“You’re in remote sensing, aren’t you, Ensign?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your first choice?”
“Actually no.” He made a face. “But I had a short-term assignment right out of the Academy, and then I was off-schedule for normal ship rotations.”
“It’s a wonder,” a jig to his right said. “I thought Serranos got whatever they wanted.”
The Serrano ensign stiffened for an instant, but then shrugged. “It’s a reputation perhaps not quite deserved,” he said, in a colorless voice.
“And what’s your specialty?” Esmay asked the jig. What was his name? Plecht, or something like that.
“I’m taking an advanced course,” the jig said, as if that should impress her. “I’m doing research in low-temperature material fabrication,” he said. “But probably nobody would understand it unless they were working in the field.”
Esmay considered her options, and decided on blandness. He was making enough of an idiot of himself already. “I’m sure you’re very good at what you do,” she said, with as little expression as she could manage. It was still too much; two of the ensigns, but not Barin Serrano, snorted and choked on their soup.
On the way out, she got two invitations to come watch the junior officers’ parpaun semifinals match.
“No, thank you,” she said to each. “I really should spend some time in the gym myself.” It was not an excuse; she was still having trouble with nightmares anytime she did not work out to exhaustion. She was sure she would outlast them in time, but for now she was spending a couple of hours a day in the gym.
The parpaun matches had thinned out the gym; Esmay saw only three others, each engrossed in his or her own program. She turned on her favorite machine. Someone had left the display wall on its mirrored setting; she faced her reflection and automatically looked away from the face. Her legs, she saw, looked hard and fit. She should probably do more with her upper-body. But what? She didn’t feel like swimming, or using the machines designed for upper-body-building. What she wanted was a scramble up some rocks, nothing really hard but movements less regular than a machine would demand.
“Excuse me, Lieutenant . . .”
Esmay jumped, then was furious with herself for reacting that way. She looked; it was Ensign Serrano, with what she privately considered that look on his face.
“Yes?” she said.
“I just wondered . . . if the lieutenant . . . would like a sparring partner.”
She stared at him in sheer surprise. It was the last invitation she’d expected from a Serrano . . . from him. “Not you!” got out before she could censor it; he flushed but looked stubborn.
“Not me? Why?”
“I thought you were different,” she said.
This time he understood; the flush deepened, and then he went as pale as a bronze-skinned Serrano could and pulled himself up angrily. “I don’t have to suck up to you. I have more influence in my family—” He stopped, but Esmay knew what he would have said—could have said. With the Serrano Admiralty behind him, he didn’t need her. “I liked you,” he said, still angry. “Yes, my cousin mentioned you, and yes, of course I saw the media coverage. But that’s not why—”
Esmay felt guilty for misjudging him, and perversely annoyed with him for being the occasion of her misjudgment. “I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she felt more gracious about it. “It was very rude of me.”
He stared at her. “You’re apologizing?”
“Of course.” That got out before Esmay could filter it, the tone as surprised as his and making it clear that in her world all decent people apologized. “I misinterpreted your actions—”
“But you’re—” He stopped short again, clearly rethinking what he had started to say. “It’s just—I don’t think it needed an apology. Not from a lieutenant to an ensign, even if you did misunderstand my motives.”
“But it was an insult,” Esmay said, her own temper subsiding. “You had a right to be angry.”
“Yes . . . but you making a mistake and me being angry isn’t enough for an apology like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” He looked around; Esmay became aware of unnatural silence, and when she looked saw the other exercisers turning quickly away. “Not here, sir. If you really want to know—”
“I do.” While she had a captive informer willing to explain, she wanted to know why, because it had bothered her for years that Fleet officers routinely shrugged off their discourtesies without apology.
“Then—no offense intended—we should go somewhere else.”
“For once I wish this was home,” Esmay said. “You’d think on a ship this size there’d be someplace quiet to talk that didn’t imply things . . .”
“If the lieutenant would consider a suggestion?”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s always the Wall,” he said. “Up in the gardens.”
“Gardens don’t imply things?” Esmay said, brows rising. They certainly did on Altiplano, where They’re in the garden meant knowing smirks and raised brows.
“No—the Wall. The climbing wall. Even if you haven’t ever climbed a real rock . . .”
“I have,” Esmay said. “You mean they have a fake rock wall?”
“Yes, sir. And the parpaun match is on the way.”
Esmay grinned, surprising herself. “I always heard Serranos were devious. All right. I’d like to try this fake cliff.”
The cliff, when they arrived, was festooned with would-be climbers wearing all the accouterments of their sport. Esmay stared up at the safety lines swinging from the overhead. “Sorry,” Barin said. “I thought they’d be gone by now—it’s past the time the climbing club usually finishes, and no one else ever seems to use it.”
“Never mind,” Esmay said. “They’re not paying any attention to us.” She examined the cliff closely. The indentations the climbers were using for their feet and hands were molded fiber-ceram, attached to the cliff face with metal clamps. “It looks like fun.”
“It is, though I’m not very good at it.” Barin peered upward. “But one of my bunkies is an enthusiast, and he’s dragged me along a few times. That’s how I know when they’re usually done.”
“Come on up . . .” someone yelled from far above.
Esmay fitted her hand into one of the holds. “I don’t think so—I don’t have any gear, and besides . . . we had a conversation going.”
“A conversation or an argument?” Barin asked, then flushed again. “Sorry, sir.”
“No offense taken,” Esmay said. Around the base of the fake cliff, decorative rocklike forms had been placed to mark off the climbing area from the garden beds. She found a comfortable niche and sat down. “I’m not letting you off, though. If you can explain the protocols of apologies in Fleet, I’ll be forever grateful.”
“Well, as I said, what you called an insult is not that important . . . I mean, unless you really wanted my friendship, and that’s personal. Is it on your world?”
On her world, duels would have been fought, and honor would have been satisfied, for the apologies Fleet never bothered with. Would he think her people barbaric, because they cared? “It’s different,” Esmay said, thinking how to say it without implying what she really felt about their manners. “We do tend to apologize easily for things . . .”
He nodded. “So that’s why Com—some people think of you as tentative.”
Esmay ignored the slip, though she wondered which commander. “They do?”
“Yes . . . at least that’s what I’ve heard some people say. You apologize for things we—sorry, most of the Fleet families—wouldn’t, things we just take for granted. So it seems as if you’re not sure of what you’re doing.”
Esmay blinked, thinking back down her years in Fleet, from the prep school on. She had made a lot of mistakes; she had expected to. She had been guided by the family rules: tell the truth, admit your mistakes, don’t make the same mistakes twice, apologize promptly and fully for your errors. How could they think that was weakness and uncertainty? It was willingness to learn, willingness to be guided.