Once she began to enjoy herself more, she started worrying that she was being too social, neglecting her studies. “I still don’t know what I should to help Major Pitak,” she said to Barin one shipnight. She felt guilty about going to the gym to play wallball when she could have been studying. Pitak seemed pleased with her progress, but if a ship needed repair right now, what could she actually do?
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Barin said. “And I know what I’m talking about. Serranos have a reputation for being hard on themselves and each other . . . you’re off the scale.”
“It’s necessary,” she said. When had she first discovered that if she had high enough standards, no one else’s criticism mattered?
“Not that far,” he said. “You’re locking down a lot of what you could be, could do, with that kind of control.”
She shied away from that. “What I could do, is study.”
He punched her arm lightly. “We need you; Alana’s not feeling up to a game, and that leaves us short.”
“All right.” She wanted to cooperate, and it bothered her. Why was she reacting like this, when she was immune to the tall, handsome Forrester, who had already asked her what Barin probably never would? She didn’t want complications; she wanted simple friendship. That was pleasure enough.
The wallball game turned into a wild melee because most of the players agreed to play a variable-G game. Esmay argued, but was outvoted. “It’s more fun,” Zintner said, setting the AI control of the variable-G court for random changes. “You’ll see.”
“Out of black eyes,” said Alana, who was refereeing this match. “I won’t play VG games, and neither should you, Esmay.”
“Be a sport,” someone on the other team called. Esmay shrugged, and put on the required helmet and eyeguard.
An hour later, bruised and sweaty, she and the others staggered out to find that they had plenty of spectators.
“Chickens,” Zintner said to those watching through the high windows of the court.
“It’s easier on you shorties,” said the tallest player on the other team. “If all the blood rushes to your head, it doesn’t have time to go as fast.”
Esmay said nothing; her stomach was still arguing about which way was up, and she was glad she had eaten little for lunch. She refused an invitation to take a cooling swim with the team, and instead showered and changed. By then she was hungry. Outside the showers, she found Barin nursing a swollen elbow.
“You’re going to have that checked, aren’t you, Ensign?” she said. They had discovered a mutual distaste for medical interventions, and now teased each other about it.
“It’s not broken, Lieutenant,” he said. “I believe surgery won’t be necessary.”
“Good—then perhaps you’ll join me for a snack?”
“I think I could just about manage to get my hand to my mouth,” he said, grinning. “It was Lieutenant Forrester’s fault, anyway. He went for my shot, and got his knee in the way of my elbow.”
Esmay tried to work that out—in a variable-G game, a lunge could turn into an unplanned dive and end in a floating rebound—and gave up.
As they ate, she brought up her past experience with his family for the first time. “I served on the same ship as Heris Serrano, back when I was an ensign. She was a good officer—I was in awe of her. When she got in that trouble, I was so angry . . . and I didn’t know what I could do to help, if anything. Nothing, as it turned out.”
“I met her just one time,” he said. “My grandmother had told me about her—not everything, of course, only what was legal. She sent me with a message; she wanted to use only family as couriers. We weren’t sure which of us would find her, and I was the lucky one.” From the tone, Esmay wasn’t sure he thought it was lucky.
“Didn’t you like her?”
“Like her!” That, too, had a tone she couldn’t read. Then, less explosively, “It’s not a matter of liking. It’s—I’m used to Serranos; I’m one myself. We tend to have this effect on people. We’re always being accused of being arrogant, even when we aren’t. But she was . . . more like Grandmother than any of the others.” He smiled, then. “She bought me dinner. She was in a white rage when I first showed up, and then she bought me dinner, a really expensive one, and—well, everyone knows what she did at Xavier.”
“But you ended up friends with her?”
“I doubt it.” Now he looked down at his plate. “I doubt she’s friends with any Serrano now, though I hear she’s speaking to her parents again.”
“She wasn’t?”
“No. It’s all kind of tangled . . . according to Grandmother she thought they would help her when Lepescu threatened her—and they didn’t—and then she resigned. That’s when Grandmother told everyone to leave her alone.”
“But I thought she was just on covert ops then.”
“That too, but I don’t know when—or what was going on. Grandmother says it’s none of my business and to keep my nose out of it and my mouth shut.”
Esmay could imagine that, and wondered that he broke the prohibition even this much. She had prohibitions of her own that she had no intention of breaking, just because she’d found a new friend.
“I met her, of course, after Xavier, but only briefly,” Esmay said. In the dark times before the trial, when she had been sure she’d be thrown out of Fleet, the memory of the respect in those dark eyes had steadied her. She would like to have deserved that look more often. “There were legal reasons for keeping us apart, they said.” Then she turned the topic to something less dangerous.
A few days later, Barin asked her about Altiplano, and she found herself describing the rolling grassy plains, the mountain scarps, her family’s estancia, the old stone-built city, even the stained glass she had liked so much as a child.
“Who’s your Seat in Council?” Barin asked.
“Nobody. We have no direct representation.”
“Why?”
“The Founder died. The Family we served. Supposedly, half the militia died along with the Family. There are those who say otherwise, that the reason no one from Altiplano has a Seat in Council is that it was a mutiny.”
“What does your grandmother say?”
“My grandmother?” Why should he think her grandmother’s words had any weight . . . oh, of course, because his grandmother was Admiral Serrano. “Papa Stefan says it’s a ridiculous lie, and Altiplano should have a Seat or maybe four.” At his look, she found herself explaining. “On Altiplano, we’re not like Fleet . . . even if we’re military. Men and women don’t usually do the same things . . . not as life work, that is. Most of the military, and all the senior commanders, are men. Women run the estancias, and most of the government agencies that aren’t directly concerned with the military.”
“That’s odd,” Barin said. “Why?”
She hated to think about it, let alone talk about it. “It’s all old stuff,” she said dismissively. “And anyway, that’s just Altiplano.”
“Is that why you left? Your father was a—a sector commander, you said?—and you couldn’t be in the military?”
Now she was sweating; she could feel the prickle on the back of her neck. “Not exactly. Look—I don’t want to talk about it.”
He spread his hands. “Fine—I never asked, you never got upset, we can just talk about my relatives again if that’s all right.”
She nodded, stabbing her fork into food she barely saw, and he began a story about his cousin Esser, who had been consistently nasty during long vacations. She didn’t know if it was true; she knew it didn’t matter. He was being polite; she was the occasion for more politeness, and that in itself was humiliating.