For once, oblivion did not take long to reach her mind.
It seemed as if she took only a few breaths before the alarm chimed her awake, and she threw on clothing and ran to the desk. It was broad, brilliant daylight. Spence was making herself breakfast, and Macnamara had already left on his morning errands—as the team’s courier, his task was to check certain public places to find if any messages had been left for the team, and he’d been provided with a two-wheeled vehicle for the purpose.
Sula called the Records Office and used Lady Arkat’s temporary password to gain access to the main computer. Spence silently brought to her desk a cup of heavily sweetened coffee, shortly followed by a toasted muffin and a pot of jam.
The question was how long it would take Lady Arkat to turn up at her desk. If she were like many of the Peers in the civil administration, she might turn up at midmorning, or even after a long luncheon.
Sula opened her hand comm and put it on the desk in front of her. She ate her muffin and asked Spence for another.
She ate her second muffin. She paced. She made more coffee. She emptied her bladder. She brushed her teeth and combed her hair.
She tried to keep from screaming aloud.
Spence stayed very much out of her way.
Lady Arkat turned out to be one of the midmorning Peers. It was just after midmorning, at 13:06, when Sula saw that the head of security had checked in and viewed her morning’s messages.
A few minutes later, Sula’s hand comm chimed. She checked the message, and found Lady Arkat’s new password waiting for her.
She leaped up from her chair to give a shriek of exultation. Then she deaccessed the Records Office and bounced joyously around the apartment, tidying the breakfast things.
Macnamara returned from his errands and walked into the apartment carrying a bag of provisions. “No messages,” he reported. Then, seeing Sula’s state, he asked, “Something happened?”
“I’ve become the Goddess of the Records Office,” Sula said.
Macnamara thought about this for a moment, then nodded. “Very good, my lady,” he said, and went to the refrigerator to put away the groceries.
TWELVE
Lady Michi’s dining room was large enough for the formal dinner parties that were part of the service life of a squadron commander, and was made to seem larger by ornate mirrors fashioned out of highly polished nickel-iron asteroid material, and by the murals that made the room seem to open up into a series of other rooms, each with windows that looked onto a distant horizon.
Martinez wore full dress—which he would have done in any case—and found the squadcom dressed likewise. From her table, set for two, she looked up at Martinez with an expression of relief.
“Oh, good,” she said, rising. “I wanted to be the first to invite you to a meal, so that I could warn you that they’re all formal here.”
“Lord Captain Fletcher told me.”
“You spoke to him, then? Please sit down, by the way.”
Martinez placed his gloves on a side table, then sat in the chair that one of Lady Michi’s servants held for him. “I encountered the captain, along with one of the lieutenants, Lady Chandra Prasad.”
A private smile touched the squadcom’s lips. “Yes. Well. I’m somewhat less formal than the lord captain, but he sets the style on the ship, so I thought you should be warned.” She looked up at the servant, an older, dignified, broad-faced woman. “Could you bring in the cocktails, Vandervalk?”
“Yes, my lady.”
After Vandervalk made her way out, Lady Michi leaned across the table and lowered her voice. “I should let you know about Prasad, by the way. In normal circumstances I’m not one to repeat gossip, but I wouldn’t want you to put a foot wrong here. It’s reported that Lady Chandra and the captain are, ah, intimates.”
The sensations produced in Martinez were dominated by relief. “Ah—thank you, my lady. Not that I would, in any case, be…” Martinez paused as he tried to work out exactly how to tactfully reassure Lady Michi that he had no intention of cheating on her niece with the captain’s mistress, or indeed with anyone else.
This road of virtue was proving a frustrating one, and not simply in the matter of continence. When interviewing servants, he’d found a young woman machinist who would have been perfect for the post, and he had been on the verge of taking her into his entourage when he realized that she was quite attractive and that everyone would assume he’d brought her along as his lover. With ill grace he had passed her over in favor of Ayutano.
“Quite so,” Lady Michi said. “I just wanted to give you a warning just in case the…undercurrents…became a little troublesome.”
Martinez knew all too well how troublesome the undercurrents around Chandra could be, and he was grateful for the news. “I thank you. And—as it happens—I have news of the family.”
Lady Michi was delighted to discover that Terza was pregnant, and when Vandervalk returned with glasses and the cocktail pitcher, she was the first to offer a toast to the new Chen heir.
Over dinner they talked of family and other innocuous matters. Martinez knew that Lady Michi was divorced, but not that she had two children at school in the Hone Reach, children whose liberty had been guaranteed by the Battle of Hone-bar. She drew out of Martinez a description of the fighting, and her questions were shrewd enough so that Martinez began to believe that here, at least, was a commander who knew her job.
“And apropos the war,” Michi said at the end of the meal, “I may as well acquaint you with your duties.” She called up the wall display and flashed onto a map of the empire, Zanshaa in the center with the wormhole routes woven like lace around the capital.
“As you’ve probably guessed,” she said, with a sidelong look, “the Fleet has adopted what I believe is now being called the Chen Plan.”
Martinez tried not to sigh too heavily. “Naturally, my lady,” he said, “I support the plan fully.”
Michi smiled. “My brother Maurice sent me an early copy of the plan,” he said, “when it still had your name on it—yours and Lady Sula’s, I recall. How is she, by the way?”
“We’ve lost touch.”
The squadron commander raised an eyebrow, but chose not to pursue the matter. “Maurice tells me, by the way, that it was Lord Tork who insisted on changing the name of the plan. Lord Tork seems to think that you’ve gained more celebrity than is proper for someone of your station.”
Martinez attempted without success to restrain his indignation. He protested to himself that he didn’t evenknow Lord Tork. He’d only met Tork briefly, at an awards presentation. Why the hell had the chairman of the Fleet Control Board taken against him?
Martinez spoke through clenched teeth. “Has Lord Chen any idea why Lord Tork has…has—”
“Lord Tork is a person of fixed ideas and strong prejudices,” Michi said. Her tone combined amusement and sympathy.
Martinez looked at her. “Does your ladyship have any notion how I might improve in his lordship’s opinion?” he asked.
Lady Michi’s amusement grew. “Avoid any distinction for the rest of the war, I suppose,” she said.
Martinez decided not to pursue this annoying topic, and he turned to the wormhole map displayed on the wall.
“And our part of the plan, my lady?” he asked.
Lady Michi suppressed her smile and turned to the map. “Once the Naxids are fully committed in the Zanshaa system,” she said, “Chenforce will leave Seizho by the Protipanu wormhole gate for raids into enemy rear areas, destroying commerce and any warships we encounter.”