Probably, he reflected, it was a wise direction to follow. The CIGAs had seen to it that a huge portion of that muscle already had been sent to the shipbreakers.
Standing on tiptoe, he finally spied the Records office and pushed his way through the milling throng toward it, arriving only three-quarters of a metacycle later than he'd planned. After this, he waited in line for nearly a metacycle more until he finally reached a counter manned by two bored civilian clerks who moved so slowly that he seriously wondered if they might be closet TimeWeed addicts on some particularly vicious bender. He had just begun to patiently explain his purpose when a full Captain rudely elbowed him aside and literally dragged a youngish-looking Sublieutenant to the counter.
"Dear boy," the captain said to the clerk, "this particularly talented young person is to be assigned to my personal staff immediately. Do you understand? I shall wait...."
The man's voice had a somehow familiar ring to Brim who, by now, was so irritated he could chew hullmetal. Grinding his teeth angrily, he grudgingly admitted that returning to the Fleet did have its drawbacks. Had something like this happened to him as a civilian, he'd have decked the Captain in the blink of an eye. Now, once more part of a rigidly controlled military hierarchy, he swallowed his pride and waited silently with the rest.
"Captain Amherst," the clerk said presently, with a look of honest apprehension on his face. "Ah, sir, ah, y-your personal staff is already over by three persons."
Brim's ears pricked up. Amherst! That was where he'd heard the voice before! His eyes narrowed while he craned his neck to see the Captain's face, and... he was not mistaken. It was indeed Puvis Amherst, the haughty young Lieutenant whose utter callousness and cowardice had made Brim's life utterly miserable while they served together on I.F.S. Truculent. Amherst was also son of retired Lord Rear Admiral Quincy Yarell Amherst, which—so far as Brim was concerned—went a long way toward explaining how such a poor excuse for an officer had risen to the exalted rank of captain.
"Well don't tell me about the problem," Amherst snapped irritably to the clerk, "— fix it!" Then he turned to smile affectionately at the young Sublieutenant "You will love it here in the Shipbreaking Directorate, Lieutenant. We are such a close-knit family."
The beautiful young blond man blushed. "Oh, of course, Captain," he said.
Brim drummed his fingers on the wall. Amherst! The miserable zukeed was clearly heavier and balder than he'd been aboard old Truculent, but he was still recognizable for all that. His cheeks and chin sagged like those of a man who no longer bothered to keep his body fit, and his skin had become office-building sallow. But clearly the Amherst personality had survived intact. Even here in the Records Office he managed to rub everyone the wrong way. Basically, Puvis Amherst was totally indifferent to anyone's needs save his own. And even worse, he clearly believed that he had every right to be that way! True to form, he quickly managed to draw both clerks into the fray. And not long afterward, the two lines he had breached began to extend all the way into another corridor. Through it all, however, the man conducted an animated conversation with his effete young friend as if nothing at all were amiss.
Brim wrested his thoughts from the mayhem he would have liked to inflict and concentrated on a list of specifications for Valerian's new M-6. Better to keep one's mouth shut than to lose a commission, he thought sourly—especially less than two days after that commission had been handed back from the far side of oblivion. Leaning a shoulder against the office wall, he had begun peering into a holograph of the M-6's proposed Helmsman's console when someone roughly jostled his arm.
"It appears that you actually have wheedled your way back into uniform," Amherst muttered, shaking his arm. "I'd heard Onrad might do something to make that happen."
Brim looked up from the holograph and nodded. "You heard right," he said, "—day before yesterday at the War Memorial Hall."
"Of course," Amherst said, shaking his head disapprovingly, "the ISS celebration. Well, you'd better enjoy the limelight while you can, Carescrian. If the CIGA has anything to say about matters of government—which it does, believe me—you'll soon find your silly racing funds cut to nothing." He raised his eyebrows. "The very idea of spending capital for something like that makes my blood boil."
Brim shrugged noncommittally, wondering what Amherst would do with the funds if they were his to allocate. He never put the question into words, however. There was little sense in provoking an argument when what he really wanted was to flatten the man's nose.
After a few moments of embarrassing silence, Amherst gave a sidelong glance at the Sublieutenant, then sneered at Brim. "You don't have much more to say than you used to aboard Truculent, do you?"
"I haven't heard anything worth talking about yet, Amherst," Brim returned quietly.
" Captain Amherst, to you, Carescrian," the man sneered, "—and never forget it!"
Taking the Sublieutenant's arm, he nodded toward Brim. "It's obsolete refuse like this that spoils today's Admiralty," he explained. "As fast as we force them out, some fool like Onrad brings them back again.
Very frustrating."
The young officer took a single glance at Brim's glowering countenance and immediately began to study a display of empty forms at the counter.
"You'd better find this worth talking about, Brim," Amherst continued presently, glaring at the Carescrian as if he had just committed some particularly detestable outrage. "Imperial entries in races like the Mitchell will soon be things of the past. There are better, more politically desirable uses to which such funds can be put. And," he added pointedly, "now is no time to compete with the League and win."
In spite of himself, Brim felt his eyebrows rise. "What do you mean by that, Amherst?" he demanded.
" Captain Amherst!"
"Captain Amherst..."
"That's better, Brim. You never have accepted your rightful place, have you?"
Brim ground his teeth again. "No," he agreed. "I have not —Captain."
By now, the two clerks seemed to have their emergency under control, and indeed, the other line had begun to move again while the clerk in Brim's line appeared to be finishing things up rapidly.
"Eventually you'll catch on, Brim," Amherst sneered breezily. "Otherwise, we'll quickly get rid of you again. And, to answer your question, the first thing you'd better learn is that we no longer compete with the League. At all. That goes for you, in a personal sense, as well as the obscenity you refer to as the ISS." This time, he glared in overt anger. "Instead of making vain glorious attempts to belittle our colleagues from the League—as you recently did in Rudolpho—your efforts should be directed toward promoting peace and cooperation."
"Like what?" Brim asked.
"Like helping to reduce a bloated Imperial Fleet," he said, "—a Fleet that is clearly no longer necessary to the safety of the realm." He put his hands on his hips and looked at Brim as if he were addressing a particularly stupid child. "Can't you understand that the Fleet, by its very existence, acts as a tremendous obstacle to our work?"