Praxis

ONE

“Of course, following the Great Master’s death, I will kill myself.”

Lieutenant Gareth Martinez, keeping pace alongside the longer-legged Fleet Commander Enderby, felt himself stumble as he heard the words.

“My lord?” He drove his legs through the stumble, to stride once more off Enderby’s left shoulder. Their heels rang again in unison on the shaved, glittering asteroid material that floored the Commandery.

“I’ve volunteered,” Enderby said in his prosaic, literal tone. “My family needs a representative on the pyre, and I’m the most suitable candidate. I’m at the apex of my career, my children are well-established, and my wife has given me a divorce.” He looked at Martinez from beneath his level white brows. “My death will assure that my name, and my family’s name, will be honored forever.”

And help everyone to forget that little financial scandal involving your wife,Martinez thought. It was a pity that Enderby’s spouse couldn’t be the family sacrifice instead of the Fleet Commander.

A pity for Martinez in particular.

“I’ll miss you, my lord,” he said.

“I’ve spoken to Captain Tarafah about you,” Enderby went on. “He’s agreed to take you aboard as communications officer on theCorona.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Martinez said, and tried not to let his voice reflect the dismay that echoed coldly down his bones.

The Martinez family was among the Peers, the clans that the Great Masters-the Shaa-had placed over all creation. Though all Peers were equal in the sight of the Shaa, the Peers’ own views were less Olympian. It wasn’t enough just to be a Peer. You had to be theright kind of Peer.

And Martinez was definitely the wrong kind. While near-omnipotent on its distant home world of Laredo, the Martinez clan were provincial nobodies to the high-caste Peers whose palaces ornamented the High City of Zanshaa. The fine gradations of rank perceived by the Peers had no status in law, but their weight was felt everywhere in Peer society. Martinez’s birth entitled him to a place in the Peers’ military academy followed by a commission, but that was all.

In six years’ service, he had risen to lieutenant. That was as far as his father had come in a dozen years, before Marcus Martinez resigned in frustration and returned to Laredo to devote himself to making money on a grand scale.

His son knew he needed a powerful patron who would advance him in the service hierarchy. And Gareth Martinez thought he had found that patron in Fleet Commander Enderby, who seemed impressed with his abilities and was willing to overlook his obscure home and the wretched provincial accent that, try as he might, he’d been unable to lose.

What do you do when your senior officer announces his intention to commit suicide? Martinez wondered. Try to talk him out of it?

“Tarafah is a good officer,” Enderby assured. “He’ll look after you.”

Tarafah is only a lieutenant captain,Martinez thought. So even if Tarafah decided that he was the most brilliant officer he’d ever met-and the chances ofthat were not high-Tarafah wouldn’t be in a position to give him a promotion to the next rank. He could only recommend him to a superior, and that superior would be patron to another set of clients whose needs, Martinez knew, would rank greater than his own.

I am hip deep in the shit,he concluded. Unless he could talk the Fleet Commander into changing his mind about annihilating himself.

“My lord,” he began, and was interrupted as another officer, Senior Squadron Commander Elkizer, approached with his entourage. Elkizer and his staff were Naxids, members of the first species to be conquered by the Shaa, and Martinez suppressed annoyance as they scuttled across the polished floor toward Enderby. Not only did they interrupt a conversation vital to Martinez’s career, the Naxids were a species that had always made him uncomfortable.

Perhaps it was the way they moved. They had six limbs, four legs, and another, upper pair that could be used as either arms or legs. They seemed to have only two speeds: stop, andvery, very fast. When they moved, the four feet were in continual motion, scrabbling at the ground, heedless of terrain or even of success. Their feet flung their bodies forward as fast as they could, and when they wanted to go particularly fast, they lowered their centauroid bodies to the ground and used the front two limbs as well, their bodies snaking from side to side in a liquid whiplike motion that frankly gave Martinez the creeps.

The Naxids’ bodies were covered with black, beaded scales ornamented with a shifting pattern of red. The swift-moving scarlet patterns were used for communication among them, a language which other species found difficult or impossible to decipher. In order not to hamper this communication, Naxid officers wore uniforms of chameleon weave that faithfully duplicated the patterns flashing underneath.

On their home world, in their primitive state, the Naxids had traveled in packs led by one dominant personality-and they still did. Even without rank badges, you could tell by body language and demeanor which Naxids were dominant and which subservient. The high-ranking Naxids were impossibly arrogant, and the lower castes cringingly submissive.

Squadron Leader Elkizer scuttled toward Fleet Commander Enderby and slammed to a halt, his upper body thrown back to bare his throat for the killing stroke.

Kill me if you so desire, my lord: that was the service’s ideal of subordination.

Elkizer’s entourage-Martinez wanted to use the wordpack — imitated their superior. Standing at attention, they came up to Enderby’s chin, with bodies the size of a very large dog.

“As you were, lords,” Enderby said amiably, then engaged Elkizer in a discussion about whether one of Elkizer’s cruisers would be out of dock in time for the Great Master’s death-and Enderby’s own suicide, of course. This was complicated by the fact that no one knew when the Great Master’s death would come, though everyone was reasonably certain it would be soon.

“Leave nothing undone,” Enderby said to Martinez after the warm-blooded reptiles went on their way. “You won’t mind some extra work helping me with my preparations?”

“Of course not, my lord.” Which meant, damn it, that his meeting with Warrant Officer Amanda Taen would have to be postponed.

“We don’t know the day,” Enderby said, “but we must be ready when it comes.”

Martinez felt a sodden, drizzling cloud of gloom press on his skull. “Yes, my lord,” he said.

Enderby’s office had a soft, aromatic scent, something like vanilla. It occupied the southeast corner of the Commandery, with a curving window that made up two walls. The magnificent view included the limitless, brooding expanse of the Lower Town, and above, Zanshaa’s accelerator ring-the thin arc of brilliant sunlit silver that cut across its viridian sky and circled the entire planet.

But Enderby had always been indifferent to the sight. His desk faced away from the huge window, toward the interior of the Commandery, and beyond it to the nearly empty Great Refuge of the Masters, where his duty lay.

Martinez had to suppress his admiration for the view while he was with the Fleet Commander. Enderby had a knack of making himself indifferent to all but the business at hand, but Martinez was more easily distracted. He could have dreamed out the window all day.

As the Fleet Commander’s communications officer, he supervised messages between Enderby and his extensive command, which included the dozens of ships that belonged to the Home Fleet; the installations on the ground on Zanshaa and elsewhere in the system; the paramilitary Antimatter Service, which serviced the accelerator ring; the installations, training facilities, docks, and stores on the ring itself; the elevators that ran personnel and cargo from the planet’s surface to the ring and back; communication with the Fleet Control Board, Enderby’s superiors; and handling the intricate communications net that webbed all this together.

Despite the size and complexity of his duties, however, Martinez usually had plenty of time on his hands. The Home Fleet ran on well-worn routine, established over the thousands of years of Shaa dominion. Most of the messages reaching him dealt with matters that scarcely required Enderby’s attention: routine situation reports, information on stores and requisitions, on maintenance, and on personnel entering and graduating from the training academies. These Martinez filed without ever sending them across the Fleet Commander’s screens. Flagged for Enderby’s attention were communications from friends or clients, reports on casualties from accidents-which always resulted in a personal note of condolence from the Fleet Commander-and, more important, appeals from the sentences imposed in the event of breaches of discipline or criminal activity. Enderby always paid close attention to these cases, and sometimes sent a series of painfully blunt questions to the accusing officer, which often resulted in charges being dropped.

Martinez felt relief whenever this happened. He had seen enough of service justice to know how rough it was, and how lazy the investigating officer could be. He knew that if he should ever be subject to the draconian penalties of the law, he’d want someone like Enderby reviewing the case.

During his time as the Fleet Commander’s aide, nothing like a real emergency had ever occurred to disturb the orderly flow of routine. Procedures were that well-honed. But the leisurely pace of his regular work was as nothing compared to the private business on which Enderby concentrated that day. Even though Martinez had worked with Enderby almost daily for months, he had no idea how complex the Fleet Commander’s life was.

Enderby had a thousand details to dispose of-bequests to friends, children, relatives, dependents, and subordinates. He was colossally wealthy, a fact Martinez hadn’t quite realized. Though the Fleet Commander stayed in modest lodgings in the Commandery, he owned a palace in the High City, which he’d closed, apparently, after his divorce. This was left as a bequest to his eldest daughter, who held a high post in the Ministry of Fisheries, though suites were left to other children for their lifetimes. Other property on Zanshaa and elsewhere had to be dealt with, along with the contents of bank and stock accounts, bonds, and a bewildering array of complex financial instruments.

Martinez sat at his desk in Enderby’s office and processed these bequests along with his normal signals traffic. Into the traffic he managed to insert a personal item, a request to Warrant Officer Taen, begging a postponement of their date.

Enderby’s secretary, an elderly sublieutenant named Gupta, who had been with him for years, was likewise kept busy, dealing with other aspects of a long, rich, complex life now being brought to a conclusion.

Commanders of fleet rank were allowed to recommend a certain number of promotions on retirement. But if a list existed, it did not cross Martinez’s desk, and he knew better than to ask Gupta if it had crossed his.

But he very much wished he knew whether his name was on it.

One personal message came to Martinez during the course of his day. Not from Warrant Officer Taen, unfortunately, but from his own sister, Vipsania. She looked at him lazily out of the desk display and tossed her dark hair with a studied gesture. “We’re having a party early next month.” Her tones were even more plummy, if possible, than when he’d last heard them. “We’d love for you to come, Gareth darling, but I imagine you’ll be too busy.”

Martinez didn’t send a reply. He knew his sister well enough to realize that he had just heard an order to be too busy to attend their party-the “Gareth, darling” was a clue he couldn’t miss.

Vipsania and the two other Martinez sisters, Walpurga and Sempronia, had turned up on Zanshaa just a few months after he’d begun his tour of duty. They rented half of the old Shelley Palace and plunged into Zanshaa society. Sempronia was supposedly attending university, with the others looking after her, but if there was any education going on, it did not seem to be from textbooks.

Martinez’s previous memories of his three sisters had been of children-annoying, intelligent, conniving, pestiferous children, admittedly, but still children. The formidable young women who held court in the Shelley Palace now seemed not only grown-up, but ageless-like nymphs gracing a fountain, they seemed eternal, strangely out of time.

They might have been expected to need Martinez’s help in establishing themselves in the capital, but they had come with letters of introduction, and in fact hadn’t needed him at all. If anything, they wanted him to stay away. They had lost their Laredo accents somewhere in the course of growing up, and his own speech was a reminder of their common provincial origins, one that might embarrass them in front of their new glit friends.

Sometimes Martinez wondered if he disliked his sisters. But what did fountain nymphs care if they were liked or not? They simplywere.

By the time Enderby finished his work, the sun had set and Zanshaa’s silver accelerator ring, half eclipsed by the planet’s shadow, was visible now only as a constellation of lights arcing across the night sky. Night birds hunted insects outside the curved window. Sour sweat gathered under Martinez’s arms and under the collar of his dark green uniform tunic. His tailbone ached. He wanted to shower and have Warrant Officer Taen massage his shoulders with long, purposeful fingers.

Fleet Commander Enderby signed hard copy of the remaining documents and thumbprinted them. Martinez and Gupta witnessed the documents where necessary. Then Enderby turned off his screens and rose from his seat, rolling his shoulders in a subdued stretch consonant with the dignity of his office.

“Thank you, my lords,” he said, then looked at Martinez. “Lieutenant Martinez, will you see that the invitations to the ship commanders are delivered?”

Martinez’s heart sank. The “invitations”-not the sort any commander would dare decline-were to a meeting concerning Fleet dispositions on the day of the Great Master’s death, and by service custom such requests had to be delivered by hand.

“Yes, my lord,” he said. “I’ll bring them up to the ring as soon as I can print hard copy.”

The Fleet Commander’s mild brown eyes turned to him. “No need to go yourself,” he said. “Send one of the duty cadets.”

A small mercy, at least. “Thank you, Lord Commander.”

Sublieutenant Gupta received Enderby’s thanks, braced in salute, and made his way out. Martinez put special thick bond paper into the printer-actual trees went into making this stuff-and printed Enderby’s invitations. When he finished putting them in envelopes, he looked up and saw Enderby gazing out the great curved window. The myriad lights of the Lower Town illuminated and softened his profile. There was an uncertainty in his glance, a strange, lost vacancy.

For once Enderby could stand in his office and contemplate the view. He had no duty awaiting him.

Nothing was left undone.

Martinez wondered if a man as successful as Enderby had any real regrets at the end of his life. Even granted that he was from a clan of the highest caste, he’d done well. Though his position had carried him through several promotions, no one wasguaranteed the rank of Fleet Commander. He was wealthy, he had added to the honor of his house, his children were all established in life and doing well. True, the wife was a problem, but the investigators had gone out of their way to make it clear that her peculations were no stain on the Fleet Commander.

Perhaps he loved her, Martinez thought. Marriages among the Peers were usually arranged by the family, but sometimes love happened. Perhaps, in a situation such as the commander’s, it was the love one regretted, not the marriage.

But this wasn’t the time to speculate on the Fleet Commander’s private life. Martinez knew this was the time for him to use his cunning, to use all the charm he’d intended to use on Warrant Officer Taen.

Now or never,he thought, and steeled himself.

“My lord?” he said.

Enderby gave a start of surprise, then turned to him. “Yes, Martinez?”

“You just said something. But I didn’t catch what it was.”

Martinez didn’t know how to begin this conversation, so he hoped to somehow come to a kind of mutual understanding that Enderby himself had begun it.

“Did I speak?” Enderby was surprised. He shook his head. “It probably wasn’t important.”

Martinez’s mind flailed as he tried to keep the conversation going. “The service is about to go through a difficult period,” he said.

Enderby nodded. “Possibly. But we’ve had sufficient time to prepare.”

“In the time to come, we’ll need leaders such as you.”

Enderby gave a dismissive twitch of his lips. “I’m not unique.”

“I beg to differ, lord,” Martinez said. He took a step closer to the commander. “I’ve had the honor to work intimately with you these last months, and I hope you’ll not take it amiss if I say that in my opinion your gifts are of a rare order.”

Enderby’s lips gave that twitch again, and he raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t worked with any other Fleet Commanders, have you?”

“But I’ve worked with a lot ofmen, my lord. And a great many Peers. And-” Martinez knew he was deep in the morass now. He could feel the slime rising to his armpits. He took a gulp of air, not daring to stop. “-and I’ve seen how limited most of them are. And how your own horizons are so much broader, my lord, so much more valuable to the service and to-”

Martinez froze as Enderby fixed him with a glare. “Lord Lieutenant,” he said, “will you please bring yourself to the point?”

“The point, Lord Commander-” Martinez said. “-the point is-” He reached into his shoes for his courage and dragged it quailing into the light. “The point is, I was hoping to convince you to reconsider the matter of your retirement.”

He hoped for a softening of Enderby’s glance, a sudden shock of concern. Perhaps a fatherly hand placed on his shoulder, a hesitant question: Does it really mean so much to you?

Instead, Enderby’s face stiffened and the older man seemed to inflate, his iron spine growing somehow more rigid, his chest rising. His lower jaw pushed out as he spoke, revealing an even white row of lower teeth.

“Howdare you presume to question my judgment?” he demanded.

Martinez felt nails bite into his palms. “Lord Commander,” he said, “I question the necessity of removing a superb leader at such a critical time-”

“Don’t you realize that I meannothing! ” Enderby cried. “Nothing!Don’t you understand that elementary fact of our service? We-all this-” He made a savage gesture toward the window with his hand, encompassing all beyond the transparency, the millions in the Lower Town, the great arc of the antimatter ring, the ships and wormhole stations beyond. “-it’s alltrash! ” His voice was an urgent whisper, as if overwhelming emotion had partially paralyzed his vocal cords. “Trash,compared to the true, the eternal, the one thing that gives our miserable lives meaning…”

Enderby raised a fist and for one horrified second Martinez feared that the Fleet Commander would strike him down.

“For the Praxis!”Enderby said. “The Praxis is all that matters-it is all that is true-all that is beautiful!” Enderby brandished his fist again. “Andthat is the knowledge for which our ancestors suffered. For which we werescourged! Millions had todie in agony before the Great Masters burned the truth of the Praxis into our minds. And if millions more-billions! — had to die to uphold the righteousness of the Praxis, it would be our duty toinflict those deaths! ”

Martinez wanted to take a step back to evade the scorching fire in the Fleet Commander’s eyes. With an effort of pure will, he kept his shoes planted on the office carpet, and tipped up his chin, exposing his throat.

He felt the commander’s spittle on his neck as Enderby raged on. “We must all die!” he said. “But the only death that gives meaning is one in service to the Praxis. Because I am who I am,at this perfect moment in time, I am privileged to havean honorable death, one that gives both myself and the Praxis meaning. Do you know how rare that is?” He gestured again out the window, at the invisible millions below. “How many ofthose will die in a meaningful way, do you suppose? Practically none!”

Fleet Commander Enderby stepped close to Martinez. “And you wish to deprive me of a meaningful death? The death proper to a Peer? Who are you to do that, Lieutenant Martinez?”

Instinct managed to find words amid the clouds of fear that shadowed Martinez’s mind. He had learned early that when he was caught out, he should always admit it and then beg forgiveness in as endearing a manner as possible. Honesty, he’d found, had its own brand of charm.

“I regret the suggestion extremely, Lord Commander,” he said. “I was thinking only of my own selfish desires.”

Enderby glared at Martinez for a few long moments, then took a step back. “Over the next few hours I shall do my best to forget your very existence, Lieutenant,” he said. “See that those letters are delivered.”

“Yes, Lord Commander.”

Martinez turned and marched for the door, ignoring the strong impulse to run.See if I ever try to save your miserable life again, he thought.

And, damn the Praxis anyway.

It was the alien Shaa, the Great Masters, who had imposed their absolutist ethic, the Praxis, on humanity after the surrender of Earth following the destruction of Delhi, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and a dozen other cities by antimatter bombs. Humanity was the second intelligent species to feel the lash of the Shaa. The first being the black-scaled, centauroid Naxids, who by the time of Earth’s surrender were sufficiently tamed to have crewed most of the Shaa ships.

No one knew where the Shaa originated, and the Shaa were not forthcoming on this or any other aspect of their history. Their capital, the city of Zanshaa on the planet of Zanshaa, was clearly not their planet of origin, and had been chosen in historical times for its convenient location amid eight wormhole gates through which the Shaa could access their dominion. The Shaa “year,”.84 Earth years, had no reference to the period of Zanshaa’s orbit about its primary, or indeed to the orbit of any other planet in their empire. Any reference to their origins had been erased from the records by the time their subject species were given access to them.

Another curiosity was the Shaa dating system, which began in the “Peace of the Praxis One,” some 437 years before their appearance in the skies above the Naxids’ home world. This suggested a time before the Praxis claimed the Shaas’ devotion, but no Shaa could be persuaded to confirm this surmise. Nor did the Shaa revere whatever Shaa-if itwas a Shaa-who first formulated the Praxis, or remember its name.

For the Shaa were adamant that every species-that thephysical universe itself — should submit to terms dictated by the Praxis. Whole categories of technology were absolutely forbidden-machine intelligence and autonomy, the translation of organic intelligence into machine or electromagnetic form, and machines constructed to manipulate matter at the molecular or atomic level. Genetic manipulation was also forbidden-the Shaa preferred the slower process of natural selection, the more unsentimental, the better.

The iron will behind these prohibitions was demonstrated again and again. Those who offended against the Praxis were punished by death, often horribly and publicly, for the Praxis itself commanded that “those who offend against the fundamental law shall receive punishment in greater proportion than their crime, so that public virtue may be maintained by this example.” Nor were the Shaa or their followers shy about using the most poisonous and destructive weapons to support their ethic. Antimatter bombs sometimes destroyed whole cities for the crimes of a few citizens, and on one occasion, when a small group of Terrans was discovered using genetic technology in hopes of breeding a plague that would kill off the Shaa, their entire planet was bombed to death, the great explosions raising vast clouds of smoke and dust that drew a curtain across the sun, condemning the survivors to lingering, freezing death in a frigid atmosphere poisoned by radiation.

Surviving Terrans, awed by the comprehensive way in which the Shaa destroyed their own subjects, felt supremely lucky that the planet involved was not Earth.

Such examples had their effect. After the lingering death of the planet Dandaphis, the prohibitions against technology embodied within the Praxis were never again subjected to such a radical challenge.

Other elements of the Praxis were devoted to social organization, with every sentient being in the empire given a place in a well-defined hierarchy, one clan ranked below the next, with the Peers over all. Those at the top were given responsibility for the well-being of those at the bottom, while the lower orders were expected to honor the Peers and the Shaa with their meek obedience.

Another clause of the Praxis forbade sentients to “curse themselves with immortality”-a curious prohibition, because the Shaa themselves were immortal. But those among the Shaa, in a rare display of the reasoning behind one of their prohibitions, freely admitted that their immortality had been a mistake, an error sufficient to drive them to eradicate by gun, flaying knife, or antimatter bomb any others who dared to seek physical immortality for themselves.

Of the Shaa themselves, the Shaa said nothing. Why these immortal beings, blessed with absolute power, began one by one to kill themselves remained a riddle. The Shaa refused to consider their own deaths a tragedy. “No being should be immortal,” was their uniform response to any questions.

Whatever the cause, the Great Masters chose to die one by one, each followed in death by dozens of loyal subordinates. And now, in the Year 12,481 of the Peace of the Praxis, only one remained.

And this last was not expected to live long.

Across the foyer of the Commandery, a map of the empire displayed the wormhole routes connecting Zanshaa to its dominions. The map bore no resemblance to the actual star systems that surrounded Zanshaa: the wormholes overleaped all nearby stars, and could in fact connect any two points in the universe. Many of the star-systems shown on the map were so remote from Zanshaa that it was not known where they stood in relation to any other part of the empire. And the wormholes spanned time as well as distance-a wormhole that leaped eight hundred light-years could also leap up to eight hundred years into the past, or alternatively into the future, or any length of time in between.

But there was no paradox when it did so. Because of the limitations imposed by the speed of light, it was impossible to get to another star quickly enough to alter its history-except by using the wormhole, in which case you found that the Shaa had been there before you.

The overwhelming fact of history was that there was no escaping the Shaa. There was no escaping the history that made Gareth Martinez a provincial lord, an object of condescension to his betters. There was no going back in time to rectify the error that had caused Fleet Commander Enderby to savage him.

There was no saving him from his mistakes, or the mistakes of civilization, or of history itself. He had to live with them all.

The heavy envelopes containing Enderby’s invitations bulked large under his left arm. Martinez transferred them to his right hand and continued his walk to the cadets’ duty room. On the way, he checked his sleeve display for any messages.

Some other time maybe.

Warrant Officer Taen’s words were printed across the chameleon-weave left sleeve of his uniform jacket. There was no audio or video, which might have given a clue as to whether Amanda Taen was angry, but from the evidence, she hadn’t shut him out altogether.

Perhaps this was one mistake from which he could recover.

Martinez triggered the silver sleeve button that acted as a camera and sent both video and audio in response. “I’m free now. Is it too late to meet? Or if it’s too late, I’ll call you tomorrow and we can reschedule.”

Flowers, he thought. If he didn’t hear from Amanda Taen soon, he would send flowers along with a written apology.

He turned off the display, and the chameleon weave of the uniform jacket returned to its normal dark green, the precise color of Zanshaa’s viridian sky. He encountered little traffic in the Commandery at this late hour as he walked to the cadets’ duty room, and the click of his heels on the marble floor echoed in the high, empty corridors. At the door, he straightened his collar with its red triangular staff tabs, stiffened his spine, and marched in.

The four duty cadets didn’t see him. As Martinez expected, they were watching sport on the room’s video walls-as he remembered from his own cadet years, watching or participating in sport was the default activity, and any cadet who failed to be obsessed by sport was marked as a “toil,” an oddball.

No toils here. The sounds of football blared from one wall, all-in wrestling from another, yacht racing from the third. The cadets lounged on a sofa they’d dragged to face the wall displaying the yacht race, and were draped across the cushions with their jackets unbuttoned and cans of beer in their hands.

There was a problem presented by cadets who had graduated from one or another of the military academies but hadn’t yet gained service experience. Jobs had to be found for them so they could gain seasoning without having the opportunity to damage themselves or others. Cadets were supposed to use the three years between their graduation and their lieutenants’ exams to gain experience and study the many technical aspects of their profession, but many preferred the more tempting curriculum of inebriation, dissipation, and gambling away their available funds. “Glits,” such people were called.

Martinez remembered his own temptations very well, and the times he’d given in to them even better. He’d managed to carry off a degree of glithood-in fact, he’d found he was good at it, and only an inner compulsion to somehow be useful prevented him from turning into a complete parasite.

The cadets in the duty room were being used as messengers until useful work could be found for them. Normally, someone needing a messenger would have called here and summoned a messenger to pick up dispatches, which could give one of these layabouts a chance to finish his drink, spruce up his uniform, and transform himself into something resembling a smart, eager officer before presenting himself to authority.

Martinez parked himself directly behind their couch without anyone noticing. Pleasurable self-righteousness filled his mind. He had tracked the slothful cadet to its lair, where it wasted and loitered and thought not of duty.

“Scuuuum!”he bellowed. Cadets were not as yet commissioned, and he didn’t have to “lord” them, even though these were almost certainly Peers.

The four cadets-one woman and three men-leaped from the couch, braced their shoulders back, and bared their throats. “My lord!”they responded.

Martinez gave them a cold look. He had just had his dignity and fortunes shredded by a superior, and he felt a very powerful, very human urge to pass the pain on to someone else. He said nothing for a few seconds, daring them to relax once they realized they were facing a mere lieutenant-and a provincial at that.

The cadets stayed braced. Rich boy Foote, with his disordered blond cowlick and a clamp on his usual supercilious expression. Chatterji, with her freckles and her red hair clubbed behind her neck. Martinez didn’t know the other two.

Eventually he condescended to speak. “Which of you is at the head of the queue?”

“I am, lord.” It was one of the unknowns who spoke, a small, slim, brown-skinned youth who reeked of the beer he’d splashed on his chest as he leaped from the sofa.

Martinez took a step closer and loomed over him. Martinez was tall, and looming was something he found useful, and he had practiced till he could do it well. “Your name, insect?” he inquired.

“Silva, lord.”

Martinez held out the letters. “These are to be hand-delivered to every ship on the ring station. To the captains personally, or to their aides. Signature-receipts will be collected and returned to Lord Commander Enderby’s office.” He looked pointedly at the beery splotch that decorated the cadet’s open jacket and the blouse beneath it.

“Are you sober enough for this task, Cadet Silva?”

“Yes, lord!” Barley and hops outgassed from Silva’s lungs, but he didn’t sway, not even with his heels together and Martinez looming over him. Therefore he probably wasn’t so drunk as to bring complete disgrace onto himself, Martinez, and Enderby’s command.

“The next shuttle for the skyhook leaves in half an hour, insect,” Martinez said. “That will give you just enough time to shower and change into suitable dress before going top-side.” A thought occurred to him, and he added, “You aren’t so drunk that you’ll upchuck on the elevator, will you, insect?”

“No, my lord!”

Martinez offered him the letters. “See that you don’t. Better put these in a waterproof bag, just in case.”

“Begging my lord’s pardon?” said someone else.

The speaker was Jeremy Foote, the big blond with the cowlick that disordered his hair on the right side, and though the cadet was braced when he spoke, he still managed to speak with something approaching his usual languid drawl. It was a voice he had probably spoken in the cradle, a voice that oozed breeding and social confidence, that conjured images of exclusive smoking rooms, fancy-dress balls, and silent servants. A world to which Martinez, despite his own status as a Peer, had no admittance, not unless he was begging favors from some high-caste patron.

Martinez wheeled on him. “Yes, Cadet Foote?”

“I may as well take the letters myself, my lord,” Foote said.

Martinez knew Foote well enough to know that this seeming generosity masked an underlying motive. “And why are you being so good to Silva tonight?” he asked.

Foote permitted a hint of insolence to touch a corner of his mouth. “My uncle’s the captain of theBombardment of Delhi, my lord,” he said. “After I’ve delivered the messages, the two of us could have a bit of breakfast together.”

Just like him to cite his connections, Martinez thought. Well damn him, and damn his connections too.

Until Foote had spoken up, Martinez had planned on letting the cadets off with a brief lecture on correct dress and deportment in the duty room. Now Foote had given him every excuse to inflict dread and misery on all of them.

“I fear you’ll have to save the cozy family breakfasts for another time, Cadet Foote,” Martinez said. He jerked his chin toward Silva and once more held out the invitations.

“Get up to the station, Silva,” he said. “And if you don’t make the next elevator, believe me, I’ll know.”

“Lord!” Silva took the invitations and scuttled away, buttoning his jacket as he went. Martinez eyed the other three, one by one.

“I have other plans for the rest of you,” he said. “I’ll oblige you to turn and look at the yacht race, if you will.”

The cadets made precise military turns to face the display on the video wall-except for Chatterji, who swayed drunkenly during her spin. The wall display gave the illusion of three dimensions, with the six competing yachts, along with a planet and its moons, displayed against a convincing simulation of the starry void.

“Display,” Martinez told the wall. “Sound, off.” The chatter of the commentators cut off abruptly. “Football, off,” he went on. “Wrestling, off.”

The yachts now maneuvered in silence, weaving about the twelve moons of the ochre-striped gas giant Vandrith, the fifth planet in Zanshaa’s system. The moons weren’t precisely the object of the race: instead, each vessel was required to pass within a certain distance of a series of satellites placed in orbit about the moons. In order to avoid the race turning into a mere mathematical exercise best suited to solution by a navigational computer, the satellites were programmed to alter their own orbits randomly, forcing the pilots into off-the-cuff solutions that would test their mettle rather than the speed of their computers.

Martinez maintained an interest in yacht racing, in part because he’d considered taking it up, not only because it might raise his profile in a socially accepted way, but because he thought he might enjoy it. He’d scored his highest marks in simulations of combat maneuvers, and as a cadet had qualified for the silver flashes of a pinnace pilot. He’d been a consistent winner in the pinnace races staged during his hitch aboard theBombardment of Dandaphis, and pinnaces were not unlike racing yachts-both were purposeful, stripped-down designs that consisted largely of storage for antimatter fuel, engines, and life-support systems for a single pilot.

Martinez knew hemight be able to afford a personal yacht-he had a generous allowance from his father, which could be increased if he were tactful about it. The little boats were expensive beasts, requiring a ground crew and frequent maintenance, and he would also be obliged to join a yacht club, which involved expensive initiation fees and dues. There would be docking fees and the expense of fuel and upkeep. Not least was the humiliating likelihood that he would probably not be considered for the very best yacht clubs, such as those-for instance-sponsoring the race now being broadcast.

So he had postponed his decision about whether to become a yachtsman, hoping that his association with Fleet Commander Enderby would serve his purposes equally well. Now that his gesture in aid of Enderby’s life seemed to have triggered nothing but Enderby’s loathing, perhaps it was time to reconsider the yachting strategy again.

Martinez looked at the display, drank it in. The race, though broadcast “live,” was actually delayed by twenty-four minutes, the length of time the telemetry signals took to travel from Vandrith to Zanshaa.

“Cadet Chatterji,” Martinez said, “can you elucidate the strategy displayed by racer number two?”

Chatterji licked her lips. “Elucidate, my lord?”

Martinez sighed. “Just tell us what the pilot is doing.”

Racer Two’s craft-the display did not offer the name of the pilot, and Martinez didn’t recognize the flashy scarlet paint job on the craft-had just rotated to a new attitude and fired the main engine.

“She’s decelerating, my lord,” Chatterji said.

“And why is she doing that, Chatterji?”

“She’s d-dumping delta-vee in order to-to-” She licked her lips. “-to maneuver better,” she finished lamely.

“And what maneuver is this deceleration in aid of?”

Chatterji’s eyes searched the display in desperation. “Delta-vee increases options, my lord,” she said, a truism she had learned in tactics class, and clearly the first thing to leap to her mind.

“Very true, Chatterji,” Martinez said. “I’m sure your tactics instructor would be proud to know you have retained a modicum of the knowledge he tried to cram between your ears. But,” he said cheerfully, “our pilot isdecreasing delta-vee, and therefore decreasing his options. So tell mewhy, Cadet Chatterji. Why?”

Chatterji focused very hard on the display but was unable to answer.

“I suggest you review your basic tactics, Cadet Chatterji,” Martinez said. “Persistence may eventually pay off, though in your case I doubt it.You — worm there-” Addressing the cadet whose name he didn’t know.

“Parker, lord.”

“Parker. Perhapsyou can enlighten Chatterji concerning our pilot’s tactics.”

“She’s dumping delta-vee in order to be captured by V9’s gravity.” He referred to Vandrith’s ninth moon, the innermost counting as number one. The Shaa didn’t go in much for naming astronomical objects in interesting or poetic ways.

“And why is she entering V9’s gravity well, Parker?”

“She’s planning to slingshot toward the satellite near V11, lord.”

“And number four-that would be Captain Chee-” He recognized the blue and silver paint job. “Why is shenot dumping delta-vee? Why is she accelerating instead?”

“I-” Parker swallowed. “I suppose she’s trying another tactic.”

Martinez sighed deliberately. “Butwhy, worm, why? The display should tell you. It’sobvious. ”

Parker searched the display in vain, then Cadet Foote’s languid tones interrupted the desperate silence.

“Captain Chee is accelerating, lord, because she’s intending to bypass V9 entirely, and to pass between V11 and the satellite to score her point. Since V11 possesses an atmosphere, she’ll probably try to use atmospheric braking in order to dump velocity and make her maneuver to tag the satellite at the last minute.”

Martinez rounded on Foote and snapped, “I don’t recall asking your opinion, Cadet Foote!”

“I beg the lord’s pardon,” Foote drawled.

Martinez realized to his dismay that Foote had just succeeded in making himself the star of this encounter. Martinez had intended to throw a little justified terror into some wastrels caught drunk on duty, but somehow Foote had changed the rules. How had hedone that?

In children’s school fiction, there was always the evil bully, tormenting the youngsters, and then there was the hero, who tried to stand between the bully and his victims. Foote had made a gesture to help Silva, and now had just rescued Parker.

And I’m the bully,Martinez thought.I’m the wicked superior officer who torments his helpless underlings just to assuage his own pathetic feelings of inadequacy.

Foote, Martinez realized, had him pegged just about right.

Still, he thought, if he were going to be the villain in this little drama, he might as well do it well.

“Parker should learn that you won’t always be there to rescue him from his own stupidity,” he said to Foote. “But since you’ve chosen to express an opinion, suppose you tell me whether Chee’s maneuver will succeed.”

“She shan’t succeed, lord,” Foote said promptly.

“Shan’tshe?” Martinez said, mocking. “Andwhyever shan she not? ”

Foote’s tone didn’t change. “V11’s satellite has altered course, but Chee didn’t see it because it was on the far side of the moon at the time. She’ll be too late to correct when she finally sees her error.” Foote’s tone had grown almost intimate. “Of course, Captain Blitsharts seems to have allowed for that possibility. His acceleration isn’t as great, but he’s allowing himself more options.”

Martinez looked at the number one boat and saw the famous Blitsharts glossy black paintwork with its ochre-yellow stripes. Blitsharts was a celebrated and successful racer, a glit of the first order, famous not only for his victories, but for the fact that he always raced with his dog, a black retriever named Orange, who had his own acceleration bed inMidnight Runner ‘s cockpit next to his master’s. Blitsharts claimed the dog enjoyed pulling hard gees, and certainly Orange seemed none the worse for his adventures.

Blitsharts also had a reputation for drollery. He was once asked by a yachting enthusiast why he called the dog Orange. Blitsharts looked at the man and lifted surprised eyebrows above his mild brown eyes. “Because it’s hisname, of course,” he said.

Oh yes, Martinez thought, there was rare wit in the yacht clubs all right.

“You think Blitsharts will win?” Martinez asked.

“At this stage, it’s very likely.”

“I don’t suppose Blitsharts is a relative of yours, is he?” Martinez asked.

For the first time, Foote hesitated. “No, my lord,” he said.

“How generous of you,” Martinez said, “to mention his name in conversation,” and was rewarded by seeing the cadet’s neck and ears turn red.

Chee crashed into V11’s atmosphere, her craft trailing a stream of ions as it cut through the moon’s hydrocarbon murk. She saw her target’s change of course too late, altered her heading and burned antimatter to try to make her mark. Her bones must have groaned with the ferocious gees she laid on, but she was a few seconds too late.

Blitsharts, on the other hand, hit the atmosphere with his usual impeccable timing, burned for the satellite, and passed it without breaking a sweat. And then kept accelerating, his torch pushing him onward past his mark.

“Perhaps, Cadet Foote, you will favor us with an analysis of Blitsharts’s tacticsnow,” Martinez said.

“Of course, lord. He’s…” Foote’s voice trailed away.

Blitsharts’s boat stood on a colossal tail of matter-antimatter fire and burned straight out of the plane of the ecliptic. Foote stared at the screen in confusion. Blitsharts seemed to be heading away from his next target, away fromall his targets.

“Blitsharts is…he’s…” Foote was still struggling for words. “He’s…”

“Shit,” Martinez said, and bolted for the door.