He was momentarily derailed as he tried to switch tracks from Sula to the woman he had until recently been pursuing. Warrant Officer Taen was a contrast to Cadet Sula in almost every particular: where Sula was a pale-skinned blonde, Taen had abundant, glossy chestnut hair, dark eyes, and a rosy complexion. Sula’s figure—so far as Martinez could tell from the video, anyway—was certainly feminine, but it was also slim; whereas Taen’s was so lush as to be almost tropical in its abundance.
Taen exuded a sense of mischief and readiness for fun that haloed her like a cloud of pheremones. Martinez suspected she had no acquaintance whatsoever withKwa-Zo’s Fifth Book of Mathematical Puzzles .
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Satellite maintenance. The usual.”
Warrant Officer Taen was second-in-command of a small vessel that maintained, replaced, and repaired the hundreds of communication and sensing satellites in the Zanshaa system. She was frequently absent for days at a time, but her furloughs were equally long, and more than compensated for the length of her missions.
“I’m engaged for this evening,” Martinez said. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”
Taen’s smile broadened. Her look was so direct that Martinez felt it more in his groin than in his mind.
“I have no plans,” she said. “I hope you can make some for me.”
Martinez did so, feeling regret as he did so that it wasn’t Sula who had just landed, with a furlough and time on her hands.
Oh well, he thought. The Fleet did not consider junior officers’ preferences when it made its schedules. Taen was available and Sula was not, and he would be a fool to deny himself one pleasure just because another was a quarter light-hour away.
After speaking to Amanda Taen, Martinez changed into semiformal evening clothes—nothing wasever casual with his stylish sisters—and took a cab to the old Shelley Palace, where the Martinez salon had been established.
Along the way, he passed the famous statue of the Great Master Delivering the Praxis to Other Peoples, with its life-size Shaa—twice the size of a Terran—standing on its thick legs with its prow-shaped head lifted toward the horizon. Gray folds of skin draped artfully from the arm that thrust out a display on which the Praxis itself had been carved, beginning with the proud, rather ominous declaration,Allthat is important is known. Before the Great Master knelt representatives of the subject races, all frozen in postures of astonishment and delight.
Martinez glanced at the statue with a morose eye and went on his way.
The Shelley Palace was a huge old thing, several buildings connected by galleries and passages, built over centuries in a succession of architectural styles, horned stone demons capering on the rooftop next to sleek, metallic abstracts of the Devis mode. Lord and Lady Shelley now lived in a smaller, more modern building on a more fashionable street, rented the front part of their old palace to the Martinez sisters, and used the buildings in back as storage for old retainers and penniless relations, who were often seen drifting about the courtyard garden like ancient, homeless ghosts.
Martinez was let into the building by a young, homely maidservant—no woman in the household was allowed to outshine the Martinez sisters. He was taken to the south drawing room, the one with the view of the Lower City, where he found his sisters Vipsania and Walpurga. They rose so he could buss their cheeks.
“Cocktail?” Vipsania asked.
“Why not?”
“We’ve just made a pitcher of blue melon.”
“That would suit.”
Martinez took his drink—which was neither blue nor contained melon—and took a chair facing his sisters.
Vipsania wore a mauve gown, and Walpurga a turquoise one. Otherwise the sisters looked very much alike, sharing Martinez’s olive skin and dark hair and eyes. Vipsania’s face was perhaps a little sharper, and Walpurga’s jaw a little fuller. Like Martinez, they were tall, and like Martinez, their height was in the length of their spine, not their legs. Both were imposing more than beautiful, and intelligent much more than not.
Martinez couldn’t imagine how he came to be related to either one of them.
“We heard from Roland,” Walpurga said. “He’s coming to Zanshaa.”
Roland was Martinez’s older brother, the presumed heir to the feudal privilege enjoyed by the Martinez clan on Laredo.
“Why?” Martinez asked.
“He’s coming for the Great Master’s end.”
Mental calculations flickered through Martinez’s mind. “Word hasn’t reached Laredo by now, surely.”
“No. He anticipated.”
“He wants to be in at the death?” Martinez wondered.
“He wants to be in at thebeginning, ” Vipsania said. “He wants to petition the Convocation to open Chee and Parkhurst to settlement.”
Under Martinez patronage, of course. That was clear but unstated.
Chee and Parkhurst were two habitable worlds that had been discovered by the Exploration Service in the heyday of planetary discovery, ages ago. As far as anyone knew, they could be reached only by way of wormholes in Laredo’s system. Both had been scheduled for settlement, but as the number of Great Masters had grown smaller, so had their ambitions. The expansion of the empire had halted, and the Exploration Service reduced to a fragment of its former self.
It had long been the ambition of the Martinez clan to sponsor habitation of the two nearly forgotten worlds. To be patrons ofthree worlds—nowthat would elevate them to the highest, most rarified ranks of the Peerage.
“I wouldn’t expect the Lords Convocate to alter the Great Masters’ policy with any speed,” Martinez asked.
Vipsania shook her head. “There areplenty of little projects left unfinished. Not all planets to be settled, of course, but appointments to be made, contracts awarded, grants offered, awards rendered, revenues to be collected or disbursed…if Roland, with Lord Pierre’s help, can find enough allies in the Convocation, I think the project can move along very well.”
Martinez grimaced. “I hope Roland can get more action out of Lord Pierre than I can,” he said. “And speaking of Lord Pierre, he’s got a cousin named PJ who—”
“Gareth!”
Martinez rose as his youngest sister, Sempronia, rushed into the room. She flung her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. He returned the embrace with pleasure.
Martinez genetics had reached back many generations to find whatever had provided Sempronia’s template. Her wavy light-brown hair had lightened to gold in the sun, and her hazel eyes were likewise flecked with gold, both hair and eyes contrasting dramatically with the Martinez olive complexion. Her nose was tip-tilted, her lips full, her legs long. She was the only one of his sisters in whom Martinez could at all see the lively girl he had left behind, years ago, on Laredo.
“What have I missed?” Sempronia asked.
“I was about to broach the subject of your marriage,” Martinez said.
Sempronia’s eyes widened. “Mymarriage?”
“One of you, anyway. It doesn’t seem to matter which.”
He explained about Lord Pierre’s cousin PJ. “I don’t see why we should marry into a family that won’t even invite us to their palace,” he concluded, “particularly as the fellow’s going to be a complete burden on his in-laws.”
“We don’t absolutelyknow that,” Vipsania said. A little frown perched between her eyebrows. She turned to Walpurga. “What do we know of PJ?”
“He’s a social creature,” Walpurga said. “Quite popular, I understand—well-dressed, well-connected, of course, good-looking. I could ask Felicia about him—she’s in a better position to know.”
“You’re not taking this seriously,” Martinez protested.
Vipsania turned her frown toward him. “Not yet,” she said. “But the Ngenis are a family who could be useful to us in the matter of Chee and Parkhurst.”