Change of Command - Heris Serrano 06 Read online

  She could always fill in the blanks while working on something else.

  “My desk, please, Chief.”

  “Yes, sir.

  Filling out the forms to Chief Cattaro’s satisfaction kept her busy the rest of that shift and part of the next, along with her other work. For reasons known only to the forms designers in Personnel, none of the forms asked for the information in the same order, or even the same format, which made it impos­sible to simply port data from one to the other. Family name first here, but last there. Middle name or names as initials in this form, but spelled out in that one. Planet of origin by a code from a table, or spelled out, or by a code from ­another table, which didn’t agree with the first.

  They really did not want Landbrides to marry into Fleet, Esmay decided.

  * * *

  Barin’s message cube-when she finally had time to put it in the reader-was less informative than she’d hoped. He loved her-she couldn’t hear that too often-and he was still waiting to hear from his parents. He was afraid they’d be upset by the administrative decision to make him responsible for the support of the women brought back from Our Texas. It was going to be hard to convince Personnel to approve the paper­work for a status change, when clearly he couldn’t afford any more dependents.

  Esmay wondered if someone in Admin had gone bonkers. Why were they demanding that Barin pay support for these women? He had included the data he thought she’d need-evidently he hadn’t yet found the sections of the application which forbade her to exist, or him to marry her. He promised to write again, but pointed out that with his entire salary going to the support of the NewTex women, he would be limited to ship-to-ship transfers within the Fleet postal ­system.

  Esmay added his information to her paperwork, and then completed what she could of her application, along with the belated Notice of Relationship papers. It was all so silly. They’d known she was a sector commander’s daughter when they accepted her into Fleet, and Altiplano had no desire to influ­ence the Familias Grand Council anyway. It had never even tried to get a Seat in Council. Why was it on the proscribed list? And if they were going to put Landbrides on, why hadn’t they done the elementary research to find out that there was no such thing as a Landgroom? Cursing the anonymous “they” in silence, Esmay finished the forms, stamped and thumb-sealed them, and took them back to the captain’s office for his clerk to make the required copies and ready them for transit.

  She went back to the rest of the message cube later. The former Rangers’ wives, now settled uneasily in an apartment block on Rockhouse Major, were constantly asking Barin for assurances he could not provide.

  “Grandmother knows why I did it-and agrees that it was justifiable under the circumstances-but she warned me that Fleet would not be pleased, no matter what kind of report she turned in. Headquarters feels I overstepped my authority, and created a huge financial obligation for them, not to mention a publicity nightmare. They’ve insisted that I contribute to their maintenance, though my whole salary won’t pay the grocery bills alone. Everyone-from the women to the admirals-seems to think it’s my place to come up with a solution. And I’m stumped. Those women don’t seem to be capable of anything but sitting around complaining, and now the civil authorities are jumping on me because they won’t send their children to school.”

  Esmay thought of the women she’d seen in the shuttle during the evacuation: the long-sleeved, long-skirted dresses, the headscarves, the work-worn hands. If they were as religious as the Old Believers on Altiplano, they’d be very uncomfortable on a space station, or even one of the more-her mind struggled for awhile, looking for a different word, but finally settled on the first-advanced planets.

  She hadn’t thought much about the women and children removed-or rescued-on that mission since leaving the task force. She’d assumed the women who had been prisoners had received medical treatment, and that “someone” had done “something” about the others.

  Apparently not. Though it was hardly fair to land all the responsibility on Barin, if he was going to be held accountable, then clearly she herself had to do something. What a nuisance it was, being stuck on a different ship! They couldn’t just talk it over, share ideas, come up with solutions.

  She prepared queries for Barin and the Fleet library-search service, and at the next downjump sent them off.

  The idea woke her out of a sound sleep some nights later, and she lay there wide-eyed, amazed at herself. The women needed a place to live and raise their children, preferably on a planet. They needed a way to earn a living. Brun had suggested the latter, with her comments about their skill in handwork. And now Esmay had herself thought of a solution to the former problem. Altiplano. As the Landbride Suiza, she could settle them on Suiza lands. In their own village, if necessary, where they could follow their own customs. Their handwork could be exported, along with the genestock, to fill out their income beyond what they could produce from the land; she would be willing to give them a start of livestock from her own personal holdings. Their children could grow up as Altiplanans; in a few generations, they’d be assimilated completely.

  The more she thought about it, the better it seemed. The women might even find husbands on Altiplano, if they wanted them. Since their beliefs fit somewhere on the great branching tree of religions that had grown out of Old Earth Christianity, surely they would find the tone of Altiplano’s Old Believers congenial. She tried not to think of those passages in her child’s history book about the religious disputes. Her great-grandmother had insisted that they were all the result of insufficient humility and excessive arrogance. And anyway, religious freedom was now part of the Altiplanan legal code, though Altiplano lacked the diversity of culture of Fleet or the more cosmopolitan planets.

  Since she couldn’t go back to sleep, she turned on her desk unit and recorded a cube for Barin with the gist of her idea, then one for Luci, telling her cousin all about the wedding plans, and Barin’s problems, and asking about vacancies on Suiza lands. In her mind’s eye, she saw them settled somewhere in the south, in a tidy little village of stone houses, with kitchen gardens. Something very like what Barin had described as the households they’d come from.

  By the time she’d populated their pastures with Cateri goats and cattelopes, and imagined them all cheerful and productive, with laughing children playing in the lanes, she was sleepy again. She went back to bed sure that all problems had solutions and this one had just been solved.

  Next morning she was not quite as sure-she thought she remembered that they were free-birthers, or at least their men were-but she put the cubes in the outgoing mail collection anyway, and went on with her work.

  Altiplano, Estancia Suiza

  Luci Suiza came through the front hall on her way in from the polo fields-she needed a shower before the Vicarios family showed up for dinner, and had let Esmay’s half-brother ride her pony cool. That was one reason, and the other was that she’d seen the little red mail van driving up to the house. Philip had been sending her a note every day; when she was lucky she got to them before anyone else. She picked up his note, and a message cube from Esmay, and took them up to her room.

  She read the note before she showered, stripping off her sweaty clothes and tingling all over from the phrases he’d used, as well as the cooler air wafting in through the window. Tonight-tonight the parents would have their final meeting, and after that, they would be betrothed.

  After her shower, wrapped in a fluffy white robe, Luci fed Esmay’s cube into the reader in her room, and brushed her hair as the message came up. Esmay was fine; she hadn’t heard back from Barin about his family yet; Brun had sent her gorgeous samples of embroidery and sketches for a gown; Fleet had a lot of silly rules about who could marry whom, so she was having to fill out lots of forms . . . Luci paused, pinned up her hair, and glanced at the clock. She still had time. She made a long arm, pulled her cosmetics closer to the cube reader, and tried to do her makeup and watch the message at the same time.
>
  Fleet didn’t approve of officers marrying Landbrides. So resign, Luci thought to herself, and sure enough the next bit was a long, rambling apology and then the admission that Esmay thought she should resign. Was Luci interested?

  Luci was interested; Luci heaved a sigh at her absent cousin, and applied lip color. No matter what anyone said, there was no way to play polo and end up with soft moist lips, without using cosmetics. The message continued; Luci kept an eye on the clock. She liked her cousin; she admired her intensely, but Phil would be here in twenty-five minutes.

  Esmay’s wonderful idea of settling the women from Our Texas and their children on Suiza lands took her by surprise; the eyeliner she’d been applying so carefully swiped up and away, a dark streak across her face before she caught herself. What?! Nineteen women, and their children-dozens of children-all to be settled on Suiza lands? Free-birthers, from a planet with a barbarous religious cult . . . she could just imagine what the priests would say about that! Esmay babbled on about their handwork skills, their experience on low-tech planets. We are not low-tech, Luci thought angrily. Idiot. Fool.

  Then she caught sight of her face in the mirror, and the clock, and the anger roared in her like a brushfire. Esmay had no right! Esmay was not a proper Landbride-no one who really understood, who really cared, could have considered that for an instant . . .

  Luci dashed into the bathroom, nearly trampling two of the younger children.

  “Luci, what happened to your-”

  “Be quiet!” she snarled at them, and scrubbed the makeup off her face, leaving streaks on the facecloth. Stupid Esmay. Ridiculous Esmay. It was a good thing she’d left, and a good thing she wanted to resign as Landbride, and Luci would pluck her hair herself if she had a chance.

  When she got back to her room and looked out the window to see if the Vicarios vehicle was coming yet, the alternating blue and gold of shadow and late sun streaking the grass of the polo fields stabbed her heart. It was so beautiful, so beautiful it hurt. How could Esmay not want this? How could she care so little, that she would think of violating the land for a bunch of outlanders?

  She rested her forearms on the windowsill and drank in the cool air scented with early roses and apple blossom. Somewhere in the distance, horses whinnied; the grooms would be mixing evening feeds. This was what she wanted, what she had always wanted-well, this and Philip to share it with. Land to cherish and nourish and protect, beauty to nurture, the ancient cycles of the land.

  Light reflected from something moving on the road, then flashed straight in her eyes when the vehicle turned into their drive. The Vicarios, no doubt, unless it was her father returning late from the city. No time now for cosmetics, though she touched her chapped lips with color again. The blue-and-white overtunic and white skirt of the courted maiden. After tonight, she would wear the blue skirt of the bride-to-be.

  Esmay, you fool! was her last thought as she closed her door and ran down the upper passage to the stairs.

  The Vicarios family had gone back to their city house by midnight. At this third of the formal meetings (alternating from one family’s home to the other’s), the parents had been pleasantly relaxed. The exchange of gifts, the ritual speeches, the contrived-but still effective-“unexpected” visit of the priest who put her hand in Philip’s, and tied a silk scarf around the pair of them-all had gone without a hitch. Luci and Philip had a few minutes alone in the rose garden as their elders watched from the lighted doorway; he kissed her respectfully on the brow, and murmured her name.

  Philip went with his parents when they left, of course. From now on, no more stolen moments, let alone hours, in which to discover each other . . . from now on, they were formally betrothed, and that betrothal had its own rules. Maddening, perhaps intentionally so. Luci filched another stuffed date from the tray a sleepy maidservant was carrying back to the kitchen, and followed her father into the library. Her uncle and grandfather, already relaxed in chairs by the fireplace, looked up as she came in.

  “Luci, you should be in bed.”

  “Papa, I’m not sleepy.” He raised his eyebrows at her, but she didn’t move. “Papa, I had a message cube from Esmay today.”

  Her uncle Casimir sighed. “Esmay . . . now there’s another problem. Berthold, did you get anywhere in the Landsmen’s Guild?”

  “Nowhere. Oh, Vicarios won’t oppose us, but that’s because of Luci, and his support is half-hearted. It would be different if she hadn’t left so young, I think. They don’t really remember her, and even though they awarded her the Star­mount, and consider her a hero, they do not want a Land­bride-any Landbride but especially our Landbride-connected to an outlander family. Cosca told me frankly that even if she moved here, and also her husband, he would oppose it. Nothing good ever came from the stars, he insisted.”

  “And the votes?”

  “Enough for a challenge, Casi, I’m sure of it. No, the only way out of this is for Esmaya to come and talk to them herself.”

  “Or resign.”

  “Or resign, but-will she?”

  Luci spoke up. “She mentioned that in her cube.”

  “What-resigning? Why?”

  “Her precious Fleet seems to think about us the way the Landsmen’s Guild thinks about them. She says they have some kind of regulation forbidding officers to marry Landbrides.”

  Her father snorted. “Do they have one forbidding officers to be Landbrides? How ridiculous!”

  “Are you serious?” Casimir asked. “They have something specific about Landbrides? How would they know?”

  “I don’t know,” Luci said. “That’s just what she said. And she said why didn’t we take in all those women brought back from Our Texas-she was sure they’d fit in.”

  A stunned silence, satisfying by its depth and length.

  “She what?” Casimir said finally. “Aren’t those women-”

  “Free-birthers and religious cultists,” Luci said, with satisfaction. “Exactly.”

  “But-but the priests will object,” Berthold said.

  “Not as badly as the Landsmen’s Guild, if they hear of it. Dear God, I thought she had more sense than that!”

  “She is in love,” Luci pointed out, willing now to be magnaminous. “Apparently Fleet is taking Barin’s salary to pay for their upkeep-at least some of it-and Esmay’s trying to help him out. Nineteen of them, after all, and all those children.”

  “At our expense.” Casimir shook his head. “Well, that settles it. She’ll have to resign, as soon as I can get word to her. The Trustees will certainly not approve this, if I were willing to let it be known.” He gave Luci a hard look. “You didn’t tell Philip, I hope.”

  “Of course not.” Luci glared at her uncle. Esmay might not have any sense, but she knew what the family honor required.

  “I hope she does name you Landbride, Luci,” Casimir said. “You’ll be a good one.”

  Luci had a sudden spasm of doubt. Was she being fair to Esmay, who after all had had so many bad things happen to her? But underneath the doubt, the same exultation she had felt when Esmay gave her the brown mare . . . mine, it’s mine, I can take care of it, nobody can hurt it. . . .

  “I wonder if we could place an ansible call,” Casimir said.

  “Surely it’s not that urgent,” Berthold said.

  “What if she just packs them up and ships them to us? Better safe than sorry.”

  “She won’t,” Luci said. “I’m sure she won’t.” She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew-probably by now Esmay had figured out for herself why it was a bad idea, and the next mail would bring apologies.

  “I hope not,” her father said. He yawned. “Oh, do go to bed, Luci! I’m exhausted.”

  Luci gave him a kiss and went up to bed, sure she would not sleep for the warring emotions inside her. She undressed quickly, hung her clothes up, and slipped naked between the sheets, taking great lungfuls of the fragrant night air. She hoped Esmay felt this way about her Barin . . . if her poor cousin couldn’t
be Landbride, she at least deserved a great love.

  R.S.S. Shrike

  Esmay came onto the bridge to find Captain Solis scowling. Now what had she done or left undone?

  “I was afraid I’d lose you,” the captain said.

  “Lose me?”

  “New orders. They’re sending me a new exec, and you over to line ships again. I knew they would eventually. Even though we can always use someone with your talents in SAR, they consider it a waste.”

  He handed over the message cube. “It’s all in there; we’ll be dropping you off at Topaz.”

  “Topaz-” A civilian station.

  “In transit between ships is a good time to use a few days’ leave, Lieutenant. Assuming you have a use for it.”

  Barin. Her heart hammered. Now if she could only figure out how . . .

  “Navarino is in Sector Six. Gyrfalcon, I hear, is going to be detached from picket duty and sent back to Castle Rock, and thence to Sector One-” Solis did not crack a smile, but she did. She knew the regulations: all she had to do was show up at the right time. The route she chose from Topaz to Sector Six HQ was her own choice. There was at least a chance that she could meet Barin at some intermediate station. If she could get word to him. If she could get leave.

  Chapter Seven

  Benignity of the Compassionate Hand

  Nuovo Venitza, Santa Luzia

  Hostite Fieddi, Swordmaster and troupe leader, bowed to the Chairman’s box, then to either end of the Grande, where the notable guests of state and industry were seated, and finally, that cold chill down the spine which this required movement always brought, turned his back on the most dangerous man in his universe to salute the mortal representative of that Holy One who was even more dangerous, having dominion over all universes.

  Protocol, he thought sourly, was invented by the devil, for the ensnaring of innocent hearts. Not that his was innocent; he had been debriefed by his superior in the Order, and had still to face confession. In between . . .