Fortunes of the Imperium (14 page)

“Oh, Thomas,” Jil said, turning to me as if surprised to see me. “
Nee’af than de outhu?
”

I was not caught off guard at her sudden use of Uctu.

“
Salthu denau
,” I said, easily. “
Ene’af than drau bedothu?
”

She shook a chiding finger at me. “You have got that wrong, cousin. You ought to say ‘
ene’af dan drau.
’”

“That’s not right,” I said.

“It is.” She tossed her head. “Perhaps you ought to go and check your grammar.”

The captain escorted her to the chair to the right of his seat at the head. Parsons and three of the other officers showed the others to their places. There was nowhere left for me.

“I say,” I said. “I believe the table has been set one chair short.”

The captain gave me an odd look.

As if in answer to my query, a serverbot rolled up to my side.

“Lieutenant Kinago?” it inquired in a mild alto. “Please come with me.”

Startled, I glanced at the captain and my cousin.

“But I should be here, shouldn’t I?” I asked. “We have so much to talk about.”

“Your assigned seat is this way, sir. Please come with me.”

I looked to Parsons for rescue, but not was forthcoming. I followed the server.

Though the room was not large, it felt as though I was walking miles through a desert. I fancied I heard scornful whispers as I went, but the sound was undoubtedly my own thoughts chiding me. Why was I not at the captain’s table among others of my rank?

I noticed Plet seated at a rectangle for eight in between others wearing the same insignia. She shone among the ordinary crew like a modest gem. I spotted an empty seat not far from hers. Her eyes shifted briefly to meet mine, then returned to the officer with whom she was speaking. That was not my place, then.

“Whither goest?” I asked the server, a bullet-shaped device on rollers concealed under its metal skirt.

“The table second along the wall from the right,” it said.

I glanced ahead. I spotted Nesbitt because it would have been difficult not to. He was at the table farthest to the right, gesturing to me to join him, Oskelev and Anstruther. Instead, my destination featured two humans, an Uctu female, one Croctoid, and two Wichu plus Redius. I knew from their lopsided faces that I outranked the humans present. The others, too, were unlikely to be members of their races’ noble class.

I glanced back. In fact, I could not have been more distant from the head table, where my cousin, wearing a gleeful expression to complement her scanty outfit, was regaling the captain with a story that required a number of humorous hand gestures. It would be just like Jil to steal one of my best jokes and fail to attribute it to me.

Still, my upbringing had taught me the importance of noblesse oblige. I would put myself out to be as likable as possible. I slid into the seat held out for me by the bullet-shaped serverbot and smiled around at my new companions.

“Good evening, all!” I said. “Lieutenant second class Thomas Kinago. Please call me Thomas.”

“Kinago?” the Croctoid asked, rolling one of its small eyes severely in its scaly socket. “Any relation?”

“The most important of relations, if you mean Admiral Kinago Loche,” I said. “She’s my mother.”

The smaller of the two Wichus took her viewpad from her belt and beckoned to the other.

“Pay up. You said he wasn’t.”

Some good-natured grousing accompanied the settling of the bet. Redius gave me a humorous shrug. He introduced everyone at the table, beginning with the other Uctu, a round-faced female who, by the blue scales on her coral-colored head, was even younger than he.

“Yerbinat Nordina. Thon Delaur. Mimi Chan. Bedere Lumon. Dinas Veltov. Oresta Veltov. All lieutenants second.”

Dinner began with a spicy soup. I savored the first few sips, then realized that it had been dosed very heavily with a chili extract that could not, by my observation of other diners, have been in any other bowl in the room. It was so powerful I wondered how l could hold out before I began to perspire, let alone dive for the water pitcher in the center of the table and soak my burning tongue in it. But I was a Kinago, by jay, and a son of the First Space Lord. I could take hazing. My cousins had pulled this particular jape on one another more than once.

“Delicious,” I declared it. “You must have an excellent food program on board.” I took another spoonful. “Really very good.”

Every mouthful was more painful than the one before. I had to force my throat to swallow the liquid. It begged me silently not to torture it any longer. It would devote its life to charity if only I would go find it a bowl of oatmeal laced with heavy cream.

Chan smiled a little nervously.

“I hear you know funny stories,” Lumon, the Croctoid, said, working his heavy green jaws back and forth over a chunk of vegetable. “Tell us one.”

By the sixth spoonful, my mouth had gone numb, but I fought for clarity of speech.

“I see my reputation has preceded me,” I said, searching my memory for a good joke. I possessed a superb collection that I had amassed over the years, a substantial half of which had come to me while I was on board the
Shahmat
. “I would be delighted to oblige. It seems that there was a young Solinian cadet who was on his first assignment planetside in a human outpost. . . .”

As I progressed through the story, my audience, as I hoped, leaned in closer and closer, not observing that I was no longer eating my soup. My tongue, in sincere thanks, put itself out to be as eloquent as ever it had been. When the serverbots moved in to replace the soup with the main course, the other junior officers hardly even noticed.

A peal of laughter interrupted my thoughts. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my cousin grasp the captain’s forearm as if in amused appreciation of a story he had related. He looked a trifle bemused at the intensity of her reaction. I could have told him that he was getting away with fairly mild treatment. A shifting of bodies at my own table told me that I had better return my attention to my audience.

“. . . Well, you weren’t supposed to eat the whole thing!” I concluded.

My tablemates laughed loudly. Dinas, the male Wichu, slapped a hand on the board. His sister applauded.

“Another!” they chorused.

“I’ll try,” I said, pointing to my throat. “But the soup, you know, it was a little . . .”

“Strong?” asked Delaur.

“Weak,” I said, and enjoyed the astonished looks on their faces. I laughed. I had over the years perfected a laugh that was part snort, part guffaw, and all mine. Those who were subjected to it were invariably impressed and often intimidated, as in this case. Everyone at the table but Redius recoiled. “Pathetically weak. You want to use tarantula chilies if you really want to incapacitate a newcomer. This was cobra pepper oil in the soup, wasn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah,” the Wichu said.

“My cousins and I
train
with cobra peppers for such occasions as this,” I said, hardly disguising my scorn. Then I allowed my expression to soften ever so slightly. “But if you’d like to hear about some really dirty tricks that we play on one another in the Imperium compound . . . ?”

“Yes!” came the general chorus.

I smiled. Now I had them in the palm of my hand. I leaned in conspiratorially. They shifted forward, their faces avid, as I began to reveal secrets scarcely known outside my family.

“. . . And the filament is absolutely invisible, so if you sew it into the fabric of a garment meant to be worn against the skin, they won’t realize where the shocks are coming from. At least, not for a while.”

With the unstated truce in place, we began to get to know one another. They were all eager for stories of my life at court. Gossip that was readily available within my cousins’ Infogrid files was easy, permissible fodder. I also regaled my tablemates with one gentle tale that included my mother as a peripheral character that only served to elevate her standing in their eyes. It didn’t do any harm to mine, either.

Over dessert, an unadulterated hazelnut cake that made my wounded taste buds feel mellow, we broke into several smaller conversations. At that point, I was able to get Redius’s attention. We leaned back in our seats to speak behind the back of our shared neighbor.

“Fear not use of tarantula on you?” Redius asked, his mouth slightly open to show he was smiling. The Wichu between us was arguing loudly with the two humans across the table.

“Not now,” I said, with a little smile. “Tarantulas are classified as a weapon of war on a naval vessel, not a food. They will be in the armory, not the pantries. But some unlucky souls might stumble on some in their meals planetside.”

“Unfortunate them.” Redius studied my expression. “Expression puzzled. Trouble?”

In the course of my immersion in Uctu over the last couple of weeks, I had come to realize that his stilted command of Imperium Standard was almost a direct translation from Uctu. In his tongue, each of the words meant so much more. With every day’s study, I began to get a greater sense of how well he expressed himself in spite of the shortcomings of my native language. His staccato phrasing concealed a wealth of meaning.

“Redius, I have a question of grammar. Just a few moments ago, Jil just asked me how my day went, and I told her my labors were rewarding. Then I asked what she did today, and she corrected my phrasing. Doesn’t such a question begin with ‘ene’af than drau’?”

“Confirmed,” Redius said. “What she?”

“She told me it was ‘dan drau.’”

Redius burst into hissing laughter.

“Means wasted, not spent,” Redius said. “Common courtesy becomes insult.”

I emitted an exaggerated growl.

“So! Jil is going to use underhanded psychological means to confuse me,” I said. “We will see about that. I can play that game as well as she.”

I did not, however, let the matter of my placement in the dining room rest. At the end of the meal, I cut Parsons out of the pack as the senior officers and their guests attempted to flee.

“Parsons, I have a quibble,” I said in a low voice, as the rest of the diners streamed past, replete with the excellence of the cuisine that I had been largely unable to taste. “Why was I not seated with the captain and the senior officers? It is unquestionably correct that my cousin and her friends were there, but why not me? Even you were there. I was with the lowest of the low. Not that they are not all good and worthy people, but I would expect to be given a place according to my class. And I would ask that my circumstances, when I represent special operations, also to be considered.”

Parsons drew me further off the beaten path, into an alcove near where the serverbots were stacking piles of dirty dishes.

“It is for the best, sir,” he murmured, his voice covered well by the clattering of plates and flatware. “Your presence on the
Bonchance
is as a simple emissary from the court of the Emperor. No one except the captain is party to your actual function, and he does not know all of it. You should take advantage of that anonymity. Such placement frees you to ask for information from the
Bonchance
’s crew at large.”

My eyebrows went up.

“Is there anyone specific whom you suspect of misdoing?” I asked, feeling the hounds of inquiry raising their noses in a group howl in my psyche.

“It would be better not to point out anyone who is under suspicion lest it unfairly arouse attention to that person. A rotation of crewbeings will occupy the four additional seats at your table. Use this opportunity to gather impressions. Data gathered over a shared collation might reveal more than a formal inquiry. You will be doing this captain a service by making use of your faculties of observation. You have been of assistance in the past.”

He gave me a deeply meaningful look.

“So true,” I mused. “Very well, I shall take my demotion in good part, although I fancy that my cousin will make much of it. She did, didn’t she? You cannot deny it.”

My emotions dashed against the bastion of his countenance, but made no impression.

“I would not attempt to do so, my lord. But she serves a purpose as well.”

“Wheels within wheels,” I said. “Although I think Jil would be mortified to learn that she had a purpose beyond her own whims.”