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  INVESTMENTS

  Walter Jon Williams

  Copyright (c) 2004, 2012 by Walter Jon Williams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form.

  With thanks for technical assistance to Michael Rupen, Kristy Dyer, Bob Norton.

  Investments

  The car sped south in the subtropical twilight. The Rio Hondo was on Lieutenant Severin’s right, a silver presence that wound in and out of his perceptions. As long as he stayed on the highway the rental car, which knew Laredo better than he did, implemented its own navigation and steering, and Severin had nothing to do but relax, to gaze through the windows at the thick, vine-wrapped trunks of the cavella trees, the brilliant plumage of tropical birds, and the occasional sight of a hovercraft on the river, fans a deep bass rumble as it carried cargo south to the port at Punta Piedra. Overhead, stars began to glow on either side of the great glittering arc of Laredo’s accelerator ring. The silver river turned scarlet in the light of the setting sun.

  The vehicle issued a series of warning tones, and Severin took the controls as the car left the highway. Severin drove through an underpass, then up a long straight alley flanked by live oaks, their twisted black limbs sprawled like the legs of fantastic beasts. Overhead arced a series of formal gateways, all elaborate wrought-iron covered with scrollwork, spikes, and heraldic emblems, and each with a teardrop-shaped light that dangled from the center of the arch and cast pale glow on the path. Beyond was a large house, two storeys wrapped with verandahs, painted a kind of orange-rust color with white trim. It was covered with lights.

  People strolled along the verandahs and on the expansive lawns. They were dressed formally, and Severin began to hope that his uniform was sufficiently well tailored so as not to mark him out. Practically all the other guests, Severin assumed, were Peers, the class that the conquering Shaa had imposed on humanity and other defeated species. It was a class into which Severin had not been born, but rather one to which he’d nearly been annexed.

  At the start of the Naxid Rebellion Severin had been a warrant officer in the Exploration Service, normally the highest rank to which a commoner might aspire. As a result of service in the war he’d received a field promotion to lieutenant, and suddenly found himself amid a class that had been as remote from him as the stars that glimmered above Laredo’s ring.

  He parked in front of the house and stepped from the car as the door rolled up into the roof. Tobacco smoke mingled uneasily in the air with tropical perfume. A pair of servants, one Terran, one Torminel, trotted from the house to join him. The Torminel wore huge darkened glasses over her nocturnal-adapted eyes.

  “You are Lieutenant Severin?” the Torminel asked, speaking carefully around her fangs.

  “Yes.”

  “Welcome to Rio Hondo, my lord.”

  Severin wasn’t a lord, but all officers were called that out of courtesy, most of them being Peers anyway. Severin had got used to it.

  “Thank you,” he said. He stepped away from the car, then hesitated. “My luggage,” he said.

  “Blist will take care of that, my lord. I’ll look after your car. Please go up to the house, unless of course you’d prefer that I announce you.”

  Severin, who could imagine only a puzzled, awkward silence following a servant announcing his presence, smiled and said, “That won’t be necessary. Thank you.”

  He adjusted his blue uniform tunic and walked across the brick apron to the stairs. Perhaps, he thought, he should have brought his orderly, but in his years among the enlisted ranks he’d got used to looking after his own gear, and he never really gave his servant enough work to justify his existence.

  Instead of taking his orderly with him to Rio Hondo, he’d given the man leave. In the meantime Severin could brush his own uniforms and polish his own shoes, something he rarely left to a servant anyway.

  Severin’s heels clacked on the polished asteroid material that made up the floor of the verandah. A figure detached itself from a group and approached. Severin took a moment to recognize his host, because he had never actually met Senior Captain Lord Gareth Martinez face to face.

  “Lieutenant Severin? Is that you?”

  “Yes, lord captain.”

  Martinez smiled and reached out to clasp Severin’s hand. “Very good to meet you at last!”

  Martinez was tall, with broad shoulders, long arms, and big hands; he had wavy dark hair and thick dark brows. He wore the viridian green uniform of the Fleet, and at his throat was the disk of the Golden Orb, the empire’s highest decoration.

  Severin and Martinez had been of use to each other during the war, and Severin suspected that it had been Martinez who had arranged his promotion to the officer class. He and Severin had kept in touch with one another over the years, but they’d never been in the same room together.

  Martinez was a native of Laredo, a son of Lord Martinez, Laredo’s principal Peer; and when Martinez had returned to his home world, he’d learned that Severin was based on Laredo’s ring and invited him to the family home for a few days.

  “You’ve missed dinner, I’m afraid,” Martinez said. “It went on most of the afternoon. Fortunately you also missed the speeches.”

  Martinez spoke with a heavy Laredo accent, a mark of his provincial origins that Severin suspected did him little good in the drawing rooms of Zanshaa High City.

  “I’m sorry to have missed your speech anyway, my lord,” Severin said in his resolutely middle-class voice.

  Martinez gave a heavy sigh. “You’ll get a chance to hear it again. I give the same one over and over.” He tilted his chin high and struck a pose. “‘The empire, under the guidance of the Praxis, contains a social order of unlimited potential.’” The pose evaporated. He looked at Severin. “How long are you on the planet?”

  “Nearly a month, I think. Surveyor will be leaving ahead of Titan, while they’re still loading antihydrogen.”

  “Where’s Surveyor bound, then?”

  “Through Chee to Parkhurst. And possibly beyond even that . . . the spectra from Parkhurst indicate there may be two undiscovered wormholes there, and we’re going to look for them.”

  Martinez was impressed. “Good luck. Maybe Laredo will become a hub of commerce instead of a dead end on the interstellar roadway.”

  This was a good time to be in the Exploration Service. Founded originally to locate wormholes, stabilize them, and travel through them to discover new systems, planets, and species, the Service had dwindled during the last thousand years of Shaa rule as the Great Masters lost their taste for expanding their empire. Since the death of the last Shaa and the war that followed, the Convocation had decided again on a policy of expansion, beginning with Chee and Parkhurst, two systems that could be reached through Laredo, and which had been surveyed hundreds of years earlier without any settlement actually being authorized.

  The Service was expanding to fill its mandate, and that meant more money, better ships, and incoming classes of young officers for Severin to be senior to. The Exploration Service now offered the possibility of great discoveries and adventure, and Severin— as an officer who had come out of the war with credit— was in a position to take advantage of such an offer.

  A Terran stepped out of the house with a pair of drinks in his hand. He strongly resembled Martinez, and he wore the dark red tunic of the Lords Convocate, the six hundred-odd member committee that ruled the empire in the absence of the Shaa.

  “Here you are,” he said, and handed a drink to Martinez. He looked at Severin, hesitated, and then offered him the second glass.

  “Delta whisky?” he asked.

  “Thank you.” Severin took the glass.

  “Lieutenant Severin,” Martinez said, “allow me to introduce you to my older
brother, Roland.”

  “Lord convocate,” Severin said. He juggled the whisky glass to take Roland’s hand.

  “Pleased you could come,” Roland said. “My brother has spoken of you.” He turned to Martinez. “Don’t forget that you and Terza are pledged to play tingo tonight with Lord Mukerji.”

  Martinez made a face. “Can’t you find someone else?”

  “You’re the hero,” Roland said. “That makes your money better than anyone else’s. You and my lord Severin can rehash the war tomorrow, after our special guests have left.”

  Martinez looked at Severin. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There are people here concerned with the Chee development, and it’s the polite thing to keep them happy.”

  Since the Chee development concerned the settlement of an entire planet, and the special guests were presumably paying for it, Severin sympathized with the necessity of keeping them happy.

  “I understand,” he said.

  Roland’s eyes tracked over Severin’s shoulder, and he raised his eyebrows. “Here’s Terza now.”

  Severin turned to see a small group on the lawn, an elegant, black-haired woman in a pale gown walking hand-in-hand with a boy of three, smiling and talking with another woman, fair-haired and pregnant.

  “Cassilda’s looking well,” Martinez remarked.

  “Fecundity suits her,” said Roland.

  “Fecundity and a fortune,” Martinez said. “What more could a man ask?”

  Roland smiled. “Pliability,” he said lightly, then stepped forward to help his pregnant wife up the stairs. Martinez waited for the other woman to follow and greeted her with a kiss.

  Introductions were made. The black-haired woman was Lady Terza Chen, Martinez’ wife and heir to the high-caste Chen clan. The child was Young Gareth. The light-haired woman was Lady Cassilda Zykov, who was apparently not an heir but came with a fortune anyway.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Severin said.

  “Thank you for keeping my husband alive,” Terza said. “I hope you won’t stop now.”

  Severin looked at Martinez. “He seems to be doing well enough on his own.”

  Lady Terza was slim and poised and had a lovely, almond-eyed face. She put a hand on Severin’s arm. “Have you eaten?”

  “I had a bite coming down in the skyhook.”

  She drew Severin toward the door. “That was a long time ago. Let me show you the buffet. I’ll introduce you to some people and then— “ Her eyes turned to Martinez.

  “Tingo with Mukerji,” Martinez said. “I know.”

  She looked again at Severin. “You don’t play tingo, do you?”

  Bankruptcy doesn’t suit me, he thought.

  “No,” he said, “I’m afraid not.”

  *

  Terza took Martinez’ arm in both her own and rested her head on his shoulder. “It was time you came home,” she said. “I’ve never seen you with your own people.”

  He looked at her. “You’re my people, now,” he said.

  Terza had spent most of her pregnancy on Laredo, but without him— that had been in wartime, with the Convocation in flight from the capital and Martinez fighting with the Fleet. After that, with the rebels driven from Zanshaa and the war at an end, the family had reunited in the High City to bask in the cheers of a thankful population. Chee and Parkhurst had been opened to settlement under Martinez patronage. Roland had been co-opted into the Convocation.

  Now, three years later, the cheers of the High City had faded. Enmity on the Fleet Control Board kept Martinez from command of a ship or any meaningful assignments. Terza led an active life that combined a post at the Ministry of Right and Dominion with a full schedule of High City diversions: receptions, balls, concerts, exhibitions, and an endless round of parties. Martinez was feeling more and more like his wife’s appendage, trailed around from one event to the next.

  The choice was stark: either go home or write his memoirs. Sitting down to write the story of his life, like an old man at the end of his days with nothing to offer to the empire but words, was an image he found repellent. He arranged for passage to Laredo on the huge transport Wi-hun, and embarked his family and their servants.

  Before he left, Martinez applied to be appointed Lord Inspector of the Fleet for Laredo, Chee, and Parkhurst, thus giving his journey an official pretext. The appointment was approved so quickly that Martinez could only imagine the joy on the Fleet Control Board at the news that Senior Captain Martinez had been willing, for once, to settle for a meaningless task.

  The appointment kept him on the active list. It gave him the authority to interfere here and there, if he felt like interfering. Maybe he would interfere just to convince himself that the postwar arrangement hadn’t made him irrelevant.

  “Captain Martinez! Lady Terza! Are you ready for tingo?”

  Martinez decided that he wouldn’t submerge into irrelevance just yet, not as long as games of tingo were without a fifth player.

  “Certainly, Lord Mukerji,” he said.

  Lord Mukerji was a short, spare Terran with wiry grey hair, a well-cultivated handlebar mustache, and all the social connections in the worlds. He had been brought in as the President of the Chee Development Company in order to provide the necessary tone. Opening two whole worlds to settlement was beyond the financial capabilities even of the staggeringly rich Lord Martinez, and outside investors had to be brought in. It had to be admitted that the Peers and financiers of the High City preferred to hear about investment opportunities in tones more congenial to their ears than those uttered in a barbaric Laredo accent.

  And Lord Mukerji had certainly done his job. Investment had poured into the company’s coffers from the moment he’d begun spreading his balm on the moneyed classes. Important Peer clans were signed on to become the official patrons of settlers, of cities, or even of entire industries. Company stock was doing well on the Zanshaa Exchange, and the bonds were doing even better.

  Martinez and Terza took their seats as a tall figure loomed above the table. “Do you know Lord Pa?” Mukerji said.

  “We’ve met only briefly, before dinner,” Martinez said.

  Lord Pa Maq-fan was a Lai-own, a species of flightless birds, and was the chairman of a privately-held company that was one the prime contractors for the Chee development. From his great height he looked at Terza and Martinez with disturbing blood-red eyes and bared the peg teeth in his short muzzle. “All Lai-own know Captain Martinez,” he said. “He saved our home world.”

  “Very kind of you to say so,” Martinez said as Lord Pa settled his keel-like breastbone into his special chair.

  It was always heartening when people remembered these little details.

  “I haven’t kept people waiting, I hope.” Lady Marcella Zykov hastened into to her place at the table. She was a first cousin of Roland’s bride Cassilda, and the chief of operations for the Chee Company, having been put in place to look after the money the Zykov clan was putting into the venture. She was a very short, very busy woman in her thirties, with a pointed face and auburn hair pulled into an untidy knot behind her head, and she absently brushed tobacco ash off her jacket as she took her place.

  “Shall we roll the bones, then?” Lord Mukerji said.

  All players bet a hundred zeniths. The bones were rolled, and they appointed Marcella the dealer. She ran the tiles through the sorting machine and dealt each player an initial schema.

  “Discard,” said Terza, who sat on her right, and removed the Three Virtues from her schema.

  “Claim,” said Lord Mukerji. He took the Three Virtues into his schema and smiled beneath his broad mustaches. He waited for Marcella to be dealt a new tile, then touched a numbered pad on the table. “Another two hundred,” he said.

  Martinez thought it was a little early in the game to raise, but he paid two hundred for a new tile just to see where the game would go. Two rounds later, when Lord Mukerji doubled, Martinez and Terza both dropped out. The game was won by Lord Pa, who had quietly built a Tow
er that he dropped onto Lord Mukerji’s Bouquet of Probity.

  “Roll the bones,” said Mukerji.

  The bones made Mukerji the dealer. As he ran the tiles through the sorting machine, Marcella looked up from the table.

  “Will you be traveling to Chee, Captain Martinez?”

  “I’m Lord Inspector for Chee,” Martinez said, “so I’ll be required to inspect the skyhook, the station, and the other Fleet facilities.”

  “And Parkhurst as well?”

  “There’s nothing in the Parkhurst system at the moment but a Fleet survey vessel. I can wait for it to return.”

  “I can offer you transport on the Kayenta,” Marcella said, “if you can leave in twenty days or so.” She turned to Terza. “That way Lady Terza can accompany you without the discomforts of a Fleet vessel or a transport.”

  Martinez was pleasantly surprised. He’d been planning on booking a ride on one of the giant transports heading to Chee— they carried immigrants as well as cargo and had adequate facilities for passengers— but Kayenta was the Chee Company’s executive yacht, with first-class accommodations and a crew that included a masseur and a cosmetician.

  He turned to Terza, who seemed delighted by the offer. “Thank you,” he said. “We’ll definitely consider the option.”

  “Are you going out to Chee yourself, Lady Marcella?” Mukerji asked.

  “Yes. They’re beginning the new railhead at Corona, and Lord Pa and I will need to consult with Allodorm.”

  Martinez caught the surprise that crossed Terza’s face, surprise that was swiftly suppressed. Terza took up her tiles.

  “Is that Ledo Allodorm?” she asked.

  Lord Pa’s blood-red eyes gazed at her from across the table. “Yes,” he said. “Do you know that gentleman?”

  “Not personally,” Terza said, as she looked down at her tiles. “His name came up, I don’t know where.”

  Martinez noted with interest that his wife wore the serene smile that experience told him was a sure sign she was telling less than the truth.