Impersonations Read online

  They grew it here, didn’t they? Normally, she preferred tea, but she thought perhaps she should try it.

  Spense and Macnamara piled in after helping the driver with the luggage, and they all sampled the coffee. Sula found it too strong even after adding sugar, and returned the cup to its holder. The car crested a hill and the towers of Nairobi were revealed, all tinged red with the setting sun. Though the towers were grand enough, they seemed insignificant next to the sky-climbing elevator cables.

  Sula was unimpressed by Nairobi during the two days she spent there. It was a large imperial city, rich with the trade going to and from orbit, and with a population drawn from every world of the empire and every corner of Earth. Those Dhai-ro pillars at the ground station had been only a foretaste of the city’s style. Dhai-ro had been fashionable about the time of Earth’s conquest, and when Nairobi had started to expand after the construction of the elevator, it had been built uniformly in the then-current style. Afterward, Nairobi had standardized on Dhai-ro as the style for all construction—unlike, say, Zanshaa, where every conceivable style was on view. Dhai-ro had faded in and out of fashion over the centuries and now seemed quaint, giving the city an old-fashioned, backwater air entirely at odds with its cosmopolitan population all hustling to make money.

  Most disappointing, Sula decided, was that there seemed so little of old Earth there. Nairobi didn’t seem Terran but rather a provincial copy of a bigger, better city somewhere else. There was a small museum featuring the bones and stone tools left by the prehistoric inhabitants of the nearby rift valley—all satisfyingly old, all satisfyingly prehuman—but otherwise, Sula’s first taste of Earth was discouraging.

  Her next stop was Constantinople, where she intended to pay a courtesy call on the imperial governor. That involved the supersonic train to Alexandria—where she hoped to spend more time later—followed by a ground-effect transport that roared across the Mediterranean in a blaze of white foam, dodging islands, until it finally slowed to enter the Dardanelles.

  Sula spent some of the transit time doing her official work, forwarded by Parku on the ring, and the rest reading history and brooding on the landscape. The cities seemed no more or less venerable than cities on other worlds. The colors, she thought, were all wrong, beginning with the blue sky and the bright white light. She’d grown used to the deep green sky of Zanshaa and the planet’s more subtle coloration.

  It was during the passage of the Dardanelles that she received a call from Lieutenant-Captain Koridun. Sula was wearing her undress uniform—uniforms made wardrobe choices easier—and was able to receive the call on the communications unit woven into her left tunic sleeve.

  “Yes?” she said. “Do you have your prisoner?”

  Koridun’s face appeared on the chameleon-weave display. “No, my lady, it was a case of mistaken identity.” Sibilants hissed around her fangs, more than adequately conveying disgust. “The Palermo authorities completely bungled it.”

  “I’m sorry you wasted your trip.”

  “Unfortunate, but necessary,” Koridun said. She made a visible effort, and her diction improved. “I wonder, lady commandant, if I may beg a favor.”

  “What do you need?” Offhandedly, expecting a request for a few days’ leave.

  “I wonder if you are still planning to pay a call on the lord governor?”

  “I am.”

  Koridun hesitated, her tongue pressed to her foreteeth, and then spoke. “I wonder if it might be possible to beg an introduction.”

  Sula restrained a smile. Koridun’s trip to the planet’s surface was now explained—it made little sense for a lieutenant-captain to make the long journey merely in order to drag some crouchback to jail, but if the expedition could be combined with an introduction that might lead to patronage or advancement, then it would be well worth Koridun’s time.

  Sula approved of enterprise on the part of her subordinates. She saw no real reason to deny the request.

  “I will be happy to provide the introduction,” she said, “if you can be in Constantinople by tomorrow evening.”

  “I’ll arrange transport. Thank you, my lady.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Sula had no sooner blanked the screen than another message came through, this time from Parku on the ring. His gray, expressionless face appeared on the display, a strip of dead skin hanging like an icicle from between his round, blank eyes.

  “The new contract from the Manado Company has arrived,” he said in his usual sonorous tones. “I am forwarding it to you for your approval and signature.”

  “Send it to the Office of the Judge Martial for review.”

  “It’s just come from there, lady commandant. The contract passed review.”

  “Right, then. I suppose you may as well send it along.”

  So, it seemed that it was legal to rent Fleet docking facilities to private companies. Not that this had ranked high on Sula’s list of concerns.

  “Have you discovered anything more about the Manado Company?”

  “Very little. Ownership is obscure, but the chief operating officer of the company is a Lord Peltrot Convil.” Which was a Daimong name, not that this signified one thing or another.

  “Any idea where the Manado’s been going on its missions? It has big antimatter engines; the flares should be easy to detect.”

  “I checked.” A pained note entered Parku’s tone. “Manado goes out very far, well past Neptune and into the Kuiper Belt. No one else ever goes to that quarter—there are no habitations, no mining ventures, nothing in that area at all. We could see their engine flares, but only if we have a detector pointing that way, and we never do, because there’s never been any reason to look.”

  Sula rapped her knuckles on the arm of her chair in frustration. “Clearly, they’ve found something,” she said.

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Keep looking.”

  “Of course, my lady.”

  And in the meantime, Sula thought, she’d wade through the dozens of pages that comprised the lease agreement, all in the hope that it might render some information.

  Not that she thought it would.

  * * *

  “You are a celebrated war hero,” said the lord governor. “Decorated.” He nodded at the medals on Sula’s dress tunic. “You destroyed those enemy ships at Magaria.”

  Actually, she’d destroyed enemy ships at Magaria twice, but Sula wasn’t about to spoil a compliment by correcting it.

  “You raised an army and captured the High City,” the governor continued. “And despite your celebrity, you find yourself on Terra. I confess it surprised me.”

  “I won the war without permission,” Sula said. “The credit was supposed to go to someone else. In fact, it did go to someone else.”

  The governor took a moment to process this. “That explains much,” he decided.

  Lord Moncrieff Ngeni was elderly and he moved with a degree of care, but it was difficult to tell his exact age. Terrans could live well past a hundred with the proper treatments, and Lord Moncrieff could clearly afford those. He could also afford cosmetic work: his dark-skinned face was as smooth and unlined as that of an infant, and only his aged, wrinkled hands hinted at his true age. His hair, unnaturally black, fell in tight waves over his collar, and he wore an equally black goatee that looked as if it properly belonged on the villain of a melodrama.

  The grand purple robes of his office, with their gold and scarlet brocade, seemed a little too large for him. He spoke with a gentle voice, as if speaking loudly was too taxing for him.

  Sula decided he was at least ninety.

  “They want me out of the way while they write their official histories,” Sula said. “So, here I am.”

  Lord Moncrieff gazed at Sula with mild eyes. “You’re very outspoken.”

  Sula shrugged. “What I say doesn’t matter. What they say matters a lot.”

  “Ah,” said the lord governor. “Zanshaa.” As if that said it all.

/>   Lord Moncrieff was pleased to inquire how Sula had come to be given such an obscure assignment, but Sula decided not to ask the same question of the governor. She could guess how Lord Moncrieff had ended up there. Terra was the sort of place where careers went to die, and presumably Lord Moncrieff had been a disappointment to somebody, or a whole series of somebodies, and had been shuffled offstage with the sort of promotion that no one actually wanted.

  Terra was a backwater. It possessed only a single wormhole gate, the one the Shaa had used when they sent in their conquering fleet, and commerce was restricted to that single access point. Worlds with thriving economies generally had many more useful wormhole gates, each of which led to other inhabited worlds, each offering the possibility of trade. In the Terran system, ships would arrive, stop, turn around, and go back, generally carrying more than they had brought. Billions of humans had left Earth over the centuries, moving up the giant elevator cables to board ships that would carry them to worlds of greater opportunity.

  Earth had been the loser in the wormhole lottery. Which was why it was a dead end, and a place for dead-end careers, like those of Sula and Lord Moncrieff.

  “Speaking of history,” said Lord Moncrieff, “I gather from one of your transmissions that you are interested in the history of Terra?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Very much.”

  “You must allow me to show you the view from my office. You might find the sight interesting.”

  The Palace of the Governor was in the heart of Constantinople, built over what had once been the palace of the caesars, and shambled from the heights of the city down to the waterfront at the Sea of Marmara. It was an eye-catching building, faced with porphyry polished to the color of fresh blood, and featuring cogged arches, niches with statues of Shaa administrators, plaques with quotations from the Praxis, and towers crowned by completely round domes, as if someone had set a cannonball atop each spire.

  The style wasn’t Terran. Sula wasn’t sure that she had seen a single building in the local style, whatever that was.

  The Lord Governor Ngeni had received her in his private apartments, and he led her up a marble stairway on which ran a plush waterfall of carpet the same color as the governor’s robes. They walked down a corridor cluttered with trophies, old flags, and the busts of long-forgotten officials, to a private door that opened to Lord Moncrieff’s thumbprint.

  The lord governor kept the lights off—Sula had the impression of a massive desk, of mirrors, and of the odor of lemon polish—and then Sula followed the governor to a broad window that looked down on a long, narrow park.

  “That is the racetrack of the old emperors,” Lord Moncrieff said. “The actual racetrack is still there, though well buried—and there are those towery things.”

  “Obelisks.”

  “Yes. One of them is from Egypt, and the other, ah”—he gestured vaguely—“isn’t.”

  “What did the emperors race?” Sula asked.

  “Oh.” Lord Moncrieff hesitated. “I don’t think the emperors actually raced; I believe they just . . . presided.”

  “Ah.”

  “And it was chariots that raced, pulled by horses. Tens of thousands watched. I’ve seen some art about it . . . somewhere.” He pointed through another window. “Beyond the racetrack is what’s left of Hagia Sofia, after the earthquake a couple thousand years ago. The bits still standing aren’t very interesting, but there’s a museum with artifacts and a virtual reconstruction. Almost as good as the real thing—though of course, if you want the version that shows the religious art that was there at one time, you have to get clearance.” Lord Moncrieff looked at her and smiled benignly. “I’ll make the necessary arrangements, if you like.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She frowned down the long track of the racecourse to the vaguely discerned piles of masonry at the far end. “They haven’t rebuilt it?”

  Lord Moncrieff sighed. “We are in an earthquake zone. The government didn’t tear down the antique buildings; that was the planet itself. There was a big mosque right over there”—he pointed at a gray, bunkerlike building that seemed to exist perpetually within its own shadow—“named after Sultan Ahmet, who still gives his name to the district. The dome fell in a quake, and the rest was demolished to put up the Transport Council building. Very ugly; you’re lucky you can’t see it properly.” He turned to her with a vague smile. “If you want to see a mosque, there’s the Suleyman, fairly well preserved. I believe it’s representative.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be sure to visit.”

  “It’s a concert hall now. And down below somewhere . . .” He flicked fingers in the direction of the floor. “There’s a mosaic floor from the old palace.”

  “Which old palace is that?”

  “Belonged to some caesar or other, I suppose. It’s a good ways down, in a subbasement. I’ve never seen it, but I’ll have Doctor Dho-ta take you down.”

  Some caesar or other. Sula felt herself vibrating with frustration. She wanted to grab some keys and charge down to the basement to view the ancient floors on which the Byzantine emperors had walked.

  Governor of the whole planet, she thought, and he can’t take an interest in the artifacts under his own feet.

  “Who is Doctor Dho-ta?” Sula asked.

  “He’s head of Heritage and Artifacts. I invited him to dine with us tonight, since you’re so interested in history and so on.”

  “Thank you. That was thoughtful.”

  There was a chime from somewhere in the lord governor’s robes, and then a pause while Lord Moncrieff searched his pockets for his hand comm. He glanced at the screen, then stuffed the comm back in a pocket.

  “Your Captain Koridun is here,” he said. “Shall we join her?”

  “It was very good of you to include her in the party.”

  The lord governor shrugged. “We have a Torminel chef on staff. Might as well give her some employment, eh?”

  Koridun had arrived in dress uniform of tunic and trousers of viridian green, with two rows of silver button. Tufts of fur splayed out between her cuffs and her immaculate white gloves. Sula assumed there were hidden cooling units in her ensemble to prevent overheating.

  Also in the party were Lady Alkan, the governor of Constantinople; her consort, who seemed supremely bored and rarely spoke; a Cree actor of some local standing; and Lady Amelia Singh, Lord Moncrieff’s wife. As chemically blond as Lord Moncrieff was sable, and with skin so taut that Sula thought she could bounce a rubber ball off it, Lady Amelia was an experienced hostess and managed to keep everyone in the conversation—everyone except Lady Alkan’s husband, anyway.

  Sula recognized the dinner service as Vigo hard-paste with a geometric design. She found herself seated across the dining table from Dr. Dho-ta and was vaguely surprised that an authority on Terran antiquities was a Lai-own. He was middle-aged, having lost the feathery, dark juvenile hair on the sides of his flat head, and the peg teeth in his muzzle bore the stains of the inhaled dy-chi intoxicant.

  At table, the intoxicants were more conventional. Somewhat to the lord governor’s surprise, Sula declined the local wine offered to the Terrans and was served sparkling pomegranate juice. Koridun, like most Torminel, preferred to drink methanol, which was poisonous to humans. The Cree drank anything that was put in front of him, and Dho-ta, for whom any form of alcohol was fatal, instead took thu-thu in the form of pastilles placed at his elbow by a thoughtful servant.

  The result was that Sula was the only completely sober person at the dinner. But then, she was used to that.

  “We were discussing the Suleyman mosque,” Lord Moncrieff said to Dho-ta. “I expect you know more about it than I do.”

  “It was built by one of the great Ottoman sultans,” Dho-ta said. “Known as ‘the Lawgiver’ to his own people, though surprisingly his enemies called him ‘the Magnificent.’ His military and cultural achievements were considerable.” His stained teeth clacked in thought. “His tomb was destroyed in an earthqua
ke centuries ago, but I can send you a monograph about its excavation, if that would interest you.”

  “Thank you,” Sula said. “I’d enjoy it.”

  “The fire damage to the concert hall has been repaired,” Dho-ta added. “It’s improved, if anything.”

  Lord Moncrieff saw Sula’s questioning look and said, “A few years ago, an incident. Someone set himself on fire in there, and the fire spread.”

  “A fanatic,” Dho-ta said. He shifted in the special chair that cradled his keel-like breastbone. “He wanted to return the mosque to its original religious function—not to Islam, curiously, but to something else, one of those syncretic cults that keep popping up.”

  “These people are Moncrieff’s special burden,” Lady Amelia said.

  The lord governor gave a sigh. “There’s something about Terra that creates cultists,” he said. “Narayanists, Christians, Gnostics, Muslims, Manicheans, Rivolean Mandaeists, and Orgonic Mandaeists.” He sighed and sipped his wine. “I can’t say I much care what a person chooses to think, but they will preach in public, and they will get arrested and condemned, and the appeal will end up on my desk.” He raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Those who are insane I can have committed, but the rest are clearly in violation of the Praxis, and I have no choice but to approve their torture and execution.”

  Lady Alkan sniffed. “If only they all had the good taste to set themselves on fire.”

  Dho-ta turned to Sula. “That’s why Jerusalem had to be leveled right to the bedrock,” he said. “There was so much unrest there. And that’s why the authorities took that rock from Mecca and sent it to some museum of cult artifacts on Preowyn.”

  “That just exported the problem,” said Lady Amelia.

  Lord Moncrieff gave his gentle smile. “But, my dearest, that means it’s no longer my problem. One of my esteemed colleagues can sign the warrants, and at least some of the cultists will leave me in peace.”

  A servant whisked away Sula’s plate, a second whisked away crumbs, and a third whisked a new course in front of her. The odor of singed flesh rose in her senses. She picked up her fork.