Walter Williams - Logs

"And the authorities don't do anything?"

Martinez shrugged. "The cultists only hurt each other. And Laredo is very far from Zanshaa."

"Apparently."

Martinez looked at Narayanguru with his bloody translucent flesh. "In any case," he said, "I'm neither a cultist nor an aesthete, and I have no intention of sleeping beneath that gory object for a single night."

The other man grinned. "I don't blame you."

Martinez turned to Jukes. "Can you… rearrange… the captain's collection?" he asked. "Store Narayanguru where he won't disturb anyone's sleep, and put something more pleasant in his place?"

"Yes, my lord. I've got an inventory of what items of his collection Fletcher brought aboard, and I'll peruse it tonight."

Martinez was amused by the word peruse. "Very good, Mister Jukes. You're dismissed."

"Yes, my lord." This time Jukes managed a halfway creditable salute, and marched away. Martinez left Fletcher's quarters and locked the door behind him.

The interview had cheered him. He went to his own cabin and was startled to find that one of his servants, Rigger Espinosa, had laid cushions on the floor of his office and had stretched out on them fully clothed.

"What are you doing there?" Martinez asked.

Espinosa jumped to his feet and braced. He was a young man, muscular and trim, with heavy-knuckled hands that hung by his side.

"Mister Alikhan sent me, my lord," he said.

Martinez stared at him. "But why?"

Espinosa's face was frank. "Someone's killing captains, my lord. I'm to keep that from happening again."

Killing captains. Martinez hadn't thought of it that way.

"Very well," Martinez said. "As you were."

Martinez went into his sleeping cabin, where Alikhan had laid out his night things. He picked up his toothbrush, moistened it in his sink, and looked at himself in the mirror.

Captain of the Illustrious, he thought.

In spite of the deaths, in spite of Narayanguru hanging on his tree and the unexplained deaths and the unknown killer stalking the ship, he couldn't help but smile.

After breakfast Martinez put on his full dress uniform with the silver braid and the tall collar, now without the red staff tabs that Alikhan had removed overnight. Martinez drew on his white gloves, and called for Marsden and Fulvia Kazakov to join him. While waiting he had Alikhan fetch the Golden Orb from its case. The empire's highest military decoration was a baton topped by a transparent sphere filled with a golden fluid that, when disturbed, swirled and eddied like the clouds surrounding a gas giant. It was a magnificent award, and Martinez was the first to be awarded the decoration in hundreds of years.

Martinez hadn't even considered strapping on the curved ceremonial knife. The situation would be tense enough without that.

Marsden and Kazakov arrived, each wearing full dress. "My lady," Martinez said to the premiere, "please let Master Machinist Gawbyan know that we are about to inspect his department."

Kazakov made the call as Martinez led the procession to the machine shop, where Gawbyan, breathless because he'd rushed from the petty officers' mess just ahead of them, braced at the door.

Martinez gave the machine shop a thorough inspection, questioned the machinists on their work, and made note of carelessness in the matter of waste disposal. If the ship had to make a course change, cease acceleration, or otherwise go weightless, the trash would go all over the shop.

Gawbyan accepted the criticism with a grim set to his fleshy features that suggested that he was going to fall on one of his recruits like an avalanche the second Martinez was out of the room.

When the inspection was over, Martinez found that he'd taken up very little of his morning, and so he called a second inspection, this time of Missile Battery Two. This review lasted longer, with time spent examining missile loaders and watching damage control robots maneuver under the command of their operators. Despite the presence of officers and the stress of the inspection the mood of the crew was nearly cheerful, and Martinez couldn't help but compare it with the foreboding and terror that drenched the atmosphere during Fletcher's inspection two days earlier.

Seeing the sunny spirits among the crew, he felt a suspicion that they might be taking him too lightly. He wanted the crew to view him seriously; and if they weren't, he was prepared to become a complete bastard until they did. Intuition suggested, however, that this wasn't necessary. The holejumpers just seemed pleased to have him in charge.

He was a winner, after all. He'd masterminded both of the Fleet's victories over the Naxids. The crew understood a winner better than they understood whatever it was that Fletcher was.

Martinez found the inspections valuable. He realized this was the best and fastest way he had of finding out about his ship.

"I'd like to see the lieutenants after supper," Martinez told Kazakov as they left the battery. "We'll have an informal meeting in my dining room. Please arrange for a qualified warrant officer or cadet to take the watch."

"Yes, my lord."

"Feel free to move into your old quarters. I thank your hospitality, involuntary though it was."

She returned his smile. "Yes, my lord."

He went into his old office, opened the safe, removed its contents, and left the door of the safe open for Kazakov. He cast a farewell glance over the putti, hoping he would never see their sweet faces again, and then went into the captain's office-his office-and looked at the statues, still stolid and arrogant in their armor, and the display cabinets, and the murals of elegant figures writing in scrolls with quills or reading aloud from open scrolls to a rapt audience. Martinez opened his new safe, changed the combination, and put his papers in it along with Fletcher's book and the little statue of the woman dancing on the skull.

In the sleeping cabin he found a welcome change. The gruesome Narayanguru was gone, as was the pieta, the snarling beast, and the bathing woman. The blue-skinned flute player remained, though he'd been shifted to a brighter-lit area. Next to him a seascape showed a ground-effect vehicle thundering over a white-topped swell in a blast of spume. Over the dressing table was a landscape of snow-topped mountains standing over a village of shaggy Yormaks and their shaggier cattle.

Pride of place went to a dark old picture that showed mostly murky empty space. The composition was unusual: a sort of frame had been painted around the edges; or perhaps it was meant to be the proscenium of a stage, since a painted curtain rod stretched over the whole scene, with a painted red curtain pulled open to the right. Against the darkness on the left were the small figures of a young mother and the infant she had just taken from her cradle. The woman's dress, though hardly contemporary, nevertheless gave the impression of being comfortably middle-class. The infant wore red pajamas. Neither were paying much attention to the little cat that squatted next to a small open fire at the center of the picture. The cat bore a sullen expression and was looking at a red bowl, which had something in it that didn't seem to please him.

Martinez was struck by the contrast between the elaborate presentation, the painted frame and red curtain, with the ordinary domesticity of the scene. The red curtain, the red bowl, the red pajamas. The young mother's round face. The sulky cat with its ears pinned back. The odd little fire in the middle of the room, presumably on an earthen floor. Martinez kept looking at the picture while wondering why it seemed so worth looking at.

There was a movement in the corner of his eye, and he turned to see Perry in the door.

"Your dinner's ready, my lord," he said, "whenever you're ready."

"I'll eat now," Martinez said, and with a last glance at the painting made his way to the dining room, where he ate alone at Fletcher's grand table with its golden centerpiece and its long double row of empty places.