Walter Williams - Logs

Chandra shook her head. "I didn't understand that part, either. If he ever suffered, he didn't do it when I was looking." A curl of disdain touched her lip. "Of course he felt he was more refined than the rest of us, he probably thought his suffering was so elevated that the rest of us didn't understand it."

"I can see why the Shaa killed Narayanguru, anyway," Martinez said. "If you maintain that there's another world, which you can't prove exists, where things are somehow better and more real than this world, which we can prove exists, you're going to run afoul of the Praxis for sure, and the Legion of Diligence is going to have you hanging off a tree before you can spit."

"Oh, there was more to it than the invisible world business. Miracles and so on. The dead tree that Narayanguru was hung on was supposed to have burst into flower after they took him down."

"I can see where the Legion of Diligence would take a dim view of those stories, too."

That night, sitting on his bed while he drank his cocoa and looked at the picture of the woman, her child, and the cat, he thought about Fletcher sitting in the same place, contemplating the ghastly figure of Narayanguru, and thinking about human suffering. Martinez wondered what Fletcher, a prominent member of two of the hundred most prominent Terran families in the empire, had ever suffered, and what comfort he received by looking at the bloody figure strung on the tree.

Doctor Xi had said Fletcher found his position a burden, for all that he worked dutifully at what was expected of him. He wasn't really an arrogant snob, according to Xi, he was just playing a part.

Fletcher had been empty, filling his hours with formal ritual and aesthetic pleasure. He hadn't created anything; he hadn't ever made a statue or a painting, he just collected them. He hadn't done anything new or original with his command, he'd just polished his ship's personnel and routines the same way he'd polish a newly-acquired silver figurine.

He had suffered, apparently. Perhaps he had known all along how hollow his life had become.

He had sat where Martinez was now sitting, and contemplated objects that other people considered holy.

Martinez wasn't going to figure Fletcher out tonight. He put the cocoa aside, brushed his teeth, and rolled beneath the covers.

Time passed. Martinez dined with Husayn and Mersenne on successive days, and the next day spent eight hours in Command, taking Illustrious through the wormhole to Osser. Squadrons of decoys were echeloned ahead of the squadron, in hopes of attracting any incoming missiles. Along with the decoys flew pinnaces, painting the vacuum ahead with their laser range finders. Every antimissile weapon was charged and pointed dead ahead.

Chenforce made some final-hour maneuvers before passing the wormhole, checking their speed and entering the wormhole at a slightly different angle, so as to appear in the Osser system on a course that wouldn't take them straight on to Qupyl, the next system, but slightly out of the direct path.

Martinez lay on his acceleration couch, trying not to gnaw his nails as he stared at the sensor displays, waiting for the brief flash that would let him know that missiles were incoming. His tension gradually eased as the returning radar and laser signals gradually revealed more of the Osser system, and then a new worry began to possess him.

The Naxids would have to wonder why Chenforce had changed its tactics, particularly when they hadn't met any genuine opposition since Protipanu, at the very beginning of their raid. If the Naxids analyzed the raiders' maneuvers, then reasoned backwards to find what the tactics were intended to prevent, they would be able to see that Michi Chen and her squadron was very, very concerned about a missile barrage fired at relativistic velocities.

If the tactic hadn't yet occurred to the Naxids, Chenforce might now be handing them the idea.

But that was a worry for another day. For the present it was enough to see that the ranging lasers were finding nothing, that more and more of the system was being revealed without an enemy being found, and that Chenforce was as safe from attack as it was ever going to be.

Days passed. Martinez conducted regular inspections to learn his ship and crew, and to confirm the information reported on the 77-12s. He dined in rotation with Lord Phillips, who was scarcely more talkative than he had been at their previous meeting, with Lieutenant the Lady Juliette Corbigny, whose volubility more than made up for Phillips' silence, and with Acting Lieutenant Lord Themba Mokgatle, who had been promoted to the vacancy left as Chandra shuttled to Michi's staff.

Gazing at the painting of the woman, child, and cat, he realized that there was another figure, a man who sat on a bed opposite the fire from the woman and her baby. Martinez hadn't noticed him because the painting was dark and needed cleaning, and the man wasn't illuminated by the fire. One moment he wasn't there, and the next Martinez suddenly saw him, head bent with a stick or staff in his hands, appearing like a ghost from behind the painted red curtain.

Martinez couldn't have been more surprised if the cat had jumped from the picture into his lap.

The dim figure on the canvas was the only discovery Martinez managed during that period. The killer or killers of Captain Fletcher remained no more than a phantom. Michi grew ever more irritable, and snapped at Martinez and Garcia both. Sometimes Martinez caught a look in her eye that seemed to say, If you weren't family…

In time, after the first breathless rush of taking command was over, Martinez was reminded that there were too many captains' servants on the ship. He had Garcia take Rigger Espinosa and Machinist Ayutano into the constabulary, with the particular duty of patrolling the decks on which the officers were quartered. Buckle the hair stylist was sent to aid the ship's barber. Narbonne was taken onto Martinez' service as an assistant to Alikhan, a demotion that Narbonne seemed to resent.

That left Baca, the fat, redundant cook that no one seemed to want, and Jukes. Baca was eventually taken on as an assistant to Michi's cook, a post he wasn't happy about, either, and that left Martinez with his own personal artist.

Martinez called Jukes into his office to give him the news, and the man turned up in Fleet-issued undress, and managed to brace rather professionally in salute. Martinez decided he must have got to Jukes before Jukes got to the sherry.

"What did Fletcher rate you, anyway?" he asked.

"Rigger First Class."

"I don't suppose you know anything about a rigger's duties?"

The artist shook his head. "Not a damn thing, my lord. That's why I need a new patron."

"Good luck in finding one."

There was a moment of silence. Jukes looked as if he'd been hit with a hammer.

"Thank you for changing the pictures in my cabin," Martinez said. "It's a considerable improvement."

"You're welcome." Jukes took a breath and made a visible effort to re-engage with the person sitting before him. "Was there a piece you particularly liked? I could to locate other works in that style."

"The one with the woman and the cat," Martinez said. "Though I don't think I've seen any painting quite in that style, anywhere."

Jukes smiled. "It's not precisely typical of the painter's work. That's a very old Northern European piece."

Martinez looked at him. "And North Europe is where, exactly?"

"Terra, my lord. The painting dates from before the Shaa conquest. Though I should say the original painting, because this may be a copy. It's hard to say, because all the documentation is in languages no one speaks anymore, and hardly anyone reads them."

"It looks old enough."

"It wants cleaning." Jukes gave a thoughtful pause. "You've got a good eye, my lord. Captain Fletcher bought the painting some years ago, but decided he didn't like it because it didn't seem one thing or another, and he put it in storage." His mouth gave a little twitch of disapproval. "I don't know why he took it to war with him. It's not as if the painting could be replaced if we got blown up. Maybe he wanted it with him since it was so valuable, I don't know."