Walter Williams - The Praxis

The Martinez sisters’ party seemed to be a success. Martinez saw several faces he’d first seen at Lord Pierre’s dinner party, and PJ had arrived with a couple of his male friends who were less successful than he at concealing their fundamentally decorative nature. Walpurga was in a corner of the room, laughing and smiling with an advocate she had first met at the Ngeni Palace, a man who represented the interests of the Qian clan. Sempronia was speaking near the garden door to a young brown-haired man in the viridian uniform of a Fleet lieutenant.

And Sula, Martinez saw, had become the center of a number of young men, including PJ’s two glit friends. Martinez was thinking about rescuing her when the dinner gong boomed and saved him the trouble.

He wasn’t seated near Sula, who was placed between two of the guests his sisters had poached from the Ngeni Palace, but he had a clear view of her. She was framed perfectly by the chair back, which was made of carved, ancient, darkened Esker ivory that admirably set off her pale complexion. Despite the other guests and the elaborate floral arrangements that had perfumed the air with their scent, Caroline Sula was clearly the object in the room most worth looking at.

Martinez was shifting from the dining room to the drawing room when Sempronia briefly touched him on the left arm. “This isyour fault!” she hissed. “He’s at me to join him for a walk in the garden!”

“It’s a pleasant garden,” Martinez said.

“Not with PJ in it.”

“Besides,” Martinez said, “it’s your sisters’ fault and you know it.”

She glared at him. “You should stand up to them for me!” she said. “What are brothers for?” She strode off.

Martinez mingled for a while, and was on the verge of seeking out Sula when PJ Ngeni touched him on the right arm. Symmetry, he thought.

“May we speak?” PJ said, and touched his narrow little mustache.

“Certainly.”

“I have asked, um, your sister Sempronia if she would join me for a walk in the garden,” he said.

Martinez drew a smile onto his face. “That will be pleasant,” he said.

“Well…” PJ hesitated. “The fact is, I’ve become quite fond of Sempronia in a very short time.”

Martinez nodded. “That’s not unusual. She’s a popular girl.”

“I thought—if I could get her in the garden—I might ask for her hand.” His voice trailed off. “In marriage,” he clarified.

“I never thought otherwise.”

“So I thought I’d ask your advice,” PJ finished, and looked brightly up at Martinez.

Martinez gazed down at the man. For someone who was supposed to have led some kind of debauched life, PJ seemed remarkably short of social confidence.

“What’s the problem?” Martinez asked. “Haven’t you propositioned a woman before?”

PJ flushed. “Well, yes,” he said, “purely in a sporting way, of course. But I have never proposed marriage, with all its,” he gave a little cough, “responsibilities and duties, and—” He looked bleak. “—so forth.” His voice trailed away, and he looked up at Martinez again. “Do you have any objection to my asking for your sister’s hand?”

“No.”Not for asking, Martinez thought.Actually marrying, I’d have to shoot you.

This answer didn’t relieve PJ’s anxiety. “Do you think she…do you think darling Sempronia will accept me?” He licked his lips. “She seems to be rather avoiding me, actually.” He cast a glance to a corner of the room, where Sempronia was still talking to the brown-haired young officer.

“She’s one of the hostesses, she’s got a lot to do,” Martinez said. “I think if you ask her, the answer would please you.” It was time to get PJ on his errand. He clapped the man on his shoulder. “Go to it,” he said. “Courage!”

PJ’s eyes seemed to be looking not at Sempronia but the abyss. “Very good of you,” he murmured. “Thanks.”

He marched toward Sempronia as if to his execution. Martinez smiled at the thought of the two people, neither of whom wanted a life with the other, stumbling their way toward the engagement that would satisfy their families. He decided he would prefer not to witness the painful outcome, whatever it was, but instead looked for Sula and found her sipping a cup of coffee, miraculously free of admirers.

“We don’t have to stay all night,” he said. “I know a place in the Lower Town that’s fun.”

Sula tasted her coffee and returned the cup to its matching saucer of hard-paste porcelain. “Is this the new Spenceware Flora pattern?” she asked.

Martinez looked at the cup as if seeing it for the first time. There was a pattern of violets and a faint, matching purple stripe. “I don’t know,” he said. “To me it looks like, well, a cup.”

Sula looked up from the saucer. “I can ask your sisters when we say good night.”

They bade farewell to Vipsania and Walpurga, who told Sula that the cup was in fact the new Flora and thanked her effusively for coming. The presence of the recently decorated Sula, Martinez knew, was enough to assure a mention of the party in tomorrow’s society reports, and that had been his sisters’ object in inviting her in the first place. They wanted to get certified as fashionable hostesses before the official period of mourning for the last Shaa brought large society functions to a close for a full year.

Martinez took Sula down the funicular railway to the Lower Town, and they gazed through the rail car’s transparent roof at the great expanse of the huge metropolis rising to embrace them like a wide, golden sea. Gusts of wind made little excited screams against the car’s hard edges. Martinez turned to one side and saw the old Sula Palace towering on the edge of the High City, its distinctive stained-glass dome glowing blue, and with a start he turned to Sula, remembering the way her parents had died and lost their property. She was looking toward the palace as well, but her face was relaxed. Maybe, after all these years, she didn’t recognize the place.

Martinez took Sula to a cabaret off the city’s main canal, sat her in a quiet corner, and ordered a bottle of wine. He was surprised when she put a hand over the mouth of her glass and asked for sparkling water instead.

“Don’t you drink at all?” he asked.

“No. I—” She hesitated. “I used to have a problem with alcohol.”

“Oh.” There was a moment of surprised silence. Then he looked at the wine bottle in his hand. “Does it bother you if I drink? Because if it does, I’ll—”

“I don’t mind. Have all you like.” She smiled thinly. “Just don’t expect me to carry you home.”

“I haven’t had to be carried yet,” he said, an attempt to carry off the awkward moment with a little bravado.

He sipped his wine but decided to strictly limit his intake. The idea of being inebriated in Sula’s presence was suddenly distasteful.

“So,” he said, “you’re an expert on porcelains? I remember sending you that book.”

“I’m hardly an expert,” Sula said, “I’m just very interested.” Her eyes brightened and she seemed as relieved as he to leave the awkward subject of alcohol behind. “Did you know that fine porcelains were invented on Earth? That porcelain was one of the few things, along with tempered tuning, the Shaa thought a worthy contribution to interstellar civilization?”

“No. I didn’t know that. You mean no one had pots until Earth was conquered?”

Sula’s eyes narrowed. “Of course they had pots. They had all sorts of ceramics. Stoneware, even. But translucent, vitrified ceramics, white clay mixed with feldspar—real porcelain, the kind that rings when you tap your finger against it—that was invented on Earth.” Her lecturing tone suggested that Martinez’s question had disappointed her.