Walter Williams - The Praxis

He disliked disappointing beautiful women, and decided not to risk her disapproval by asking about tempered tuning, whatever that was. He took a careful sip of his glass and decided to try the compliment direct.

“I’m reminded of porcelain when I look at you,” he said. “Your complexion is extraordinary, now that I can appreciate it in person. I’m having a hard time not staring.”

She turned away from him, an ambiguous smile twisting her lips. And then she gave a brief laugh, tossed her head, and looked him in the eye. “And my eyes are like emeralds, right?” she said.

Martinez answered with care. “I was going to say green jade.”

She nodded. “Good. That’s better.” She turned away again. “Perhaps we can save the descriptions of any remaining parts for another time,” she murmured.

At least the thought of her other parts—this time or next—was cheering.

“Do you collect porcelains?”

Sula shook her head. “No. I—Not with the way I’m living now. Not if I’m sharing cadet quarters with five other pinnace pilots. Nothing would survive.”

It was also possible, Martinez realized, that Sula couldn’t afford the kind of ceramics she’d like to own, not if she were actually living on her cadets’ pay. He didn’t know what financial resources the execution of her parents had left her.

“There’s a whole wing of porcelains in the Museum of Plastic Arts,” he said. “We could go there someday, if you like.”

“I’ve seen it,” Sula said. “It was the first place I went when theLos Angeles came here to refit.”

He could scratch the museum tours off his agenda, he thought. Though it might have been fun, seeing porcelains with an expert as lovely as any of the ceramics on display.

“Any luck in finding a good posting?” Sula asked.

“No. Not yet.”

“Does it have to be a staff job?”

Martinez shook his head. “I don’t mind ship duty. But I’d like it to be a step up, not a step back or sideways.” He put his arms on the table and sighed. “And it would be nice to be in a position to occasionally accomplish something. I have this ridiculous compulsion not to be totally useless. But that’s difficult in the service, isn’t it? Some days it’s a struggle to find a point in it all. Do you know what I mean?”

Sula looked at him and nodded. “We’re in a military that hasn’t fought a real war in thirty-four hundred years, and most of its engagements before and since consisted of raining bombs on helpless populations. Yes, I know what you mean.” She cocked her head, silver-gilt hair brushing her shoulders. “Occasionally we pull off a nice rescue,” she said. “Though we hardly need cruisers or battleships for that, do we? But all those big ships make terrific platforms for enhancing the grandeur and self-importance of senior captains and fleet commanders, and grandeur and self-importance are what holds the empire together.”

Martinez blinked. “That’s blunt,” he said.

“I’m allowed to be blunt. I understand my position very well.” She looked at him. “You know about my family?”

Martinez gave a cautious nod. “I’ve seen your file.”

“Then you know that the military is the only career I’m allowed. But even though I’m a clan head, there’s no clan for me to be head of, so there will be no powerful relatives to help me get promotions. I can get a lieutenancy on my own, but once I pass the exam, that’s about all I can expect. If I astonish everyone with my genius, I might be promoted to elcap, and if I make full captain, it will probably happen only on retirement.” She gave a cold smile. “The consolation of my position is that I can say what I damn well please,” she said. “None of it will change anything.” She looked thoughtful. “Except…” she began.

“Yes?”

“If I do an absolutely brilliant exam. Sometimes senior officers take an interest in the cadet who scores first. Or even second.”

Martinez nodded. It had been known to happen. Even commoners could do well if they had the right patron. “I wish you the best of luck,” he said.

“I hope luck has nothing to do with it,” Sula said. “I’ve never got anywhere by counting on luck.”

“Fine,” Martinez said amiably. “No luck to you, then.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was a brief silence, and then Sula said, “In the last couple days, since I’ve arrived on Zanshaa, I’ve started getting messages from people. People who say they were friends of my parents.” She shook her head. “I don’t remember any of them. I don’t remember things very well from that period.”

“You should meet them.”

“Why?”

“Maybe they could help you. They may feel that they owe your parents that.”

Sula considered this for a moment, and then her eyes hardened. She shook her head. “It’s the job of the dead to stay dead,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

Sula raged inwardly against her certainty that everything she said was wrong. She was making a botch of the whole evening, and all because she didn’t know how to talk to someone who liked her.

She had been another person once, and then decided not to be that person again, and to avoid anything, like alcohol, that might bring that person back. But she didn’t know how to be this new person very well, and she kept getting it wrong.

It’s the job of the dead to stay dead. Nice light cocktail-bar conversation, that.

She reminded herself that Martinez was only trying to help.

Of course, he was also trying very hard to get her into bed. This prospect wasn’t entirely without its attractions, though she’d been chaste for so long that she wondered if she’d have any idea how to behave with a man. It would be on a par with everything else this evening to somehow make a total botch of it.

Martinez could probably handle any problem that would arise, she decided. She could trust to his efficiency that way.

She might as well surrender. It wasn’t as if chastity had benefited her in any way that she could see, and Martinez could hardly make her life worse than it was.

Fortunately, entertainment began before she could completely poison the conversation. A pair of singers and a band mounted the stage and began a series of dance tunes, and Martinez seemed pleased that it was she who asked him to dance and not the other way around.

Sula had once enjoyed dancing, but her only practice in recent years had been at the academy, where everyone stood nervous and perspiring in dress uniforms and hampered by a rigid etiquette. She was out of practice at dancing for pleasure, but fortunately, Martinez was an able partner—those stumpy legs knew their business, she decided—and his expertise neutralized her initial awkwardness. She discovered in herself a tendency to bounce on the balls of her feet with each step, but reminded herself that the whole point was to keep a low center of gravity, and told herself sternly to glide, not bound like an eager puppy.

As the evening progressed her awkwardness faded and she relaxed into the movements, the steps, and Martinez’s arms. Their bodies moved into a close synchrony, and she found herself responding easily to the merest suggestion of his touch, the lightest impulse on her palm or hip or back. Her body molded to his during the slow dances, and warm blood flushed her skin at his nearness. There seemed progressively less point to the whole chastity business.

They danced for an hour and then stepped outside to cool off. Clouds scudded low overhead, obscuring Zanshaa’s ring, and gusts of wind blustered around the corners of the buildings. A pleasure boat floated past on the canal, darkened, but with its contours outlined in cool blue neon—it looked like a skeleton boat, a visitation from another plane. Martinez dabbed sweat from his brow with a handkerchief and opened his high uniform collar. “Next time,” he said, “I’ll wear civvies.”