Walter Williams: The Praxis

Vipsania and the two other Martinez sisters, Walpurga and Sempronia, had turned up on Zanshaa just a few months after he’d begun his tour of duty. They rented half of the old Shelley Palace and plunged into Zanshaa society. Sempronia was supposedly attending university, with the others looking after her, but if there was any education going on, it did not seem to be from textbooks.

Martinez’s previous memories of his three sisters had been of children—annoying, intelligent, conniving, pestiferous children, admittedly, but still children. The formidable young women who held court in the Shelley Palace now seemed not only grown-up, but ageless—like nymphs gracing a fountain, they seemed eternal, strangely out of time.

They might have been expected to need Martinez’s help in establishing themselves in the capital, but they had come with letters of introduction, and in fact hadn’t needed him at all. If anything, they wanted him to stay away. They had lost their Laredo accents somewhere in the course of growing up, and his own speech was a reminder of their common provincial origins, one that might embarrass them in front of their new glit friends.

Sometimes Martinez wondered if he disliked his sisters. But what did fountain nymphs care if they were liked or not? They simplywere.

By the time Enderby finished his work, the sun had set and Zanshaa’s silver accelerator ring, half eclipsed by the planet’s shadow, was visible now only as a constellation of lights arcing across the night sky. Night birds hunted insects outside the curved window. Sour sweat gathered under Martinez’s arms and under the collar of his dark green uniform tunic. His tailbone ached. He wanted to shower and have Warrant Officer Taen massage his shoulders with long, purposeful fingers.

Fleet Commander Enderby signed hard copy of the remaining documents and thumbprinted them. Martinez and Gupta witnessed the documents where necessary. Then Enderby turned off his screens and rose from his seat, rolling his shoulders in a subdued stretch consonant with the dignity of his office.

“Thank you, my lords,” he said, then looked at Martinez. “Lieutenant Martinez, will you see that the invitations to the ship commanders are delivered?”

Martinez’s heart sank. The “invitations”—not the sort any commander would dare decline—were to a meeting concerning Fleet dispositions on the day of the Great Master’s death, and by service custom such requests had to be delivered by hand.

“Yes, my lord,” he said. “I’ll bring them up to the ring as soon as I can print hard copy.”

The Fleet Commander’s mild brown eyes turned to him. “No need to go yourself,” he said. “Send one of the duty cadets.”

A small mercy, at least. “Thank you, Lord Commander.”

Sublieutenant Gupta received Enderby’s thanks, braced in salute, and made his way out. Martinez put special thick bond paper into the printer—actual trees went into making this stuff—and printed Enderby’s invitations. When he finished putting them in envelopes, he looked up and saw Enderby gazing out the great curved window. The myriad lights of the Lower Town illuminated and softened his profile. There was an uncertainty in his glance, a strange, lost vacancy.

For once Enderby could stand in his office and contemplate the view. He had no duty awaiting him.

Nothing was left undone.

Martinez wondered if a man as successful as Enderby had any real regrets at the end of his life. Even granted that he was from a clan of the highest caste, he’d done well. Though his position had carried him through several promotions, no one wasguaranteed the rank of Fleet Commander. He was wealthy, he had added to the honor of his house, his children were all established in life and doing well. True, the wife was a problem, but the investigators had gone out of their way to make it clear that her peculations were no stain on the Fleet Commander.

Perhaps he loved her, Martinez thought. Marriages among the Peers were usually arranged by the family, but sometimes love happened. Perhaps, in a situation such as the commander’s, it was the love one regretted, not the marriage.

But this wasn’t the time to speculate on the Fleet Commander’s private life. Martinez knew this was the time for him to use his cunning, to use all the charm he’d intended to use on Warrant Officer Taen.

Now or never,he thought, and steeled himself.

“My lord?” he said.

Enderby gave a start of surprise, then turned to him. “Yes, Martinez?”

“You just said something. But I didn’t catch what it was.”

Martinez didn’t know how to begin this conversation, so he hoped to somehow come to a kind of mutual understanding that Enderby himself had begun it.

“Did I speak?” Enderby was surprised. He shook his head. “It probably wasn’t important.”

Martinez’s mind flailed as he tried to keep the conversation going. “The service is about to go through a difficult period,” he said.

Enderby nodded. “Possibly. But we’ve had sufficient time to prepare.”

“In the time to come, we’ll need leaders such as you.”

Enderby gave a dismissive twitch of his lips. “I’m not unique.”

“I beg to differ, lord,” Martinez said. He took a step closer to the commander. “I’ve had the honor to work intimately with you these last months, and I hope you’ll not take it amiss if I say that in my opinion your gifts are of a rare order.”

Enderby’s lips gave that twitch again, and he raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t worked with any other Fleet Commanders, have you?”

“But I’ve worked with a lot ofmen, my lord. And a great many Peers. And—” Martinez knew he was deep in the morass now. He could feel the slime rising to his armpits. He took a gulp of air, not daring to stop. “—and I’ve seen how limited most of them are. And how your own horizons are so much broader, my lord, so much more valuable to the service and to—”

Martinez froze as Enderby fixed him with a glare. “Lord Lieutenant,” he said, “will you please bring yourself to the point?”

“The point, Lord Commander—” Martinez said. “—the point is—” He reached into his shoes for his courage and dragged it quailing into the light. “The point is, I was hoping to convince you to reconsider the matter of your retirement.”

He hoped for a softening of Enderby’s glance, a sudden shock of concern. Perhaps a fatherly hand placed on his shoulder, a hesitant question: Does it really mean so much to you?

Instead, Enderby’s face stiffened and the older man seemed to inflate, his iron spine growing somehow more rigid, his chest rising. His lower jaw pushed out as he spoke, revealing an even white row of lower teeth.

“Howdare you presume to question my judgment?” he demanded.

Martinez felt nails bite into his palms. “Lord Commander,” he said, “I question the necessity of removing a superb leader at such a critical time—”

“Don’t you realize that I meannothing! ” Enderby cried. “Nothing!Don’t you understand that elementary fact of our service? We—all this—” He made a savage gesture toward the window with his hand, encompassing all beyond the transparency, the millions in the Lower Town, the great arc of the antimatter ring, the ships and wormhole stations beyond. “—it’s alltrash! ” His voice was an urgent whisper, as if overwhelming emotion had partially paralyzed his vocal cords. “Trash,compared to the true, the eternal, the one thing that gives our miserable lives meaning…”

Enderby raised a fist and for one horrified second Martinez feared that the Fleet Commander would strike him down.

“For the Praxis!”Enderby said. “The Praxis is all that matters—it is all that is true—all that is beautiful!” Enderby brandished his fist again. “Andthat is the knowledge for which our ancestors suffered. For which we werescourged! Millions had todie in agony before the Great Masters burned the truth of the Praxis into our minds. And if millions more—billions! — had to die to uphold the righteousness of the Praxis, it would be our duty toinflict those deaths! ”