Эрик Флинт - The Service of the Sword

"Only twice," Shobhana admitted calmly. "Of course, everyone got invited at least once. To get invited more often than that, you had to earn it, and, frankly, Tactics wasn't my best subject." She smiled sweetly at Grigovakis' expression. Having even a single "earned" invitation to one of Duchess Harrington's dinners on her record was a mark of high distinction for any Tactics student at the Academy.

"But you had three invitations, did you?" he said, turning back to Aitschuler, who nodded. "And Abigail did, too?" That cutting edge of astonishment was back at the mere possibility that Abigail might have achieved such a distinction.

"Oh, no," Karl said, shaking his head sadly, then paused, waiting with perfect timing for the flicker of satisfaction to show in Grigovakis' eyes. "Abigail was invited ten times . . . that I know of," he said innocently.

"What is his problem?" Shobhana muttered later that ship's evening as she and Abigail shared the shower. It was the midshipwomen's turn to have it first today; tomorrow, it would be their turn to wait while the midshipmen had first dibs.

"Whose?" Abigail worked shampoo into her almost waist length hair. There had been more times than she could count that she'd been tempted to cut it as short as Shobhana wore her own. Indeed, once or twice she'd been tempted to cut it as short as Lady Harrington's hair had been on her first visit to Grayson. Just finding the time to care for and groom it properly had seemed an impossible task more often than not, and its length was scarcely convenient in zero-gee conditions, or under vac helmets, or during phys-ed class. She supposed her inability to actually bring herself to cut it was one of her few unbreakable concessions to the standards of her birth world, where no respectable young woman would ever dream of cutting her hair short.

Now she finished working in the lather and stuck her head under the shower and rinsed vigorously.

"You know perfectly well whose," Shobhana said just a bit crossly. "That asshole Grigovakis, of course! Every once in a while you'd almost swear there was a worthwhile human being inside there somewhere. Then he reverts to normal."

"Well," Abigail said a bit damply from inside the cone of spray, "I always figured he just thought he was so much better than anyone else that we were being obtuse and rude not to acknowledge it spontaneously." She withdrew her head from under the shower, slicked her hair back into a thick rope, and began squeezing water out of it. "So since we aren't going to extend proper obeisance to him on our own, it's clearly his duty to extract it from us any way he can, instead."

Shobhana turned under the other showerhead to look at her in surprise, and Abigail bit her tongue. She knew the caustic bite she'd let into her voice had twanged her friend's mental radar.

"I wasn't exactly thinking about all of us," Shobhana said after a moment. "I was thinking about the way he seems to have a problem specifically with you. And unless my finely honed instincts are deceiving me, I think maybe you have a problem with him , too. No?"

"No, I don't—" Abigail began sharply, then stopped.

"You never were a very good liar," Shobhana observed with a slight smile. "Has to do with that strict religious upbringing, I bet. Now, tell Momma Shobhana all about it."

"It's just . . . well—" Abigail found herself suddenly very busy squeezing water out of her hair, then sighed. "He's one of those idiots who think that all Graysons are cave-dwelling barbarian religious fanatics," she said finally. "And he thinks our customs and notions of propriety are ridiculous."

"Oho," Shobhana said softly, regarding Abigail with knowing eyes through the shower's steam. "Came on to you, did he?"

"Well, yes," Abigail admitted. She knew she was blushing, but she couldn't stop. It wasn't the way Shobhana was looking at her, even given the fact that neither of them had a stitch on at the moment. Women outnumbered men by three to one on Grayson, and for a thousand years, the only really acceptable female career on Abigail's home world had been that of wife and mother. Given the imbalance in births, competition for the available supply of men was often . . . intense. Moreover, Grayson's practice of polygamy meant that any Grayson woman could expect to find herself one of at least two wives, with all of the need for frankness and compromises that implied. All of which meant a Grayson girl grew up accustomed to a degree of explicit "girl talk" which was far more earthy and pragmatic than almost any Manticoran would have believed, given the SKM's view of the Grayson stereotype, just as they grew up accustomed to sharing living quarters and bathing facilities. But that was really part of the problem, wasn't it? She'd grown up accustomed to that sort of openness with other young women, not in a society which had prepared her for overt, direct expressions of masculine interest.

"I'm not surprised," Shobhana said after a moment, head cocked as she considered her friend. "Lord knows if I had your figure, I'd spend all of my time beating men off with a stick! Or, more probably, not beating them off," she admitted cheerfully. "And from what I've seen of friend Grigovakis, the fact that you're from Grayson probably added spice to it, didn't it?"

"I thought so, anyway," Abigail agreed with a grimace. "Couldn't wait to get the 'neobarb ice maiden' into bed where he could thaw her out. And probably brag to all of his friends about it, too! Either that, or he's one of the idiots who believes all Grayson women must be sex-starved, crazed nymphos, our frantic lust stayed only by our religious programming, just because our men are so outnumbered."

"You're probably right, given the crowd he hangs out with. Hell, for that matter, I wouldn't be surprised if he was dumb enough to believe both stereotypes at once!" Shobhana made a face. Then she waved a hand over the shower control and reached for a towel as the water stopped.

"Tell me," she went on, "did he take no for an answer?"

"Not very well," Abigail sighed. She closed her eyes and raised her face for one last rinse, then turned off her own shower and grabbed a towel. "Actually," she admitted through its folds as she dried her face, "I probably didn't say no as . . . gracefully as I could have. I'd only been on the Island for about two weeks at the time, and I was still in some pretty severe culture shock." She lowered the towel and grinned wryly at her friend. "The best of you Manties would curl the hair of any properly raised Grayson maiden, you know! As for someone like Grigovakis—!"

She rolled her eyes, and Shobhana chuckled. But the blonde's green eyes were serious.

"He didn't try to push it, did he?"

"On Saganami Island? With a Grayson? A Grayson everyone insisted on assuming was Lady Harrington's protégée?" Abigail laughed. "Nobody would be stupid enough to follow that closely in Pavel Young's footsteps, Shobhana!"

"No, I guess not, at that," Shobhana conceded. "But I'll bet he's never missed an opportunity to make your life miserable, has he?"

"Not if he could help it," Abigail admitted. "Fortunately, until we wound up assigned here, our paths didn't cross that often. Personally, I'd have preferred for it to stay that way indefinitely."

"Don't blame you," Shobhana said, picking up a fresh towel and starting to help Abigail dry her hair. "But at least you can look forward to the fact that the two of you will be in different navies after graduation!"

"Believe me, I thank the Intercessor for that regularly," Abigail assured her fervently.

An hour and a half later, Abigail Hearns, who was far more anxious than she strove to appear, found herself, along with Mr. Midshipman Aitschuler, seated at the foot of the large table in the captain's dining cabin of HMS Gauntlet . The only really good news, she reflected, was that Karl's class standing was eleven places behind hers. That made him the junior officer present, which meant that at least she wouldn't have to offer the loyalty toast. Although, at the moment, that seemed like a remarkably grudging favor on the Tester's part.