“You understand,” she replied, having lost in an instant nearly all her wariness of me. “All of that, and so few really Ghaonish songs left.”
“What would you give me,” I asked, “for a Ghaonish song you’ve never heard?”
Her eyes widened, disbelief apparent. “Sir,” she said, indignant. Offended. “You’re making fun of me.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I assure you not, Administrator. I had several from a ship that was there during the annexation.” I didn’t mention that I had been the ship in question.
“You met Justice of Toren!” she exclaimed. “What a loss that was! Did you serve on it? I’ve so often wished I could meet someone who did. One of our horticulturists here had a sister who served on Justice of Toren, but that was long before she came here. She was just a child when…” She shook her head regretfully. “Such a shame.”
Time to turn that topic aside. I turned to address Governor Giarod. “May one, Governor,” I asked, “properly inquire about this temple ritual that has kept you so occupied all day?” My accent as elegant as any high-born officer, my tone overtly courteous but underneath just the hint of an edge.
“One may,” Governor Giarod replied, “but I’m not sure how many answers anyone can properly provide.” Like Station Administrator Celar, she picked up a piece of dredgefruit and then apparently set it in her lap.
“Ah,” I ventured. “Temple mysteries.” I’d seen several, over my two-thousand-year lifetime. None of them had been allowed to continue, unless they admitted Anaander Mianaai to their secrets. The survivors were all quite nonexclusive as a result. Or at least theoretically so—they could be fantastically expensive to join.
Governor Giarod slipped another piece of fruit under the table. To some child harder to exhaust and possibly more enterprising than her siblings and cousins, I guessed. “The mysteries are quite ancient,” the governor said. “And very important to the Athoeki.”
“Important to the Athoeki, or just the Xhai? And it is, somehow, connected to this story about the Athoeki who had penises pretending to cut them off?”
“A misunderstanding, Fleet Captain,” said Governor Giarod. “The Genitalia Festival is much older than the annexation. The Athoeki, particularly the Xhai, are a very spiritual people. So much is metaphor, an inadequately material way to speak of immaterial things. If you have any interest in the spiritual, Fleet Captain, I do encourage you to become an initiate.”
“I greatly fear,” Citizen Fosyf said before I could answer, “that the fleet captain’s interests are musical rather than spiritual. She’s only interested if there’s singing.” Quite rudely presumptuous. But true enough.
Under the table a tiny, bare hand clutched my trouser leg—whoever was there had lost patience with the governor’s absorption in the conversation and had decided to try her luck with me. She wasn’t much more than a year old, and was, as far as I could see, completely naked. I offered her a piece of dredgefruit—clearly a favorite—and she took it with one sticky hand, put it in her mouth, and chewed with frowning absorption, leaning against my leg. “Citizen Fosyf tells me the workers on her estate sing a great deal,” I remarked.
“Oh, yes!” agreed Station Administrator Celar. “In the past they were mostly Samirend transportees, but these days they’re all Valskaayans.”
That struck me as odd. “All your field workers are Valskaayan?” I slipped another piece of dredgefruit under the table. Kalr Five would have reason to complain about the sticky handprints on my trousers. But Radchaai generally indulged small children greatly, and there would be no real resentment.
“Samir was annexed some time ago, Fleet Captain,” said Fosyf. “All the Samirend are more or less entirely civilized now.”
“More or less,” muttered Captain Hetnys, beside me.
“I’m quite familiar with Valskaayan music,” I confessed, ignoring her. “Are these Delsig-speakers?”
Fosyf frowned. “Well, of course, Fleet Captain. They don’t speak much Radchaai, that’s for certain.”
Valskaay had an entire temperate, habitable planet, not to mention dozens of stations and moons. Delsig had been the language a Valskaayan would have needed to speak if she wanted to do much business beyond her own home, but it was by no means certain that any Valskaayan would speak it. “Have they retained their choral tradition?”
“Some, Fleet Captain,” Celar replied. “They also improvise a bass or a descant to songs they’ve learned since they arrived. Drones, parallels, you know the sort of thing, very primitive. But not terribly interesting.”
“Because it’s not authentic?” I guessed.
“Just so,” agreed Station Administrator Celar.
“I have, personally, very little concern for authenticity.”
“Wide-ranging taste, as you said,” Station Administrator Celar said, with a smile.
I raised my utensil in acknowledgment. “Has anyone imported any of the written music?” In certain places on Valskaay—particularly the areas where Delsig was most often a first language—choral societies had been an important social institution, and every well-educated person learned to read the notation. “So they aren’t confined to primitive and uninteresting drones?” I put the smallest trace of sarcasm into my voice.
“Grace of Amaat, Fleet Captain!” interjected Citizen Fosyf. “These people can barely speak three words of Radchaai. I can hardly imagine my field workers sitting down to learn to read music.”
“Might keep them busy,” said Raughd, who had been sitting silent so far, smiling insincerely. “Keep them from stirring up trouble.”
“Well, as to that,” said Fosyf, “I’d say it’s the educated Samirend who give us the most problems. The field supervisors are nearly all Samirend, Fleet Captain. Generally an intelligent sort. And mostly dependable, but there’s always one or two, and let those one or two get together and convince more, and next thing you know they’ve got the field workers whipped up. Happened about fifteen, twenty years ago. The field workers in five different plantations sat down and refused to pick the tea. Just sat right down! And of course we stopped feeding them, on the grounds they’d refused their assignments. But there’s no point on a planet. Anyone who doesn’t feel like working can live off the land.”
It struck me as likely that living off the land wasn’t so easy as all that. “You brought workers in from elsewhere?”
“It was the middle of the growing season, Fleet Captain,” said Citizen Fosyf. “And all my neighbors had the same difficulties. But eventually we rounded up the Samirend ringleaders, made some examples of them, and the workers themselves, well, they came back soon after.”
So many questions I could ask. “And the workers’ grievances?”
“Grievances!” Fosyf was indignant. “They had none. No real ones. They live a pleasant enough life, I can tell you. Sometimes I wish I’d been assigned to pick tea.”
“Are you staying, Fleet Captain?” asked Governor Giarod. “Or on your way back to your ship?”
“I’m staying in the Undergarden,” I said. Immediate, complete silence descended, not even the chink of utensils on porcelain. Even the servants, arranging platters on the pale, gilded sideboards, froze. The infant under the table chewed the latest piece of dredgefruit, oblivious.
Then Raughd laughed. “Well, why not? None of those dirty animals will mess with you, will they?” Good as her façade had been so far, her contempt reached her voice. I’d met her sort before, over and over again. A few of those had even turned out to be decent officers, once they’d learned what they needed to learn. Some, on the other hand, had not.