Bonar Tighe reported its LACs recovered, and requested and received permission to dock at the orbital station. This, like the request to practice LAC drops, was standard procedure, and the Traffic Control gave Bonar Tighe a docking priority assignment based on her ETA. The stationmaster approved station liberty at the captain’s discretion, and forwarded the station newsletter. Ships of Bonar Tighe’s mass could not microjump so close to a planet, so the cruiser had to crawl patiently in a spiral to catch up with the station, a process which took several hours.
Chapter Seventeen
Margiu Pardalt boarded the odd-looking aircraft before dawn. If not for the briefings, she’d have had no idea that such craft existed. On Xavier, she had seen only surface-to-station shuttles and low-flying aircars or flitters. Her years at the Academy had introduced her to high-altitude passenger aircraft like the one she’d been in from Drylands to the coast. But this uneasy compromise between aircraft and boat looked like something a mad scientist would come up with: four fat engines on the high-set wings, with whirligig propellers set into adjustable ducts; a peculiar blob hanging from the end of each wing, suspended on a thin pole. The bottom of the fuselage had the conchoidal shape, scooped and ridged, that she associated with shattered glass. She found it hard to believe it would actually fly.
This time the craft carried only three passengers besides its crew. One was a gray-haired major, with a pinched mouth and a narrow line of decorations which she recognized as efficiency awards. Admin, most likely. He went to the head of the little line waiting on the dock as by rights, boarded first, and installed himself in a seat midway down the port side, where he immediately flicked on his seat lamp and opened a handcomp.
The other passenger had waved Margiu ahead, with a flamboyant gesture that matched his flamboyant appearance. In the harsh lights of the harborage, his leather jacket blazed a garish yellow, and the metallic decorations glittered. Margiu climbed over the entrance coaming, and followed the major, almost stumbling once when the gentle motion of the seaplane on the water surprised her.
She picked out a window seat, on the starboard side. As she buckled in, she looked up to see the third passenger watching. One of those? He had pulled off his cap, revealing fine gray hair fluffed around a bald pate, and in this light she could see that his yellow jacket might be some theatrical troupe’s idea of a uniform. Its shoulders were decorated with loops of green braid, and a line of stars on the upstanding collar, now open to reveal a green shirt; his dark pants were actually green.
“May I?” the man said, in a surprisingly sweet voice. “I’m really quite harmless.”
She had hoped for a quiet ride, perhaps even a nap. But courtesy demanded that she say yes, so she nodded.
A crew chief checked to be sure they were all wearing the PPU, and a life vest, and that all the survival gear aboard was actually in place. Predictably, the man in yellow wasn’t wearing his PPU. Unpredictably, he was quite cheerful about having to change, and quicker than she would have expected. Margiu had flown between the stars, but never over large bodies of water; she began to realize that this was serious.
Then the pilot swung the stumpy plane around, revved the engines, and Margiu felt acceleration shoving her back. The plane slammed its way across the low ripples of the harbor, spray blurring the lights outside. A few moments later they were airborne.
The headlands of Dark Harbor, edged with lights, fell away behind and below them, and then it was nothing but darkness below. Down there somewhere was water, invisible to the eye but cold and wet. Margiu shivered. To her relief, her seat companion turned a little away and started snoring almost immediately. By dawn, they were flying under high clouds, and the water below looked like a vast sheet of wrinkled silk patched with shades of blue and green and silver that she could not identify.
The man beside her woke up, and gave her a sweet smile. “I hope my snoring didn’t keep you awake,” he said.
“No, sir.”
“I’m no sir, milady. I’m Professor Gustaf Aidersson, if you want my dull, boring, everyday name, which goes with my dull, boring, everyday profession, about which I cannot talk, or we will both be in serious trouble. Or you could call me Don Alfonso Dundee, most noble knight of the Order of Old Terra, and we could have a pleasant conversation about anything you wish.”
“I’m sorry?” She had no idea what he was talking about.
“No, I’m sorry.” He hit himself dramatically on the forehead. “Never accost young ladies before breakfast with strange tales out of distant mythology. You’ve heard of SPAL?”
“No, sir.”
“Ah. Well, it’s the biggest collection of galoots and misfits in the universe, and the letters stand for the Society for the Preservation of Antique Lore. Antique lunacy is more like it—I have no faith whatever in the actuality of our tomfoolery, but it is fun. We got the idea back when the rich folks in the Families first took up antique studies and arts—long before your time, milady—and we put our own interpretation on it. Let them flit about with fencing masters from the Company of Sabers, create titles for themselves, and imagine that they’re re-creating scenes from Old Earth history. They’re so serious about it, it takes all the fun out.”
Margiu listened to the rolling flow of words and wondered if the man were entirely sane. His bright sidelong look seemed to catch her thought in midair, as if it were a ball being tossed.
“You wonder if I’m crazy. Of course you do. I’m not sure myself, and my wife tells me regularly that my pot is a little cracked. But the fact of the matter is, craziness is not necessarily a bar to genius, and my kind of craziness consists only in boring total strangers to distraction in airplanes. Or spacecraft. Or anywhere else I can trap them.” He grinned at her with such obvious good humor that Margiu felt herelf relaxing.
“What is that yellow jacket?” she found herself asking.
“Good question,” he said promptly, in a tone that she could well believe went with a professor of something. “There was a colony world—second-order colony out of Old Earth by way of Congreve—which had successive waves of settlers. They didn’t get along, so of course they started fighting. Back then fabricators were pretty basic machines—couldn’t turn out any useful sort of protective garments. So the colonists started using leather from their herds of cattle. The color told what side they were on. Mine is a semiaccurate reproduction of a Missen-Asaya officer’s uniform of the Third Missen-Asaya/Tangrat War. Except the insignia. I should have a little wooden bird, but I couldn’t find it before I left. My wife swears I must have left it at the last awards banquet . . . so I just took the stars off a model spaceship. Not a very good model, either; Rose-class ships never had double batteries of beam weapons. I told Zachery that when he showed me the model, but he got huffy about it and threw it in the corner, the one where Kata drops her dirty boots. That’s why I knew where to find stars when I wanted them. And I thought stars might be more impressive when I had to travel with Fleet officers, but of course they see that yellow canary-jacket and try not to laugh.”
It was like drowning in treacle.
“But I’m talking too much about myself. Just whap me on the head when I do that; that’s what my wife does. Or ignore me and look out the window if you want. I can see you’re an ensign, with red hair exactly the color of my niece’s, but—who are you?”
“Margiu Pardalt,” Margiu said. “From Xavier.”
“Xavier!” His face lit up, and her heart sank. “You know, the tactical analysis of the most recent engagement is fascinating. I was most impressed with the fire control of the Benignity ships—”