Didn’t she . . . ? Esmay contemplated for a moment the probable result of pulling out Brun’s tousled gold curls by the roots.
“Of course, such an upright professional as yourself would never stoop to dally with mere ensigns,” Brun went on, in a tone that could have removed several layers of paint from a bulkhead. “He, like the rest of us, is far beneath your notice—unless someone gets in your way.” This time she picked up a water bottle and opened and shut the spout.
“That is not fair,” Esmay said. “I didn’t have anything to do with your being taken out of the field exercise—”
“I suppose you want me to believe you support me?”
“No, but that’s not the same thing. It wasn’t my decision to make.”
“But if it had been—” Brun gave her a challenging glare.
“It wasn’t. What might have been doesn’t matter.”
“So true. You might have been a friend; you might have been Barin’s lover; instead—”
“What do you mean ‘might have been’ someone’s lover?” Even as angry as she was, she could not say Barin’s name in that context. Not to this woman.
“You don’t expect him to hang around worshipping your footsteps forever, do you? Just in case you might come down from your pinnacle and notice him? Even a bad case of hero worship yields at last to time.”
This was her worst fear, right here and now. Had it been only hero worship? Was it . . . over?
“And you, of course, were right there to help him over this unwarranted fixation . . . ?”
“I did my part,” Brun said, flipping out the gold curls with a gesture that left no doubt what she meant. Esmay had an instant vision of them strewn about the room, little gold tufts of hair like fleece on the shed floor after shearing. “He’s intelligent, witty, fun, not to mention incredibly handsome—I’d have thought you’d notice—”
A light of unnatural clarity seemed to illuminate the room; Esmay felt weightless with pure rage. This . . . this to be pursuing Barin. This to displace her, to ruin her relationship with Barin. A young woman who boasted openly of her sexual conquests, who refused to abide by any rules, who claimed to be unafraid of rape because “it’s just mechanics; and aside from that, no one can make me pregnant.” She was like Casea Ferradi, without Ferradi’s excuse of a colonial background.
Hardly conscious of what she was doing, she reached out and lifted Brun off the bunk, and set her against the wall, as easily as she could have picked up a small child.
“You . . .” She could not say the words she was really thinking; she struggled to find something hurtful enough. “You playgirl,” she said finally. “You come bouncing in here, all full of your genetically engineered brains and beauty, showing it all off, playing with us—playing with the people who are risking their lives to keep you and your wonderful family alive and safe.”
Brun opened her mouth, but Esmay gave her no chance; the words she had longed to say came pouring out.
“You wanted to be friends, you said—what did you ever do but get in my way, take up my time, and go lusting after anyone who caught your fancy? It never occurred to you that some of us have a job to do here—that people’s lives, not just ours, will depend on how we do it. No. You want to go play in Q-town, someone should go with you . . . it doesn’t matter to you if that means learning less. After all, what does it matter if you pass a course or flunk it? It’s not your life on the line. You don’t care whether you ruin Barin’s career or not—” Not the way she herself cared; not the way she agonized over it. “You think your money and your family make it right for you to have anyone you want.”
Brun was white to the lips. Esmay didn’t care. Her anxiety about the next day, her exhaustion from weeks of extra work—all had vanished, in righteous rage. “You have the morality of a mare in heat; you have no more spiritual depth than a water drop on a window. And someday you will need that, and I promise you—I promise you, Miss Rich and Famous—you will wish you had it, and you will know I’m right. Now get out, and stay out. I have work to do.”
With that, Esmay yanked the door open; she was ready to shove Brun out, but Brun stalked past her, under the eyes of her waiting security, who carefully looked at neither of them. The doors were not made to slam, or Esmay would have slammed hers. As it was, she restacked her gear with shaking hands, packed it, set it aside, then lay unsleeping on her bunk to wait for the alarm.
Chapter Four
Brun stalked along the streets of Q-town trying to push her anger back down her throat. That sanctimonious little prig . . . that prissy backcountry chit . . . her family probably slopped hogs in their bare feet. Just because she herself had grown up rich, just because she could talk about sex without squinching her face up—!
In one corner of her mind, she knew this was unfair. Esmay was not an ignorant girl, but an accomplished older woman. Not much older, but an Academy graduate, a Fleet officer, a combat veteran—Brun would have been glad to have Esmay’s experience. She wanted Esmay’s respect.
But not enough to turn into a frumpy, tight-buttoned, sexless, joyless . . .
Esmay wasn’t joyless, though.
Brun didn’t want to be fair. She wanted to be angry, righteously angry. Esmay had had no right to ream her out like that, no right to say she had no moral sense. Of course she had moral sense. She had rescued Lady Cecelia, for one thing. Even Esmay granted that. Aside from the requisite helling around that all the people in her set went through in adolescence, no one had ever accused her of being immoral.
She hunted through her past, finding one instance after another in which she had acted in ways she was sure Esmay would approve . . . not that it was any of her business. She had protected that little Ponsibar girl at school, the one who had arrived so scared and so easy to bully. She had told the truth about the incident in the biology lab, even though it had cost her a month’s detention and the friendship of Ottala Morreline. She had been polite to Great-Aunt Trema even when that formidable old lady had regaled guests at the Hunt Ball with tales of “little Bubbles” cavorting naked in the fountain as a toddler. She’d had to fight off entirely too many of her schoolmates’ brothers after that one, but she hadn’t turned against Aunt Trema. She and Raffa on the island . . . they had saved each others’ lives.
She could not, however, find something to plaster over all the accusations. Well . . . so what? Her standards were different; that didn’t mean she had none. Just as her inner voices began to talk about that, she decided she was thirsty, and turned into one of the bars that lined the street.
Diamond Sims, the sign read. Brun assumed it referred to fake diamonds, with an implication of world-weariness. Inside, the tables and booths were full of men and women who might as well all have been in uniform as in the mostly-drab shipsuits now the favorite casual wear for the military. The way they sat, their gestures . . . all revealed their profession. A few—less than a third—were in uniform. She didn’t see any of the students from the courses here—not that she’d know any but those in her own section, anyway. But she hadn’t wanted to see anyone she knew, anyone who would wonder where her bodyguards were. She wanted new faces, and a new start, and new proof that she was who she thought she was.
With that in mind, she edged past crowded tables to the one double seat empty toward the back. She sat down, and touched the order pad on the table—Stenner ale, one of her favorites—and put her credit cube in the debit slot. She glanced around. On the wall to her right were framed pictures of ships and people, and a display of little metal bits arranged in rows. A faded red banner hung up in the far corner; she could not make out the lettering from where she sat.