Martinez was not surprised that Mangahas’s snacks were very popular among his staff. He turned to Hadad. “I don’t see how anyone could get in,” he said. “Even if one of the doors to the corridor was open, the pantry would always be locked.”

  “Unless I was moving plates and cups in and out,” Mpanza said. “And if that were the case, I’d be in the room myself.”

  Martinez pondered the impossibilities of the theft, and then an idea flashed through his mind, lighting every brain cell like a strobe.

  “Mpanza,” he said, “you said yesterday that you’d learned your lesson about taking your lady friends through my suite.”

  Mpanza seemed uneasy. “Yes, my lord.”

  “‘On that one occasion,’ you said. The occasion when I found you and Raju together.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Martinez looked at him closely. “Are you sure there was just the one occasion?”

  Mpanza’s eyes turned uneasily toward a corner of the office. “Well, my lord . . . ,” he began.

  “You brought her here more than once?”

  Mpanza made a visible effort to maintain his dignity. “Yes, my lord. I showed her around—she was interested because she’d never seen a ranking officer’s suite. And we used my sleeping cabin now and again.”

  “Better than the dining table.”

  “Over time, certainly.”

  Hadad seemed intrigued by mention of the dining table. Martinez rubbed his chin. “Did you show her the pantry?”

  “Well, yes. I wanted to show her all the specialized plates and glassware and so on. That big silver boat used for chilling wine, with all those allegorical figures—you have to admit that’s impressive, my lord.”

  Martinez frowned for a moment into the middle distance, then gave Mpanza a searching look. “Do you think,” he said, “that Raju might have stolen the silver charger in order to get Juskiene arrested and somehow win you back?”

  Hadad was bewildered—he hadn’t heard about Raju till now, and Martinez could see a hundred questions building up behind his eyes. Mpanza’s answer was immediate.

  “I think she’s crazy enough, my lord,” he said. “But I don’t see how she could have done it. She doesn’t have access to your suite, or the pantry.”

  Martinez turned back to Hadad. “How did you know to search Juskiene’s quarters?” he asked.

  “Anonymous denunciation, my lord,” Hadad said.

  “How often do you get anonymous denunciations on Los Angeles?”

  Hadad hesitated. “It’s a happy ship, my lord. Now, I mean. There were a lot of denunciations at the very start, when people didn’t know their jobs and had complaints about their officers or their fellow recruits, and they seemed to expect the constabulary to solve their problems. But that all died away when they finally realized they were complaining to the wrong people.”

  “How many anonymous accusations of criminal activity?” Martinez said.

  Hadad frowned. “Just the one, my lord.”

  “Well then,” Martinez said. “I think we should give serious consideration to the notion that Filomena Juskiene was framed.”

  Hadad let out a long sigh and seemed to diminish, as if he’d lost some of his mass. Martinez turned to Mpanza.

  “Put the plates back in the kitchen, then bring Constable Hadad whatever he wants to drink.” He turned to Hadad. “Have a seat, Constable. This may take a while.”

  “Could Raju—or anyone—have watched you unlock the doors with a code?”

  Mpanza shook his head. “I use a thumbprint, never the keypad.”

  Cabin door locks on Los Angeles were standardized, a fingerprint reader next to a standard eleven-key numerical keypad. Those authorized to pass the doors, like Mpanza and Martinez himself, would have their thumbprint in the system, and would be able to use their print to gain access. Others not normally authorized to be in the area would be able to get a code from an officer and would punch the code into the keypad to open the door.

  The lock to the pantry was a different model, with the keypad and no thumbprint reader.

  Mpanza and Hadad sat with Martinez at the breakfast table, Hadad with his Citrine Fling and Martinez with his third cup of coffee.

  “Constable,” Martinez said, “can you look into the records and see if Raju—or anyone else—might have thumbprint access authorized for my suite.”

  “I never gave her access, my lord!” Mpanza was indignant. “In fact, I couldn’t! I’m not authorized!”

  “I never said you did,” said Martinez. “But Raju could have wrangled it from someone else.”

  Hadad made a note to himself on his sleeve display. “I’ll look into it, my lord.”

  “And while you’re looking, see if anyone was authorized a keypad entry who wasn’t supposed to be here.”

  It might be too early to focus entirely on Raju, Martinez thought. There might be instead an unknown actor—though, he thought, it would have to be an actor with a grudge against Juskiene, and how many could there be?

  A warning tone sounded through the ship. “Ten minutes to high acceleration,” Martinez said. He rose from his chair. “Constable, I’ll talk to you during the next meal break. In the meantime, we’d better get to our couches.”

  Martinez returned to his sleeping cabin, took off his shoes and tunic, and then made sure his bladder was empty. During his conversation with Mpanza and Hadad he’d had too much coffee, and he had the feeling that sometime in the next few hours he’d be dragging himself out of bed under two and a half gravities, then creeping to the toilet. It was perfectly possible to walk under 2.5 gee—it was like carrying an overweight person on your back—but he had to take care not to injure himself.

  He lay on his bed and strapped himself in, stared at the ceiling, and then felt a sudden, desperate longing to be off this ship and standing on some green world—Zanshaa, Laredo, Harzapid, it didn’t matter—to feel the touch of wind on his cheek, to smell vegetation and freshly turned soil and the scent of rain, to be able to walk free beneath a sky of blue or viridian green or star-spangled night, breathing air that had not been filtered and processed.

  He wanted to hear the laughter of children. To stand on a shoreline and watch the waves roll in from the far horizon. To see a plant that grew from the ground and not a pot. To kick off his shoes and feel grass beneath his bare feet.

  Martinez had spent over two years in artificial environments, ships or ring stations, and the dreadful monotony of living in a habitat so resolutely fabricated was dragging him down as assuredly as a 2.5 gee acceleration.

  Another warning sounded, and as the engines ramped up he felt the surge, and then the smothering weight.

  With every second of acceleration, he was getting closer to Zanshaa.

  Once he got down to the surface of the planet, it would take another war to drag him off it.

  Sula woke with a gasp and a sudden spasm. Derivoo blasted from wall speakers. Pain blazed behind her eyeballs, and her mouth tasted foul. She blinked gummy eyes and saw that she was lying atop her bed in her jumpsuit, with the bedroom lights still shining.

  She gave a groan and rolled onto her side, and only then realized she had rolled into a pool of vomit. She jerked away, but not before the smell of the vomit hit her, and for a moment it was all she could do to avoid throwing up all over again.

  With exaggerated care Sula rose to hands and knees and climbed off the bed. One foot kicked a bottle, which then knocked into another bottle with a clank. She peered down at the floor and saw the two empty gin bottles lying next to a glass fogged with dregs and fingerprints.

  A slight miscalculation, she thought.

  She looked up at the wall chronometer and saw that her breakfast would be brought into the dining room in fifteen minutes or so, and thought she’d better clean up before that happened.

  Another rocket of pain exploded in her head as she tried to walk to the bathroom, and she stumbled and grabbed the door frame with one hand to keep from falling. There was a trail of vomit, she saw, between the bathroom and her bed. At least she hadn’t stepped in it.

  Sula tried to remember the previous evening, but it eluded her. She’d spent the evening by herself, she remembered, and she was thankful that Gunaydin wasn’t in the picture.

  Though if Gunaydin had been there, she thought, she probably wouldn’t be in this situation now.

  She stepped into the bathroom and stripped off her jumpsuit and underwear. As she raised a hand to trigger the shower she got a whiff of body odor, sour sweat touched with the juniper scent of gin.

  I smell like Caro Sula, she thought, and then her gorge rose, and she lunged for the toilet and threw up again.

  “Lord Squadcom,” said Martinez, “I’ve been asked by the Restoration government to find out what rewards you might accept for your service during the conflict.”

  Senior Squadron Commander Rivven was a Daimong who had defected with his entire command at the Second Battle of Shulduc, then fought with the Combined Fleet at Toley. Rivven was shorter than Martinez, which was unusual for a Daimong, and his gray immobile face was frozen in an expression of hauteur. Occasionally a whiff of his ever-dying flesh came to Martinez’s nostrils.

  “I should like to be promoted, of course,” Rivven said in his beautifully modulated Daimong voice. “But more than anything else, I should like a place in the Convocation and a seat on the Fleet Control Board.”

  “Everyone I’ve spoken to wants to be on the Fleet Control Board,” Martinez said, “and some are bound to be disappointed. I think your other requests are more than reasonable, though I hope you understand that I’m not the one making the decisions.”

  “I understand, Lord Captain.” Rivven’s round black-on-black eyes stared at Martinez with relentless intensity. “Though I think it would be awkward for the government if rewards went only to Terrans.”

  “I agree, Lord Squadcom,” said Martinez.

  Martinez understood that the way to please Rivven was to agree with him on all points, and it helped that he did agree that Terrans shouldn’t hog all the rewards. He also knew that he wouldn’t enjoy sharing the Control Board with the prickly Rivven, but supposed that the cause of interspecies solidarity would exact a price.

  “This stuff is rubbish, isn’t it?” Rivven said. There was a hint of a snarl in his voice.

  “Some of it eludes me,” Martinez said.

  They were at another prize-giving aboard the battleship Perfection of the Praxis, this for the Combined Fleet Festival of Visual Arts. Paintings, photographs, and sculptures were on display in the cavernous ballroom, the room smelled of paint and polish, and Wei Jian and other judges wandered from one to the next, taking notes. Martinez noted that Jeremy Foote hovered purposefully at Jian’s elbow.

  “What is this thing supposed to be?” Rivven asked. “It looks like junk taken from the recycler.”

  The object in question was a bell-shaped structure, tall as Martinez, that had either been corroded in some way or treated so as to seem corroded. Video screens were visible through rents in the sculpture’s surface, on which warship crew were seen capering, dancing, or making faces at the camera. The object was plastered with photographs, mostly of politicians or senior Fleet officers, all defaced with the same stuff that had corroded the main structure. Martinez was relieved not to find himself there. Also pasted onto the exterior were labels from products available on the ship, snack foods, drinks, and staples like flour, dried noodles, and canned vegetables.

  “Perhaps it’s supposed to be satire,” Martinez offered.

  “Satire is inevitably the product of a rebellious and disordered mind,” Rivven said. “Such minds should be suppressed, not encouraged.”

  Martinez shrugged. “Whatever it is, I think it’s fun.”

  Rivven gave him a long black-eyed stare, and Martinez received the distinct impression that Rivven viewed fun as the inevitable product of a disordered mind.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Lord Squadcom,” Martinez said. “I see another officer I need to speak to.”

  “Of course, Lord Captain.”

  The other officer was Chandra Prasad, who was walking with Vonderheydte between two rows of pictures. Both carried cocktails and seemed as interested in each other as in the art on display. Chandra smiled at Martinez’s arrival.

  “Lo,” she said, “the glorious steersman approaches.”

  Martinez was puzzled, but answered as seemed appropriate. “I’m pleased my achievements have been recognized.”

  “And immortalized,” Chandra said. “Have you seen your statue?”

  “My statue?”

  “Come,” she said with some glee. “I’ll show you.” She led Martinez through the rows of art until Martinez came face-to-face with himself.

  He was caught in motion, right leg advanced, a stern expression on his face. One hand held the Golden Orb, the other a hand comm. He was in full dress, with the double row of silver tunic buttons and his medals on his chest. The statue was painted in brighter-than-lifelike colors, and next to the more subdued works in the vicinity seemed practically incandescent.

  Martinez was unable to find words.

  “It’s called The Glorious Steersman,” Vonderheydte said.

  “It’s a little startling,” Martinez said. He searched the statue for any hint of irony, for the sense that he was being mocked, but so far as he could tell the work seemed a straightforward piece of homage.

  Not that he was any kind of expert, of course.

  Maybe he could buy it, he thought. Not to keep—it was too garish for anyplace he actually lived—but to donate to somewhere or other. To the city of Garethport on Chee, perhaps, the town his father had named after him. It could sit in the lobby of the city hall, shining in all its fluorescent glory.

  “It must be wonderful to be so adored,” said Chandra.

  “Adoration is something we glorious steersmen must learn to live with.” Martinez raised an eyebrow. “Did Wei Jian get a statue?”

  “Not that we’ve found,” said Vonderheydte.

  “Of course,” said Chandra, “if there were a statue of her, she’d have to recuse herself as a judge.”

  “She’d just appoint a flunky to vote for her,” Martinez said. “And where did you get those cocktails?”

  Chandra pointed toward a corner of the vast room.

  “Thank you,” Martinez said. “If you see any more adoring impressions of me, let me know.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that,” Chandra said.

  The drinks, Martinez discovered, were not complimentary and did not include Laredo whisky. With his thumbprint, Martinez paid for a Kyowan and Spacey, and carried the drink into the exhibition, where he found another officer he needed to speak to.

  Lord Naaz Vijana had a pointed face, caramel skin, and a pencil-thin mustache that outlined his upper lip. His black eyes darted from one object to another, restless as a sparrow. He had won the thanks of the Convocation for his annihilation of the rebel Yormaks on Esley, a job made easier by employing automatic weapons and fuel-air bombs against a species whose most advanced weapon was a stone-tipped spear. He had fought well in the current war, and had become spokesman for a faction that openly argued for Terrans becoming the dominant species in the empire, replacing the Great Masters.

  Martinez didn’t like him—his monomaniacal obsession with Terrans ruling the empire had grown tedious—but he also knew that Vijana was a gambler fond of high play and had already lost the money and mortgaged the property the grateful government of Esley had awarded him. He would be wanting more cash to lose at the gambling tables, and Roland Martinez would be willing to provide it if Vijana fell in with Roland’s schemes.

  So Martinez approached Vijana to ask what rewards he might accept from the Restoration government, and was told Vijana would take a seat in the Convocation, membership on the Fleet Control Board, and a promotion.

  “Everyone wants the Control Board,” Martinez said, “but the rest is perfectly possible.”

  Vijana was prompt in his response. “In that case,” he said, “a seat on the Promotions Subcommittee.” Which would give him a say in every promotion in the Fleet, an ideal base for building patronage.

  “I’ll pass it on,” Martinez said. He wasn’t sure he wanted Vijana building patronage—he much preferred a malleable bankrupt to the leader of a faction.

  Though another consideration was that Vijana’s patronage wouldn’t go very far if he had no money to support his clients. But then, if he was a member of the Convocation, plenty of people would be offering him money and other sweeteners.

  Martinez spent another hour at the exhibition, drifting past the exhibits while meeting and chatting with his fellow officers. He left before he had to listen to Wei Jian’s awkward speeches congratulating the prize winners.

  Once in the shuttle back to Los Angeles, he checked his messages and found an audio report from Constable Hadad. It had been two days since the breakfast meeting with Hadad and Mpanza, and very little had been discovered in the time since, only that the warrant officer who shared a cabin with Juskiene reported that Juskiene was always leaving the door unlocked, and that she’d complained to Juskiene about it.

  “I’m unlikely to discover anything new, my lord,” Hadad said. “I’d like to suggest I pick up Raju with a couple constables and subject her to an interrogation. It’s possible she’d crack and confess.”

  Martinez considered this, then sent a return message. “Let’s meet tomorrow for breakfast and talk about it.”

  After returning to Los Angeles, he gave a supper for Captain Dalkeith and her officers, and afterward he read reports and answered correspondence until it was time for Mpanza to bring in his cocoa. Mpanza arrived, but he didn’t bring the cocoa, instead rushing into the study with an expression of fierce joy on his face.

  “I just remembered something!” he said. “A few months ago, the fingerprint reader on the dining room door malfunctioned, and I had to use the keypad to manually input the code.”