Conventions of War

FIFTEEN

Sula had some morning deliveries on the High City and thought she might as well collect some club gossip from PJ while she was on the acropolis. Having some idea of his indolent habits, she waited till the sun was high in Zanshaa’s viridian sky before she called him on a public terminal. Since she trusted his intentions but not his intelligence, she’d made certain that he had no way to contact her, nothing he could betray to the enemy-he would have to wait forher to initiate contact.

“Yes?” he mumbled as he answered. His eyes were blurry, his thinning hair awry-either she’d awakened him or he was just out of bed.

“Hi, PJ!” she called brightly. “How’s the lad this morning?”

Recognizing her voice, his eyes came into sudden bright focus as he stared at her image on the comm display. “Oh!” he said. “Oh! Things are, ah, excellent. Just excellent.”

If he’d saidfirst-rate instead ofexcellent, that would have meant the Naxids had nabbed him and she should ignore everything he said, particularly any attempt to set up a meeting.

“I say,” PJ said, “Lady-I mean, miss-there’s someone I need you to meet. Right away.”

“Half an hour from now?”

“Yes! Yes!” He made a strange, thoughtful face, pulling at his jaw. “If you’ll come by the palace, we’ll go to his…place of business.”

“Be cautious about, ah…”About my being the secret government.

“Of course.” He gave a wink. “No problem there. He doesn’t even know we’re coming.”

Oh dear, Sula thought as she broke the connection. PJ had contracted an enthusiasm.

She hoped he wasn’t planning on blowing anything up without her advice.

Team 491 delivered its last cargo of cigars and vacuum-packed coffee beans, collected some inconsequential information from club workers, then drove to the Ngeni Palace, where PJ had already opened the service drive gate. He waited before the massive root systems of the ancient banyan tree that overshadowed his cottage, standing with his usual languid ease in the shade while he smoked a cigarette.

“Miss Ardelion! Mr. Starling!” He greeted Spence and Macnamara with great energy, then turned to Sula. “Lady, ah, Miss Lucy.”

“What’s up?” Sula asked.

He brightened. “Wait till you see what Sidney’s got in his shop! You’ll jump for joy!”

He stubbed out his cigarette, led them back down the drive, coding shut the gate behind them, then on a roughly diagonal course across the High City. PJ was practically skipping in his excitement. The streets were half empty, and vehicles full of military constables were parked at some of the intersections. As their dark Naxid eyes swept over her, Sula looked away, exceptionally conscious of the pistol tucked into her waistband under her jacket. Then she thought she shouldn’t have looked away, she was acting suspiciously. But then she thought no, probablyno one looks at them. Everyone was suspicious equally.

She walked past the Naxids and they made no move to stop her.

The sound of theaejai seemed to echo from half the shops in the city. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze to cool the burning day, and they were all glossy with sweat by the time they arrived at their destination, a narrow shop in a pedestrian lane lined with other specialty shops, offering antiques or quality meats, tailored uniforms or Daimong delicacies, or…

SIDNEY’S SUPERIOR FIREARMS,said the sign. And across the door was a banner: CLOSED BY ORDER OF LORD UMMIR, MINISTER OF POLICE.

Sula felt an electric hum in her nerves. Brilliant, she thought.

She would try to remember to give PJ something very nice on his birthday.

“I found out at the club that Sidney was closing,” PJ said as he took them down an alley behind the building. “I stopped by yesterday to chat with Sidney and reconnoiter, and since then I’ve been waiting for you.”

PJ stopped by a door of greenish metal and banged on it. Sula stood for a moment in the hot silence and gazed at the fragrant corpse of a kanamid, probably killed by a cat, that lay between two gray resin waste bins with its six limbs pointing crookedly to the sky.

The metal door rolled open with a subdued electric hum. She shaded her sun-dazzled eyes to see the man standing in shadow on the far side of the door: he was white-haired and thin and had a goatee with a waxed, curled mustache, much like those worn by petty officers of the Fleet. Sula tasted a smoky scent that drifted from the open door.

“My lord,” the man said. His voice was grainy. “These are your friends?”

“Yes, Mr. Sidney.” PJ’s tone was a little smug. “This is Miss Lucy, Miss Ardelion, and Mr. Starling.”

The man’s eyes, pupils broad as the barrels of a shotgun, scanned Sula and her companions. “Come in then,” he said, and stood back.

The back of the shop was a marvelously compact workroom, computer-guided lathes, tools gleaming in their racks, magnifiers and manipulators on shelves, racks of exotic, cured woods and ivories, gun barrels gleaming on shelves. Sula’s heart warmed to the meticulous orderliness of it all.

The heavy scent of hashish, however, made her less certain, as did the curl of smoke from a gleaming metal pipe that Sidney picked up from one of the workbenches as he passed.

“Let me take you up front,” he said. They passed through a door into the shop’s narrow front. Weapons gleamed softly in the racks on the walls, in polished wood cabinets. Sidney stopped before a coal-black metal carrying case that held a long-barreled hunting weapon. He picked it up, held it in the air. The barrel was a damascened concoction of contrasting metals beautifully wrought together, silver and black chasing each other down its length like serpents. The stock was a deep red wood polished and inlaid with a floral pattern in ebony. There was a magnifying scope with a deep amber display that would prove easy on the eye at night, and iron sights for the classically inclined.

“I built this for Lord Richard Li,” he said, speaking around the pipe clenched between his teeth.

Sula gave a start at the name. Lord Richard had been her captain, killed bringing hisDauntless into action at Magaria. He had been engaged to Terza Chen, the woman-no, theconniving bitch — who had married Martinez.

She fought her way back through the curtain of memory that had draped across her mind. “The Naxids have shut you down?” she asked.

Not the brightest thing she could have said, admittedly, but at least she’d gotten the words out.

“I’m surprised it’s taken them this long,” Sidney said. “I suppose they’ve had other things to think about, being a new government. I wouldn’t know.” He replaced the rifle in its case and took a meditative sip on his pipe. “I could apply to reopen the business if I agreed to sell exclusively to Naxids, but I don’t want to think about those bastards using one of my guns to kill hostages, and all the weapons configured for other species are still unsellable no matter what I do.”

He locked the rifle case and turned around. His eyes were hard. “The thing is, I can’t sell these weapons. But there’s nothing in the new regulations about mygiving them away.”

Sula stared at Sidney in stunned surprise. A self-conscious look crossed his face, and he took his pipe from his mouth. “I’ve been remiss,” he said. “Would any of you care for a smoke?”

“Umm,” PJ began, on the verge of accepting, but Sula answered for them all.

“Not right now, thanks,” she said. She looked at Sidney. “You’re going togive us all these guns?”

He gave her a hard look. “If you’ll makegood use of them.”

Sula’s mouth went dry. “That’s …very generous.”

Sidney shrugged. “They’re worthless now. I can’t return them to the manufacturers-the makers have been forbidden to do business too. I’ll have to break my lease; I can’t afford to keep this place and I can’t afford to store the weapons. I could sit here waiting for the government to confiscate them, but why?” He shrugged again. “I’d rather see them put to use.” He began to say something, then shook his head and clamped the pipe between his teeth again. “Not that I want to know what you’re going to use them for, of course.” He turned again and laid a hand on the metal case beside him on the counter. “There are only a few pieces I can’t let go-the true custom work. If any of them were found after a…misadventure, the trail would lead straight to me.”

He stepped back a pace and swept a hand along the glass of the counter, indicating a row of gleaming pistols, each adapted to the Lai-own hand. “All sporting weapons, of course,” he said. “Of limited use for military purposes. But in the right hands…”

He sipped on his pipe, and exhaled a dense cloud of smoke. Sula made the mistake of inhaling, and burst out coughing.

“Sorry,” Sidney said politely.

After the coughing ceased, Sula made an effort to collect her thoughts from the mist that swirled through her head. She knew she was going to need fresh air very soon.

“Mr. Sidney,” she managed, “do I understand that youdesign guns?”

“That’s right,” Sidney said. He puffed another cloud of smoke, and Sula took a step back.

“Perhaps you can help me,” she said, and had to cough again. Tears dazzled her eyes as she recovered her voice. “I’ve been looking for a particular kind of firearm.”

Interest glittered in Sidney’s eyes. “Yes?”

“Not at all the kind of work you usually do. The opposite, in fact. Something that could be put together without great expense out of components that could be acquired very easily.”

Sidney gave a snort of amusement, then affected to consider the problem. “Computer-operated lathes can do some amazing things, given the right programming.”

“Let’s just say that my own lathe-programming skills are limited.”

Sidney smiled. “I seem to have a lot of free time at present. Let me put my mind to it, then, Miss…Lucy, was it?”

“Lucy. Yes.”

“Well,” Sidney said. “If you’ll give me a call in a few days, perhaps I’ll have something for you.”

“Fantastic!” Spence said as they took the first of several truckloads of firearms from Sidney’s place, on their way to store them in PJ’s basement. “I can’t believe he’s giving us all this stuff! And the ammunition too!”

“He’s quite brave, isn’t he?” PJ asked. His smile was sillier than usual after an hour of hauling crates through Sidney’s smoke cloud.

“He’s not brave,” Sula said. “He’s suicidal.”

The silly smile faded from PJ’s face. “My lady?” he said. “I mean, my Lucy. I mean-” His mouth opened fishlike for words but failed to find any.

“Do you think the manufacturers haven’t kept a record of the serial numbers of all these weapons?” Sula asked. “Not to mention the ballistics tests they’re required to do before the weapons even leave the factory? The first time we use one of these, they’ll track it to Sidney and tear his ribs out trying to find out who he gave them to. And that would lead toyou, PJ.”

PJ turned pale. “Oh,” he said.

“Maybe Sidney hopes he’ll take a few Naxids with him when he goes. Maybe he doesn’t care about himselfor about you. Or maybe he thinks he’ll be able to hide. But until we know what he means to do, we’re going to store these guns in your basement and never use them, not unless we know Sidney is safe.” She contemplated the road and the overcareful driving undertaken by Macnamara, who was no less affected by hashish fumes than anyone else.

“Besides,” Sula said, “I’ve got other plans for our Mr. Sidney, and they’d be spoiled by his committing suicide.”

By the end of the day, she’d talked Sidney into reopening his gun shop exclusive to a Naxid clientele. “Only the elite can afford your guns anyway,” she told him. The tax of one hundred zeniths on every firearm sale-half a year’s wages for the ordinary person-raised them entirely out of the range of the ordinary consumer. “When you deliver the guns to their new owners, you’ll get through their security.”

Sidney gave a grim smile. “You see me as an assassin?” he asked.

“No,” Sula said. “We haveother people for that.”She hoped. “Instead I need you to take careful notes on access, on what guards are stationed where. On any routines that might be useful.”

“I can do that,” Sidney said. “How do I contact you?”

Sula hesitated. She had declined to give PJ a way of communicating with her on the grounds that he might accidentally give himself-or her-away. For her to give Sidney such a means while PJ was present might offend PJ. And while she didn’t much care if PJ’s feelings were hurt, she didn’t want him made despondent or careless.

“We’ll have to let you know about that later,” she said. “In the meantime, we’ll have to contact you.”

For the present, she gave him the simple communications code she’d given PJ, to use the phrase “first-rate” if he were ever compromised by the Naxids. He nodded with what appeared to be sage comprehension, though considering how much hashish he’d smoked over the course of the day, Sula wondered that he could stand upright, let alone understand instructions.

She supposed she’d find out.

Now, returning to the communal apartment, she checked Gredel’s comm unit and discovered that Casimir had logged three calls asking her out for the night. She took a long, delicious bath in lilac-scented water while considering an answer, then turned off the camera that would transmit her image before she picked up the hand comm to call him back.

“Why not?” she said at the sullen face that answered. “Unless you’ve made other plans, of course.”

The sulky look vanished as Casimir peered into his sleeve display in a failed search for an image. “Is this Gredel?” he asked. “Why can’t I see you?”

“I’m in the tub.”

A sly look crossed his features. “I could use a wash myself. How about I join you?”

“I’ll meet you at the club,” she said. “Just tell me what time.”

He told her. She would have time to luxuriate in her bath for a while longer and then to nap for a couple hours before joining him.

“How should I dress?” she asked.

“What you’re wearing now is fine.”

“Ha ha. Will I be all right in the sort of thing I wore last night?”

“Yes. That’ll do.”

“See you then.”

She ended the call, then ordered the hot water tap to open. The bathroom audio pickup wasn’t reliable and she had to lean forward to open the tap manually. As the water raced from the tap and the steam rose, she sank into the tub and closed her eyes, allowing herself to slowly relax, to let the scent of lilacs rise in her senses.

Clean porcelain surfaces floated through her mind. Celadon, faience, rose Pompadour. Her fingers tingled to the remembered crackle of herju yao pot.

The day had started well. She thought it would only get better.

Sula adjusted her jacket as she gazed out the window of the communal apartment. The last of the vendors were closing their stalls or driving away in their little three-wheeled vehicles with their businesses packed on the back. The near-blackout imposed by the Naxids-not to mention the hostage-taking-had severely impacted them, and there weren’t enough people on the streets after dark to keep them at their work.

“I should be with you,” Macnamara argued.

“On adate?” Sula laughed.

He pushed out his lips like a pouting child. “You know what he is,” he said. “It’s not safe.”

She fluffed her black-dyed hair with her fingers. “He’s a necessary evil. I know how to deal with him.”

Macnamara made a scornful sound in his throat. Sula looked at Spence, who sat on the sofa and was doing her best to look as if she weren’t listening.

“He’s a criminal,” Macnamara said. “He may be a killer, for all you know.”

He probably hasn’t killed nearly as many people as I have.Sula remembered five Naxid ships turning to sheets of brilliant white eye-piercing light at Magaria, and decided not to remind Macnamara of this.

She turned from the window and faced him. “Say that you want to start a business,” she said, “and you don’t have the money. What do you do?”

His face filled with suspicion, as if he knew she was luring him into a trap. “Go to my clan head,” he said.

“And if your clan head won’t help you?”

“I go to someone in his patron clan. A Peer or somebody.”

Sula nodded. “What if the Peer’s nephew is engaged in the same business and doesn’t want the competition?”

Macnamara made the pouting face again. “I wouldn’t go to Little Casimir, that’s for sure.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t. But a lot of peopledo go to people like Casimir, and they get their business started, and Casimir offers protection against retaliation by the Peer’s nephew and his clan. And in return Casimir gets fifty or a hundred percent interest on his money and a client who will maybe do him other favors.”

Macnamara looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “And if they don’t pay the hundred percent interest they get killed.”

Sula considered this. “Probably not,” she judged, “not unless they try to cheat Casimir in some way. Most likely Casimir just takes over the business and every minim of assets and hands it over to another client to run, leaving the borrower on the streets and loaded with debt.” Macnamara was about to argue, and Sula held out her hands. “I’m not saying he’s a pillar of virtue. He’s in it for the money and the power. He hurts people, I’m sure. But in a system like ours-where the Peers have all the money and all the law on their side-people like the Riverside Clique are necessary.”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “You’re a Peer yourself, but you talk against the Peers.”

“Oh.” She shrugged. “There are Peers who make Casimir look like a blundering amateur.”

The late Lord and Lady Sula, for two.

She told the video wall to turn on its camera and examined herself in its screen. She put on the crumpled velvet hat and adjusted it to the proper angle.

There. That was raffish enough, if you ignored the searching, critical look in the eyes.

“I’m going with you,” Macnamara insisted. “The streets aren’t safe.”

Sula sighed and decided she might as well concede. “Very well,” she said. “You can follow me to the club a hundred paces behind, but once I go in the door, I don’t want to see you for the rest of the evening.”

“Yes,” he said, and then added, “my lady.”

She wondered if Macnamara’s protectiveness was actually possessiveness, if there was something emotional or sexual in the way he related to her.

She supposed there was. There was with most men in her experience, so why not Macnamara?

She hoped she wouldn’t have to get stern with him.

He followed her like an obedient, heavily armed ghost down the darkened streets to the Cat Street club. Yellow light spilled out of the doors, along with music and laughter and the smell of tobacco. She cast a look over her shoulder at Macnamara, one that warned him to come no farther, and then she hopped up the step onto the black and silver tiles and swept through the doors, nodding to the two bouncers.

Casimir waited in his office, along with two others. He wore an iron-gray silk shirt with a standing collar that wrapped his throat with layers of dark material and gave a proud jut to his chin, heavy boots that gleamed, and an ankle-length coat of some soft black material inset with little triangular mirrors. In one pale, long-fingered hand he carried an ebony walking stick that came up to his breastbone and was topped by a silver claw that held a globe of rock crystal.

He laughed and gave an elaborate bow as she entered. The walking stick added to the odd courtly effect. Sula looked at his outfit and hesitated.

“Very original,” she decided.

“Chesko,” Casimir said. “This time next year, she’s going to be dressing everybody.” He turned to his two companions. “These are Julien and Veronika. They’ll be joining us tonight, if you don’t mind.” Julien was a younger man with a pointed face, and Veronika was a tinkly blonde who wore brocade and an anklet with stones that glittered.

Interesting, Sula thought, for Casimir to include another couple. Perhaps it was to put her at ease, to assure her that she wouldn’t be at close quarters with some predator all night.

“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “I’m Gredel.”

Casimir gave two snaps of his fingers and a tiled panel slid open in the wall, revealing a well-equipped bar, bottles full of amber, green, and crimson liquids in curiously shaped bottles. “Shall we start with drinks before supper?” he asked.

“I don’t drink,” Sula said, “but the rest of you go ahead.”

Casimir, on his way to the bar, was brought up short. “Is there anything else you’d like? Hashish or-”

“Sparkling water will be fine,” she said.

Casimir hesitated again. “Right,” he said finally, and handed her a heavy cut-crystal goblet that he’d filled from a silver spigot.

He mixed drinks for himself and the others, and everyone sat on the broad, oversoft chairs. Sula tried not to oversplay.

The discussion was about music, songwriters, and musicians she didn’t know. Casimir told the room to play various audio selections. He liked his music jagged, with angry overtones.

“What do you like?” Julien asked Sula.

“Derivoo,” she said.

Veronika gave a little giggle. Julien made a face. “Too intellectual for me,” he said.

“It’s not intellectual at all,” Sula protested. “It’s pure emotion.”

“It’s all about death,” Veronika said.

“Why shouldn’t it be?” Sula said. “Death is the universal constant. All people suffer and die. Derivoo doesn’t try to hide that.”

There was a moment of silence in which Sula realized that the inevitability of misery and death was perhaps not the most appropriate topic to bring up on first acquaintance with this group; and then she looked at Casimir and saw a glimmer of wicked amusement in his dark eyes. He seized his walking stick and rose.

“Let’s go. Take your drinks if you haven’t finished them.”

Casimir’s huge Victory limousine was built along the lines of a pumpkin seed, and painted and upholstered in no less than eleven shades of apricot. The two Torminel guards sat in front, their huge, night-adapted eyes perfectly at home on the darkened streets. The restaurant was paneled in old, dark wood, the linen was crisp and close-woven, and the fixtures were brass that gleamed finely in the subdued light. Through an elaborate, carved wooden screen Sula could see another dining room with a few Lai-own sitting in the special chairs that cradled their long breastbones.

Casimir suggested items from the menu, and the elderly waitron, whose stolid, disapproving old face suggested he had seen many like Casimir come and go, suggested others. Sula followed one of Casimir’s suggestions, and found her ostrich steak tender and full of savor; the krek-tubers, mashed with bits of truffle, were slightly oily but full of complex flavors that lingered long on her palate.

Casimir and Julien ordered elaborate drinks, a variety of starters, and a broad selection of desserts, and competed with each other for throwing money away. Half what they ordered was never eaten or drunk. Julien was exuberant and brash, and Casimir displayed sparks of sardonic wit. Veronika popped her wide eyes open like a perpetually astonished child and giggled a great deal.

From the restaurant they motored to a club, a place atop a tall building in Grandview, the neighborhood where Sula had once lived until she had to blow up her apartment with a group of Naxid police inside. The broad granite dome of the Great Refuge, the highest point of the High City, brooded down on them through the tall glass walls above the bar. Casimir and Julien flung more money away on drinks and tips to waitrons, bartenders, and musicians. If the Naxid occupation was hurting their business, it wasn’t showing.

Sula knew she was supposed to be impressed by this. But even years ago, when she was Lamey’s girl, she hadn’t been impressed by the money he and his crowd threw away. She knew too well where the money came from.

She was more impressed by Casimir once he took her onto the dance floor. His long-fingered hands embraced her gently, but behind the gentleness she sensed the solidity of muscle and bone and mass, the calculation of his mind. His attention in the dance was entirely on her, his somber dark eyes intense as they gazed into her face while his body reacted to her weight and motion.

This one thinks!she thought in surprise.

That might make things easy or make them hard. At any rate, it made the calculation more difficult.

“Where are you from?” he asked her after they’d sat down. “How come I haven’t seen you before?” Julien and Veronika were still on the dance floor, Veronika swirling with expert grace around Julien’s enthusiastic clumsiness.

“I lived on the ring,” Sula said. “Before they blew it up.”

“What did you do there?”

“I was a math teacher.”

His eyes widened.

“Give me a math problem and try me,” Sula urged, but he didn’t reply. She wondered if her phony occupation had shocked him.

“When I was in school,” he said, “I didn’t have math teachers like you.”

“You didn’t think teachers went to clubs?” she said.

A slow thought crossed his face. He leaned closer and his eyes narrowed. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is why, when you’re from the ring, you talk like you’ve spent your life in Riverside.”

Sula’s nerves sang a warning. She laughed. “Did I say I’ve spent my whole life on the ring?” she asked. “I don’t think so.”

“I could check your documents,” his eyes hardening, “but of course you sell false documents, so that wouldn’t help.”

The tension between them was like a coiled serpent ready to strike. She raised an eyebrow. “You still think I’m a provocateur?” she asked. “I haven’t asked you to do a single illegal thing all night.”

One index finger tapped a slow rhythm on the matte surface of the table before them. “I think you’re dangerous,” he said.

Sula looked at him and held his gaze. “You’re right,” she said.

Casimir gave a huff of breath and drew back. Cushions of aesa leather received him. “Why don’t you drink?” he asked.

“I grew up around drunks,” she said. “I don’t want to be like that, not ever.”

Which was true, and perhaps Casimir sensed it, because he nodded. “And you lived in Riverside.”

“I lived in Zanshaa City till my parents were executed.”

His glance was sharp. “For what?”

She shrugged. “For lots of things, I guess. I was little, and I didn’t ask.”

He cast an uneasy look at the dancers. “My father was executed, too. Strangled.”

Sula nodded. “I thought you knew what I meant when I talked about derivoo.”

“I knew.” Eyes still scanning the dance floor. “But I still think derivoo’s depressing.”

She found a grin spreading across her face. “We should dance now.”

“Yes.” His grin answered hers. “We should.”

They danced till they were both breathless, and then Casimir moved the party to another club, in the Hotel of Many Blessings, where there was more dancing, more drinking, more money spread around. After which he said they should take a breather, and he took them into an elevator lined with what looked like mother-of-pearl and bade it rise to the penthouse.

The door opened to Casimir’s thumbprint. The room was swathed in shiny draperies, and the furniture was low and comfortable. A table was laid with a cold supper, meats and cheeses and flat wroncho bread, pickles, chutneys, elaborate tarts and cakes, and bottles lying in a tray of shaved ice. It had obviously been intended all along that the evening end here.

Sula put together an open-faced sandwich-nice Vigo plates, she noticed, a clean modern design-then began to rehearse her exit. Surely it was not coincidental that a pair of bedrooms were very handy.

I’ve got to work in the morning.It certainly sounded more plausible thanI’ve got to go organize a counterrebellion.

Casimir put his walking stick in a rack that had probably been made for it specially and reached for a pair of small packages, each with glossy wrapping and a brilliant scarlet ribbon. He presented one each to Sula and Veronika. “With thanks for a wonderful evening.”

The gift proved to be perfume, a crystal bottle containing Sengra, made with the musk of the rare and reclusive atauba tree-crawlers of Paycahp. The small vial in her hand might have set Casimir back twenty zeniths or more-probably more, since Sengra was exactly the sort of thing that wouldn’t be coming down from orbit for years, not with the ring gone.

Veronika opened her package and popped her eyes open wide-that gesture was going to look silly on her when she was fifty, Sula thought-and gave a squeal of delight. She opted for a more moderate response and kissed Casimir’s cheek.

There was the sting of stubble against her lips. He looked at her with calculation. There was a very male scent to him.

She was about to bring up the work she had to do in the morning when there was a chime from Casimir’s sleeve display. He gave a scowl of annoyance and answered.

“Casimir,” came a strange voice. “We’ve got a situation.”

“Wait,” he said, left the room and closed the door behind him. Sula munched a pickle while the others waited in silence.

Casimir returned with the scowl still firm on his face. Without a trace of apology, he looked at Sula and Veronika and said, “Sorry, but the evening’s over. Something’s come up.”

Veronika pouted and reached for her jacket. Casimir reached for Sula’s arm to draw her to the door. She looked at him. “What’s just happened?”

He gave her an impatient, insolent look-it was none of her business, after all-then thought better of it and shrugged. “Not what’s happened, but what’s going to happen in a few hours. The Naxids are declaring food rationing.”

“They’rewhat?” Sula’s first reaction was outrage. Casimir opened the door for her, and she hesitated there, thinking. He quivered with impatience.

“Congratulations,” she said finally. “The Naxids have just made you very rich.”

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“I’ll be rich too,” she said. “Ration cards will cost you a hundred apiece.”

“Ahundred?” For a moment it was Casimir’s turn to be outraged.

“Think about it,” Sula said. “Think how much they’ll be worth to you.”

They held each other’s eyes for a moment, then both broke into laughter. “We’ll talk price later,” Casimir said, and hustled her into the vestibule along with Veronika, who showed Sula a five-zenith coin.

“Julien gave it to me for the cab,” she said triumphantly. “And we get to keep the change!”

“You’d better hope the cabhas change for a fiver,” Sula said, and Veronika thought for a moment.

“We’ll get change in the lobby.”

A Daimong night clerk gave them change, and Veronika’s nose wrinkled at his corpse scent. On the way to her apartment Sula learned that Veronika was a former model and now an occasional club hostess.

“I’m an unemployed math teacher,” Sula said.

Veronika’s eyes went wide again. “Wow,” she said.

After letting Veronika off, Sula had the Torminel driver take her within two streets of the communal Riverside apartment, after which she walked the distance to the building by the light of the stars. Overhead, the broken arcs of the ring were a curved line of black against the faintly glowing sky. Outside the apartment she gazed up for a long moment until she discerned the pale gleam of the white ceramic pot in the front window. It was in the position that meantSomeone is in the apartment and it is safe.

The lock on the building’s front door, the one that read her fingerprint, worked only erratically, but this time she caught it by surprise and the door opened. She went up the stair, then used her key on the apartment lock.

Macnamara was asleep on the couch, with a pair of pistols on the table in front of him, along with a grenade.

“Hi, Dad,” Sula said as he blinked awake. “Junior brought me home safe, just like he said he would.”

Macnamara looked embarrassed. Sula gave him a grin.

“What were you planning on doing with agrenade?” she asked.

He didn’t reply. Sula took off her jacket and called up the computer that resided in the desk. “I’ve got work to do,” she said. “You’d better get some sleep, because I’ve got a job for you first thing in the morning.”

“What’s that?” He rose from the couch, scratching his sleep-tousled hair.

“The market opens at 0727, right?”

“Yes.”

Sula sat herself at the desk. “I need you to buy as much food as you can carry. Canned, dried, bottled, freeze-dried. Get the biggest sack of flour they have, and another sack of beans. Condensed milk would be good. Get Spence to help you carry it all.”

“What’s going on?” Macnamara was bewildered.

“Food rationing.”

“What?”Sula could hear the outrage in his voice as she called up a text program.

“Two reasons for it I can think of,” she said. “First, issuing everyone a ration card will be a way of reprocessing every ID on the planet…help them weed out troublemakers and saboteurs. Second…” She held up one hand and made the universal gesture of tossing a coin in her palm. “Artificial scarcities are going to make some Naxids very, very rich.”

“Damn them,” Macnamara breathed.

“We’lldo very well,” Sula pointed out. “We’ll quadruple our prices on everything on the ration-you don’t suppose they’d be good enough to rationtobacco, would you? — and we’ll make a fortune.”

“Damn them,” Macnamara said again.

Sula gave him a pointed look. “Good night,” she said. “Dad.”

He flushed and shambled to bed. Sula turned to her work.

“What if they rationalcohol?” she said aloud as the thought struck her. There would be stills in half the bathrooms in Zanshaa, processing potatoes, taswa peels, apple cores, whatever they could find.

In the next few hours she roughed out an essay forResistance denouncing the food ration. Her previous job, before she’d volunteered to get herself killed with partisan forces, had been with the Logistics Consolidation Executive, which had been deeply involved with cataloging and deployment of resources. She knew that, as the Praxis demanded, the planet of Zanshaa was self-sufficient in foodstuffs, and that from the practical point of view of providing food to the population, the ration was nonsense. She quoted numerous statistics from memory, and was able to get the rest out of public data sources.

By the time she finished, dawn was greening in the east. She took a shower to wash the tobacco smell out of her hair and collapsed into bed just as she heard Macnamara’s alarm go off.

She rose after noon, the apartment already hot with the brilliant sun of summer. As she rubbed her swollen eyelids and blinked in the sunlight flooding the front room, she began to remember what it was like to be a clique member’s girlfriend.

And then she had another thought. Thus far Action Team 491 had been selling her own property out of the back of a truck, a business that was irregular but legal. But once the ration came into effect, selling cocoa and coffee off the ration would be against the law. The team wouldn’t just be participating in informal economic activity, they’d be committing acrime.

People who committed crimes needed protection. Casimir was going to be more necessary than ever.

“Damnit,” she said.