Conventions of War

TWENTY

Time passed. Martinez dined with Husayn and Mersenne on successive days, and the next day spent eight hours in Command, takingIllustrious through the wormhole to Osser. Squadrons of decoys were echeloned ahead of the squadron, in hopes of attracting any incoming missiles. Pinnaces flew along with the decoys, painting the vacuum ahead with their laser range finders. Every antimissile weapon was charged and pointed dead ahead.

Chenforce made some final-hour maneuvers before passing the wormhole, checking their speed and entering the wormhole at a slightly different angle, so as to appear in the Osser system on a course that wouldn’t take them straight on to Arkhan-Dohg, the next system, but slightly out of the direct path.

Martinez lay on his acceleration couch, trying not to gnaw his nails as he stared at the sensor displays, waiting for the brief flash that would let him know that missiles were incoming. His tension gradually eased as the returning radar and laser signals revealed more of the Osser system, and then a new worry began to possess him.

The Naxids would have to wonder why Chenforce had changed its tactics, particularly when they hadn’t met any genuine opposition since Protipanu, at the very beginning of their raid. If the Naxids analyzed the raiders’ maneuvers, then reasoned backward to find what the tactics were intended to prevent, they would be able to see that Michi Chen and her squadron was concerned about a missile barrage fired at relativistic velocities.

If the tactic hadn’t yet occurred to the Naxids, Chenforce might now be handing them the idea.

But that was a worry for another day. For the present it was enough to see that the ranging lasers were finding nothing, that more and more of the system was being revealed without an enemy being found, and that Chenforce was as safe from attack as it was ever going to be.

Eight hours after they entered the new system, Martinez finally asked permission from Michi to secure from general quarters, andIllustrious dropped to a lower level of alert. He returned to his paperwork, but it was all he could do to avoid calling the officer of the watch every few minutes to make certain the squadron wasn’t flying into jeopardy.

Days passed. Martinez conducted regular inspections to learn his ship and crew and to confirm the information reported on the 77-12s. He dined in rotation with Lord Phillips, who was scarcely more talkative than at their previous meeting; with Lieutenant Lady Juliette Corbigny, whose nervous chatter was a contrast to her silence in the presence of the squadcom; and with Acting Lieutenant Lord Themba Mokgatle, who had been promoted to the vacancy left as Chandra shuttled to Michi’s staff.

Late one day, as Martinez sipped his cocoa and gazed at the painting of the woman, child, and cat, he realized that there was another figure, a man who sat on a bed opposite the fire from the woman and her baby. He hadn’t noticed him because the painting was dark and needed cleaning, and the man wasn’t illuminated by the fire. One moment he wasn’t there, and the next Martinez suddenly saw him, head bent with a stick or staff in his hands, appearing like a ghost from behind the painted red curtain.

He couldn’t have been more surprised if the cat had jumped from the picture into his lap.

The dim figure on the canvas was the only discovery Martinez managed during that period. The killer or killers of Captain Fletcher remained no more than a phantom. Michi grew ever more irritable, and snapped at him and Garcia both. Sometimes Martinez caught a look in her eye that seemed to say,If you weren’t family …

In time, after the first breathless rush of taking command was over, he was reminded that there were too many captains’ servants on the ship. He had Garcia take Rigger Espinosa and Machinist Ayutano into the Constabulary, with the particular duty of patrolling the decks on which the officers were quartered. Buckle the hair stylist was sent to aid the ship’s barber. Narbonne was taken onto Martinez’s service as an assistant to Alikhan, a demotion that Narbonne seemed to resent.

That left Baca, the fat, redundant cook that no one seemed to want, and Jukes. Baca was eventually taken on as an assistant to Michi’s cook, a post he wasn’t happy about either, and that left Martinez with his own personal artist.

Martinez called Jukes into his office to give him the news, and the man turned up in Fleet-issued undress and managed to brace rather professionally in salute. Martinez decided that tonight he must have gotten to Jukes before Jukes got to the sherry.

“I’ve been playing with a design forIllustrious, ” Jukes said. “Based on folk motifs from Laredo. Would you like to see it?”

Martinez said he would. Jukes downloaded from his sleeve to the wall display, and revealed a three-dimensional model of anIllustrious, covered with large, jagged geometric designs in violent shades of red, yellow, and black. Nothing more unlike Fletcher’s subtle, intricate pattern of pink, white, and pale green could be imagined.

Martinez looked in surprise at the cruiser, which was rotating in the display, and managed to say, “That’s very different.”

“That’s the point. Anyone looking atIllustrious is going to know that Captain Martinez is on station, and that he’s a bold skipper who’s not afraid to stand out from the common run of officers.”

Martinez suspected that he already stood out more than was good for him. He knew that Lord Tork, head of the Fleet Control Board, was not about to forgive him for achieving such prominence so quickly, not when the Fleet’s whole style was based on letting family connections quietly work behind the scenes to further elevate those who had been already elevated from birth. As far as the board was concerned, any further glory won by Martinez would only be at the expense of more deserving Peers, that he should have taken his promotion and decoration and been happy to return to the obscurity from whence he’d come.

Flying that gaudy red and yellow design anywhere within Tork’s domain would shriek his presence aloud in the ears of a superior who never wanted to hear his voice again. It would be like buying media time to advertise himself.

But Tork was already a lost cause,Martinez thought. A little advertising wasn’t going to change anything. So why not?

“Have you considered interiors?” he asked.

Jukes had. Martinez looked at designs for the office and dining room, both as brazen as the exterior designs, one dominated by verdant jungle green and the other by dark reds and yellows that suggested sandstone cliffs standing over a desert.

“Keep working along these lines,” Martinez said. “And if another theme occurs to you, feel free to work it out. We’ve got a lot of time.” It would be ages beforeIllustrious saw a dock or underwent a refit-the raid into Naxid space would last at least another couple months, and then the Fleet would have to reunite to retake Zanshaa.

There was a whole war betweenIllustrious and any new paint job.

Still, Martinez saw no reason not to plan for a grand triumph and its aftermath, in which he could decorateIllustrious as if it were his private yacht. For the odds were that either he would experience a grand triumph or be blown to atoms, and for his part, he’d rather assume the former.

“I should mention at this point, my lord,” Jukes said, “that Captain Fletcher was paying me sixty zeniths per month.”

“I looked up the captain’s accounts, and he paid you twenty,” Martinez said. “For my part, I propose to pay you fifteen.”

As Martinez spoke, Jukes’s expressions went from smug confidence to chagrin to horror. He stared at Martinez as if he’d just turned into a creature with scales and fangs. Martinez tried not to laugh.

“I don’tneed a personal artist,” he explained. “I’d rather have a rigger first class, but I don’t expect I’ll get one.”

Jukes swallowed hard. “Yes, my lord.”

“And I was thinking,” Martinez said, “that when things become a little less busy, you might begin a portrait.”

“A portrait,” Jukes repeated dully. He didn’t seem to be thinking very well through his shock, because he asked, “Whose portrait, my lord?”

“The portrait of a bold skipper not afraid to stand above the common run of officers,” Martinez said. “I should look romantic and dashing and very much in charge. I shall be carrying the Golden Orb, andCorona andIllustrious should be in the picture too. Any other details I leave to you.”

Jukes blinked several times, as if he’d had to reprogram part of his mind and the blinks were elements of his internal code.

“Very good, my lord,” he said.

Martinez decided he might as well pay Jukes a compliment and take his mind off his misfortunes. “Thank you for changing the pictures in my cabin,” he said. “The view is now a considerable improvement.”

“You’re welcome.” Jukes took a breath and made a visible effort to reengage with the person sitting before him. “Was there a piece you particularly liked? I could locate other works in that style.”

“The one with the woman and the cat,” Martinez said. “Though I don’t think I’ve seen any painting quite in that style anywhere.”

Jukes smiled. “It’s not precisely typical of the painter’s work. That’s a very old Northern European piece.”

Martinez looked at him. “And North Europe is where, exactly?”

“Terra, my lord. The painting dates from before the Shaa conquest. Though I should say theoriginal painting, because this may be a copy. It’s hard to say, because all the documentation is in languages no one speaks anymore, and hardly anyone reads them.”

“Itlooks old enough.”

“It wants cleaning.” Jukes gave a thoughtful pause. “You’ve got a good eye, my lord. Captain Fletcher bought the painting some years ago, but decided he didn’t like it because it didn’t seem one thing or another, and he put it in storage.” His mouth gave a little twitch of disapproval. “I don’t know why he took it to war with him. It’s not as if the painting could be replaced if we got blown up. Maybe he wanted it with him since it was so valuable, I don’t know.”

“Valuable?” Martinez asked. “How valuable?”

“I think he paid something like eighty thousand for it.”

Martinez whistled.

“You could probably buy it, my lord, from the captain’s estate.”

“Not at those prices, I can’t.”

Jukes shrugged. “It would depend on whether you could get a license for cult art anyway.”

Martinez was startled. “Cult art.That’s cult art?”

“The Holy Family with a Cat,by Rembrandt. You wouldn’t know it was cultish except for the title.”

Martinez considered the painting through his haze of surprise. The cult art he remembered from his visits to the Museums of Superstition, and the other pieces he’d seen on Fletcher’s cabin walls, made its subjects look elevated, or grand or noble or at the very least uncannily serene, but the plain-faced mother, the cat, and the child in red pajamas merely looked comfortably middle-class.

“The cat isn’t normally seen with the Holy Family?”

A smile twitched at Jukes’s lips. “No. Not the cat.”

“Or the frame? The red curtain?”

“That’s the contribution of the artist.”

“The red pajamas?”

Jukes laughed. “No, that’s just to echo the red of the curtain.”

“Could the title be in error?”

Jukes shook his head. “Unlikely, my lord, though possible.”

“So what makes it cult art?”

“The Holy Family is a fairly common subject, though usually the Virgin’s in a blue robe, and the child is usually naked, and there are usually attendants, with some of them, ah…” He reached for a word. “…floating. This particular treatment is unconventional, but then there were no hard and fast rules for this sort of thing. Narayanguru, for example, is usually portrayed on an ayaca tree, I suppose because the green and red blossoms are so attractive, but Captain Fletcher’s Narayanguru is mounted on a real tree, and it’s a vel-trip, not an ayaca.”

A very faint chord echoed in Martinez’s mind. He sat up, lifting his head.

“…and Da Vinci, of course, in hisVirgin of the Rocks, did a-”

Martinez raised a hand to cut off Jukes’s distracting voice. Jukes fell silent, staring at him.

“An ayaca tree,” Martinez murmured. Jukes wisely did not answer.

Martinez thought furiously, trying to reach into his own head. Mention of the ayaca tree had set off a train of associations, then conclusions, but in an instant, without him having to think through a single step. He now had to consciously and carefully work backward from his conclusions through the long process to make certain that it all held together, and to find out where it had started.

Without speaking, he rose from his desk and walked to his safe. He opened a tunic button and drew out his captain’s key on its elastic, inserted the key into his safe and pressed the combination. Seals popped as the door swung open, and Martinez caught a whiff of stale air. He took out the clear plastic box in which Dr. Xi had placed Fletcher’s jewelry, opened it and separated the signet ring and the silver mesh ring from the gold pendant on its chain. Holding the chain up to the light, he saw the tree-shaped pendant dangling, emeralds and rubies glittering against the gold.

“An ayaca tree like this?” he asked.

Jukes squinted as he looked at the dangling pendant. “Yes,” he said, “that’s typical.”

“Would you say that this pendant is particularly rare or unusually beautiful or stands out in any way?”

Jukes blinked at him, then frowned. “It’s very well made and moderately expensive, but there’s nothing extraordinary about it.”

Martinez flipped the pendant into his hand and returned to his desk. “Comm,” he said, “page Lieutenant Prasad.”

A shadow fell across his door, and he looked up to see Marsden, the ship’s secretary, with his datapad.

“My lord, if you’re busy-”

“No. Come in.”

“Lord Captain.” Chandra’s face appeared in the depths of Martinez’s desk. “You paged me?”

“I have a question,” Martinez said. “Did Captain Fletcher wear a pendant in the shape of a tree?”

Chandra was taken aback. “He did, yes.”

“Did he wear it all the time?”

Her look grew more curious. “Yes, so far as I know he did, though he took it off when he, ah, went to bed.”

Martinez raised his fist into view of the pickups on the desk and let the pendant fall from his grasp so it dangled on the end of its chain. “This is the pendant?”

Chandra squinted, and her face distorted in the camera pickups as she stared into her sleeve display. “Looks like it, my lord.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. End transmission.”

Chandra’s startled face faded from the display. Martinez looked at the pendant for a long moment as excitement hummed in his nerves, and then became aware of the silence in his office, of Jukes and Marsden staring at him.

“Have a seat for a moment,” he said. “This may take a while.”

He was still reaching deep into his own head.

He called up a security manual onto his desk display, one intended for the Constabulary and Investigative Service. Included was a description of cults and the methods of recognizing them. He read:

Narayanism,a cult based on the teachings of Narayanguru (Balambhoatdada Seth), condemned for a belief in a higher plane and for the founder’s alleged performance of miracles. Narayanguru’s teachings show a kinship to those of the Terran philosopher Schopenhauer, themselves condemned for nihilism. Though cult tradition maintains that Narayanguru was hanged on an ayaca tree, historical records show that he was tortured and executed by more conventional methods in the Year of the Praxis 5581, on Terra. Because of this false tradition, cultists sometimes recognize one another by carrying flowering branches of the ayaca on certain days, planting ayacas about the home, or by using the ayaca blossom on jewelry, pottery, etc. There are also the usual variety of hand and other signals.

Narayanism is not a militant cult and its adherents are not believed to pose an active threat to the Peace of the Praxis, except insofar as they promote false beliefs. The cult has recently been reported on Terra, Preowin, and Sandama, where entire clans sometimes participate secretly in cult activity.

Martinez gazed up at Jukes and held out the pendant dangling from his fist. “Why would Captain Fletcher wear this pendant?” he asked. “It’s not a particularly rare or precious form of art, is it?”

Jukes looked blank. “No, my lord.”

“Suppose he was actually a believer,” Martinez said. “Suppose he was a genuine Narayanist.”

A look of pure horror crossed Marsden’s face. Martinez looked at him in surprise. Marsden took a few moments to find words, and when he spoke, his voice trembled with what Martinez supposed was fury.

“Captain Fletcher, a cultist?” Marsden said. “Do you realize what you’re saying? A member both of the Gombergs and the Fletchers? A Peer of the highest possible pedigree, with noble ancestors stretching back thousands of years-”

Martinez was taken aback by this rant, but was in no mood for a pompous lecture on genealogy. “Marsden,” he said, cutting him off, “do you know where the personal possessions of Thuc and Kosinic have been stored?”

Marsden’s larynx moved in his throat as he visibly swallowed his indignation. “Yes, my lord,” he said.

“Kindly bring them.”

Marsden rose, put the datapad on his seat, and braced. “At once, Lord Captain.”

The secretary marched away, his legs stiff with anger. Jukes looked after him in surprise.

“An odd man,” he said. “I had no idea he was such a snob.” He turned to Martinez and raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think Captain Fletcher was a cultist?”

Martinez looked at the pendant that still dangled from his hand. “I don’t know why else he’d wear this.”

“Maybe it was a gift from someone he cared for.”

“Acultist he cared for,” Martinez muttered.

He leaned back in his chair and followed his chain of reasoning again, piece by piece. No part of it was implausible by itself, he decided, and therefore his ideas were better than any other theory that had come his way.

Much of it had to do with the way the Praxis viewed cults, and the way servants of the Praxis had interpreted their duty.

The Shaa had believed in many things, but they did not believe in the numinous. Any cult that promoted a belief in the supernatural was, by definition, a violation of the Praxis and illegal. When the Shaa conquered Terra, they had found the place swarming with cults, and acted over time to suppress them, gradually over many generations. Meeting houses of the faithful had been torn down, turned to secular use, or converted to museums. Believers were dismissed from government and teaching posts. Cult literature was confiscated and its reproduction forbidden. Cult organizations were disbanded, any professional clergy dismissed, and schools of instruction shut down.

Any believer determined on martyrdom was given ample opportunity to exercise his choice.

Cults had never vanished, of course. The Shaa, who were not without their own shrewd intelligence, might not have expected they would. But by forbidding the spread of doctrine, professional clergy and houses of worship, and the reproduction of literature and cult objects, they had turned what had been by all accounts a thriving business into a strictly amateur affair. If there were meetings, they were small and took place in private homes. If there were clergy, they had no opportunity for specialized study, and had to hold regular jobs. If there was literature, it was copied clandestinely and passed from hand to hand, and errors crept in and many texts were incomplete.

Believers were usually not harassed as long as they did not practice in public or proselytize, and in time they learned discretion. Though belief was not destroyed, its force was reduced and cults became indistinguishable from superstition-a set of arcane and irrational practices designed to achieve the intervention of who knew what against the inflexible workings of an unknowable fate.

There were certainly cults scattered through the empire, but most of them existed very quietly and often in fairly remote corners of the Shaa dominion. Cult members tended to marry within one another’s families and avoid public service. Occasionally a governor or a local official would try to earn a name for himself by rooting them out, executing some and forcing others to renounce their beliefs, but for the most part they were left alone.

There was no point in persecution. Over the centuries, the supernatural had simply ceased to be a threat to the empire.

Marsden returned within a few moments, carrying a pair of gray plastic boxes. “I assumed you wanted possessions other than clothing, my lord,” he said. “If you want to examine the clothing as well, may I requisition a hand truck?”

That would be for Kosinic’s trunks containing the amazing number of uniforms required of an officer, plus his personal vac suit. Thuc would have had fewer uniforms, and used a vac suit from the ship’s stores.

“The pockets would have been emptied, and so on?” Martinez asked.

“Yes, Lord Captain. Pockets are gone through, and other places where small items might be found, and anything discovered put in these boxes.”

“I won’t need the clothing then. Put the boxes on my desk.”

Martinez opened Kosinic’s box first. He found a ring from the Nelson Academy, from which Martinez had graduated before Kosinic arrived, and a handsome presentation stylus-brushed aluminum inlaid with unakite and jasper, and engraved “To Lieutenant Javier Kosinic, from his proud father.” There was a shaving kit, a modestly priced cologne, and a nearly empty bottle of antibiotic spray that a doctor had probably given him for his wounds. Martinez found some fine paper, brushes, and watercolor paints, and looked at several finished watercolors, most of them planet-bound landscapes of rivers and trees, but including one recognizable impression of Fulvia Kazakov sitting at a table in the wardroom. To Martinez’s unpracticed eye, none of the watercolors seemed particularly expert.

In a small pocketbook he found a series of foils, neatly labeled, that held music and other entertainments, and at the bottom of the box, a small pocket-sized datapad, which Martinez turned on. It asked for a password, but he wasn’t able to provide one. He slotted his captain’s key into it, but the datapad was a private one, not Fleet issue, and wouldn’t recognize his authority. Martinez turned it off and returned it to the box.

The few belongings-the cologne and the academy ring and the inexpert watercolors-seemed to add up to an inadequate description of a life. Whatever had most mattered to Kosinic, Martinez thought, probably wasn’t here: his passions remained locked in his brain, and had died with him. He looked again at the stylus, sent by the father who might not yet know that his son had been killed, and closed the box on Kosinic’s life.

He turned to the box labeled THUC, H.C., MASTER ENGINEER (DECEASED), and found what he was looking for right on top.

A small enameled pendant in the form of a tree with green and red blossoms, hanging from a chain of bright metal links.

“Ithink there was a group of Narayanists onIllustrious, ” Martinez explained to Michi Chen. “I think Captain Fletcher was one of them. He wore a Narayanist symbol around his neck, and he had a huge statue of Narayanguru in his sleeping cabin. I think he adopted the pose of a collector of cult art so he could collect Narayanist artifacts legally, and he covered his activities by collecting artifacts from other cults as well.”

“If you insist on that theory,” Michi said, “you’re going to have trouble with the Gombergs and Fletchers, maybe even a suit in civil court.”

“Not if I’m right, I won’t,” Martinez said. “If there are Narayanists in either of those families, we won’t hear a word from them.”

Michi nodded silently. “Go on,” she said.

He had asked Michi into his office on a confidential matter, and she was surprised on her arrival to find Marsden and Jukes present. Martinez called Perry to bring out coffee and snacks, and ordered Marsden to record the meeting and take notes.

“I think there were, perhaps still are, a number of Narayanists aboard,” Martinez said. “Captain Fletcher protected them. Somehow, Kosinic found out about at least some of this, though possibly he didn’t know the captain was a part of the arrangement. As Kosinic’s knowledge was now a menace to the cultists, one of them-Thuc-killed him.”

Michi nodded. “Very well,” she said.

“It was a masterfully done murder, and we would never have found out about it if Captain Fletcher wasn’t killed the same way and made us suspicious.”

Perry and Alikhan arrived with coffee and little triangular pastries, and Martinez fell silent while everyone was served. He took an appreciative taste of the coffee and felt heat flush at once to the surface of his skin. He could feel his theories boiling in his skull, and he wanted to let them escape; he was so impatient that it took an effort for him to compliment Perry on the coffee. Finally, the two left the room and he was able to continue.

“We know that Thuc was a Narayanist because he too wore a Narayanist medallion. I think that once Kosinic was killed, Captain Fletcher began to realize that he was in a bad spot. All it would take would be a little indiscretion on the part of a petty officer, and he would be implicated in the death of a fellow officer-and not justany officer, but a member of the squadron commander’s staff.

“He couldn’t indict Thuc, because any public proceedings would expose his own membership in the cult. So he used his officers’ privilege and executed Thuc during the course of an inspection.”

Martinez gave a little shrug. “Everything from this point is completely speculative,” he said. “I think Captain Fletcher was intent on eliminating every member of the cult in order to protect himself, but I can’t be certain that he wasn’t just after Thuc. In any case, one or more other cult membersassumed that Fletcher was going after them, and they acted to kill him first.”

Michi absorbed this quietly. “Do you have any idea who those other cult members might be?”

Martinez shook his head. “No, my lady. The only people I’m inclined to exempt from suspicion are Weaponer Gulik and the crew of Missile Battery Three. Fletcher inspected them on the day of his death and didn’t execute any of them.”

“That still leaves something like three hundred people.”

“Though I would start with those among the crew who are from Sandama, like the lord captain, or who are Fletcher’s clients. Dr. Xi, for example.”

“Xi?” Michi was startled. “But he’s been helpful.”

“He helpfully explained away his own fingerprints that were found in Captain Fletcher’s office.”

“But he was the one who proved that Captain Fletcher was murdered in the first place. If he’d been part of the conspiracy, he would have kept silent.”

Martinez opened his mouth, then closed it.Dr. An-ku I’m not, he thought. “Well,” he said, “let’snot start with Dr. Xi then.”

She held his eyes for a moment, then her shoulders slumped as she seemed to deflate. “We’re no better off than we were. You’ve got an interesting theory, but even if it’s true, it doesn’t help us.”

Martinez took the two pendants, Fletcher’s and Thuc’s, in one large hand and held them dangling over his desk. “We searched the ship once, but we didn’t know what we were looking for. Now we do. Now we’re looking for these. We look in lockers and we look around necks.”

“My lord.” Martinez and Michi both turned at the sound of Marsden’s flat, angry voice. “You should check me first, my lord. I’m from Sandama, and I was one of Captain Fletcher’s clients. That makes me a double suspect, apparently.”

Martinez gazed at the secretary and his annoyance flared. Marsden was offended on Fletcher’s behalf, and apparently on behalf of the crew as well. A search of the crew’s private effects was an insult to their dignity, and Marsden had taken it to heart. He was going to insist that if Martinez was going to violate his dignity, he was going to violate it personally, and right now.

“Very well,” Martinez said, having no choice. “Kindly remove your tunic, open your shirt, and empty your pockets.”

Marsden did so, a vein in his temple throbbing with suppressed fury. Martinez sorted through the contents of Marsden’s pockets while the secretary pirouetted before him, arms held out at the shoulder to show he had nothing to hide. No cult objects were detected.

Martinez clenched his teeth. He had degraded another human being, and for nothing.

And the worst part was that he felt degraded himself for doing it.

“Thank you, Marsden,” Martinez said.You bastard, he added silently.

Without a word, the ship’s secretary turned his back on him and donned his tunic. When he had buttoned it, he resumed his seat, put his datapad on his lap, and picked up his stylus.

“The last inspection was too helter-skelter,” Michi said. “And it took too long. This next has to be more efficient.”

The two of them discussed it for a while, then Michi rose. The others rose and braced. “I’m going to dinner,” she told Martinez. “After dinner we’ll confine the crew to quarters and begin the search, starting with the officers.”

“Very good, my lady.”

She looked at Marsden and Jukes, who had spent the entire meeting sipping coffee and eating one pastry after another. “You’ll have to dine with these two in your quarters. I don’t want news of this getting out over dinner conversation in the mess.”

Martinez suppressed a sigh. Marsden was not going to be the jolliest of guests.

“Yes, my lady,” he said.

Michi took a step toward the door, then hesitated. She looked at Jukes, her brows knit. “Mr. Jukes,” she said, “why exactly are you here?”

Martinez answered for him. “He happened to be in the room when I had my brainstorm.”

Michi nodded. “I understand.” She turned away for a moment, hesitated again, then returned her gaze to the artist. “There are crumbs on your front, Mr. Jukes,” she said.

Jukes blinked. “Yes, my lady,” he said.

The officers’ quarters were searched first, by Martinez, Michi, and the three lieutenants on Michi’s staff. The officers’ persons were also searched, with the exception of Lord Phillips, who was officer of the watch and in Command.

“This is what you’re looking for,” Martinez told them, showing them the two pendants. “These are cult objects, representations of ayaca trees. They need not be worn around the neck-they could be a ring or a bracelet or any kind of jewelry, or they could be on cups or plates or picture frames or practically anything.Everything needs to be examined. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my lord,” they chanted. Kazakov and Mersenne looked determined. Husayn and Mokgatle were uncertain. Corbigny seemed worried. None spoke.

“Let’s go then.”

The lieutenants, Martinez, Michi, and Michi’s staff marched off in a body to inspect the warrant officers and their quarters. No ayaca trees were found, on jewelry or anyone else. Now reinforced by the warrant officers, the party moved on to the petty officers’ quarters.

The petty officers stood braced in the corridor, out of the way, and did their best to keep their faces expressionless. Lady Juliette Corbigny held back as the other officers began going through lockers. Her white, even teeth gnawed at her lower lip. Martinez ghosted up to her shoulder.

“Is there a problem, Lieutenant?”

She gave a little jump at the question, as if he’d startled her out of deep reflection, and she turned to him with her brown eyes open very wide.

“May I speak to you privately, Lord Captain?”

“Of course.” Corbigny followed him into the corridor outside, where he turned to her. “Yes?”

She was gnawing her nether lip again. She paused in her champing to say, uncertainly, “Is this a bad cult we’re looking for?”

Martinez considered the question. “I’m not an expert on cults, good or bad. But I think the cultists are responsible for Captain Fletcher’s death.”

Corbigny began to gnaw on her lip some more. Impatience jabbed at Martinez’s nerves, but instinct told him to remain silent and let Corbigny chew on herself for as long as she needed to.

“Well,” she said finally, “I’ve seen a medallion like that on someone.”

“Yes? Someone in your division?”

“No.” Her eyes looked wide into his. “On an officer. On Lord Phillips.”

Phillips? That can’t be right. It was the first thing he thought. He couldn’t imagine little Palermo Phillips banging Fletcher’s head against his desk with his tiny hands.

His second thought was,Maybe he had help.

“Are you sure?” Martinez asked.

Corbigny gave a nervous jerk of her head. “Yes, my lord. I got a good look at it. I remember him running out of the shower that day you paged him and inspected his division. He was in a hurry to get his tunic on, and the chain of the pendant got caught on one of his buttons. I helped him untangle it.”

“Right,” Martinez said. “Thank you. You may rejoin the others.”

Martinez collected Cadet Ankley, who was qualified to stand watches, and Espinosa, his former servant who had been shifted over to the military constabulary, then walked straight to Command.

“The lord captain is in Command,” Lord Phillips called as he entered. Phillips rose from his couch to let Martinez take his place if he so desired.

Martinez marched forward until he stood before Phillips, who even fully braced failed to come up to his chin.

“My lord,” Martinez said, “I’d be obliged if you’d open your tunic.”

“My lord?” Phillips stared up at him.

Suddenly Martinez didn’t want to be there. He had begun to think the whole day had been a mistake. But here he was, having joined the role of detective to his authority as captain, and he could think of nothing but following the path he’d set himself, wherever it took him.

“Open your tunic, Lieutenant,” he said.

Phillips looked away, suddenly thoughtful. His hand came slowly to the throat of his tunic and began undoing the silver buttons. Martinez looked at the rapid pulse beating in Phillips’s throat as the collar came open and he saw the gold links of a chain.

Anger suddenly boiled in Martinez. He reached out, took the chain, and brutally pulled until the pendant at the bottom of its loop was revealed. It was an ayaca tree, red and green jewels glittering.

Martinez looked down at Phillips. The chain was cutting into his neck, and he was on his toes. Martinez let go of the chain.

“Please accompany me, Lieutenant,” he said. “You are relieved.” He turned and addressed the room at large. “Ankley is the officer of the watch!” he proclaimed.

“I am relieved, my lord!” Phillips repeated. “Ankley is the officer of the watch!”

As Ankley came forward, Martinez bent to speak in his ear. “Keep everyone here,” he said. “No one is to leave Command until a party arrives to search them.”

Ankley licked his lips. “Very good, my lord.”

Cold foreboding settled into Martinez’s bones as he marched to the ship’s jail. Phillips followed in silence, buttoning his tunic, and Espinosa came last, a hand on the butt of his stun baton.

He walked through the door into the reception room of theIllustrious brig, and the familiar smell hit him. All jails smelled alike, sour bodies and disinfectant, boredom and despair.

“I’ll need your tunic, belt, shoes, and your lieutenant’s key,” Martinez said when he came to the brig. “Empty your pockets here, on the table.” He had been military constabulary officer on theCorona, and he knew the drill.

The stainless steel table rang as Phillips emptied his pockets. He rolled an elastic off his wrist, one that had his lieutenant’s key on it, and handed that to Martinez.

The sense that this was all a horrible mistake continued to hang over Martinez’s head like a dense gray cloud. He couldn’t imagine shy, tiny Phillips committing a crime as serious as stealing a candy bar, let alone killing his captain.

But it had been his own idea that the deaths were cult related, and that cult symbols would mark the killers. He had begun this. Now Fate would finish it.

“All your jewelry, please,” Martinez said.

Phillips took off his academy ring with some effort, then opened his tunic and reached for the chain with both hands. He looked at Martinez.

“May I ask what this is about?”

“Two people wearing that medallion have died,” Martinez said.

Phillips gaped at him. “Two?” he said.

Martinez’s sleeve comm chimed. He answered and saw Marsden’s frozen face resolve on his sleeve’s chameleon weave.

“The lady squadcom was wondering where you went,” he said.

“I’m in the brig, and I’m about to report to her. Have there been any developments?”

“None. We’re about to finish here.”

“Tell Lady Michi that I’ll be right there.”

Martinez ended the conversation and looked at Phillips, to see bewilderment still on his face.

“I don’t understand,” Phillips said.

“Your jewelry, Lieutenant.”

Phillips slowly took the chain from around his neck and handed it to him. Martinez issued him a pair of the soft slippers worn by prisoners and showed him to his narrow cell. The metal walls were covered with many thick layers of green paint, and the single light was in a cage overhead. The room was almost filled with the acceleration couch used for a bed, the toilet, and the small sink.

Martinez closed the heavy door with its spy hole and told Espinosa to remain on guard. He put the ayaca pendant in a clear plastic evidence box and returned to the petty officers’ quarters. The cabins had all been searched, and the search party had gone on to the body search, women searching women in the petty officers’ mess while men searched men in the corridor.

Nothing was found. Martinez approached Michi and handed her the box with the ayaca pendant inside. She looked up at him in silent query.

“Lord Phillips,” he said.

At first Michi was surprised, and then her expression hardened. “Too bad Fletcher didn’t get him first,” she said.

Michi’s expression didn’t soften throughout the rest of the search, and Martinez could tell she was thinking hard, particularly after the search of the enlisted and those on duty in Command and Engine Control produced no cult symbols, no murder weapons, and no suspects.

“Page Dr. Xi to the brig,” Michi told her sleeve display. She looked up at Martinez. “Time to interrogate Phillips,” she said.

“I don’t think he killed Fletcher,” Martinez said.

“I don’t either, but he knows who did. He knows who the other members of the cult are.” Her lips drew back from her teeth in a kind of snarl. “I’m going to have the lord doctor use truth drugs to get those names out of him.”

Martinez suppressed a shiver. “Truth drugs don’t always produce the truth,” he said. “They lower a person’s defenses, but they can confuse a prisoner as well. Phillips could just babble names at random, for all we know.”

“I’ll know,” Michi said. “Maybe not this first interrogation, but we’ll keep up the interrogations day after day, and in the end I’ll know. The truth always comes out in the end.”

“Let’s hope so,” Martinez said.

“Get Corbigny here as well. I’ll take her to the jail with me. You and”-with a look at Marsden-“your secretary can get back to running the ship.”

Martinez was startled. “I-” he began. “Phillips is my officer, and-”

I want to watch as you use chemicals to strip away his dignity and his every last secret. Because it’s my fault you’re putting him through this.

“He’s not your officer anymore,” Michi said flatly. “He’s a walking dead man. And frankly, I don’t think he’s going to welcome your presence.” She looked at him, and her look softened. “You have a ship to run, Captain.”

“Yes, my lady.” Martinez braced.

He and Marsden spent the rest of the day in his office dealing with the minutiae of command. Marsden was silent and hostile, and Martinez’s mind kept running into blind alleys instead of concentrating on his work.

He supped alone, drank half a bottle of wine, and went in search of the doctor.

As he approached the pharmacy, he encountered Lady Juliette Corbigny leaving. She was pale and her eyes were wider than ever.

“Beg pardon, Lord Captain,” she said, and sped away, almost in flight. Martinez looked after her, then walked into the pharmacy, where he found Xi slumped over a table, his chin on one fist as he contemplated a beaker half filled with a clear liquid. The sharp scent of grain alcohol was heavy on his breath.

“I’m afraid Lieutenant Corbigny isn’t well,” Xi said. “I had to give her something to settle her tummy. Partway into the interrogation she threw up all over the floor.” He raised the beaker and looked at it solemnly. “I fear she isn’t cut out for police work.”

Savage, pointless anger roiled in Martinez. “Didanything go well?” he asked.

“The interrogation wasn’t a success, particularly,” Xi said. “Phillips said he hadn’t killed the captain and didn’t know who did. He said he doesn’t belong to a cult. He said the ayaca pendant was given to him by his sweet old nurse when he was a child, and by the way, the story can’t be confirmed because she’s dead. He said he had no idea that the ayaca had any significance other than being a pretty tree that a lot of people put in their gardens.”

Xi slumped over his table and took a drink from the beaker.

“When the drug hit him he kept to his story until his mind got the addles, and then he started to chant. Garcia and the squadcom and Corbigny-when she wasn’t spewing-tried to keep him on the subject of the captain’s death, but he kept going back to the same chant. Or maybe they were different chants. It was hard to tell.”

“What was he chanting?”

“I don’t know. It was in some old language that nobody recognized, but we heard the word’Narayanguru‘ all right, so it’s a cult ritual language, and when the Investigative Service hears the recording they’ll find someone to identify it, and that will be the end of Lord Phillips. And if the I.S. is on speaking terms with the Legion that week and passes the information, the Legion will probably arrest half the Phillips clan and that will be the end ofthem, because the Legion have many more methods of interrogation than are available to us here, and doctors who are far more bad than I am and are very proud that their confession rate is nearly one hundred percent.” He looked at the beaker again, then raised his head to look at Martinez.

“Captain, I have been remiss. I am a bad doctor and a bad host. Will you share my beverage of consolation?”

“No thanks, I’ve had enough already. And you’re going to have a hell of a hangover.”

Xi gave a weary grin. “No, I’m not. A dose of this, a dose of that, and I will rise a new man.” His face fell. “And then the squadcom will turn me into a bad doctor again, and have me shoot chemicals into the carotid of a harmless little man who didn’t hurt anybody, if you ask me-which nobody did-but who’s going to die anyway, and I wish I’d kept my damn mouth shut about the captain’s injuries.” He poured more alcohol into his beaker. “I thought I was going to be a brilliant detective, tracking clues like the police in the videos, and instead I find myself involved in something soiled and disgusting and sordid, and frankly, I wish I could throw up like Corbigny.”

“Keep this up and you will,” Martinez said.

“I shall do my best,” Xi said, and raised his glass. “Bottoms up.”

The bitter taste of defeat soured Martinez’s tongue. As he left the pharmacy, he swore that the next time he had a brainstorm, he’d keep it to himself.

Acall from Garcia brought Martinez out of bed and running to the brig while still buttoning his undress tunic over his pajamas. “There was a guard here all night, Lord Captain,” Garcia said in a rapid voice as soon as Martinez entered the room. “There’s no way anyone could have got to him.”

Martinez walked to Lord Phillips’s cell, looked inside and wished he hadn’t.

Sometime over the course of the night, Phillips had torn open the acceleration couch that served as his bed, pulled out fistfuls of the foam padding, then filled his mouth with the foam and kept packing it in until he choked.

Choked to death. Phillips was half off the couch and his mouth was still full of foam and his face was black. His eyes were open and gazed overhead at the light in its cage. Bits of the foam floated in the air like motes of dust.

Dr. Xi knelt by him. He eyes were red-rimmed and his hands trembled as he made a cursory examination.

“He knew he’d crack,” Michi said after she arrived. “He knew he’d give us the names sooner or later. He decided to die first to protect his friends.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought he had the nerve for it.”

Martinez turned to her, rage poised on his tongue, and then he turned away.

“We’re still no better off than we were!” Michi cried, and slammed her fist into the metal door.

Later that morning Martinez conducted vicious, mean-spirited inspections of Missile Battery 1 and the riggers’ stores, but it didn’t make him feel any better.