Change of Command

Chapter Six

“Mail drop, Lieutenant.” Chief Conway handed Esmay the hardcopy list. Esmay managed not to sigh. All these new security procedures ate time, since every piece of incoming mail at every mail drop required her to check and initial it. Luckily, they could pick up mail only when reasonably near Fleet relays. Still, she could not believe that all these security measures were necessary on a small ship like this. She ran her eye down the list, noting that the chief had flagged three names, a pivot-major and two sergeants minor. They had received more than a sig beyond the mean number of contacts, and from multiple sources.

“No packages,” Esmay murmured, checking the columns.

“No, sir, not for them. There’s one for you, though. And Pivot-major Gunderson is getting married at the end of this tour. The return addresses match his next-of-kin address, his future in-laws’ address, and the medical center on Rockhouse Major.”

“Medical center?” Then it came to her. “Oh—of course.” Gunderson was neuroenhanced, and—“Is his betrothed also a NEM?”

“No . . . civilian softsider. Gunderson’s trying to get a control implant approved.”

That made sense—he wouldn’t want to tear his spouse apart by accident. “Still . . . a civilian marriage?”

“Security’s been all over it,” the chief said, correctly interpreting her scowl of concern. “The family’s not Fleet, but they’ve been subcontractors for two generations.”

Esmay let her gaze drift to the next name.

“Farley’s parents have sicced the whole family on her to get her to leave Fleet and work for their shipping consortium. She says she’s been hassled for years, and just trashes the notes.”

A message cube from Barin. Esmay put it aside for later viewing. It bore the sticker that meant it had passed censors at Sector HQ. He must have told his family by now—his grandmother already knew; this was probably about their response to his telling them about Esmay. She still hadn’t heard back from her own family, though with the long transit times the new security regs imposed, that wasn’t too surprising. She hoped they’d reply promptly. She and Barin would have only a short window of opportunity for their wedding, and while they wanted it to be small and informal, she still wanted it to feel like a wedding, which meant family present.

Her other mail was all official business, addressed to her position on Shrike . . . all but the package, much battered after its passage through one checkpoint after another, with Brun Meager’s name in the sender ID square.

A package from Brun? Esmay hadn’t heard from her since she left for Castle Rock with her babies. She noticed the rumpled sealtape, where security had tried to open it, as required by the new rules. She laid her hand on the ID plate, wondering momentarily how Brun had acquired her handprint, and the sealtape flicked free. Esmay unfolded the wrapping, aware of security watching her.

The last of the paper folded back to reveal . . . a strip of embroidery so exquisite that Esmay could not repress a gasp of pleasure. As wide as her hand, a long strip—she unfolded it carefully—that was nearly as tall as she was. And every centimeter covered with white-on-white embroidery and lace. She hardly dared touch it with bare hands; she felt she should be wearing white gloves to protect it. She laid it gently across her lap and went back to the box.

Under the folded strip was a square of some sheer white fabric, more like a net, encrusted with tiny seed pearls. And under that, several pages of drawings, sketches of a gown—a wedding gown, Esmay realized, with long sleeves and a high collar. It was more severe than she would have expected Brun to choose; it had almost the suggestion of a uniform about the shoulders.

The data cube in the same package explained. “Barin’s acquisitions need a way to support themselves, Hazel told me, and you need a wedding gown. Handwork of this quality is rare; if they’re working for a good designer, they’ll be paid well for it. So I took the liberty of talking to some designers. I assume you don’t want to pay a year’s salary on it. For the Fleet hero who rescued me, and an introduction to the craftswomen doing work of this quality, Goran Hiel is willing to design your gown. He’s not considered as good as Marice Limited, but I liked the slight military flair.”

It was not the first time Brun had tried to plan their life for them. This was . . . the fourth, Esmay thought, trying not to resent it. Brun had grown up expecting things to go her way; money and beauty and luck had failed her only once. No wonder she wanted to go back to running the world—or at least her friends’ lives. She was only reverting to normal; she didn’t mean to flaunt her power. Probably.

Esmay looked at the drawings and embroidery again. For a moment, Esmay imagined herself in that gown, made of such gorgeous stuff. She would look . . . no, she must not think about that, not now. It was far too grand a gown for her, for a plain lieutenant in Fleet who wanted a quiet family wedding.

But for the Landbride Suiza?

It was not too grand for the Landbride Suiza, but she was not marrying Barin as Landbride . . . she paused in folding the strip of embroidery to replace it in the box. Was she not, indeed?

A cascade of difficulties unfolded in her mind, beginning with her position as Landbride Suiza. What if someone thought her marrying Barin had anything to do with that? With the historical position of Suiza of Altiplano and the Regular Space Service, or Altiplano’s ambiguous position within the Familias Regnant?

What if her family thought that? What if—she did not like even thinking about this, about the land link that was supposed to have been formed with the Landbride ceremony—what if the land itself, Land Suiza, thought her marriage to Barin Serrano meant something beyond love?

And she hadn’t yet made formal application for a status change. Quickly, without stopping to think about any of it, she called up the relevant forms.

Officer Application For Life Partner Ceremony: Procedures and Requirements.

Although she had known about the official forms in an intellectual way, having them actually loaded onto her deskcomp felt very . . . serious. First came a long, depressing series of warnings, restrictions, and discouraging statistics: she had to initial each paragraph as having been read. Formal life partnerships (also known as marriages, the text informed her prosily) failed even among individuals of longstanding Fleet background. The report cited all the possible reasons, including some Esmay hadn’t thought of (Were there really people who were confused about their gender as adults? And how many people converted to a religion requiring celibacy after marrying someone?).

She read on, doggedly initialling one paragraph after another, until she came to the section warning officers against entanglements with persons of planetary importance. And right there, in a list that included governor-general of this, and assistant general secretary of that, and commander of the other, she found “Altiplano: Sector Commanders, immediate families of, and Landbride/Landgroom.”

Landgroom? There wasn’t any such title on Altiplano. The whole point of the Landbride was . . . her mind caught up with the warning and she glanced back at the heading. “Officers are specifically warned to avoid political entanglements, including liaisons either casual and permanent with the following classes of persons.”

She could hardly avoid a liaison with herself, but—what would this mean to Barin? She was a commissioned officer of the Regular Space Service. Surely they couldn’t hold her Landbride status against her . . . not her . . .

But if they did . . . she hadn’t been a Landbride when she and Barin met and fell in love. She had been just another ensign . . . just another ensign who had survived a mutiny and saved a planet . . . but basically, a Fleet officer. She hadn’t done anything wrong in falling for Barin, or he for her. What difference did it make that she was also the Landbride Suiza?

Come to think of it, had she ever officially informed Fleet that she was the Landbride? Lady Katerina Saenz knew, but she had been concentrating so on helping get Brun free—that was far more important—and she wasn’t at all sure she’d turned in the form. Esmay called up her personnel stats. Planet of origin, family of origin, religion, local awards and decorations . . . the Starmount, she had put that in. But she hadn’t mentioned Landbride.

Feeling guilty already, she hunted through the Personnel Procedures database for the right form, and didn’t find one. Well . . . not that many officers became Landbride. In fact, she was the only one. But this meant discussing the lapse with Captain Solis; he would not want to be surprised by it later.

“Captain, could I speak to you?”

“Certainly.” He looked up from his work, much less menacing than she had once thought him.

“It’s about these forms for a change of status,” Esmay began. “The warnings to personnel—”

His brows rose. “I don’t imagine you’re in any trouble—you and the young man are both Fleet officers. Unless you still think you’re robbing cradles.”

“No, sir. But the section on planetary entanglements—”

“I know your father’s a prominent person, but you’re a Fleet officer—”

“And a Landbride.”

“Landbride? What is that?”

“A proscribed position, it says here.” Esmay handed over the printout she’d made. “I don’t know if it applies—I am a Fleet officer, and when we met I wasn’t Landbride Suiza—”

“Umph. Landbride must be something extraordinary. What does a Landbride do, Lieutenant?”

That was not something she could explain, when she didn’t half understand it herself. “It’s—the Landbride represents the family’s bond to the land—to the soil itself—in the family holdings. She’s a symbol of the family’s commitment to the land. It’s . . . sort of religious.”

“I didn’t even know you were a Landbride,” he said.

“It happened during my leave home, after my great-grandmother died,” Esmay said. “When I came back, we were so busy with the rescue mission, I guess I forgot to put it in . . . I didn’t think about its being important.”

“Yes . . . we were all somewhat preoccupied right then. But you need to report it now. Personnel will definitely want to know, and they may have some concerns about your duties. How much time you’ll need to be away from Fleet, and so on.”

“I won’t,” Esmay said. “That’s what my father said—”

“But religion . . .” He looked thoughtful. “Religious positions usually require some actual commitment of time and effort, Lieutenant. If you aren’t there—”

Esmay thought suddenly of the spring and fall Eveners, when her great-grandmother had ridden out to do something—she didn’t know what—in the fields. No one had mentioned that to her, but—

“It all happened so fast,” she said. “And then I came back . . .” She hated the sudden pleading tone in her voice; and stopped short.

“You need to get it straightened out, whatever it is, before you marry young Serrano,” he said. “Not just because of regulations, but because you both need to know what you’re getting into. And I see here you’re in double jeopardy, with your father being a sector commander.”

“Yes, sir,” Esmay said. “But they knew that when I went into the prep school.”

“But you weren’t then about to marry one of the oldest families in Fleet,” he said. His tone held no rancor, but the very matter-of-factness of it set a barrier of steel between her and what she hoped for.

Esmay nodded, and withdrew. Master Chief Cattaro, after rummaging in the Admin database for the correct form, gnawed the corner of her lip. “There’s a procedure, Lieutenant . . . there’s always a procedure. Let me just check . . .” Another dive into the database. “Ah. What I think will work is a 7653, an Application for Exception, Unspecified, and a 78B-4, an Incident Report, Personnel Infraction, Unspecified, and then you’ll need a 9245 . . . no, actually, two of them. One to accompany each of the others.” Chief Cattaro grinned, looking happier with each additional form. “And it might be just as well to file your 8813—your application for permission for permanent bond—linked to the code tag for your pre-commissioning records, because that will have your prep-school classifications, and of course you’ll need . . .”

“Chief, I’m not going to have time to do all that at once.”

“Best get started then,” Cattaro said. She had the quiet twinkle of the senior NCO who has just been able to dump a load of work on a junior officer. “I’ll just pipe it to your desk, shall I? Or would you rather work on it in here?”

She could always fill in the blanks while working on something else.

“My desk, please, Chief.”

“Yes, sir.

Filling out the forms to Chief Cattaro’s satisfaction kept her busy the rest of that shift and part of the next, along with her other work. For reasons known only to the forms designers in Personnel, none of the forms asked for the information in the same order, or even the same format, which made it impossible to simply port data from one to the other. Family name first here, but last there. Middle name or names as initials in this form, but spelled out in that one. Planet of origin by a code from a table, or spelled out, or by a code from another table, which didn’t agree with the first.

They really did not want Landbrides to marry into Fleet, Esmay decided.

Barin’s message cube—when she finally had time to put it in the reader—was less informative than she’d hoped. He loved her—she couldn’t hear that too often—and he was still waiting to hear from his parents. He was afraid they’d be upset by the administrative decision to make him responsible for the support of the women brought back from Our Texas. It was going to be hard to convince Personnel to approve the paperwork for a status change, when clearly he couldn’t afford any more dependents.

Esmay wondered if someone in Admin had gone bonkers. Why were they demanding that Barin pay support for these women? He had included the data he thought she’d need—evidently he hadn’t yet found the sections of the application which forbade her to exist, or him to marry her. He promised to write again, but pointed out that with his entire salary going to the support of the NewTex women, he would be limited to ship-to-ship transfers within the Fleet postal system.

Esmay added his information to her paperwork, and then completed what she could of her application, along with the belated Notice of Relationship papers. It was all so silly. They’d known she was a sector commander’s daughter when they accepted her into Fleet, and Altiplano had no desire to influence the Familias Grand Council anyway. It had never even tried to get a Seat in Council. Why was it on the proscribed list? And if they were going to put Landbrides on, why hadn’t they done the elementary research to find out that there was no such thing as a Landgroom? Cursing the anonymous “they” in silence, Esmay finished the forms, stamped and thumb-sealed them, and took them back to the captain’s office for his clerk to make the required copies and ready them for transit.

She went back to the rest of the message cube later. The former Rangers’ wives, now settled uneasily in an apartment block on Rockhouse Major, were constantly asking Barin for assurances he could not provide.

“Grandmother knows why I did it—and agrees that it was justifiable under the circumstances—but she warned me that Fleet would not be pleased, no matter what kind of report she turned in. Headquarters feels I overstepped my authority, and created a huge financial obligation for them, not to mention a publicity nightmare. They’ve insisted that I contribute to their maintenance, though my whole salary won’t pay the grocery bills alone. Everyone—from the women to the admirals—seems to think it’s my place to come up with a solution. And I’m stumped. Those women don’t seem to be capable of anything but sitting around complaining, and now the civil authorities are jumping on me because they won’t send their children to school.”

Esmay thought of the women she’d seen in the shuttle during the evacuation: the long-sleeved, long-skirted dresses, the headscarves, the work-worn hands. If they were as religious as the Old Believers on Altiplano, they’d be very uncomfortable on a space station, or even one of the more—her mind struggled for awhile, looking for a different word, but finally settled on the first—advanced planets.

She hadn’t thought much about the women and children removed—or rescued—on that mission since leaving the task force. She’d assumed the women who had been prisoners had received medical treatment, and that “someone” had done “something” about the others.

Apparently not. Though it was hardly fair to land all the responsibility on Barin, if he was going to be held accountable, then clearly she herself had to do something. What a nuisance it was, being stuck on a different ship! They couldn’t just talk it over, share ideas, come up with solutions.

She prepared queries for Barin and the Fleet library-search service, and at the next downjump sent them off.

The idea woke her out of a sound sleep some nights later, and she lay there wide-eyed, amazed at herself. The women needed a place to live and raise their children, preferably on a planet. They needed a way to earn a living. Brun had suggested the latter, with her comments about their skill in handwork. And now Esmay had herself thought of a solution to the former problem. Altiplano. As the Landbride Suiza, she could settle them on Suiza lands. In their own village, if necessary, where they could follow their own customs. Their handwork could be exported, along with the genestock, to fill out their income beyond what they could produce from the land; she would be willing to give them a start of livestock from her own personal holdings. Their children could grow up as Altiplanans; in a few generations, they’d be assimilated completely.

The more she thought about it, the better it seemed. The women might even find husbands on Altiplano, if they wanted them. Since their beliefs fit somewhere on the great branching tree of religions that had grown out of Old Earth Christianity, surely they would find the tone of Altiplano’s Old Believers congenial. She tried not to think of those passages in her child’s history book about the religious disputes. Her great-grandmother had insisted that they were all the result of insufficient humility and excessive arrogance. And anyway, religious freedom was now part of the Altiplanan legal code, though Altiplano lacked the diversity of culture of Fleet or the more cosmopolitan planets.

Since she couldn’t go back to sleep, she turned on her desk unit and recorded a cube for Barin with the gist of her idea, then one for Luci, telling her cousin all about the wedding plans, and Barin’s problems, and asking about vacancies on Suiza lands. In her mind’s eye, she saw them settled somewhere in the south, in a tidy little village of stone houses, with kitchen gardens. Something very like what Barin had described as the households they’d come from.

By the time she’d populated their pastures with Cateri goats and cattelopes, and imagined them all cheerful and productive, with laughing children playing in the lanes, she was sleepy again. She went back to bed sure that all problems had solutions and this one had just been solved.

Next morning she was not quite as sure—she thought she remembered that they were free-birthers, or at least their men were—but she put the cubes in the outgoing mail collection anyway, and went on with her work.

Luci Suiza came through the front hall on her way in from the polo fields—she needed a shower before the Vicarios family showed up for dinner, and had let Esmay’s half-brother ride her pony cool. That was one reason, and the other was that she’d seen the little red mail van driving up to the house. Philip had been sending her a note every day; when she was lucky she got to them before anyone else. She picked up his note, and a message cube from Esmay, and took them up to her room.

She read the note before she showered, stripping off her sweaty clothes and tingling all over from the phrases he’d used, as well as the cooler air wafting in through the window. Tonight—tonight the parents would have their final meeting, and after that, they would be betrothed.

After her shower, wrapped in a fluffy white robe, Luci fed Esmay’s cube into the reader in her room, and brushed her hair as the message came up. Esmay was fine; she hadn’t heard back from Barin about his family yet; Brun had sent her gorgeous samples of embroidery and sketches for a gown; Fleet had a lot of silly rules about who could marry whom, so she was having to fill out lots of forms . . . Luci paused, pinned up her hair, and glanced at the clock. She still had time. She made a long arm, pulled her cosmetics closer to the cube reader, and tried to do her makeup and watch the message at the same time.

Fleet didn’t approve of officers marrying Landbrides. So resign, Luci thought to herself, and sure enough the next bit was a long, rambling apology and then the admission that Esmay thought she should resign. Was Luci interested?

Luci was interested; Luci heaved a sigh at her absent cousin, and applied lip color. No matter what anyone said, there was no way to play polo and end up with soft moist lips, without using cosmetics. The message continued; Luci kept an eye on the clock. She liked her cousin; she admired her intensely, but Phil would be here in twenty-five minutes.

Esmay’s wonderful idea of settling the women from Our Texas and their children on Suiza lands took her by surprise; the eyeliner she’d been applying so carefully swiped up and away, a dark streak across her face before she caught herself. What?! Nineteen women, and their children—dozens of children—all to be settled on Suiza lands? Free-birthers, from a planet with a barbarous religious cult . . . she could just imagine what the priests would say about that! Esmay babbled on about their handwork skills, their experience on low-tech planets. We are not low-tech, Luci thought angrily. Idiot. Fool.

Then she caught sight of her face in the mirror, and the clock, and the anger roared in her like a brushfire. Esmay had no right! Esmay was not a proper Landbride—no one who really understood, who really cared, could have considered that for an instant . . .

Luci dashed into the bathroom, nearly trampling two of the younger children.

“Luci, what happened to your—”

“Be quiet!” she snarled at them, and scrubbed the makeup off her face, leaving streaks on the facecloth. Stupid Esmay. Ridiculous Esmay. It was a good thing she’d left, and a good thing she wanted to resign as Landbride, and Luci would pluck her hair herself if she had a chance.

When she got back to her room and looked out the window to see if the Vicarios vehicle was coming yet, the alternating blue and gold of shadow and late sun streaking the grass of the polo fields stabbed her heart. It was so beautiful, so beautiful it hurt. How could Esmay not want this? How could she care so little, that she would think of violating the land for a bunch of outlanders?

She rested her forearms on the windowsill and drank in the cool air scented with early roses and apple blossom. Somewhere in the distance, horses whinnied; the grooms would be mixing evening feeds. This was what she wanted, what she had always wanted—well, this and Philip to share it with. Land to cherish and nourish and protect, beauty to nurture, the ancient cycles of the land.

Light reflected from something moving on the road, then flashed straight in her eyes when the vehicle turned into their drive. The Vicarios, no doubt, unless it was her father returning late from the city. No time now for cosmetics, though she touched her chapped lips with color again. The blue—and-white overtunic and white skirt of the courted maiden. After tonight, she would wear the blue skirt of the bride-to-be.

Esmay, you fool! was her last thought as she closed her door and ran down the upper passage to the stairs.

The Vicarios family had gone back to their city house by midnight. At this third of the formal meetings (alternating from one family’s home to the other’s), the parents had been pleasantly relaxed. The exchange of gifts, the ritual speeches, the contrived—but still effective—“unexpected” visit of the priest who put her hand in Philip’s, and tied a silk scarf around the pair of them—all had gone without a hitch. Luci and Philip had a few minutes alone in the rose garden as their elders watched from the lighted doorway; he kissed her respectfully on the brow, and murmured her name.

Philip went with his parents when they left, of course. From now on, no more stolen moments, let alone hours, in which to discover each other . . . from now on, they were formally betrothed, and that betrothal had its own rules. Maddening, perhaps intentionally so. Luci filched another stuffed date from the tray a sleepy maidservant was carrying back to the kitchen, and followed her father into the library. Her uncle and grandfather, already relaxed in chairs by the fireplace, looked up as she came in.

“Luci, you should be in bed.”

“Papa, I’m not sleepy.” He raised his eyebrows at her, but she didn’t move. “Papa, I had a message cube from Esmay today.”

Her uncle Casimir sighed. “Esmay . . . now there’s another problem. Berthold, did you get anywhere in the Landsmen’s Guild?”

“Nowhere. Oh, Vicarios won’t oppose us, but that’s because of Luci, and his support is half-hearted. It would be different if she hadn’t left so young, I think. They don’t really remember her, and even though they awarded her the Starmount, and consider her a hero, they do not want a Landbride—any Landbride but especially our Landbride—connected to an outlander family. Cosca told me frankly that even if she moved here, and also her husband, he would oppose it. Nothing good ever came from the stars, he insisted.”

“And the votes?”

“Enough for a challenge, Casi, I’m sure of it. No, the only way out of this is for Esmaya to come and talk to them herself.”

“Or resign.”

“Or resign, but—will she?”

Luci spoke up. “She mentioned that in her cube.”

“What—resigning? Why?”

“Her precious Fleet seems to think about us the way the Landsmen’s Guild thinks about them. She says they have some kind of regulation forbidding officers to marry Landbrides.”

Her father snorted. “Do they have one forbidding officers to be Landbrides? How ridiculous!”

“Are you serious?” Casimir asked. “They have something specific about Landbrides? How would they know?”

“I don’t know,” Luci said. “That’s just what she said. And she said why didn’t we take in all those women brought back from Our Texas—she was sure they’d fit in.”

A stunned silence, satisfying by its depth and length.

“She what?” Casimir said finally. “Aren’t those women—”

“Free-birthers and religious cultists,” Luci said, with satisfaction. “Exactly.”

“But—but the priests will object,” Berthold said.

“Not as badly as the Landsmen’s Guild, if they hear of it. Dear God, I thought she had more sense than that!”

“She is in love,” Luci pointed out, willing now to be magnanimous. “Apparently Fleet is taking Barin’s salary to pay for their upkeep—at least some of it—and Esmay’s trying to help him out. Nineteen of them, after all, and all those children.”

“At our expense.” Casimir shook his head. “Well, that settles it. She’ll have to resign, as soon as I can get word to her. The Trustees will certainly not approve this, if I were willing to let it be known.” He gave Luci a hard look. “You didn’t tell Philip, I hope.”

“Of course not.” Luci glared at her uncle. Esmay might not have any sense, but she knew what the family honor required.

“I hope she does name you Landbride, Luci,” Casimir said. “You’ll be a good one.”

Luci had a sudden spasm of doubt. Was she being fair to Esmay, who after all had had so many bad things happen to her? But underneath the doubt, the same exultation she had felt when Esmay gave her the brown mare . . . mine, it’s mine, I can take care of it, nobody can hurt it . . .

“I wonder if we could place an ansible call,” Casimir said.

“Surely it’s not that urgent,” Berthold said.

“What if she just packs them up and ships them to us? Better safe than sorry.”

“She won’t,” Luci said. “I’m sure she won’t.” She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew—probably by now Esmay had figured out for herself why it was a bad idea, and the next mail would bring apologies.

“I hope not,” her father said. He yawned. “Oh, do go to bed, Luci! I’m exhausted.”

Luci gave him a kiss and went up to bed, sure she would not sleep for the warring emotions inside her. She undressed quickly, hung her clothes up, and slipped naked between the sheets, taking great lungfuls of the fragrant night air. She hoped Esmay felt this way about her Barin . . . if her poor cousin couldn’t be Landbride, she at least deserved a great love.

Esmay came onto the bridge to find Captain Solis scowling. Now what had she done or left undone?

“I was afraid I’d lose you,” the captain said.

“Lose me?”

“New orders. They’re sending me a new exec, and you over to line ships again. I knew they would eventually. Even though we can always use someone with your talents in SAR, they consider it a waste.”

He handed over the message cube. “It’s all in there; we’ll be dropping you off at Topaz.”

“Topaz—” A civilian station.

“In transit between ships is a good time to use a few days’ leave, Lieutenant. Assuming you have a use for it.”

Barin. Her heart hammered. Now if she could only figure out how . . .

“Navarino is in Sector Six. Gyrfalcon, I hear, is going to be detached from picket duty and sent back to Castle Rock, and thence to Sector One—” Solis did not crack a smile, but she did. She knew the regulations: all she had to do was show up at the right time. The route she chose from Topaz to Sector Six HQ was her own choice. There was at least a chance that she could meet Barin at some intermediate station. If she could get word to him. If she could get leave.