Once a Hero

Chapter Ten

“Looks like you came prepared,” Major Pitak said, as Esmay lugged her carryall of cubes and printouts into the assigned conference room. This was a large hall in the Technical Schools wing, T-1, its raked seating curved around a small stage.

“I hope so, sir,” Esmay said. She could think of two dozen more cubes she might need, if someone asked one of the less likely questions. She had come early, hoping for a few minutes alone to set up, but Pitak, Commander Seveche, and Commander Atarin were already there. Her chain of command, she realized.

“Would you like any help with your displays?” Atarin asked. “The remote changer in this room hangs up sometimes.”

“That would be helpful, yes, sir. The first are all set up on this cube—” she held it out. “But I’ve got additional visuals if the group asks particular questions.”

“Fine, then. I’ve asked Ensign Serrano to make himself available—I’ll call him in.”

Serrano. She hadn’t met him yet, and after what she’d said at dinner, no one had gossiped more about him in her presence. She hadn’t wanted to seek him out. What could she have said? I saved your aunt’s life; your grandmother talked to me; let’s be friends? No. But she had been curious.

Her first thought when he walked in was that he had the look of a Serrano: dark, compact, springy in motion, someone whose entire ancestry was spangled with stars, someone whose family expected their offspring to become admirals, or at least in contention. Her second was that he seemed impossibly young to bear the weight of such ambition. If he had not worn ensign’s insignia, she’d have guessed him to be about sixteen, and in the prep school.

She had known there were young Serranos, of course, even before she got to the Koskiusko. They could not be hatched out full-grown as officers of some intermediate grade. They had to be born, and grow, like anyone else. But she had never seen it happen, and the discovery of a young Serrano—younger than she was—disturbed her.

“Lieutenant Suiza, this is Ensign Serrano.” The glint in his dark eyes looked very familiar.

“Sir,” he said formally, and twitched as if he would have bowed in other circumstances. “I’m supposed to keep your displays straightened out.” Generations of command had seeped into his voice, but it was still expressive.

“Very well,” Esmay said. She handed over the cube with her main displays, and rummaged in the carryall. “That one’s got the displays that I know I’ll need—and here, this is the outline. They’re in order, but in case someone wants to see a previous display, these are the numbers I’ll be calling for. Now these—” she gave him another three cubes, “—these have illustrations I might need if someone brings up particular points. I’m afraid you’ll have to use the cube index . . . I didn’t know I’d have any assistance, so there’s no hardcopy listing. I’ll tell you which cube, and then the index code.”

“Fine, sir. I can handle that.” She had no doubt he could.

Other officers were arriving, greeting each other. Ensign Serrano took her cubes and went off somewhere—Esmay hoped to a projection booth—while she organized the rest of her references. The room filled, but arriving officers left a little group of seats in front as if they’d had stars painted on them. In a way, they did . . . the admirals and the captain came in together, chatting amiably. Admiral Dossignal nodded at her; he seemed even taller next to Captain Hakin. On the captain’s other side, Admiral Livadhi fiddled with his chair controls, and Admiral Uppanos, commander of the branch hospital, leaned toward his own aide with some comment. Atarin stood to introduce Esmay; with the admirals’ arrival, the meeting started.

Esmay began with the same background material. No one made comments, at least not that she could hear. All her displays projected right-side-up and correctly oriented . . . she had checked them repeatedly, but she’d had a nagging fear. This time, her recent research in mind, she added what she had learned about the Benignity’s methods, about the implications of Fleet protocols. Heads nodded; she recognized an alert interest far beyond the ensigns’ hunger for exciting stories.

When the questions began, she found herself exhilarated by the quality of thought they implied. These were people who saw the connections she had only just found, who had been looking for them, who were hungry for more data, more insights. She answered as best she could, referencing everything she said. They nodded, and asked more questions. She called for visuals, trusting that the Serrano ensign would get the right ones in the right order. He did, as if he were reading her mind.

“So the yacht didn’t actually get involved in the battle? Aside from that one killer-escort?”

“No, sir. I have only secondhand knowledge of this, but it’s my understanding that the yacht had only minimal shields. It had been used primarily to suggest the presence of other armed vessels, and would not have fired if the Benignity vessel hadn’t put itself in such a perfect situation.”

“It can only have confused them briefly,” a lieutenant commander mused from near the back. “If they had accurate scans, the mass data would show—”

“But I wanted to ask about that ore-carrier,” someone else interrupted. “Why did Serrano have it leave the . . . what was it? Zalbod?”

“It’s my understanding that she didn’t, sir. The miners themselves decided to join in—”

“And it shouldn’t have got that far, not with the specs you’ve shown. How did they get it moving so fast?”

Esmay had no answer for that, but someone else in Drive & Maneuver did. A brisk debate began between members of the D&M unit . . . Esmay had never been attracted to the theory and practice of space-drive design, but she could follow much of what they said. If this equipment could be reconfigured it would give a 32 percent increase in effective acceleration . . . .

“They’d still arrive too late to do any good, but that’s within the performance you’re reporting. I wonder which of them thought it up . . .”

“If that’s what they did,” another D&M officer said. “For all we know, they cooked up something unique.”

Esmay snorted, surprising herself and startling them all into staring at her. “Sorry, sir,” she said. “Fact is, they cooked up a considerable brew, and I heard about the aftermath.” Scuttlebutt said that Lord Thornbuckle’s daughter had been dumped naked in a two-man rockhopper pod . . . supposedly undamaged . . . and the pod jettisoned by mistake into the weapons-crowded space between the ore-carrier and Xavier. Esmay doubted it was an accident . . . but the girl had survived.

Brows raised, the officer said, “I wonder . . . if they added a chemical rocket component . . . that might have given them a bit of extra push.”

The talk went on. They wanted to know every detail of the damage to Despite from the mutiny: what weapons had been used, and what bulkheads had been damaged? What about fires? What about controls, the environmental system failsafes, the computers? The admirals, who had sat quietly listening to the questions of their subordinates, started asking questions of their own.

Esmay found herself saying “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know that,” more often than she liked. She had not had time to examine the spalling caused by projectile hand weapons . . . to assess the effect of sonics on plumbing connections . . .

“Forensics . . .” she started to say once, and stopped short at their expressions.

“Forensics cares about evidence of wrongdoing,” Major Pitak said, as if that were a moral flaw. “They don’t know diddly about materials . . . they come asking us what it means if something’s lost a millimeter of its surface.”

“That’s not entirely fair,” another officer said. “There’s that little fellow in the lab back on Sturry . . . I’ve gone to him a few times asking about wiring problems.”

“But in general—”

“In general yes. Now, Lieutenant, did you happen to notice whether the bulkhead damage you mentioned in the crew compartments caused any longitudinal variation in artificial gravity readings?”

She had not. She hadn’t noticed a lot of things, in the middle of the battle, but no one was scolding her. They were galloping on, like headstrong horses, from one person’s curiosity to another’s. Arguments erupted, subsided, and began again with new questions.

Esmay wondered how long it would go on. She was exhausted; she was sure they had run over the scheduled meeting time—not that anyone was going to tell the captain and senior officers to vacate the place. Finally Atarin stood, and the conversation died.

“We’re running late; we need to wrap this up. Lieutenant, I think I speak for all of us when I say that this was a fascinating presentation—a very competent briefing. You must have done a lot of background work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It’s rare to find a young officer so aware of the way things fit together.”

“Sir, several other officers asked questions ahead of time, which sent me in the right directions.”

“Even so. A good job, and we thank you.” The others nodded; Esmay was sure the expressions held genuine respect. She wondered why it surprised her—why her surprise made her feel faintly guilty. The admirals and the captain left first, then the others trailed away, still talking among themselves. Finally they were all gone, the last of them trailing out the door. Esmay sagged.

“That was impressive, Lieutenant,” Ensign Serrano said as he handed her the stack of cubes. “And you kept track of which display went with which question.”

“And you handled them perfectly,” Esmay said. “It can’t have been easy, when I had to skip from one cube to another.”

“Not that difficult—you managed to slide in those volume numbers every time. You certainly surprised them.”

“Them?”

“Your audience. Shouldn’t have—they had recordings of the talk you gave the juniors. This was just fleshed out, the grown-up version.”

Was this impertinence? Or genuine admiration? Esmay wasn’t sure. “Thanks,” she said, and turned away. She would worry about it tomorrow, when Major Pitak would no doubt keep her busy enough that she wouldn’t really have time. The young Serrano gave her a cheerful nod before taking himself off somewhere.

The next morning, Major Pitak said, “You know, there are still people who think that mutiny must’ve been planned ahead.”

Esmay managed not to gulp. “Even now?”

“Yes. They argue that if Hearne knew she was going to turn traitor, she’d have her supporters in key positions, and it would have been impossible to take the ship without doing critical damage.”

“Oh.” Esmay could think of nothing further to say. If after all the investigation and the courts-martial, they wanted to believe that, she didn’t think she could talk them out of it.

“Fleet’s in a difficult situation right now . . . what with the government in transition, and all these scandals . . . I don’t suppose you’d heard much about Lepescu.” Pitak was looking at her desk display, a lack of eye contact that Esmay realized must be intentional.

“A few rumors.”

“Well. It was more than rumors—that is, I know someone who knew . . . more than she wanted. Admiral Lepescu liked war and hunting . . . for the same reasons.”

“Oh?”

“He got to kill people.” Pitak’s voice was cold. “He hunted people, that is, and your Commander Serrano caught him at it, and shot him. A result that suits me, but not everyone.”

“Was he a Benignity agent?”

Pitak looked surprised. “Not that anyone noticed. I’ve never heard that rumor. Why?”

“Well . . . I heard that Commander Garrivay—who had the command of—”

“Yes, yes, the force sent to Xavier. I don’t forget that quickly, Suiza!”

“Sorry, sir. Anyway, I heard he had served under Lepescu. And Garrivay was a Benignity agent . . . or at least a traitor in their pay.”

“Mmm. Keep in mind that there are officers on this ship who served under Lepescu some time back. Far enough back not to be caught by Serrano, but . . . that might not be a healthy thing to speculate about, whether he was an agent or not.”

“No, sir. Anyway, he’s dead, so it doesn’t matter.” The moment it was out of her mouth she wished she hadn’t said it; the look on Pitak’s face was eloquent. It mattered, if only to the dead, and given Pitak’s expression it mattered to some of the living too. It probably mattered to Heris Serrano. “Sorry,” she said, feeling the hot flush on her face. “That was stupid . . .”

“Um. Just watch yourself, Lieutenant.”

“Sir.”

Since she didn’t have another public appearance to get ready for, she headed for the gym when she came offshift. She’d missed out on her regular exercise.

The gym was crowded at this hour, but almost at once one of the machines came vacant, and the jig who’d been leaning against the bulkhead waiting waved her on. “Go on, Lieutenant. I’d really rather have one of the horsebots.”

Esmay climbed onto the machine and set it for her usual workout. She had been aware of quiet competition to have the machine next to hers in the exercise room, the eagerness to invite her onto wallball teams despite her indifferent play, the little favors offered casually. She supposed it would go away in time, when people forgot about her so-called fame. She had never had really close friends in Fleet, and she didn’t expect to acquire any now. Her mind hung on that thought. Why shouldn’t she have friends? If people liked her, and they seemed to . . . .

It was only her transient fame. It had nothing to do with her real self.

Could she be sure?

She worked harder, until she was breathless and sweating and all thought of friends had vanished in the struggle for breath and strength.

At dinner, she listened to the chatter at her table with a mind uncluttered by worry about a coming presentation. Ensign Zintner’s enthusiasm for Hull & Architecture reminded her of Luci’s uncomplicated enthusiasm for stock breeding. She could like Zintner. She glanced around the mess hall, and found another female lieutenant watching her. It made her feel itchy, and she looked back at her plate. The hard workout had damped her appetite; she would be hungry in three hours, but not now.

On her way out, two other lieutenants stopped her. “If you don’t have duty tonight, would you like to come watch a show with us?” They had asked before, but she had been preparing for the discussion group presentation. Now she had no excuse ready. She agreed to come, expecting to slip away after a few minutes.

Instead, she found herself locked into a row of others, with someone leaning over the back of her seat to speak to her. When the show started, she had that much peace, but as soon as it was over, she found herself the center of attraction.

It was ludicrous. It could not be real liking, real interest. It was only her notoriety. She hated herself for enjoying it, even the small amount that she did enjoy. She shouldn’t like it; the only legitimate way for an Altiplano woman to be the center of attention was as matriarch of a family. Her great-grandmother would scold . . . her great-grandmother was light years away, if she was still alive.

Esmay shivered, and someone said “Are you all right . . . Esmay?” She looked over. A lieutenant . . . Kartin Doublos . . . so the use of her first name was not familiarity, but the normal usage between those of the same rank off duty.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just thought of my great-grandmother.” He looked puzzled, but shrugged it off.

Over the next weeks, she noticed that the interest in her, the competition for her attention, did not slack off. It puzzled her. What could they hope to gain? What were they trying to prove?

Tickling at the edge of her mind were all the things Admiral Serrano had said . . . that legal counsel had said . . . and her father . . . and Major Pitak. She pushed them aside. She could not cope with a demand to break out of the comfortable safe niche she had created for herself. She would crawl back into it, pull it around her, an inviolable shield.

The nightmares came oftener, further proof that she was not, could not be, the person these others seemed determined to see. Not every night, but especially after those times when someone had talked her into a game, a show, some recreation which had—as far as she could tell—no connection with the content of either set of dreams. She started running a noise generator in her compartment, hoping it would cover any sound she made. No one had complained, but when she woke, heart pounding, at 0300, she was always afraid she had cried out in real life the way she had in the dream.

The dreams tangled, the helpless child caught in a war she did not understand merging abruptly into the terrified young officer belly-down on a bloody deck, firing into the haze.

She considered going to Medical. She would have to, if it affected her performance. So far it had not, that she could tell. Pitak seemed pleased with her progress; she got along fine with Master Chief Sivars, whose massive frame was so unlike Seb Coron’s that she was startled only occasionally by the same kind of attitude.

“And how is Lieutenant Suiza shaping, Major?” Commander Seveche asked, at the quarterly review.

“Very well, of course.” Pitak looked down at the record cube she held. “She’s worked hard to get herself up to speed, though she has no background in heavy engineering and she’ll never be the technical help that Bascock was.”

“She shouldn’t be technical track at all,” Seveche said. “That presentation to the senior tactical came out of a command-track mind.”

“She asked for technical,” Admiral Dossignal said, but with the quirk in the corner of his mouth that his subordinates knew meant he was playing devil’s advocate.

“I think it was the colonial background,” Seveche said. “I looked up Altiplano’s cultural index. Even though she’s a general’s daughter, they have no tradition of women commanders.”

“Of women in the military, period,” Dossignal said. “I saw the same report.”

“Well, then. And the juniors are around her like bees around honey.”

“Which she isn’t comfortable with,” Pitak said. “She’s muttered to me about it, claims not to understand it. If that’s honest, and I think it is, she’s got no insight into her abilities . . .”

“Which you say aren’t technical.”

“Well . . .” Pitak considered. “I don’t want to overstate it. She’s got the brains, and she’s applying herself. I can’t speak for her qualifications in scan, but she’s merely a studious amateur where H&A’s concerned. And there’s her habit of seeing everything in operational terms.”

“Example?”

“Well . . . she’s completed the second course in hull design, and I assigned her a report on the modifications necessary to support the new stealth hardware. I was looking for the usual, what I’d have gotten from Ensign Zintner: where to install it based on its need for power, its effect on the center of gravity, and so on. All technical. What she came up with was an analysis of the performance changes in terms of operational capability. I pointed this out, and she blinked twice and said ‘Oh—but isn’t that what really matters?’ ”

Seveche and Dossignal laughed. “Yes,” said the admiral, “I see what you mean. To her, everything matters because of its use in battle—”

“Which is what’s supposed to matter to us,” Pitak said. “I know that . . . but I also know that I personally get sidetracked into neat engineering problems, technical bits for the sake of technical bits. She doesn’t appear to, and I wonder if she ever did, even in scan.”

“I doubt it,” Dossignal said. “Because of her record on Xavier, they sent along the entire personnel file. Along with all those ordinary fitness reports, in which she came up bland and colorless and mediocre, there are her Academy ratings. Guess which courses she topped out in?”

“Not tactics and maneuver?”

“No . . . though she was in the top 5 percent there. Try military history. She wrote a paper analyzing the Braemar Campaign, and was invited to consider an appointment to postgraduate work as a scholar. She turned it down, and applied for technical track instead, where she’d never excelled.”

“That’s odd,” Pitak said, frowning.

“It’s more than odd,” Dossignal said. “It makes no sense. I can’t find anything in the file to show that she was counseled against command track, though I do find the usual comments about non-Fleet family backgrounds down in her prep school files. Yet they assigned her to technical track, purely on the basis of her request and her fairly mediocre scores.”

“What were her personal evaluations?”

“What you’d expect for an outsider who wasn’t pushing for command track . . . I don’t know why we still use those things. If Personnel would ever go back and check officer performance against the predictions of the personal evaluations, they’d have to admit they’re useless. She came out midrange in everything except initiative, where she was low-average.”

“On which I’d rate her quite high,” Pitak said. “She doesn’t wait to be told, if she knows what she’s doing.”

“The question is, what do we do about her?” Dossignal asked. “We’ve got her for a couple of years, and we can teach her a lot about maintenance . . . but is that the best use of her talents?”

Seveche looked at Atarin and Pitak. “I’d have to say no, sir, it’s not. She’s a good speaker, a good tactical analyst—she might make a good instructor. Or . . .” His voice trailed away.

“Or the kind of ship commander she was in the Xavier action,” Dossignal said. Silence held the group for a moment.

“That’s a risky prediction,” Atarin muttered.

“True. But—compare her even to officers several ranks ahead of her, in their first combat command. I think we’d agree that she has abilities she has shown only rarely—abilities Fleet needs, if she’s really got them and can unlock them. I see that as our task: getting this potentially outstanding young officer to show her stuff.”

“But how, sir?” asked Pitak. “I like the girl, truly. But—she’s so reserved, even with me, even after this much time. How do we get the lid off?”

“I don’t know,” Dossignal admitted. “Engineering is my strength, not combat. I know we can’t ask Captain Hakin, because he’s half-convinced she’s a mutineer. But if we all agree that the best use of Lieutenant Suiza is elsewhere, then at least we’ll be looking for opportunities to nudge her that way.”

Atarin chuckled suddenly. “When I think of all the youngsters who fantasize being heroic ship captains . . . all the untalented children of famous families . . . and here’s a shy, inhibited genius who just needs a good kick in the pants—”

“I just hope we can administer that kick in the pants before life does,” Pitak said. “However hard we kick her, reality can do worse.”

“Amen to that,” Dossignal said. He picked up another file. “Now—let’s get to the ensigns. Zintner, for instance—”

Esmay had not run into the Serrano ensign for some time; she had seen him occasionally playing wallball or working out with someone on the mats, but he had never approached her. Now, the rotation in table assignments put him at hers. She nodded at him as the others introduced themselves.

“You’re in remote sensing, aren’t you, Ensign?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your first choice?”

“Actually no.” He made a face. “But I had a short-term assignment right out of the Academy, and then I was off-schedule for normal ship rotations.”

“It’s a wonder,” a jig to his right said. “I thought Serranos got whatever they wanted.”

The Serrano ensign stiffened for an instant, but then shrugged. “It’s a reputation perhaps not quite deserved,” he said, in a colorless voice.

“And what’s your specialty?” Esmay asked the jig. What was his name? Plecht, or something like that.

“I’m taking an advanced course,” the jig said, as if that should impress her. “I’m doing research in low-temperature material fabrication,” he said. “But probably nobody would understand it unless they were working in the field.”

Esmay considered her options, and decided on blandness. He was making enough of an idiot of himself already. “I’m sure you’re very good at what you do,” she said, with as little expression as she could manage. It was still too much; two of the ensigns, but not Barin Serrano, snorted and choked on their soup.

On the way out, she got two invitations to come watch the junior officers’ parpaun semifinals match.

“No, thank you,” she said to each. “I really should spend some time in the gym myself.” It was not an excuse; she was still having trouble with nightmares anytime she did not work out to exhaustion. She was sure she would outlast them in time, but for now she was spending a couple of hours a day in the gym.

The parpaun matches had thinned out the gym; Esmay saw only three others, each engrossed in his or her own program. She turned on her favorite machine. Someone had left the display wall on its mirrored setting; she faced her reflection and automatically looked away from the face. Her legs, she saw, looked hard and fit. She should probably do more with her upper-body. But what? She didn’t feel like swimming, or using the machines designed for upper-body-building. What she wanted was a scramble up some rocks, nothing really hard but movements less regular than a machine would demand.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant . . .”

Esmay jumped, then was furious with herself for reacting that way. She looked; it was Ensign Serrano, with what she privately considered that look on his face.

“Yes?” she said.

“I just wondered . . . if the lieutenant . . . would like a sparring partner.”

She stared at him in sheer surprise. It was the last invitation she’d expected from a Serrano . . . from him. “Not you!” got out before she could censor it; he flushed but looked stubborn.

“Not me? Why?”

“I thought you were different,” she said.

This time he understood; the flush deepened, and then he went as pale as a bronze-skinned Serrano could and pulled himself up angrily. “I don’t have to suck up to you. I have more influence in my family—” He stopped, but Esmay knew what he would have said—could have said. With the Serrano Admiralty behind him, he didn’t need her. “I liked you,” he said, still angry. “Yes, my cousin mentioned you, and yes, of course I saw the media coverage. But that’s not why—”

Esmay felt guilty for misjudging him, and perversely annoyed with him for being the occasion of her misjudgment. “I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she felt more gracious about it. “It was very rude of me.”

He stared at her. “You’re apologizing?”

“Of course.” That got out before Esmay could filter it, the tone as surprised as his and making it clear that in her world all decent people apologized. “I misinterpreted your actions—”

“But you’re—” He stopped short again, clearly rethinking what he had started to say. “It’s just—I don’t think it needed an apology. Not from a lieutenant to an ensign, even if you did misunderstand my motives.”

“But it was an insult,” Esmay said, her own temper subsiding. “You had a right to be angry.”

“Yes . . . but you making a mistake and me being angry isn’t enough for an apology like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” He looked around; Esmay became aware of unnatural silence, and when she looked saw the other exercisers turning quickly away. “Not here, sir. If you really want to know—”

“I do.” While she had a captive informer willing to explain, she wanted to know why, because it had bothered her for years that Fleet officers routinely shrugged off their discourtesies without apology.

“Then—no offense intended—we should go somewhere else.”

“For once I wish this was home,” Esmay said. “You’d think on a ship this size there’d be someplace quiet to talk that didn’t imply things . . .”

“If the lieutenant would consider a suggestion?”

“Go ahead.”

“There’s always the Wall,” he said. “Up in the gardens.”

“Gardens don’t imply things?” Esmay said, brows rising. They certainly did on Altiplano, where They’re in the garden meant knowing smirks and raised brows.

“No—the Wall. The climbing wall. Even if you haven’t ever climbed a real rock . . .”

“I have,” Esmay said. “You mean they have a fake rock wall?”

“Yes, sir. And the parpaun match is on the way.”

Esmay grinned, surprising herself. “I always heard Serranos were devious. All right. I’d like to try this fake cliff.”

The cliff, when they arrived, was festooned with would-be climbers wearing all the accouterments of their sport. Esmay stared up at the safety lines swinging from the overhead. “Sorry,” Barin said. “I thought they’d be gone by now—it’s past the time the climbing club usually finishes, and no one else ever seems to use it.”

“Never mind,” Esmay said. “They’re not paying any attention to us.” She examined the cliff closely. The indentations the climbers were using for their feet and hands were molded fiber-ceram, attached to the cliff face with metal clamps. “It looks like fun.”

“It is, though I’m not very good at it.” Barin peered upward. “But one of my bunkies is an enthusiast, and he’s dragged me along a few times. That’s how I know when they’re usually done.”

“Come on up . . .” someone yelled from far above.

Esmay fitted her hand into one of the holds. “I don’t think so—I don’t have any gear, and besides . . . we had a conversation going.”

“A conversation or an argument?” Barin asked, then flushed again. “Sorry, sir.”

“No offense taken,” Esmay said. Around the base of the fake cliff, decorative rocklike forms had been placed to mark off the climbing area from the garden beds. She found a comfortable niche and sat down. “I’m not letting you off, though. If you can explain the protocols of apologies in Fleet, I’ll be forever grateful.”

“Well, as I said, what you called an insult is not that important . . . I mean, unless you really wanted my friendship, and that’s personal. Is it on your world?”

On her world, duels would have been fought, and honor would have been satisfied, for the apologies Fleet never bothered with. Would he think her people barbaric, because they cared? “It’s different,” Esmay said, thinking how to say it without implying what she really felt about their manners. “We do tend to apologize easily for things . . .”

He nodded. “So that’s why Com—some people think of you as tentative.”

Esmay ignored the slip, though she wondered which commander. “They do?”

“Yes . . . at least that’s what I’ve heard some people say. You apologize for things we—sorry, most of the Fleet families—wouldn’t, things we just take for granted. So it seems as if you’re not sure of what you’re doing.”

Esmay blinked, thinking back down her years in Fleet, from the prep school on. She had made a lot of mistakes; she had expected to. She had been guided by the family rules: tell the truth, admit your mistakes, don’t make the same mistakes twice, apologize promptly and fully for your errors. How could they think that was weakness and uncertainty? It was willingness to learn, willingness to be guided.

“I see,” she said slowly, though she still didn’t understand. “So . . . when you make a mistake you don’t apologize?”

“Not unless it’s pretty massive—oh, you say you’re sorry, if you step on someone’s foot, but you don’t make a procedure out of it. Most mistakes—you own up, of course, and take the responsibility, but the apology is understood.”

It was not understood, Esmay was sure, nearly as well as an apology properly delivered in plain speech. However, if they chose to be rude about it, she couldn’t change that. “Is it offensive?” she asked, intent on mapping the edges of Fleet courtesy.

“Oh no, not offensive. A little bothersome, if someone’s always doing it—it makes seniors a bit nervous, because they don’t know how sincere it is.”

Esmay felt her brows rising. “You have insincere apologies?”

“Of course,” he said. Then he took another look at her face. “You don’t,” he said. Not a question.

“No.” Esmay took a long breath. She felt as if she’d ridden out into a dry riverbed and sunk hock-deep in quicksand. She went on, quickly, keeping her voice as unemotional as possible. “In our—on our world, an apology is always part of taking responsibility for errors. It accompanies action taken to redress the wrong and ensure that the error is not repeated.” That was almost a quote from the Conventions. “An insincere apology is like any other lie.” Serious, she meant, and her mouth tingled at the memory of the hot peppers that had impressed her with the importance of telling the truth, no matter how unpleasant. She had not suspected her father of an insincere apology . . . just one far too late and insufficient.

“Fascinating,” he said; by his tone he meant it the right way, real interest and not idle curiosity about the barbarians. “It must be very different, if you didn’t know—I mean—”

“I understand what you mean,” said Esmay. “It’s—a new idea for me, that apologies could get me into trouble.”

“Not trouble exactly, but the wrong idea about you.”

“Yes. I take your point. Thank you for the information.”

“You don’t have to thank—” Again that bright-eyed look. “But you do, don’t you? Thanking goes with apologizing . . . your world must be terribly formal.”

“Not to me,” Esmay said. It wasn’t formality, it was caring about how others felt, caring how your actions affected them. Formality was Founders’ Day dinners, or the awards ceremonies, not one of the twins coming in to apologize for having broken her old blue mug.

“Do we—I mean, do the others born into Fleet—seem rude to you?”

Should she answer that? She couldn’t lie, and he had been unexpectedly honest with her. “Sometimes,” Esmay said. She forced herself to smile. “I expect that I sometimes seem rude to you—or them.”

“Not rude,” he said. “Very polite—extremely polite, even formal. Everyone says how nice you are—so nice they couldn’t figure out how you could do what you did.”

Esmay shivered. Did they really think rudeness went with strength, with the killing way, that someone who said please and thank you and I’m sorry couldn’t fight or command in battle? A grim satisfaction flowered briefly: if the Altiplano militia ever came offplanet, Fleet wouldn’t know what hit them. Pride is a blossom of ashes. The old saying rang in her ears. Bitter in the mouth, sharp to the nose, stinging to the eyes, and blown away on the first wind from the mountains. Plant no pride, lest you harvest shame. She almost shook her head to free it from that old voice.

“I’m not sure myself how I did what I did—besides making a great number of unnecessary mistakes.”

“Mistakes! You stopped a Benignity invasion—”

“Not by myself.”

“Well, no, you weren’t out there on your white horse galloping across the stars alone.” He sounded as sarcastic as he looked.

This time Esmay took the offensive. “Why do you people use that image so much? The white horse thing, I mean. Yes, we use horses on Altiplano, but where did you get the idea that they’re all white?”

“Oh, that’s not about you,” he said. “Nor Altiplano. It’s from the Tale of the White Knights, who all rode white horses and spent their time doing great deeds. Didn’t you have that in your libraries?”

“Not that I know of,” Esmay said. “Our folk tales ran to Brother Ass and the Cactus Patch. Or the Starfolk and the Swimmers of Dawn. The only heroes on horses we know about were the Shining Horde.”

He blinked. “You really do come from another culture. I thought everybody had grown up with the White Knights, and I never heard of the Swimmers of Dawn, or Brother Ass. The Shining Horde—that wasn’t an ancestor of the Bloodhorde, was it?”

“No.” That thought sickened her. “They’re just legends; supposedly they were people with strange powers, who could glow in the dark.” She glared at the twinkle in his eye. “Without getting too close to atomics,” she said firmly.

The climbers, now near the base of the wall, ended that conversation. Esmay went over to see what equipment they used—much like that she’d used at home—and was offered more help than she wanted if only she’d join the climbing club. They would teach her; she could start on the easy end.

“I’ve scrambled around some boulders,” she said.

“Well, you should come join us,” one of the climbers said. “We can always use new members and soon you’ll be right up there—” he pointed. “It’s like nothing else, and this is the only ship I know with a real Wall.” He was so clearly entwined in his hobby that Esmay felt no embarrassment; he would have welcomed anyone willing to climb off the flat deck. “Come on—just go up a little, and let me see how you move. Pleeease?”

Esmay laughed, and started up the wall. She had never done as much climbing as her male cousins, but she had learned how to reach and shift her center of gravity without swinging away from the slope. She made it up a meter or so before losing her grip and slithering back down.

“Good start,” the tall climber said. “You’ll have to come again . . . I’m Trey Sannin, by the way. If you need climbing gear, there’s some in our club lockers.”

“Thanks,” Esmay said. “I might do that. When’s your meeting time?” Sannin told her, then led the other climbers away. “And thank you,” she said to Barin. “I’m sorry I misjudged you, and you’ll just have to put up with my apology—at least this time.”

“Gladly,” he said. He had an engaging grin, she noticed, and she felt an impulse to trust him even more than she had already.

That night she slept free of nightmares, and dreamed of climbing the cliffs of home with a dark-haired boy who was not quite Barin Serrano.