The event that at some point in the night came to be called Operation Boogey Man (alternately, Operation Booger Man, Booty Man, Boogie Down Man) does not begin as smoothly as Ray would have liked. In the morning, with the three of them still scrubbing sleep out of their eyes and the lacquer of old coffee off their tongues, it becomes painfully apparent that Kilgore and Rodriguez had never qualified in Covert Urban Civilian Fashion. They go through much of their wardrobes of loud, baggy shirts and khaki cargo pants with too many utilitarian pockets and manage in none of the iterations to look like anything except Marines gearing up for espionage activities. Ray would have accepted a Marines-on-shore-leave theme since that fit with their backup cover story, but they couldn’t even pull that off without looking like they had stuffed blocks of explosive putty in their pockets and kept pistols strapped under their arms. (This was partially due to the fact that Kilgore insisted on actually keeping a pistol there.)
Later in the morning, there is shopping carried out by a glowing ensign intermediary dispatched by Becker–at Ray’s request–to fend off the impending mission-threatening crisis. She breathlessly collects sizes, crawls around Kilgore and Rodriguez with a tape measure, tickles inseams with a zest that is somewhere between professional and lascivious, then disappears for better than two hours with their cred chips. When she finally returns, there are bags to open, wads of crepe paper to wad up and toss away. Loads of grunting and I’m-not-wearing-that protestations. Ray issues a whole raft of threatening sounding orders about the fact that mingling with poofs requires looking like poofs. In return, he’s threatened with a mutiny that is only put off by the ensign’s declaration that just looking at the two Marines in their urban camouflage makes her feel rather weak in the knees.
By noon, Kilgore and Rodriguez have drawn up a detailed map of the Garden and its assorted attractions. They argue over deployment strategies, over zones of control and population assimilation and control measures. They chuckle about redefinitions of the term “Fields of Fire”. They pull up confidential ship demographic and transaction history information and demarcate a ten section square block which they label Biddy Central, a sort of No Man’s Land given over to Paraclete’s aged matron and widower set. It is Avoid At All Costs territory, saved for the extremest of exigencies, the most suicidal of intel obtainment tactics. Finally, they agree to rendezvous back at the suite by ten for standard debriefing, then troop out, leaving Ray alone at last.
Ray has coordinated the tactical removal of a battalion strength force of entrenched Russoturk regulars by grossly undermanned allied ground and air forces from four different countries and twelve branches of the military with less general aggravation.
For his part, Ray changes into fresh clothes that are nearly identical to the ones he wore the day before. He takes three minutes to hack the telephony index and track down the private comm nodes of the Whiston compound. He pings Emma’s room with a transmission encrypted lightly enough to hide his contact information and boggle most private industry unauthorized descrambling software.
He tells himself that he does this because his ability to prosecute the tasks of his job requires it of him, because he needs to stay close to the Whistons. He doesn’t want to think about it any other way at this moment, because the wall of deception and lies he is erecting between them is unconscionable otherwise. This much, at least, he owes to dead and mutilated Micah.
He doesn’t even want to calculate the debt he’ll owe Emma for so many lies, so much manipulation.
Her voice sounds thin, drawn when she answers. He’s sent the call as voice only and immediately wishes he would have authorized a vid signal
“Meet me for lunch,” he says.
“Ray?”
“I can be at Frankie V’s in five minutes. I’ll get us a table.”
Hesitation, then sadness, muffled by electrons. “I’d love that, but I can’t.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“I am angry with you. You abandoned me in the middle of the night without anything like an acceptable explanation.” For just a moment she is growling, spurned, arch, but either can’t or won’t maintain it. “But that’s not why I can’t meet you. Amah is furious that I’ve been entertaining strange men, common sailors no less, who haven’t shown her the courtesy of submitting to a proper introduction. Frederick, of course, isn’t helping matters, and has been saying the most scandalous and misleading things about you. I’m afraid she’s generally more prone to believing his side of things than mine.”
“I’ve performed a few clandestine extractions in my time,” Ray says, joking. “And if I had to get rough with your brother again to make good our escape, that would just be a bonus.”
“Frederick isn’t here.”
“What are you telling me?”
“Etiquette, Ray.”
He mulls this strange word, trying to make some sense of it. “Oh. You want me to pick you up. Like a date. Knock on the front door, meet the guardian, all of that.”
Emma laughs lightly. “That is the way it’s traditionally done.”
“Do I bring something? Flowers or candy or something?”
“When you come for dinner, you can do that. It isn’t required when you’re taking me out. Unless, of course, you’re bringing things for me, as a token of apology for the manner in which you abandoned me. In that case, I like chocolate and you can bring as much as you like.”
“So I just come down there and knock on the door, meet your Amah and we’re set, right?”
“The main door, Ray. Not the one to my private room.”
“I would have figured that out. Eventually.” Probably would have, though not necessarily before creating some noxious inter-familial incident. He grins imagining it; it’s probably just as well that she can’t see him. “I’ll be there in ten.”
Chocolate, he remembers. “Make that fifteen.”
“If you’re not here in half an hour, I’m calling security.”
Still smiling, he clicks off. He looks over at Nomar, standing expectantly on the kitchen counter. “Where do you find chocolate on a starship?”
The rat, of course, has a perfectly clear idea.
Exactly fifteen minutes later and a shocking amount of ship’s cred lighter, he’s standing on Iota-D outside the primary entrance to the Whiston suites. In one hand he holds a package wrapped in white satin cloth, frouffy with pastel ribbons and lace. He swipes the other hand against his pant leg to keep the sweat off his palms, and alternately uses it to slap at Nomar who can’t seem to get it through his processing array that the chocolate extravagance is not now and never was intended for him.
He gets thing settled with Nomar in time to ignore the chipper salutation of the security system in agatho-daimon, receptive mode and pound out his arrival on the skin of the front door. It slides open at once, like she’s been waiting for him.
Emma is there, bright-eyed and shimmering with an internal glow. She’s an old time movie star under a soft lens. For several moments he forgets to breathe.
When he does remember, he says, “I’m punctual.”
“If that’s the worst of your vices, I think you might not be a complete waste of my energies.”
“Am I supposed to take that as flattery?”
“Indeed. And you’re supposed to say something flattering in return.”
“If you get me started we’ll be standing here all day.” He’s fairly certain he’s making a fool of himself. Despite everything, just seeing her overwhelms him. “You make me feel dizzy.”
Emma puts her finger to her lips, hushing him.
She mouths one word: wonderful.
But with a toss of her head, she indicates the space behind her. Someone listening in. He suspects this is supposed to make him feel instantly and utterly abashed, but it doesn’t. Whoever it is, he owes them a debt of dignity.
So he’ll have something less awkward to do, Ray thrusts the package of chocolates at her. Grins like an idiot. Emma takes it from him with the proper appreciative noises and exclamations of surprise, but she isn’t really looking at the package. She’s looking at Nomar, who has followed the transaction with a twitch of his nose and a less than stealthy tracking maneuver. Emma raises an eyebrow at Ray, as if to say, Today! Today of all days, you bring the rat! Ray just shrugs. There are certain impulses a man should not be expected to explain.
Finally, she invites him inside. Ray pauses long enough to inform Nomar that he’s going to remain outside, preferably right where he is, even more preferably, without chewing on anything that looks expensive. A brief, but frenzied negotiation results in Emma unwrapping the bundle and handing over a piece of chocolate to placate him.
She leads him through a brief vestibule of white marble floors, soft wood paneling and fine Grecian urns mounted on Romanesque stone pillars, both of which, Ray suspects, are actual antiquities rather than clever reproductions thereof. Through an arched doorway is a large parlor that is everything one would expect from a Whiston family domestic space. The carpet is plush, white, dreadfully soft. There are leather chairs sprinkled about in chummy groups which break up the uncharacteristic vastness of the open room. Low bookcases neatly arranged with dark leather volumes stamped with gold lettering on the spines line two of the walls. The wall directly to Ray’s right is taken up by a massive vid screen, currently dark, but bracketed on each side by fading frescoed tiles, what seem to be remnants of ancient Pompeii. A tasteful assortment of lamps and flowers, flowers hiding lamps, lamps shaped like flowers, generate a white glare that is almost dazzling.
And Ray might be tempted to be dazzled, except he suddenly remembers something Emma had said to him. About finding Micah camped out in one of these soft leather chairs, poring over a book well after bedtime. He can imagine it now, the boy’s small body spread across the seat with a book propped on his chest, his gangly limbs draped over a chair’s arm, his foot swinging lightly in the air, his brows furrowed as he troubles over an unfamiliar spatter of characters and ungainly word forms, unaware that he’s a few scant hours from death.
There are perhaps more important things in the world than making a good impression on Emma’s domestic servant or maternal guardian or whatever it was she happened to be.
Emma leads him across the room to the far corner where space has been carved out from so much opulence for a battered wicker rocking chair that looks old enough to have been transported from Terra during the original settlement of New Holyoke. The woman seated in it is no less ancient in her appearance, and she is exactly not at all what Ray expected.
She is vast, sprawling, with thick legs like industrial pistons, skin brown as burnt cocoa, trunk massive in its proportions. Her upper arms, poking out of a bright, floral print dress are slabs of wrinkled fat which droop down over her elbows like the sleeves of a bulky sweater. Her head is a squarish block seated awkwardly on broad, muscled shoulders. The chair beneath her creaks an alarming plaint as she rocks, the sound of organic materials reaching their critical stress point. Even without standing, it’s apparent that she’s tall, probably a hand span taller than Ray. Almost a freak of nature; a creature of awe.
Ray’s first impression is that age has wrinkled her in curious patterns, but it isn’t wrinkling at all, it’s a fine network of ritual scars. Blackened whorls and loops crowd her arms. On her fingers are delicate stick figures that seem to dance when she moves her hands. The billowing canvasses of her cheeks are cratered spirals spinning away from a central point, ever widening in arcs that disappear behind the curve of her ears.
“Most men stare the first time,” the woman says, her voice rich and deep, projected like a roll of thunder into the room’s quiet.
She has been doing something with her hands which involves thin strips of plaited bark interwoven in a broad, dun colored disk. Basket weaving, Ray realizes. The emerging disk of what will be the base is spread out on her wide thighs, trailing curled strips like creeper vines down her legs. She lifts her eyes to him, stunning wells of darkness, black on black, but shining, perceptive, quick.
“You look, but you don’t gawk, Mr. Marlowe. These are better manners than you’ve displayed toward this family so far. You had a good mother, then, but her handiwork has been blunted by the influence of less tactful teachers.”
“I’m sorry,” Ray says reflexively.
“For what reason, young man? For learning poor lessons? For manhandling poor, earnest Frederick after he let his temper get the better of him? For compromising the virtue of a young woman in the middle of the night when you thought no one was watching? Or for just for being a man in general?”
Not a good start. “Maybe for the insensitivity of others, ma’am.”
Beside him, Emma shifts nervously from one foot to the other. In a small voice, she says, “Amah, this is Ray.”
The woman snorts, but sets her craftwork aside. “I know who he is. I’m just giving him a dose of his own medicine, little Emma. Rude behavior breeds rudeness in return.”
“I had no intention of causing difficulties for you,” Ray says evenly.
“I am fully aware of your intentions, Mr. Marlowe, but what you may intend and what the actual consequences of your actions may be do not necessarily correspond. This family has seen better days than the ones we’ve been granted of late. Trial stacked on trial. First Emma and Frederick’s mother, then Micah, and now here you are, a distraction at best. At worst–well, who’s to say?”
Apparently, this is a woman who has no trouble expressing what she thinks. “I realize the timing is unfortunate.”
“Do you?”
Ray hesitates over his phrasing. “I’ve been apprised of the current situation.”
“Do you think so?”
He can’t tell what she means by this question. “Yes.”
Amah frowns. “You have no idea of the complexities of the current situation. The affairs of the Whiston family are beyond your ken. That you would even suppose to know is foolish and preposterous. Are you a fool, Mr. Marlowe?”
Emma draws a sharp breath. “Amah, you promised.”
But the accusation still hangs in the air between them. Ray peers down at the old woman, his jaw set. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Indeed. At least, no more than you know about the Whistons. You should not find yourself confusing what you believe with what is true–what you perceive with what is actual. The ability to separate truth from fiction is the foundation of courtesy.”
“Courtesy?” He speaks the word like he doesn’t know what it means.
“Amah, please!”
The old woman levels a glare at Ray, but something about her seems to soften, relent. “I did promise. Not to be hard on you, not to remind you that the ways of the family are old and strange to some. It’s not my place to tell a girl of Emma’s age how to conduct her affairs, and you are obviously a man of the world who knows how to comport himself properly, eh? You don’t need my approval of your business, not when you’re perfectly capable of learning the hard truths for yourself. But I’m old, and I measure by standards that are no longer in fashion.” She fixes Ray with a final, penetrating look from her dark eyes, her wells of knowledge. “Times change, Mr. Marlowe. Standards change. But the Whistons do not. We are as we have always been, and what is demanded of those who would flutter near to our flame is respect. Perhaps in time you will come to see that this is true–if you have the fortitude to endure.”
Emma intervenes before Ray can respond. “Ray just wants to take me to lunch.”
A shake of the head. “Is that what you want, Mr. Marlowe?”
All that you want, she means.
Any time now, he should begin to get properly angry, to pull his sergeant’s voice out of mothballs and use it to defend himself. But he can’t. Doesn’t even want to, in fact, because of Emma. He’s already forced her to bear the weight of his conflicting interests once. He is not going to do it again.
He does his best to smile amiably. “If you don’t mind.”
Amah purses her lips. “None of my business.”
“Then I think I’ll go,” Emma says, hardly more than a whisper. “The children have been fed, of course, and Leela is putting the younger ones down for their nap. I’ve told them not to disturb you. I should be back in time for their afternoon lessons.”
“I trust Mr. Marlowe will help you keep track of the time.” Pregnant pause, almost amused. “And return you in decent order.”
Ugh.
Emma sweeps toward her and kisses her cheek warmly, on the verge of glee, or imitating glee to dissuade her from changing her mind. The old woman clutches at her in an embrace that resembles a mudslide as Emma whispers what Ray guesses must be gratitude or groveling in her ear. Amah’s heavy lidded gaze never leaves him, claws at him like an accusation of rape.
Impending rape at best, he wants to remind her, but doesn’t.
And Miss I-don’t-really-wear-the-pants-in-this-household Nanny might just be rudely surprised by whose name would appear in the security report as the perpetrator of any sexual aggression that might occur.
Bottom line: he is starting to remember why it always seemed easier to just pay for sex rather than going after slutty, sticky, relationship-minded Air Force chicks.
Emma disentangles herself from the old woman’s embrace, smiling again. She springs at Ray, takes his hand and draws him out of the parlor, through the vestibule and out the front door so rapidly he might as well have been sucked through a wormhole.
With the door sealed behind them, Ray says, “That was certainly pleasant. I would like to thank you for subjecting me to such pleasantness. Really. I mean that.”
“Oh, listen to you,” Emma says, giggling, beaming, happy just to have escaped, Ray imagines. She bumps her shoulder playfully against him. “It isn’t as though she doesn’t have a point. You haven’t exactly gone out of your way to make a good impression with my family.”
Flabbergasting! “Freddy got exactly what he deserved. Less than he deserved, actually. At least where I come from.”
“Don’t let him hear you call him that. He hates it.”
“I thought I was trying to be convivial,” Ray says, innocent and impish. “And that’s beside the fact that she practically accused me of sneaking into your room to seduce you, among other things.”
They reach the lift and Emma punches the keypad to call the car. Nomar follows after them, sniffing at the air for more as-yet-unperceived confections.
“Are you saying you had other intentions?”
“Not at all, but there’s no way she could know that. Innocent until proven guilty and so on.”
The car arrives and they step inside. Emma looks up at him as they begin to move. “You’d be surprised what Amah knows, Ray. And you’d do well to remember that she can find out whatever she desires to.”
Her tone is tinged with a distressingly reverential awe. Ray frowns hearing it. “She probably just checked the security log. Assumptions beyond that are fairly straightforward.”
Emma only shrugs. If that’s what you want to believe.
What he wants to believe is that Amah is a cranky old harridan mortified by her advancing age and her increasingly faulty carbon-based husk and takes her disappointments out on the young men her stunning daughter by proxy chooses to bring home. He wants to believe that she has been alone and bitter and charged with the task of raising someone else’s youngsters for so long that her bulldog defense of their interests and innocence has staggered from competent to obsessive and is now well on its way to psychosis.
The truth is that if he had been Emma’s father and had caught some gauche young turk sneaking into her bedroom in the middle of the night, the chances were good that he’d be in lockup for the unauthorized discharge of firearms in the direction of individuals who had not granted their express, written consent to being mistaken for shooting range targets.
Ray can only shake his head and say, “You know, if you weren’t so pretty, this wouldn’t have been a problem.”
“I’m not just pretty, Ray. I’m perfect. You never had a chance.”
He, at least, knows better than to disagree.
They proceed up to the Garden Level, transitioning from the Iota-D lift to one of the public lifts, and arrive at Frankie V’s in time to avoid the press of the lunch crowd. Ray likes it here; it’s his favorite of all the shipboard franchises, and only partially because of Frankie’s under the table food deal, and even less so because of the faux Mafioso/old New York Italian bistro theme to the décor with its red checkered tablecloths and dimly lit, smoky interior where the booths are tall enough to hide you from view and thick enough to stop an assassin’s bullet. He likes it because Frankie is actually Ed Goins from Cleveland, a part Irish, part German Protestant who has to die his dishwater brown hair black before he can slick it, and has to concentrate to look cagey and dangerous rather than bursting into wide, toothy smiles. When he doesn’t think about his speech, his accent is flat, drawl-less Midwestern, which is to say, not accented at all except for a slight tendency to turn “you’re” into yer and “for” into fer.
In Ray’s line of work, finding someone who can make a successful go at assuming a role to which he is entirely unsuited and despite his copious shortcomings is distinctly comforting.
Inside, Frankie is playing maitre d’ to a rapidly thinning clientele, tall and stiff in a shining dark suit with lapels that are too wide and a red silk shirt beneath open at the collar to show his (dyed) chest hair. He spots Ray and scampers across the dining room, lunges for Ray’s outstretched hand and circles it in a double-fisted, vigorous shake.
“Hey! Mr. Marlowe, benevenutti, eh? Carlo said yous was gonna stop by for a little somethin’ this afternoon. How’s it treating you?” Frankie isn’t paying attention to Ray at all, but rolling his eyes up and down Emma’s curves with lascivious attention to detail. When he’s finished his survey, he cocks his head to Ray, wide smiles, winks. “Forget I asked. It’s treating you good, real good, I see.”
He’s having too much fun for Ray to tell him to can it.
“You want a table or a boot, Ray?”
Boot? But Frankie gives him the appropriate hand signal, a snap wave toward the back of the dining room and the booths crowded under pools of low and flickering yellow lights.
“Booth,” Ray says distinctly.
Frankie gives him the wink again–Gotcha. He snaps his fingers at someone Ray can’t see, presumably a waiter, and draws them deeper into the dining hall. Positioned on Ray’s right, opposite Emma, Frankie leans close so he can speak almost mouth to ear.
“Hey, tell me honestly. I’ve been working on the accent, watching some old movies and stuff. Is it over the top? I think it’s probably over the top but none of my guys will say so.”
Frankie/Ed’s “guys” are mostly Koreans still trying to learn more than a passing familiarity grade school English. They wouldn’t recognize over the top if it fell on them, and would be close to the last speakers of the language in human space to criticize anyone else’s mangled accent. Koreans are generally way too polite to give you a straight answer anyway.
“Just a little,” Ray whispers back.
“I knew it. How about the benevenutti?”
“That’s a nice touch, but I don’t know what it means.”
“’Good morning’,” Frankie says guardedly. “At least, I think so. I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I’ll look it up, get back to you.”
“Sure, sure. You gonna use the rat to pay?”
“Not today. I’m trying to make a good impression here, but you’d be doing me a favor if you showed him the kitchen and put him to work.”
Frankie sighs wistfully. “Ah, l’amour!”
“That’s French.”
“Amore?“
“I think so.”
“Good deal. And by the way, a couple of the other guys–system vets–have been in looking for you. Chief Zighowser is pissed enough to skin cats. I’m supposed to pass the word if I see you.”
“You haven’t.”
A nice, Mafia shrug. “I seen nothin’.”
Frankie steps aside so they can fold themselves into the booth, well apart from the dozen or so other customers in the room. “Gino will be with in a moment. Might I recommend the house special?”
Ray doesn’t know what the special is, but he nods anyway.
Frankie bows out, nudging Nomar with his foot and jerking his head back toward the kitchen. It’s a signal Nomar understands and obeys with only the slightest hesitation. The two of them disappear like old confederates slinking off to plot a bank heist.
Emma watches them go, then leans forward with her elbows on the table. “You come here often?”
“Frankie takes care of me.”
“He isn’t Italian, I don’t think.”
“Don’t tell him that. You’ll destroy his confidence.” Ray presses close, lowers his voice. “This is his first franchise voyage. He’s made amazing leaps since Terra, believe me.”
Then, “You’ve never been here before?”
“Frederick doesn’t like pasta, and he despises American kitsch.”
Ray lifts an eyebrow. “And you never go anywhere without his escort?”
“Not if they can stop me.”
Like the other morning, she means. It sits there plainly between them, but Ray doesn’t know how to make her actually say it, recognize it.
“Your family seems to be heavily invested in protecting you.” Big sign, red letters, neon flash: Watch Out for Thin Ice. Ray prepares to wince as she cuts him down.
But she doesn’t. Emma sucks in her lower lip, blinks slowly. “I’m the baby.”
“They let you go off to the university,” he points out.
More lip chewing. She shifts her eyes away. “That’s not completely accurate. I went off to school. Frederick retrieved me from school.”
“Meaning?”
“I had enough money to get to Stratiskaya Daransk and get by for six months. I don’t control my trust until I’m twenty-five, so it wasn’t hard for Frederick to block access to my account. The university expelled me for failure to pay my bill.”
“And your mother?”
“Mother’s been ill my entire life, sometimes better other times worse. The severity of her condition is a pretense to keep people from talking about family affairs.” Emma frowns, then tries to shake it off with a grim laugh. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. It sounds like I’m trying to scare you off.”
“Unfortunately for you, I’m not that easily frightened.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” Immediately, she puts her hand to her face. “God, that makes me sound so mercenary. It’s not that bad, Ray, really. I don’t need to be rescued.”
Ray reaches for her hand, uncovers her eyes. “It’s okay.”
A moment later, Gino is there, dark and burly, bona fide Italian, bustling them through wine lists and menu recommendations and pronouncements on the virtues of linguini al sugo di pescatore and Sicilian mostacciolo. He’s a whirlwind of jovial service, gregarious high pressure sales, winking too much, slapping shoulders, impressing them with the sense of how deeply insulted he’ll be if they don’t take each one of his menu selections to heart.
Once he’s gone, Ray says, “At least that explains the reception I received.”
“From Amah, you mean?”
“Yes. She’s afraid I’m going to try to steal you away, and that you’re more than willing to be stolen.”
“And that’s not what you want?”
Ouch. “Too early to call it.”
“Why?”
He chuckles uncomfortably. “Because I snore. Because my feet smell bad. Because I sleep with my socks on and like to wear the same pair of skivvies two or three days in a row. I have a whole list of reasons for possible rejection, any one of which I fully suspect will bring to screeching to your senses as soon as you become aware of them. How’s that?”
But she pinches her brow, troubled. “You said the other night that I was out of your league. You’re wrong about that, you know. I’m not like–I mean, I’ve been very sheltered. Most of my life has been spent on a frontier colony with fewer than a million people. I’m not sophisticated; I haven’t traveled. I’m not who you think I am, not who anybody thinks I am.”
“Even Amah?” Ray says, arching an eyebrow.
Emma laughs. “I used to tell people that in many ways, Amah is more Whiston than I am, than any of us are. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Amah has held the family together for years, longer than I’ve even been alive. Amah and her clan.”
It makes her uncomfortable to say these things, like telling secrets. She won’t meet his gaze, the way she always does when she talks about the family, about Frederick, about anything Whiston. Ray doesn’t prompt her. He doesn’t need to. He gets the sense that she’s been waiting to tell someone, anyone, for a very long time.
“You’ve got to understand, Amah’s family has been with us for as long as there’s been a Whiston family, at least in the way people think of us now. As financial juggernauts, I mean. They’ve been part of us from the beginning, when great, great–supply your own multiple–grandfather rescued them from a plague stricken Polynesian island. This is classic family history stuff, Ray, part of the grand tradition. Grandfather Elliot George sells everything he owns in Old Boston, which isn’t much, but enough to purchase a majority share in a trading vessel called Hesperides aimed for China. Since he has nothing to his name but prospects, he convinces the minor partners to let him accompany the ship’s crew as a trade negotiator. It’s by all accounts a disastrous voyage. The hired captain falls ill before they round the tip of Tierra del Fuego, and grandfather is required to take over. Of course, he knows almost nothing about ocean seamanship, just what he’s picked up around the harbor, and then there are storms and diseases and long periods of calm so that by the time they sight land, they’re thousands of miles off course and half of them have perished. But they’re lucky, I guess, those who remain, because they eventually come across a small south seas island.
“They draw the Hesperides into a shallow harbor and man the jackboats to search for water, food, citrus–anything they can find to replenish their catastrophically depleted stores. The bad news is that they’ve arrived on this island at the worst possible time. The indigenous peoples, the Ma’huru and the Dag Maoudi, are entering the final act of a genocidal conflict in which the Ma’huru have the upper hand because they’ve been poisoning the wells of the Dag Maoudi. Grandfather Elliot learns about what’s going on, puts the pieces together, and also discovers that the Dag Maoudi are sailors of some considerable skill. He exchanges the might of 18th century weaponry and a promise to end the plague for enough Dag Maoudi sailors to replace the crew he’s lost and enough stores to get them to China. The Dag Maoudi agree, and once he’s done his part, they offer him Amah’s ancestors–fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, old folks and newborn babies. Grandfather takes them all.
“After that, the fortunes of the Hesperides change. They reach China, manage an amazing series of clever negotiations and cement trade relationships. Grandfather returns to Boston heroically, and more important, on the verge of fabulous wealth. The Dag Maoudi go with him like good luck charms, adopted into the family as it were.
“They’ve been with us ever since. Through the transitions from trade and ship building to automobiles then aircraft then military manufacturing, now starships, the Dag Maoudi have been the one constant in the family. Amah takes her role, and her clan’s history with us, very seriously. It’s part of who she is, as much a personal definition as the scars she bears to celebrate her heritage.”
“And she’s not about to let you throw all that away in a post-adolescent fit,” Ray finishes for her.
“I’m just trying to help you understand.”
He’s being too hard on her, he realizes. Of course he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t have the experience to make it part of his reality.
“So Amah has essentially taken care of family affairs since your mother became ill.”
“Since father died, actually. Just before I was born.”
Ray gives her a shrug. “I guess I can see why she’s so invested in your success. She’s been working at it for a long time. But here’s what I don’t get: the current Whiston fortune, as immense and gaudy as it is, is based on starship manufacture and trade–all of which is Terran based. What are you doing out on the fringes of human space, for God’s sake? How the heck did your branch of the family end up on New Holyoke?”
Emma grins widely at him, as though he’s said something unintentionally funny. “You know, for a suspected gold digger, you haven’t done very thorough research.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ray, my family didn’t ‘end up on’ New Holyoke. We own it. We–meaning vessels and crews in our employ–we discovered it; we went to the Congressional Forum with a request for charter and trade rights; we paid cash money for private settlement and exclusive commerce considerations with the promise that we’d get a colony up and running and shipping raw materials back to Terra within a half century. It’s China all over again, you might say, and it’s the dirty secret behind the Whiston Charitable Trust.”
“The Trust is a tax break?” Ray barks, astounded. Then he’s laughing, and she’s laughing along with him. “That’s clever. Insidiously so, or admirably so. I’m not quite certain which.”
“You can’t tell anyone, of course, and the Terran branch of the family would deny it, probably destroy you in the process. Or at least to the extent that they’d care. I think they’re still angry that Grandfather Fram cut them out of the deal.”
“Who’d believe it?” He slaps his palm against his forehead. “You’re serious! You really own the entire planet?”
“For what it’s worth. Which, for the record, isn’t much at this point in time. Just enough to meet our quotas and hold onto our charter. We’re still decades away from really profitable resource mining unless we can get more and highly skilled people to immigrate. Labor is the most important raw material on any new colony, especially skilled labor. That’s a much less cynical way of looking at the work we do with the Trust. We take children who would otherwise be hopeless and give them a place and the necessary knowledge to flourish.” She pauses briefly, develops a look of consternation. “Oh, but Ray, you understand that’s just the business side of things, all this talk about ownership. New Holyoke is a legitimate colony with its own governing structure independent of the Whiston corporate aims. We are not petty tyrants ruling by executive fiat. The colony has its own local Congressional Forum that sets domestic policy, its own independent security forces, elects its own delegates to the Terran forum. The family stays completely away from the political side of it.”
Nice sentiment, but naïve. “You’re neglecting the fact that everyone on New Holyoke has to know that there is no colony, or at least not a financially viable one, without Whiston backing. You don’t have to exert your influence explicitly, I’d imagine, for the people who depend on your good favor to do what they believe you desire. It’s the way mining operations work–the way they’ve always worked, and that’s completely beside the fact that a considerable portion of your skilled and educated population owes their livelihood to the beneficence of the Trust.”
“Cultural power is a different animal entirely, Ray. If you believe that we don’t wish to exert some influence over the manner in which the colony develops, then you’re mistaken. We have our own interests in New Holyoke, both financial and otherwise, but it benefits no one if the people aren’t free to be human, free to develop into something grander than they have been before.”
“That sounds very utopian,” Ray says.
“Not utopian, darling. Human. It’s the nature of mankind to rise, to desire elevation. Sometimes, I think we forget that and are content to just expand rather than improve. We have striven for long years to create an environment where that can occur–and occur profitably, of course.”
“But not politically, eh?”
Emma rolls her eyes at him. “If you like, imagine us as akin to the British royal family–good tabloid gossip material, but not really relevant to most people’s lives.”
She’s either very naïve or New Holyoke is a very different sort of place than Ray has ever been.
“It must have created quite the local stir when you ran away.”
Emma is suddenly serious again, verging on bitter. “I’m sure Frederick found a way to spin it to his advantage. He probably announced I was off joining a convent or something, just so I’ll be more subject to humiliation when we return. I’m certain that any rumors of impropriety or tawdriness will be directed at me alone so as not to soil the family’s reputation.”
“So any plans I might harbor to smash him in the mouth probably wouldn’t help matters, is that what you’re saying?”
“Probably not, no.”
Ray gives her hand a squeeze to show her that he’s joking. Mostly. “So what is Freddy’s role in the great Trust?”
“You mean when he’s not getting drunk and losing his temper?”
“You said it. I didn’t.”
She smiles weakly. “He’s the primary administrator of the Trust and its charges.”
“In other words, he’s a high priced babysitter.”
“For me and others, yes.”
“Then Amah runs the household, Freddy runs the family business–what’s the role they’re grooming you for, Emma? Other than closet feckless dilettante slash secluded sociopath, I mean.”
But she waves him off as if the question doesn’t matter to her. “Something innocuous, I’m sure. But tedious, too. While I’m young, something to keep me in the public eye so I can attract a suitable match. That means public relations most likely. The simple truth is that they haven’t told me yet, and apparently they haven’t liked my ideas on the subject.”
“And those would be?”
Emma flings her arms wide, a starlet pose. “Why, to be fabulously wealthy and decadent and die young in an exotic land surrounded by adoring and nubile devotees, of course. Is there anything else worth aspiring to?”
This is perhaps a not so subtle indication that she wants to drop the subject, so Ray lets her. He’s gotten enough out of the business portion of this lunch to justify the expense on the cred pool to Becker.
“So where do I fit into these future plans?”
“You would be the High Priest, Ray, shielding my glory from the masses, worshipping at my altar, heeding my every command.”
She comes across as completely earnest, so Ray nods playfully. “It’s been too long since the universe has seen a well conducted theocracy.”
“I’m glad you see it that way, my love.”
My love. Hearing her say it sends a thrill through him like a jolt of electricity. While he marvels over her, Gino arrives with their food. He makes a big show of distributing plates and rhapsodizing over the perfection of the preparation, the presentation, the complexity of the culinary issues. All the sprawling and glorious history of Italy from trilobite dawn to this morning’s news has conspired to bring them this moment, these dishes, a palate-shattering explosion of delight.
But Ray leaves his food untouched.
“What is it about you, Emma?”
She stops, fork in hand, says matter-of-factly: “I’ve told you. I’m perfect. Perfect for you, at least.”
“You realize that you know next to nothing about me.” And what you think you know is mostly lies too complex to straighten out without hurting you.
“I realize that you think I know nothing about you. I also realize that you’re wrong, which is a convenient balance of power for my taste.”
Ray holds his breath, lets it go slowly. “I’m wrong? How can that be, when I’m pretty sure I remember most of the things I have told you.”
Barring Freddy pulling some corporate strings and hacking into the EED’s classified personnel files, there’s no way she can know anything else. Even then, he couldn’t be certain that an accurate file with his name attached to it even exists. Well, Holcomb suggested one might exist, and Becker had seen a copy of something like his file, but he knows better than to believe anything those sources might have to say about him.
Emma, however, chooses not to elaborate, and he’s afraid to press her. Instead, she says, “Just know that I’m perfect for you. That we’re perfect. Nothing else really matters, does it?”
“I don’t know what that means,” he whispers.
“You don’t have to know yet. It just is. You love me, and that should be all the proof you need.”
How can she say that? How can she say it like it’s irrefutable?
But she believes it all with a fervency so real, so tactile that to deny it would destroy her. He can only stare. Stare at her, drink her image as if he could burn her reflection into his brain if he just doesn’t take his eyes off of her. Because it’s not just irrefutable, it’s true. Despite all the complications, it’s not just her that feels this way. Not her alone, and he has no way of understanding it.
He scrambles through a score of thoughts, all inchoate, unrelated, asinine.
“I have something for you,” he says sharply.
He roots through his pockets, looking for all the world like he’s wrestling with his penis under the table, coming up with nothing but a collection of lint beneath his fingernails. Both pockets, while Emma follows his mounting desperation with a quizzical expression. He remembers his thigh pocket, the one with the zipper and the way he tended to clink on his run from his room to the confectioner for the chocolate.
He doesn’t know what size she wears and can’t make the estimation from looking at her fingers to the shapes in his pocket, so he grabs the whole handful and flings them on the table. Stone rings tinkle across the tabletop, clatter against the dishes. One rolls all the way to the edge against the wall, teeters then falls on its side.
Emma narrows her eyes at the shotgun pattern of the rings, then sets her fork down. She picks the one nearest to her, where it leans against her dinner plate. Like Rodriguez, she rolls it around between thumb and forefinger, holding it up to the light to examine the silver etching.
“It’s a ring,” she says.
“I want you to wear it.” He’s breathing hard. Too hard, really. “All the time.”
“You got me a ring?”
“Not that kind of ring. Just a thing. A–”
“I see you got enough for all your girlfriends.” The dreaded raised eyebrow, suggesting he has either made a major relationship blunder or is acting irrationally. Very possibly both. “What does this mean, this writing around the edges?”
Ray thinks he might be experiencing some sort of lethal medical condition. He’s having trouble taking a breath that’s actually deep enough to satisfy what seems to be a severe case of oxygen deprivation. He suspects his brain itself is suffocating, a billion neurons a second snuffling vacuum, pitching over with a uniform scream. The idea of actually sucking in air to say something seems idiotic to him. “It says I care about you. That I want you to be safe. Just put it on your finger. Please.”
“It’s on.”
Painstakingly, he collects the extras, wiping them off on his pant leg before jamming them back in his pocket. The pressure in his chest subsides gradually, until he’s feeling normal again.
“I’ve never given a woman a ring before,” he offers as an explanation. “Promise me you’ll wear it.”
“I will, Ray.”
“All the time. Until I tell you it’s okay to take it off.”
“All right.”
He takes one last, deep breath, decides that the ship has stopped spinning on its axis, lets himself relax. The food is there, still steaming, and he’s hungry. All he’s had in hours–too many hours–is coffee. Ray attacks the pasta like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.
In his quiet voice, he’s saying: You are such a dumbass.
After a time, Emma asks, “Ray, why did you just give me a ring.”
And because he’s occupied with castigating himself for making such a disaster of it, for being such a freaking assclown, he doesn’t give the proper attention to her question. Shoots the obvious response right past his neural processors, through the Dumbass Alert System and affiliated security checkpoints, straight into the output bin. He simply blurts out the first thing that pops into his forebrain. The true thing.
“Because I love you.”
And she didn’t even have to use sodium penethol to get it out of him. Had Jack Holcomb heard him, he would have busted him back down to sergeant on the spot. Then fired him. Probably had him executed just for good measure before he went off blabbing even more confidential, potentially state toppling information.
He discovers in that moment that silence really is audible. It has a sound like radio static heard through a wall. A low, empty rush against the ears.
In the next instant, though, shame blots it out, triphammers his heartbeat and he can feel that to the exclusion of all other senses. A thump in his fingertips, his temples, the soles of his feet. Because even that isn’t the whole truth, just a piece, a sliver. Less about love than about fear. Less about Emma, than about shed. He can’t seem to tell her anything without making it into a lie.
He lifts his eyes to her, halfway into a blanch as though he expects her to strike out at him. He deserves it.
Emma holds her hand up in the uncertain light, and where the golden glow catches the tang of silver, it seems to erupt in pinprick sparks. She wears an expression that he can’t read, something that seems to be trapped between satisfaction and loss.
Quietly, still watching only her hand, she says, “And the other rings? They’re all like the this one, and like the one you’re wearing.”
“Long story.”
“One you don’t want to tell me.” Oddly, it’s a statement, not a prelude to a pout.
“Not at the moment.”
“But later?”
“If there is a later. If you can forget that I’ve been acting like such an idiot.”
She makes the leap he fears. “This has something to do with Micah, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She looks at him now, and clouds spring into her eyes, turning their extravagant blue into lead. “You’re not who you seem to be, are you?”
“I am,” he says quickly. “Except for a few details.”
“Amah said you were.”
That you were lying. Was that what she meant?
“Emma, I–” I just want you to be safe. I want to protect you.
She drops her hand into her lap and shakes her head, silencing him. “It’s beautiful, Ray. That’s enough for now. Thank you.” The smile that spreads her lips is wide, brilliant, genuine, as though she’s chosen to forget that’s he’s a big, fat liar. “We should eat before the food gets cold. Amah will be expecting me home soon.”
She doesn’t ask him any more questions. But on the way back to her rooms, she takes his hand and walks close to him, their shoulders touching, and it’s enough. Without speaking, she tells him that everything between them is fine.
Filed under: A Vessel for Offering
[...] Vessel for Offering – Ch. 9 Posted on December 3, 2007 by wincing.at.light <– Chapter 8 / Chapter 10 [...]