The Way to Glory Read online

  He bowed as deeply as his corset allowed him, which of course wasn't very deep. Even without the undergarment, his bright green Fencibles uniform had enough gold piping that it could stand up itself.

  "Thank you, Colonel," Adele said, miming a curtsey by spreading her hands with a bare dip of her head. "The pleasure was mutual."

  Which was more or less true: he hadn't trodden on her, always a possibility when Adele danced with out-of-condition men who were determined to show off. It was a worse problem off-planet, of course. Here in Xenos she was Mundy of Chatsworth, a person of rank but no particular importance. On the distant worlds where the Princess Cecile might land, Adele Mundy was a sophisticate from the capital, a personage of greater status than any other woman present . . . even in the minds of those women.

  The latest style for the sarabande was to keep the toes of the forward foot straight down while executing the steps in slow motion. Adele filed the information as she filed all information. She'd be called on to demonstrate Xenos fashion soon enough, she was sure, in a ballroom of unpainted wood or on an open pavement under unfamiliar stars.

  "Mistress Mundy?" said an attractive woman somewhat older than Adele's own thirty-two standard—that is, Earth—years. "I was told . . . well, are you Mundy of Chatsworth? I don't mean to intrude, but . . . ?"

  The woman, a complete stranger to Adele, was dressed at the height of current style: her neck and wrist ruffs would make it impossible for her to feed herself. That was probably the point, of course, rather like the shoes you couldn't walk in that had been a fad among the nobility when Adele was a child.

  "Yes," said Adele, knowing her voice held a hint of challenge. She didn't intend that—whoever this woman was, she clearly wasn't an enemy in the sense that Adele would need the small pistol in the side-pocket of her tunic.

  But there had been enemies of that sort in Adele's life, even before she joined the RCN and became part of the Republic's most powerful instrument of policy. Reflexes you've gained on battlefields don't go away because you're standing in a ballroom now. "I'm Adele Mundy."

  "I'm Lira Kearnes, Mistress Mundy," the woman said, obviously embarrassed. "I'd hoped to talk with you because you're a naval officer. Ah . . . I expected you to be in uniform, so though you were pointed out to me I wasn't sure. . . ."

  "Oh!" said Adele in considerably greater embarrassment than Mistress Kearnes and for better reason. Here she was treating her hostess like a potential enemy, simply because the woman had wanted to talk with her. Though why had she mentioned the RCN? "I'm very sorry, I was thinking of other things."

  And so she had been, thinking about things that had no business in polite society. Even without the hardships that resulted from her family's ruin, Adele Mundy wouldn't have grown into a person whom acquaintances would've described as cheerful and outgoing. She regarded courtesy as the most important social virtue, however, and she'd just been discourteous to her hostess.

  Quickly she went on before Lira Kearnes could resume speaking, "I received an invitation as Mundy of Chatsworth, mistress. The invitation to the officers of the Princess Cecile was limited to the commissioned officers. Or in the case of the midshipmen, those who will be commissioned. I'm a technician; a warrant officer, in RCN terms."

  The orchestra was playing a rigadoon. It was more sprightly than most of the guests cared to attempt, but Midshipman Dorst of the Princess Cecile danced with the athletic grace with which he'd carried out any task requiring physical strength and dexterity. His partner was a red-haired civilian, strikingly attractive and just as good a dancer as Dorst was.

  Midshipman Vesey, also of the Sissie and Dorst's lover, watched from the edge of the dance floor with a careful lack of expression. Daniel regarded Vesey as a very respectable astrogator. That was high praise, as it came from a man whom the RCN held the near equal of the incomparable Stacey Bergen, Daniel's uncle and the man who'd trained him in everything to do with a starship. Vesey was even attractive . . . but not the way the redhead was attractive.

  As best Adele could tell, Dorst loved Vesey; certainly he'd willingly put his tall, muscular body between her and any danger. But tonight was likely to be a difficult time for Vesey, who seemed completely oblivious of the bevy of civilian nobles trying to catch her attention.

  Adele sighed. She herself had no more interest in sex than the busts on either side of the marble mantelpiece did. There were others—Daniel Leary was a member of the class—who had an obvious animal enthusiasm for the business but then got on with the rest of their lives, utterly unscathed by those activities.

  And then there were the Midshipman Veseys and apparently the majority of humanity, who were regularly turned inside out by what could've been a matter of simple biology. Adele's philosophy hadn't had room for a deity even before the slaughter of her family, but it sometimes seemed to her that the whole business was too illogical not to have been Something's cruel joke.

  "Mistress Mundy . . . ?"

  "I'm very sorry," Adele said, curtseying to Kearnes in honest contrition. "I'm afraid I'm distracted by the—"

  She didn't know how to go on. Not with what she was really thinking, not to this woman who'd no more understand than if Adele began chattering in the language of a just-discovered planet which'd fallen into savagery at the Hiatus and never recovered.

  "We don't have much occasion for events like this," Adele continued in a flash of inspiration. It wasn't exactly a lie. Not exactly. She made a gesture of cultured restraint to the glittering crowd. "I haven't seen anything to equal it since, that is, in a very long time."

  Since my family was massacred; but that was another thing not to say here.

  "Would you like to go . . ." Kearnes began. She caught herself and amended her words to, "Would you mind stepping into a drawing room with me, Mistress Mundy? I know it's my party and I shouldn't, but I really do want to talk with you. It's about my son, you see."

  Adele went blank-faced. Her son?

  "Yes, of course," she said aloud, meaning the private discussion rather than that she had any idea of what Lira Kearnes was talking about. It took conscious restraint to prevent Adele from pulling out her personal data unit and squatting on the floor to check the Kearnes family in a detail greater than what she'd thought necessary on receiving the invitation. It was always a mistake not to search deeply when you had the time!

  Adele wore a double tunic and skirt. The translucent outer fabric was a misty gray which slightly blurred the geometric patterns embroidered in black on her inner garments. The data unit in a pocket on the inner skirt was hidden from view but instantly accessible. Through the unit's controlling wands—less bulky than a keypad—Adele had access to the wider universe in the only form she could really accept it: as tabulated information.

  But it would be impolite to bring out the flat rectangle now, and Adele had already come uncomfortably close to being impolite to Lira Kearnes. Besides, there was a better—if not as natural to Adele—way to learn what the lady was talking about: she could ask.

  "I'm not aware of having met your son, mistress," Adele said as footmen in violet frock coats swept open an unobtrusive door and closed it behind them. The drawing room beyond was tiled in patterns of circles, whorls, and multi-pointed stars. Instead of ordinary light fixtures, a screen brightened into the holographic image of an arched double window looking out onto a palm-fringed beach. Beyond, the sea combed over sand toward the window.

  "Do sit, please," Kearnes said. There were chairs and a table, but she gestured instead to the ottoman beneath the "window."

  Adele seated herself carefully, folding her hands in her lap. The tips of her fingers rested on the hard, hidden outlines of her data unit.

  Kearnes sat on the other end of the ottoman and stared at the upholstery between them for a moment. When she looked up, she began, "It's my third son, Oller. He's joined the navy, you see. I didn't want him to go, but . . . Oller's a very high-spirited boy, extremely bright but, well, he has his own ideas. He'd sig
ned on with a privateer, and it was only because my husband agreed to get him a special appointment as a midshipman that Oller gave up that plan."

  "The RCN can be a fine career for a high-spirited youth, mistress," Adele said, choosing her words carefully. "It has been for my friend Lieutenant Leary, certainly."

  But Daniel was high spirited. Reading between the lines of a mother's description, Oller Kearnes was a spoiled brat with romantic notions of what it meant to be one of scores or hundreds of people sealed in a metal box so full of equipment that even to turn around required caution.

  Danger is another thing that's more romantic to read about than the reality of blood and burns and the screams transcending age and gender and even humanity. Pain can be a sound, pure sound, and pictures can't prepare you for the smell of a man trying to stuff his intestines back into his ripped abdomen.

  "Yes, I know that," Lira Kearnes said. "That's why I wanted to talk with you, one of the reasons. I don't suppose you're a mother . . . ?"

  And despite the wording, Kearnes obviously hoped Adele would say, "Yes."

  "No," Adele said primly. "I am not."

  "Ah," Kearnes said. "Well, I was sure you weren't. I couldn't talk to Lieutenant Leary directly. He, ah, his father was an associate of my husband's at one time, but they had a falling out. I thought you might be able to tell me what life's like for a midshipman on shipboard. And, well . . ."

  She reached out impulsively and touched her fingertips to the back of Adele's right hand. "It helps that you're a woman," she blurted.

  In biological terms you're no doubt correct, Adele thought. With some difficulty she controlled the instinctive curl of her lip. But that wasn't fair, because Kearnes was really saying it was easier for her to talk to a woman about her fears for her offspring. It didn't imply anything about the woman she confided in.

  "I might better introduce you to Midshipman Dorst, whom you've invited tonight," Adele said. "But . . . midshipman is a responsible job. He'll be treated as an officer under most circumstances, but he's still in training and he'll be expected to pay attention to whoever may be instructing him. And of course RCN discipline is strict even for officers; perhaps especially for officers. Lives may depend on obedience to orders."

  "Yes, that's what worries me," Kearnes admitted to her interlaced fingers. "Oller isn't a bad boy, please understand me, and he's very bright on so many subjects. But . . ."

  Oller is a willful brat who's never stuck to anything long enough to learn if he has an aptitude for it, Adele translated silently. Aloud she said, "It's possible that discipline imposed by his superiors will teach your son the importance of self-discipline, mistress. That often happens."

  Certainly being clouted across the deck by a bosun who took exception to your smart mouth would be a learning experience beyond anything a well-born youth was likely to have gotten at home. Woetjans, the Princess Cecile's bosun, was also biologically female. She was six and a half feet tall and showed no hesitation whatever in using her immense strength to advance an argument with someone whom RCN regulations made her responsibility. As Chief of Rig, those responsibilities included teaching midshipmen the ropes as surely as they did teaching enlisted recruits.

  "Yes, well . . ." Kearnes said. She forced a smile as she met Adele's eyes again. "Oller is on a cruise to Sexburga in the Bainbridge under Commander Slidell. They're taking dispatches for distribution there, but I gather it's really a training cruise. It should be a good experience."

  The poor fool almost choked getting that last sentence out, Adele thought; half in pity, half in disgust. Did the woman have any conception of what real hardship amounted to?

  But of course she didn't, because she hadn't allowed herself to think about uncomfortable things. Lira Kearnes may well have walked past Agatha's head on Speaker's Rock, for example.

  "A training cruise will give your son an idea of what service in the RCN really is," Adele said aloud, wondering if she should get up to put a stop to the conversation. Not quite yet. "I don't know what the regulations say formally, but I'm sure that if the boy feels he's really unsuited to a naval career, your husband will be able to arrange his separation easily enough."

  "Yes, of course," Kearnes said, her smile real this time but wan. "I know that, but I still, well . . ."

  In a change of subject that made Adele reach again for her data unit—and again catch herself—Kearnes continued, "The Captain Slidell commanding the Bainbridge is Aban Slidell. His elder brother Jan was Corder Leary's private secretary when he was Speaker of the Senate."

  "Politics have never interested me, mistress," Adele said, tensing herself to rise.

  "But you know that your friend Daniel's father is that Leary, don't you?" Kearnes said. Suddenly her voice was firmer. "I was wondering how you two came to be friends."

  Adele looked at the holographic image. Waves rolled inshore. If you looked carefully, you could see the line at which the seeming water changed from gray-green to deep blue, following the sea's depth as sharply as anything a surveyor could draw on a map. The palm fronds moved in a pictured breeze as well.

  "Mistress . . ." Adele said, choosing her words very carefully. If she hadn't been sure that there was something to this conversation that she hadn't grasped yet, she'd have left the room and this house instantly.

  But Lira Kearnes wasn't simply being stupidly offensive. Good heavens, the woman had started crying!

  "Mistress Kearnes," Adele said, turning toward the seascape again so that Kearnes could dab at her tears with a tiny handkerchief. "I'm not the sort of person who makes friends easily. This isn't anything to do with events in my life, it's just what I was born. I'm a librarian by instinct and training. Under normal circumstances I'd be running a major research institution now. I'd have the respect of my peers—and not to be unduly boastful, I'd have very few peers. But I'd have no friends at all."

  "Please, I didn't mean to offend you," Kearnes said. "Please, I'm very sorry!"

  She was reacting to the tone, Adele supposed, but not even Adele could control that now. People sometimes called her emotionless, but that wasn't the case: she was just very controlled, because the emotion Adele Mundy knew best was a cold, murderous rage that had no place in ordinary human society.

  "I'm not offended," Adele said, rasping the words. Fighting to take the edge from her voice she repeated, "I'm not offended."

  Taking a deep breath, Adele went on, "As you obviously know, my circumstances stopped being normal at the time of the Three Circles Conspiracy. I lost my family, but quite frankly I'd never been close to them either. I can be offended at what happened and I can quarrel intellectually with why it happened, but I don't imagine that I'd have any more contact with my parents and sister in the future I expected than I do in my present existence. I put a flower on the family cenotaph once a year."

  Adele laughed. She was a proud woman, she knew that: proud of her intelligence and skills, proud of being a Mundy of Chatsworth; proud that she wore the uniform of the RCN.

  But the greatest boast of Adele Mundy's heart was her honesty—and that she was proving tonight, in a fashion that surprised even her.

  "But a very odd thing happened, Mistress Kearnes," Adele went on, wry humor suddenly bubbling in her voice. "Events have made me a member of the RCN. I have a family closer than ever my blood relatives could have become. And I have a friend, too. If he happens to be the son of Speaker Leary, then that's nothing to me—or to him either. Because we're friends."

  "I . . ." Kearnes said. She smiled wanly and continued, "I think you're very fortunate, mistress."

  "Yes, I am," Adele said, standing up at last. "And if what you really started to say is that you don't understand, then let me assure you that I don't understand either. But I'm very glad of the situation."

  She turned the door latch but looked back over her shoulder before pulling the panel open. Lira Kearnes was still seated on the ottoman. Her expression was vaguely surprised when she met Adele's gaze.

&nbs
p; "The RCN has been very good to me, mistress," Adele said. "I hope it'll prove equally good for your son."

  "I hope so too," Kearnes said, rising to her feet with the composure to be expected of a noblewoman like herself. "Thank you very much for your time, Mistress Mundy. And your kindness."

  The footmen had stepped to either side when they heard the latch click. After Adele passed between them, they edged back to conceal as well as protecting the doorway.

  The tiny bead earphone in Adele's right ear blipped minusculely to get her attention. It was Adele's connection with her only servant, Tovera, who was paranoid because at some level she believed that everyone else was exactly like her. Adele suspected nobody was exactly like Tovera, a murderous sociopath with no more personality than a bowl of skimmed milk.

  Tovera had knowledge which she'd gained as an agent of the Alliances' Fifth Bureau—the spy agency which reported directly to Guarantor Porra, whose will was law everywhere the military forces of the Alliance could carry it. She'd attached herself to Adele in part because she'd seen that Adele through art and instinct could gain information which Tovera's practiced craftsmanship couldn't reach—

  And also because she'd seen Adele kill as emotionlessly as Tovera carried out every aspect of life, killing included. Tovera watched her mistress as an example of how human beings behaved; Adele saw in her servant an example of how easily she herself could become a thing that was human only on the outside.

  They both gained by the association. Mistress Bernis Sand, the head of Cinnabar's civil intelligence service, gained even more.

  Adele had no way to answer, so she waited the few heartbeats that Tovera always allowed after the attention signal. Three men had noticed her reappearing from the drawing room and were walking toward her: two fellows in their forties, both strangers to her, and a one-time political associate of Adele's father whom she'd thought was an old man even then.