Investments (7 page)

Ships docked at the elevator terminus at the base of the tower, in zero gravity. Passengers then traveled down a weightless tube to the hub of the residential and commercial areas of the station, where they could shift laterally to either one of two fat rotating wheels of white laminate that contained living quarters for workers, Fleet personnel, Shon-dan’s astronomers, and anyone in transit from Chee to anywhere else.

Martinez thanked Marcella and Lord Pa for the ride on
Kayenta.
He made a point of offering his thanks before they all left the ship, since he knew that once he transferred to the station, the awesome role of Lord Inspector would descend on him, and a long series of rigid protocols would take place.

Which in fact they did. As soon as Martinez floated out of the docking tube, one white-gloved hand on the guide rope that had been strung from the tube into the bay, he heard the bellow of petty officers calling the honor guard to attention, and the public address system boomed out “Our Thoughts Are Ever Guided by the Praxis
,
” one of the Fleet’s snappier marching tunes.

The honor guard were all Lai-own Military Constabulary in full dress, with the toes of their shoes tucked under an elastic strap that had been stretched along the deck to keep everyone properly lined up in zero gravity. Standing before them, braced at the salute, was Lieutenant-Captain Lord Ehl Tir-bal, who commanded the station, and his staff.

Lord Ehl was young, and short for a Lai-own— he and Martinez could almost look level into one another’s eyes. Lord Ehl introduced his staff, and then turned to the cadaverous civilian who stood behind the party of officers.

“My lord,” he said, “may I introduce Meridian Company’s chief engineer, Mister Ledo Allodorm.”

“Mister Allodorm,” Martinez said, and nodded.

“An honor to meet you, my lord.” Allodorm’s face, like those of all Daimong, was permanently fixed in the round-eyed, open-mouthed stare that a Terran could read either as surprise or terror or existential anguish. His voice was a lovely tenor that sounded like a pair of trumpets playing in soft harmony, and Martinez could see his soft mouth parts working behind the grey, fixed bony lips as he spoke.

Martinez performed a ritual inspection of the honor guard, after which Martinez, Terza, their servants and their baggage were loaded into a long, narrow viridian-green vehicle that would carry them to their lodging. Lord Ehl and Allodorm both joined them, and Ehl pointed out the features of the station as, on little puffs of air, the vehicle rose and began its journey down the docking bay.

The post of Chee’s station commander was Lord Ehl’s first major assignment, and his delight in his new command showed. He pointed out the features of the station, which was fresh and glossy and, to Martinez’ mind, rather overdesigned. Every feature, from the cargo loaders to the computer-operated ductwork on the air vents, was of the largest, brightest, most efficient type available.

“The air purifying and circulation systems are custom designed,” Ehl said. “So is the power plant.”

“We didn’t just take a thousand-year-old design off the shelf,” Allodorm said. “Everything on this station was rethought from basics.”

Custom design is very expensive,
Martinez thought. “It’s very impressive,” he said. “I’m not used to seeing new stations.”

“The first new station in nine hundred years,” Allodorm said. “And now that the Convocation’s begun opening new systems to expansion, we can expect to see many more.”

“You’ve done all this in a little over two years,” Martinez said. “That’s fast work.”

And awfully fast for such custom work. Perhaps, he thought, it wasn’t custom after all.

How would anyone know? No one had built an orbital station in eons. You could take an old standard design and change a few minor specifications and call it custom work.

All he knew was that, even if the circulation system was custom designed, the air smelled the same as it did on every other station he’d ever been on.

The vehicle jetted down the connecting tube to the hub of the two wheels, where it entered a large elevator and began its descent to the living areas. “You’ll be the first occupant of the Senior Officers’ Quarters,” Ehl said. “There will be a full staff on hand to look after you. Please let one of them— or me— know if anything is unsatisfactory.”

Gravity began to tug with greater insistence at Martinez’ inner ear. “Thank you, lord elcap,” Martinez said. “I’m sure everything will be satisfactory.”

Gravity had been restored by the time the elevator reached the main level of Wheel Number One. The staff of the Senior Officers’ Quarters were lined up by the exit, as if for inspection. Ehl gave an order, and the staff scurried to the vehicle to unload the luggage and to help Terza and Martinez from their seats. The luggage was placed on motorized robot carts, and Martinez and Terza walked followed by the carts and Lord Ehl and the staff and Allodorm.

“My lord,” Allodorm said, “I hope you and Lady Terza will accept the hospitality of the Meridian Company, two nights from now. The company’s executive and engineering staff would be honored to meet you.”

“We’d be delighted,” Martinez said.

Lord Ehl and the Fleet officers on station were dining with him tomorrow night, and he’d already been sent a rather ambitious schedule involving trips to various Fleet installations. He recognized Ehl’s plan well enough, which was to keep him so busy going from place to place, viewing one engineering wonder after another, and receiving toast after toast at banquets, that he would have precious little time to do any actual inspections. There wasn’t necessarily anything sinister in this scheme— it was the sort of thing Martinez might do himself, were he in charge of an installation and saw a Lord Inspector bearing down on him.

Ahead was the bright new corridor, curving only slightly upward, walls that looked as if they were made of pale ceramic, lighting recessed into the tented ceiling. Martinez looked down at the polymerized flooring beneath their feet. It was a dark grey and rubbery, giving slightly under his shoes, the standard flooring for an installation of this type.

“There was some confusion with this flooring, as I recall?” Martinez asked. His review of the Fleet contracts had told him that much.

“Yes, Lord Inspector, there was,” Allodorm said in his beautiful voice. “A consequence of our
not
rethinking something— we hadn’t worried about anything so basic as station flooring. But when we looked at the standard station flooring we’d ordered, we found that it was inadequate to the stresses of a developing station, the vehicle traffic and weights we’d have to move along it these corridors. We’d have to replace it all within ten years, and of course we couldn’t afford to shut down the station to do that, not with our deadlines. So we had to special order new flooring from Zarafan, and ship it out by high-gee express.”

“That Torminel crew must have knocked years off their lives getting it here,” Ehl said, and made a deliberate, shivering motion of his hands— his hollow-boned species abhorred high gravities.

“Well,” said Martinez, “at least the problem was corrected.”

He tried to sound offhand, and he wondered how he could get underneath the flooring to take a look at it.

The Senior Officers’ Quarters were as overdesigned as the rest of the station, with dark wood paneling and polished brass fittings. Aquaria glowed turquoise along the walls, filled with exotic fish from the planet below, and below the tall ceilings hung chandeliers that looked like ice sculptures. Everything smelled new. Ehl and Allodorm retired to allow their visitors to “recover from the rigors of the journey,” as if traveling forty-three days by private yacht were as taxing as crossing a mountain range on the back of a mule.

That left Terza and Martinez alone in the entrance hall, standing on the wood parquet that formed a map of the empire, with Chee a small disk of green malachite and Zanshaa, the capital, a blood-red garnet.

They looked at each other. “They’ve given us separate bedrooms,” Terza said.

“I noticed.”

“I’ll have Fran move my things into your room, if that’s all right.”

“Please,” Martinez said. “That huge room would be lonely without you.”

Their palace in Zanshaa High City didn’t have bedrooms as large. The Fleet must have paid a pretty penny for these accommodations, but on the other hand the Fleet wasn’t exactly known for depriving its officers of their comforts.

There was an hour or so before dinner. Martinez had his orderly, Alikhan, find him some casual civilian clothes, and he changed and left his quarters through the kitchen entrance, surprising the cooks who were preparing his meal.

This was a free hour on his schedule. He might as well make use of it.

He walked to one of the personnel elevators, then went to the unfinished wheel. He found an area still under construction, where Torminel workers straddled polycarbon beams just beyond portable barriers, working on pipes and ducts, and the flooring waited on huge spools taller than a Lai-own. Martinez quietly made some measurements, then ventured across the barriers to the point where the flooring dropped away to reveal an expanse of plastic sheeting, followed by open beams and the workers.

If the Torminel noticed Martinez making his measurements, they gave no sign. Martinez finished his task and returned to his quarters.

“Not custom-made, not at all,” Martinez said over dinner. “They’re just laying a second layer of the standard flooring over the first.” He raised a glass and sipped some of the Fleet’s excellent emerald Hy-oso wine. “The Meridian Company’s pocketing the money for all that flooring.”

“I’d suggest not,” Terza said. “I think the flooring exists. That express ship came out here with
something.
I think the flooring’s been diverted to another project, one owned a hundred percent by the Meridian Company.”

“I wonder how many people
know,
” Martinez said.

“Quite a few, probably,” Terza said. “Not the work gangs, who I imagine just do what they’re told. You can’t do corruption on this scale without a good many people figuring it out. But I’m sure the company keeps them happy one way or another.”

“Does Lord Ehl know, I wonder?” Martinez asked. “He’d have to be remarkably incurious not to notice what’s happening with the flooring, but perhaps he
is
incurious.”

Terza gave Martinez a significant look. “I suggest you not ask him,” she said.

Martinez looked at his plate and considered his roast fristigo lying in its sauce of onions and kistip berries. The berries and vegetables were fresh, a delight after his forty-three days in transit— the settlements must have got agriculture under way. “I wish we knew who owns the Meridian Company. But it’s privately held, and the exchanges don’t know because it’s not publicly traded . . . “ He let the thought fade away. “As Lord Inspector I could demand the information, but I might not get it, and it’s an indiscreet way of conducting an investigation.”

“Lord Pa must be one of the owners, and very likely the whole Maq-fan clan is involved,” Terza said. “But unless we get access to the confidential records of whatever planet the company’s chartered on, we’re sunk . . . “ She looked thoughtful. “You know, I
could
find out.”

Martinez turned to her. “How?” he said.

“Meridian does business with the Fleet, and law requires them to give the Ministry a list of their principal owners. The names are supposed to remain confidential, but—“ She gazed upward into a distant corner of the room. “I’m trying to think who I could ask.”

“Your father,” Martinez pointed out. “He’s on the Fleet Control Board, he should have the authority to get the information.”

Terza shook her head. “He couldn’t do it discreetly. An inquiry from the Control Board is like firing an antimatter missile from orbit.” She smiled. “Or like a command from a Lord Inspector. People would notice.” She gazed up into the corner again for a long moment. “Bernardo, then,” she decided. “He’s got access and is reasonably discreet. But I’ll owe him a
big
favor.”

“Ten days for the query to get to Zanshaa,” Martinez said. “Another ten days for the answer to return.”

The communication would leap from system to system at the speed of light, but Martinez still felt a burning impatience at the delay.

A smile quirked its way across Terza’s face. “I’ve never seen you work before. Half the time you’re frantic with impatience, and the rest of the time you’re marching around giving orders like a little king. It’s actually sort of fascinating.”

Martinez raised his eyebrows at this description of himself, but said, “I hope you can manage to sustain the fascination a little longer.”

“I think I’ll manage.”

Martinez reached across the corner of the table to take her hand. Terza leaned toward him to kiss his cheek. Her voice came low to his ear. “My doctor once told me that a woman’s at her most fertile in the month following the removal of her implant. I think we’ve proved him right. For the second time.”

He felt his skin prickle with sudden heat as delight flared along his nerves. “Are you sure?” he asked.