Starliner(80)

"But I'm a Streseman!"

Kneale squeezed the younger man's hands in sympathy. Streseman forced himself to turn and look Kneale in the face. "What do you think, sir?" he asked. "I'm going to do it anyway. But am I wrong?"

"I think . . ." the commander said very carefully. "That you're eighteen, Mr. Streseman. And yes, I think you're wrong, because you're doing more or less what I did at your age. And I was wrong."

He smiled with genuine affection. "But that's what being eighteen is for—making mistakes. Just don't kid yourself about what you're doing."

Streseman squeezed back, released his hands, and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. "Sorry about that," he muttered. "I'd best be going. Thank you, sir. I appreciate—everything. You'll give my regards to Lieutenant Colville?"

"I will indeed," Commander Kneale said. "I'm—you might say waiting up for him right now. I think I may have . . . given Mr. Colville an order, more or less, that I wouldn't have done if I'd known quite as much about Szgranian culture as I've found since reviewing the pilotry data in his absence."

Franz Streseman straightened and gave Kneale a stiff-armed Grantholm salute. "Thank you again, sir," he said.

"One thing, Mr. Streseman . . . ?" Kneale said.

"Sir?"

"If you survive what you're getting into just now," the commander said, picking his way with delicacy through his vocabulary. Kneale knew Streseman's rank in Grantholm society; but he knew there was no society equal to that of the men and women who held civilization together across the starlanes.

"If you've done what you feel is your duty," he continued, "come and see me, will you? Because Trident Starlines can always use officers who know their duty."

Kneale grinned starkly. "And know how to handle themselves in a tight spot. Which both you do very well."

He returned the salute, not as a Trident officer with palm outward, but with one languid finger to the brow, the way the Parliamentary Guard on Sulimaniya recognized their officers when Hiram Kneale was a boy of eighteen.

* * *

The shanties at the edge of the port area were still smoldering when Ran's palanquin swayed to a halt, then grounded. There were no open flames, but the sludgy reek of incomplete combustion hung in a waist-high layer in the pre-dawn air.

The Empress of Earth brilliantly illuminated herself. The starliner's glare trickled through hundreds of meters of paper walls, providing a dull beacon for the last stage of Ran's journey back from the palace. A Staff Side rating lounged at the top of the main gangway, the only human in sight at this hour.

Half a dozen of the servants preceding the palanquin carried lanterns. The leading male blew his seashell horn as before, though the streets were empty except for a few figures huddling at the corners of buildings for shelter. Ran wondered if those derelicts had owned the dwellings which the starliner ignited on landing.

He hadn't expected an entourage to accompany him back to the Empress. If anything, his escort was larger than had been the force which took him and the clan mistress up the bluff. There must be at least thirty armed and fully-caparisoned warriors surrounding the palanquin.

Rawsl stalked through the streets immediately ahead of the palanquin. Unlike the other warriors, he carried only pairs of swords, daggers, and short-hafted axes—the weapons traditional to his race before Szgrane came in contact with starfaring humans. Several of the escort lumbered along under the heavy tubes of plasma dischargers. The remaining warriors carried either an assault rifle for the lowest pair of hands or a brace of machine pistols with snail magazines.

There were no inside handles on the palanquin doors. While Ran fumbled for a catch which didn't exist, Lady Scour's chief aide twirled the door open and stepped back. The eight bearers had withdrawn to the fringes of the entourage of Szgranians.

"I hope you have enjoyed your trip through Betaniche," Rawsl said, placing his hands behind his neck in the Szgranian gesture of submission.

"Yes, thank you," Ran said as he got out of the vehicle. He ached in unfamiliar places. He was pretty sure that every one of Lady Scour's fingertips had left a bruise on his back as she climaxed the third time.

Rossignol from Commander Kneale's watch was on gangway duty. He straightened with a bored man's interest in any change.

"May we tell our mistress that you are fully satisfied with the way we carried out her instructions to bring you back to your ship, then?" Rawsl asked, still in his formal posture.

"Yes, certainly," Ran said. Rawsl was acting like a concierge prodding his guest for a tip.

"Let no one leave the vessel," the Szgranian aide snarled in his own language.