Planet Pirates Omnibus Part 54

"Later, Seraphine." Auntie Q lifted the crystal bell and, in response to its delicate ring, a uniformed servant entered with a tray of food.

Whatever else Auntie Q had, Ford thought later that evening, she had a miracle of a cook. He was sure it was not just the contrast with the supply hauler's mess: he had eaten well enough on the Zaid-Dayan, and at plenty of elegant restaurants in several Sectors. No, this was special, a level of cuisine he had never even imagined. Nothing looked like what it was, or tasted the way

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he thought it would, and it all made "good" or "delicious" into inadequate words. If only his unsteady stomach had not suffered through the tanker crew's cookery, he'd have been in culinary heaven.

Conversation, on the other hand, was limited. Ma-dame Flaubert kept giving Ford meaningful looks, but said nothing except to ask for the return of certain dishes. Spiritual advising was evidently hungry work; she ate twice as much as Auntie Q, and even more than Ford. Auntie Q asked Ford perfunctory questions about his family, and was satisfied with the barest outline of answers. He had the feeling that normally she'd want to know what color stockings his sister's bridesmaids had worn at her wedding, and who had given what gift, but something was distracting her. Suddenly, while Ma-dame Flaubert still had a mouthful of food, Auntie Q pushed back her chair.

"We shall retire," she said, "while you enjoy your port."

Madame Flaubert flushed, swallowed gracelessly but without choking, and stood. Ford was already on his feet, and bowed them out. Port? After clearing away, the servant had returned, carrying a tray with bottle, gla.s.s, and a box of cigars. Ford eyed them. He did not smoke, and everything he'd read about cigars warned him not to start now. The port was something else. Would it settle his stomach or make things worse? And how long was he supposed to wait before rejoining the ladies? For that matter, what did the ladies do while waiting for the gentleman to finish his port?

He took a cautious sip, and smiled in spite of himself. Wherever Auntie Q had found this, it was grand stuff for a stomach-ache, warming all the way down. He stretched his legs beneath the table and tried to imagine himself lord of all he surveyed. With the exception of Auntie Q, who would rule whatever domain she happened to be in.

After a time, the same servant appeared to take away the tray, and direct Ford to "Madame's drawing room." Originally a withdrawing room, Ford recalled, to which

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the ladies withdrew while the menfolk made noise and rude smells with their cigars.

His aunt's drawing room was furnished with more restraint than Ford would have expected. A small instrument with black and white keys, reversed from the usual, and too small for a piano. Ford wondered what it was, but did not ask. Several elegant but st.u.r.dy chairs, each different. A low table of some remarkable wood, sawn across knots and knurls to show the intricate graining. A single tall cabinet, its polished doors closed, and two graceful etchings on the walls but none of the cluttered knick-knacks her other mannerisms had suggested.

Madame Flaubert lounged in a brocaded armchair, a pose he suspected of concealing more tension than she would admit. She fondled a furry shape he gradually recognized as a dog of some sort. Its coat had been brushed into fanciful whirls, and it had a jeweled collar around its tiny neck. Two bright black eyes glittered at him, and it gave one minute yip before subsiding into Madame Flaubert's ample lap. His aunt, on the contrary, sat upright before a tapestry frame.

"I remember your father," Auntie Q said. "Hardly more than a boy, he was then. Seemed afraid of me, for some reason. Very stiff."

Ford gave her the smile that had worked with other women. "If I'd been a boy, you'd have frightened me."

"I doubt that." She snipped the needle free and threaded a length of blue. "I know what your side of the family thinks of me. Too rich to be reasonable, too old to know what she's doing, troublesome. Isn't that right?" Her eye on him was as sharp as her needle's '

;. Ford grinned and shrugged. "Spoiled, overbearing, r arrogant, and tiresome, actually. As you, without doubt, already know."

^ She flashed a smile at him. "Thank you, my dear. Honesty's best between relatives, even when, as so .often, it is inconvenient elsewhere. Now we know where we stand, don't we? You didn't come to see a spoiled, .

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overbearing, arrogant, tiresome old lady for the fun of "Not for the fan of it, no." Ford let himself frown. "It was actually curiosity."

"Oh?"

"To see if you were as bad as they said. To see if you were as sick and miserable as you said. To see what kind of woman could have married into both Santon and Paraden and then gotten free of them."

"And now?"

"To see what kind of woman would wear Ryxi tailfeathers to dinner. How could anyone resist that?"

"I can't tell you what you want to know," she said, sombre for an instant. "I can't tell you why. But, never mind, I can tell you about the Ryxi."

Ford was not surprised to notice that Madame Flaubert was back in the room, cooing to her dog, which had spent the interim curled on her chair.

"Even the Ryxi are fellow beings searching for the light," said Madame Flaubert. "Ridicule damages the scoffer ..."

"I'm not scoffing," said Auntie Q tardy. "I'm merely telling Ford where I got these feathers."

She plunged into the tale without looking at Madame Flaubert again; her voice trembled at first, then steadied. Ford listened, amused by the story. He could have predicted it, what a high-spirited rich young wife might do at one of the fancy b.a.l.l.s when her "incorrigibly stuffy" husband tried to insist that she be discreet. Discretion, quite clearly, had never been one of Auntie Q's strong points. He could almost see her younger (no doubt beautiful) self, capering in mock courtship with a Ryxi in diplomatic service ... a Ryxi who had let himself get overexcited, who had plucked the jeweled pin from her turban, and crowed (as Ryxi sometimes did, when they forgot themselves).

He could imagine her shock, her desire to do something outrageous in return. When the Ryxi had gone into the final whirling spin of the mating dance, she had yanked hard on his tailfeathers. By the time the whirling Ryxi could stop, screeching with mingled pain and hu-

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initiation, she had run away, safely hidden by her own wild crowd. Ford glanced at Madame Flaubert, whose mouth was pinched into a moue of disgust. He could almost hear her mental comment: vulgar. Ford himself agreed, but not with any intensity.

Most of what he knew about the wealthy and powerful he considered vulgar, but it didn't bother him. He certainly didn't bother about the degrees of vulgarity they might a.s.sign to one another's actions. Tenuous as the family connection might be, he would pick Auntie Q over Madame Flaubert anytime. His aunt had finished her story, with a challenging, almost defiant lift of her chin. He could imagine her as a spoiled child, when she would have had dimples beside her mouth. He grinned as much at the memory as at her story.

"Didn't he file a protest?" asked Ford.

His aunt bridled. "Of course he did. But I had filed a protest, too. Because he still had my jewel and he'd made a public nuisance of himself by losing control and going into the mating sequence. It's quite unmistakable even if you've never seen it."

"I have." Ford fought to keep his voice under control. It must have been the spectacle of the year, he thought to himself.

"So there was a lot of buzzing around. My husband's attorneys got involved and eventually everyone withdrew charges. The Ryxi amba.s.sador himself sent a note of apology. Everyone insisted I do the same. But both of us kept our trophies. I had to agree not to display Aem then-not in public, you know-but that was years back, and this is my own private yacht."

It sounded as if she expected an argument; another fiance at Madame Flaubert suggested with whom. Ford Iwt protective, but realized that Auntie Q expected {and trained) her menfolk to feel protective. **>. "It's a wonderful story," he said, quite honestly. "I wish I'd been there to see it." He meant that, too. .Formal diplomatic functions with multiple races were osually painfully dull, kept so by everyone's attempts not to break another culture's rules of etiquette. Fleet officers stuck with attendance expected to spend long

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hours standing politely listening to civilian complaints while all the good-looking persons of opposite s.e.x enjoyed themselves across a crowded dance floor. He remembered Sa.s.sinak telling him about a little excitement once, but that was all.

His aunt leaned over and touched his cheek. "You'd have enjoyed it, I can tell. You might even have helped me."

"Of course I would."

His stomach rumbled, loudly and insistently, and he felt himself flush. His aunt ignored die unmentionable noise, turning instead to Madame Flaubert, who was staring at Ford's midsection as if she could see into it.

"Seraphine, perhaps you could find the cube with die newsstories from that event?" Her tone made it more command than request; Madame Flaubert almost jumped, but nodded quickly and set her lapdog back down.

"Of course."

But even as she rose to comply, Ford's stomach clenched, and he realized he was about to be sick. He felt cold, clammy, and his vision narrowed.

"Excuse me, please," he said, between gritted teeth.

Auntie Q glanced at him politely, then stiffened. "You've gone quite green," she said. "Are you ill?"

Another pang twisted him, and he barely whispered, "Something I ate on the tanker, perhaps."

"Of course. I'll have Sam find you some medicine." She rose, as imperious as she had been after dinner. "Come, Seraphine."

They swept out as Ford groped his way to the door. He was perversely irritated that she had seen him lose control, and at the same time that she had left him to find his own way back to his stateroom. He didn't want to throw up on her elegant silver and rose carpet, but if he had to wander far. . . .

He had hardly taken a few steps down the corridor when a strongly-built man in chefs whites (another uniform unchanged through the centuries) grasped him under the arm and helped him swiftly back to his quarters.

He had been very thoroughly sick in the bathroom,

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losing with regret that delicious dinner, hardly noticing the silent, efficient help of the cook. When he regained his sense of balance, he was tucked into bed, his dress clothes draped across a chair, and the cold clamminess had pa.s.sed into a burning fever and aching joints. What a beginning to a social inquiry, he thought, and then lapsed into unrestful sleep.

He woke to a foul taste in his mouth, the sour smell of sickness, and the suspicion that something was very wrong indeed. He had had bad dreams, full of dire symbolism (a black Eyxi dancing around his aunt's casket waving her two stolen plumes in macabre triumph? Commander Sa.s.sinak handing him a shining medal that turned into a smoking fuse when he pinned it to his uniform? A scaly, clawed hand tossing a handful of Fleet vessels, including the Zaid-Dayan, like dice onto a playing board whose pieces were planets and suns?).

He was quite sure that Madame Flaubert could "explain" them all, in ways that would make him responsible if he didn't reform, but he felt too weak to reform. Even to get up. Someone tapped on his door, and he croaked a weak answer.

"Sorry, sir, to be so late with breakfast."

It was the man in white, the cook. Sam, he remembered. He had not expected anyone, but if he'd thought, he'd have expected the servant who served dinner. Sam carried a covered tray; Ford thought it probably smelled delicious, but whatever it was he didn't want it. He shook his head, but Sam brought it nearer anyway, and set it on a folding table he had had in his other hand.

"You're still not well. I can see that." Off came the tray cover, revealing a small plate with crisp slices of toast, small gla.s.ses of fruit juice and water, and a tiny cut-gla.s.s pillbox. "This may not sit well, but at least it'll give me an idea what to try next . . ."

"I don't want anything." That came out in a hoa.r.s.e voice he hardly recognized for his own. "Something on the tanker ..."

"Well, I didn't think it came out of my kitchen." That barely missed smugness, the certainty of a master crafts-

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man. "Did you get a look in that tanker's galley?" Sam held out the gla.s.s of water, and Ford sipped it, hoping to lose the taste in his mouth. It eased die dryness in his throat, at least.

"They told me, boasted in fact, that they didn't have a galley. Cooked their own food, mostly just heated up whatever came out of the synthesizer."

"And didn't clean the synthesizer coils often enough, I daresay. It's not easy to make great meals from basic synth, but it doesn't have to be sickening, either." As he spoke, Sam offered the toast, but Ford shook his head again.

"Just the water, thanks. Sorry to cause you any inconvenience." Which was a mild way of apologizing for the night before, when he had done more than cause inconvenience. And what was he going to do now? In Auntie Q's circle, he was sure that one did not inflict one's illnesses on hosts. But he had no place to go. The Zaid-Dayan was on her way to FedCentral; the nearest Fleet facility was at least a month's travel away, even if the yacht was headed that direction, which it wasn't.