“Thank you,” Ky said. It was still not 1000 hours. Her world had ended less than an hour ago. She had another couple of hours . . .
“What time did you arrange transport for?” MacRobert asked.
“Noon,” Ky said.
“I’ll see that your gear is at the gate by 1130,” MacRobert said.
“Thank you,” Ky said again. She felt unreal, still, as if this were a dream, as if she were floating a few centimeters off the floor.
“I’ll leave you alone,” MacRobert said. “When you’re finished, you can leave the resignation here—”
“The Commandant said on his desk,” Ky said.
“That’s right. And so it will be; just tell me when you’re finished.” He nodded and went out, shutting the door silently behind him.
She put Naval Etiquette: Essentials for Officers into the reader and found that someone had already bookmarked the section on resignations. Voluntary and involuntary, sections of the legal code relating to, forms of appropriate and inappropriate . . . She paused there and looked at the appropriate wording for resigning one’s commission while in command of a ship, while in command of a flotilla, while between commands, while on leave, while suffering an incurable mental or physical condition precluding further duty . . . That’s me, Ky thought. Suffering from an incurable tendency to trust people in trouble and help lame dogs.
She turned to the keyboard—she didn’t trust her voice to use the speech-activated system—and copied in the phrasing. “I, [name], hereby resign my [cadetship/commission] for reasons of [reason.]” “I, Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, hereby resign my cadetship for reasons of overwhelming stupidity and weak sentimentality.” No, that wouldn’t do. “For reasons of totally unfair blame for something I didn’t do.” That wouldn’t do either. “For reasons of a mental illness called gullibility?” “Softheartedness?” No.
Tears blurred her vision suddenly; she blinked them back. Memory stirred, bringing her Mandy Rocher’s image as he sat, shoulders hunched, hands trembling a little, telling her that he had to find a chaplain, he really did. Had his hands trembled with secret laughter that she was so easy to fool? Had he looked down to hide the scorn in his eyes? He was such a little . . . little . . . she searched her vocabulary for a sufficiently descriptive phrase. Insignificant. Forgettable. Boring. Pitiful. Nonentity. And to lose her cadetship because of him!
She would get him someday. Vengeance, said her grandmother, was an unworthy goal, but this was a special case. Surely this was a special case.
“I, Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, hereby resign from the Academy for reasons that reflect on my ability to carry out the duties of a naval officer.”
Close. Not quite yet.
She looked around the room, squinting to bring the titles of the old books into focus. Herren and Herren’s Chronicles of the Dispersion, all ten volumes. Her family owned III through X, but I and II were very rare indeed in paper form. Cantabria’s Principles of Space Warfare, evidently a first edition. She longed to pull it down and check, but was afraid to. A row bound identically in blue-gray cloth . . . logbooks, the old-fashioned kind. Those would be centuries and centuries old; she got up and looked at the names on the spines. Darius II, Paleologus, Sargon, Ataturk . . . she felt the gooseflesh come up on her arms, and looked quickly at the last, least-faded volume. Centaurus. Not in fact centuries old, not even one century: these were logs that the Commandant had kept, his personal logs from every ship on which he’d served. She’d once memorized the sequence on a dare. Her fingers twitched. What had he thought, felt, done as a young man on his first ship?
She would never know. She had no right to know. The adventures she had hoped to write into such logs herself would never come her way now. She made herself step away from that shelf and look at another. History here, biography there, reference works on all the neighboring states, on the biota of First Colony, on the ecology of water gardens . . . Water gardens? The Commandant studied water gardens?
A sound outside in the passage startled her and sent her back to the table, but the footsteps passed by. She stared at the screen again. “For reasons of . . .” Back to the hand reader. Alternate phrasing: “due to.” Clumsy.
Never say more than you need, her father had said; her mother had muttered that Kylara always said more than she needed.
She’d stop that right now.
“I, Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, hereby resign from the Academy for personal reasons.” Short and . . . not sweet. Nothing about this was sweet.
She stared at the screen a long time, glaring at the tiny blue words on the gray screen. Then she moved the paper over and copied the words very carefully, in her best script, the handwriting of a properly-brought-up child and good student.
Panic gripped her when she had signed it. She did not want to do this. She could not do this. She must do this. She looked at the time, 10:22:38. Had destroying her life really taken so little time?
A tap on the door, then it opened. MacRobert again, this time with a large silver tray. A teapot, incongruously splotched with big pink roses. A pair of matching cups, gold-rimmed, on saucers. A small plate of lemon cookies, and another of tiny, precisely cut sandwiches.
“The Commandant will be joining you,” MacRobert said. He set the tray on the end of the library table, picked up her resignation, and walked out with it. Ky sat immobile, staring at the steam rising from the teapot’s spout, trying not to smell the fragrance of cookies obviously fresh from the oven, trying not to think or feel anything at all.
The Commandant’s entrance brought her upright, to attention; he waved her back down. “You’ve resigned, sit down.” He sighed. His left eyelid was back up where it should be, but his whole face sagged. “Pour out, will you?”
Ky carried out the familiar ritual, something she didn’t have to think about, and handed him his cup of tea. He waited, and nodded at her. She poured one for herself. It was good tea; it would be, she thought. He took a sandwich and gave her a look; she took one, too.
He ate his sandwich in one bite, and sipped his tea. “It’s a shame, really,” he said. “Here I had a perfectly good excuse to remove your internal organs and hang them from the towers, make an example of you . . . It’s my job, and I’m supposed to relish it, or why did I ask for it? But you were a good cadet, Mistress Vatta, and I know you intended to be a good officer.”
Then why did you make me resign? That was a question she must never ask; she knew that much.
“In consideration of your past performance, and on my own responsibility, I’ve chosen to let you keep your insignia and wear it as you depart; I trust your sense of honor not to wear it again.”
“No, sir,” she said. The bite of sandwich she had taken stuck in her throat. She had not even considered that he might demand their removal. The class ring on her finger—Hal’s ring, as he wore hers—suddenly weighed twice as much.
“It’s hard for you to believe now, I’m sure, but you will survive this. You have many talents, and you will find a use for them . . .” He took a long swallow of his tea, and actually smiled at her. “Thank you for not making this harder than it had to be. Your resignation was . . . masterful.”
The sandwich bite went down, a miserable lump. She wasn’t hungry; she couldn’t be hungry. She ate the rest of the sandwich out of pure social duty.
“I understand you’ve arranged transport for noon?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to say sir, Ca—Mistress Vatta.”
“I can’t help it,” Ky said. Tears stung her eyes; she looked away.
“Well, then. I would advise that you go out at 1130, while classes are in session. MacRobert will remain with you until your transport arrives, to deal with any . . . mmm . . . problems that may come up. Since the story broke on the early news, the media have been camped at our gates; it’ll be days before that dies down.”
For a moment she had been furious—had he thought she’d do something wron
g?—but the mention of media steadied her. Of course they would be trying to get in, trying to interview cadets. Of course the daughter of the Vatta family would interest them, even if Mandy hadn’t mentioned her, and someone would be bound to have a face-recognition subroutine that would pop out her name.
“And there’s another thing.” She had to look at him again, had to see the expression of mingled annoyance and pity that was worse than anything he might have said directly. “The Bureau demands—I realize this isn’t necessary—a statement that you will consider all this confidential and not communicate with the media.”
As if she would. As if—but she took the paper he handed her and scrawled her name on it in a rough parody of her usual careful handwriting.
“You have almost an hour,” the Commandant said. “MacRobert will fetch you when it’s time.” He drained his cup and picked up one of the lemon cookies. “And—if you’ll take advice—drink the rest of that tea, and eat those sandwiches. Shock uses up energy.” He rose, nodded to her, and went out, shutting the door softly behind him.
To her shame, Ky burst into tears. She snatched the tea towel off the tray and buried her face in it. She could always claim she’d spilled the tea; she wasn’t a cadet; she didn’t have to tell the strict truth. Five hard sobs, and it was over, for now. She wiped her face, spread the tea towel out again, and set everything back on the tray in perfect order. No—her cup was almost full. She drank the tea. She ate another sandwich. Disgusting body, to want tea and food at such a time.
The silent room eased her, made calm possible. She got up and paced the circuit, looking at the titles again. Then she took down the logbook labeled Darius II on the back. Just this once—and what could they do to her if they disapproved?
When MacRobert came for her at 1127, she was deep into the logbook, and calm again.
Outside, the weather had changed, as if her fortune changed it, from early morning’s sunshine and puffy clouds to a dank, miserable cold rain with a gusty wind. Her luggage made a pile in the relative safety of the gateway arch; she stood in the shelter of the sentry’s alcove, where she could just see the street beyond, and the gaggle of reporters on the far side. She was still in cadet blue; the sentry ignored her, and MacRobert checked off her bags on a list before turning to her.
“They’ll be near on time?” he asked.
“I expect so,” Ky said. The lump in her throat was growing now; she had to swallow before she could speak.
“Good. We’ll have to frustrate the mob over there . . .” He cocked his head. “You’re not half-bad, Vatta. Sorry you stepped in it. Don’t forget us.” His voice seemed to carry some message she couldn’t quite understand.
“I won’t,” she said. How could he even suggest she might forget this? Her skin felt scorched with shame.
“Don’t be angrier than you have to be.”
“I’m not.” She might be later, but now . . . anger was only beginning to seep toward the surface, through the shock and pain.
“Good. You still have friends here, though at the moment there’s a necessary distance—” He looked at the clock. 1154. “Excuse me for a few moments. I’ll be back at 1200 sharp.”
Ky wondered what he was up to, but not for long. The chill dank air, the gusts of wind, all brought back to her the enormity of her fall from grace. She was going to have to go out there, in the cold rain, and pick up those bags and put them in the vehicle in front of everyone in the universe, obviously disgraced and sent away, and be driven home to her parents like any stupid brat who’s messed up. Like, for instance, her cousin Stella, who had fallen in love with a musha dealer and given him the family codes. She remembered overhearing some of that, when she was thirteen, and telling herself she would never be so stupid, she would never disgrace the family the way Stella had.
And now it was on all the news, whatever had actually been said, and it was all her fault.
A huge black car whizzed past the entrance, flags flapping from its front and rear staffs, and she saw the reporters across the way turn, and then rush after it. “The back entrance!” she heard one of them yell. Their support vans squealed into motion, turned quickly across the street, and sped after the black car. She glanced at the clock. 1159. She stepped out of the alcove into the archway and saw a decent middle-aged dark blue car swerving over to stop at the archway. Twelve hundred on the dot. Two men—the driver and escort—got out of the car.
“I’ll help with these.” MacRobert was back, and already had two of her bags in hand. “Vatta, you get in the car. Jim, get her trunk,” he said to the sentry. In moments, Ky was in the backseat, her luggage stowed in the trunk or beside her, and the two men were back in the car.
“Take care, Vatta,” MacRobert said. “And remember what I said; you have friends here . . .”
At the last moment, she stripped off the class ring and handed it to him. “You’ll know where this should go,” she said. She couldn’t keep it; she could only hope that MacRobert would get it back to him discreetly, that Hal would understand.
The car moved off, sedately, rejoining the traffic stream, and turning at the first corner; Ky glanced to the right and saw a crowd of news vans partway down that block. What, she wondered, did MacRobert want her to remember? That he was kind as well as brusque? Or how stupid she’d been?
The Vatta employees in the front seat didn’t talk on the way to their first stop, the warehouse office at 56 Missalonghi. There, the escort got out and her uncle Stavros climbed into the backseat with her.
“Kylara, my dear . . . are you all right?”
“I’m . . .” She did not want to come apart in front of Uncle Stavros, father of the notorious Stella. “I’m fine.” A lie, and they both knew it, but the right thing to say.
“We’re going over to the airfield—” That would be the private airfield, of course. “You’ll be on a flight to Corleigh; your parents had to run over there to take care of some business a week ago.”
Ky put her mind back to work: Corleigh. Tik plantations. Source of both wealth and problems, because the labor force knew all too well what tik extract brought on the interstellar market, and felt they weren’t getting enough of the profits. “Pickers or packers?” she asked.
Her uncle nodded approvingly. “Packers. The pickers got a new contract last year, and the packers insist they add more value and need another two percent on top of the five percent increase year before last.”
She hadn’t seen the sales figures for tik extract since the holiday before last. “So . . . what’s the quote running?”
“Thirty-eight two seven—down a hundredth from last year; Devann’s come into production, though we judge their product only third-rate. I think the market’ll be back up, but we’ll see.”
Ky knew her uncle had brought this up mostly to distract her, but it did make the journey easier. “What’s their production base?”
“Twenty thousand hectares, five thousand in eight-year-olds, five each in seven, six, and four. Rumor has it they lost their entire planting five years ago, and all the surviving trees lost a year’s maturity. Soil’s good, climate’s marginal.”
“Labor force?”
“Well, now, that’s more of a problem for them than they want to admit, and that’s where their quality falls off. They recruited from the immigrant lists, and none of ’em are experienced. Most of the ag-credentialed immigrants are row croppers who know nothing about trees. What I hear from the market is that their pickers are damaging the fruit, and the packers aren’t tossing the damaged stuff. It’s been a year longer than they planned, after all, getting any income off the place at all, so they’re trying to make it up.”
Ky glanced out the window as the car swerved; they were nearing the private airfield now, and a truck with the blue and red Vatta Transport insignia had slowed for the turn into the cargo bays. Their car sped on to the passenger entrance, paused at the check station for their driver to flash the scans, then followed the service road past the elegant littl
e charter terminal with its tropical garden and colonnade, for those departing or arriving on chartered flights, and on around past the private terminals to the Vatta Transport complex, all in blue with red trim. Sitting out on the apron was the sleek little twin-engine craft in which Kylara had flown from island to island most of her life.
“You can’t pilot yourself today, Ky,” her uncle said, as the car slowed. “Under the circumstances—”
Her vision blurred. She knew she wasn’t safe to pilot anything, not like this, but—
“It’s Gaspard; you remember him.” She did; Gaspard Ritnour had been her first flying instructor, though the family wasn’t supposed to know that. “Let’s get you aboard.” Kylara moved quickly from the car to the aircraft. Automatically she put her feet in the right places on the step and wing, and started to slide into the copilot’s seat.
“You’d better ride in the passenger compartment,” her uncle said.
Ky felt herself flushing. “I won’t try to grab the controls,” she said.
“It’s not that, Ky,” her uncle said. “Gaspard—explain it to her; if she’s going to ride up front you’ll have to take steps. I need to get back—”
Ky buckled in and one of the ground crew slammed the door.
CHAPTER TWO
Ky said nothing as Gaspard finished preflight; he didn’t explain what her uncle had meant. She sat quietly, waiting. One thing she’d learned at the Academy was how to wait without fidgeting. She did not even put on the copilot’s headset.
Gaspard murmured into his own voice pickup—contacting traffic control, she assumed. Then he turned to her.
“Put your headset on,” he said.
“Why?” Ky asked.
“You’re visible up here.” It took her a moment to figure out what he meant. Anyone looking in—with a long lens for instance—could see her, whereas back in the passenger compartment the smaller windows had little shades.