They went into the palace hall together, and a crescendo of voices echoing from stone rose up around them like a sudden rain.
Faces turned toward Zai as the group moved across the great black floor. The hero of Dhantu, or as the gutter media called him: the Broken Man. He realized that the group of officers, arrayed casually around him, had done him a kindness, forming a shield between him and the stares of the crowd. He wondered if Masrui had planned their meeting on the steps. They moved slowly, to nowhere in particular, his entourage hailing familiar faces and pulling them into the group, or fending off interlopers with a deflecting touch of greeting. One of them cadged a tray full of drinks and passed it round the group.
Zai drifted along like a child in his parents' tow. The great hall was crowded. The lucent dress uniforms of Navy personnel were mixed with the absolute black of the Political Apparatus. There were civilians dressed in formal bloodred or the white of the Senate, guildfolk in colored patterns he couldn't begin to read. The high, fluted columns that climbed to the vaulted ceiling channeled this mass of people into swirling eddies. After a few minutes of this promenade, Zai realized what would have been instantly obvious to an observer in the upper reaches of the hall: everyone was walking in circles.
Fowler's voice came from his side.
"How's immortality, Lieutenant-Commander?"
Fowler, despite her meteoric early career, had not been elevated yet.
"I hear it's not much different for the first hundred years," Zai answered. "Certainly, the first week isn't."
Fowler laughed. "Not missing the specter of death yet, are you? Well, I guess you saw enough of that on Dhantu." A chill crawled up Zai's spine at the word. Of course, the planet that had seen his art of heroism--if that's what it could be called--was implicit everywhere tonight. But only Fowler would be graceless enough to mention its name.
"Enough for a few centuries, I suppose," Zai answered. He felt movement on one flank. It was the ants, reorganizing themselves for some vital bit of tailoring. They would pick this moment.
Then Zai realized their purpose: a trickle of sweat had appeared under his real arm.
Fowler's face was close in the pressing crowd. "Well, the Rix are playing rough again, my connections on the frontier are saying. We may need heroes on that side of the Empire soon. They say you'll be promoted soon. Maybe get your own ship."
Zai felt overheated. The sense of a nakedness had disappeared in the close air of the crowded room, as if the ants were linking ever more tightly, closing their ranks against Fowler's rudeness. Could they detect the woman's hostility and react to it as they did to light? Zai wondered. The little elements writhed in a column down and around Zai's side, carrying his suddenly prodigious sweat to the small of his back.
"And the specter of death always joins heroes at the front," Fowler added. "Perhaps you'll become acquainted again." The woman's false camaraderie was growing thinner by the word. Zai looked around for Masrui. Was he among friends here, really?
He caught the eye of a young woman by the nearest column. She returned his glance with a smile and the slightest bow of her head.
"She's quite pretty," Zai said, interrupting whatever Fowler was saying. That basic touchstone of desire had its desired effect, and Fowler immediately turned to follow the path of Zai's gaze.
She turned back with an undisguised sneer.
"I think you picked the wrong woman, Zai. She's as pink as they come. And perhaps a bit beyond your rank."
Zai looked again and cursed his haste. Fowler was right. The sleeves of her white robe were hatched with the mark of a Senator-Elect. She seemed terribly young for that; even in an age of cosmetic surgery, a certain gravitas was expected of members of the Senate.
Zai tried not to show his embarrassment. "Pink, you said?"
"Anti-imperial," Fowler supplied, speaking slowly as though to a child. "The opposite of gray. A brave defender of the living. That's Nara Oxham, the mad senator-elect from Vasthold. She's rejected elevation, for heaven's sake. By choice, she'll rot in the ground."
"The Mad Senator," Zai murmured. He'd read that moniker in the same garbage media that had dubbed him the Broken Man.
The young woman smiled again, and Zai realized he'd been staring. He raised his glass to her and looked sheepishly away. Of course Zai knew what pink meant. But his native Vadan was as politically gray as any planet in the Empire. The dead were worshiped there, everyone claiming a risen ancestor as his or her personal intermediary with the Emperor. And of course the Navy was gray from admirals to marines. Lieutenant-Commander Zai wasn't sure if he'd met a pink in his entire life.
"Mind you, I'm sure she'll accept the elevation when she's a bit closer to death," Fowler said. "Just as long as she doesn't have an accident in the meantime. Wouldn't that be a pity, losing eternity for one's principles."
"Or one's arrogance," Zai added, hoping Fowler would suspect whom he really meant. "Perhaps she just needs a talking-to." He pushed past Fowler, feeling the woman's skin against his own as their ants briefly conjoined.
"For heaven's sake, Zai, she's a senator," Fowler hissed.
Zai turned briefly toward his adversary and spoke calmly.
"And tonight I am a hero," he said.
SENATOR-ELECT
Nara Oxham's eyes widened as Lieutenant-Commander Laurent Zai pushed his way out and headed toward her. The purpose on his face was unmistakable. He gripped his champagne glass with all five fingers, as if it were a club, and his eyes locked hers.
A group of officers had surrounded him since his arrival, cutting him off from the rest of the party in a display of protectiveness, and perhaps pride that one of theirs had been elevated so young. The handlers in Nara Oxham's secondary audio listed names and academy years as she moved an eyemouse across their faces. All were older than Zai. Senator-Elect Oxham suspected that their claim on him was newly minted; the hero of Dhantu would make a fine addition to their clique.
For some reason, though, Zai had moved to extract himself from their attentions. The young lieutenant-commander almost stumbled as he left them behind, as if pulling his feet from some invisible tangleweed on the marble floor. Nara Oxham fingered her apathy wristband ruefully. She would love to feel what was going on in Zai's mind, but the party was too crowded to dare a lower dosage.