he says.”
“I eat my own meals in the crew’s mess,” I said. “Often with Ned. I haven’t seen lines of men and women queuing up.”
“Then you can’t have been paying attention.… I have my sources, my informants.”
For a while there was silence. I looked at Montesquieu. She was still breathing heavily. I looked round her office. There was no item of personal significance, no image of husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, children. There was no art on the walls. The place was sterile.
I said, “Why don’t you talk to Ned himself?”
“I am forbidden.”
“Forbidden? By whom?”
“By Her Excellency.”
“Oh, come on.…”
“I made the mistake of sending Her Excellency a memo outlining my concerns. An executive order forbidding me from approaching Malley in any way was my only repayment. I was doing my duty.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“You’re his friend. Talk to him. Please talk to him. Before the mass hysteria goes viral, before the breakdown of all social structure destroys this spacecraft.”
“I’ll give it a go,” I said. “And now I’ve got work to do.”
Without waiting for a formal dismissal I left the room.
* * * *
I didn’t have work to do, I had an early dinner to consume before I started serving the officers theirs. In the crew’s mess I found Ned and his friends, John Doe and D’Bridie. I took my tray over to their table.
“Dear lady, you look a bit agitated,” John Doe said. “I hope nothing has happened to upset the even tenor of your days.”
“You’re very perceptive,” I said.
“Then speak to us of your angst,” Doe said. “You are amongst friends.”
I wanted to talk to Ned by himself. But then I thought, bugger it, nothing’s private, the ship’s a hothouse, just as Montesquieu says. I might as well broadcast my feelings to all and sundry.
“I’ve been talking to Flight Regulator Montesquieu,” I said.
“A stalwart of the ship’s company,” John Doe said.
“Her!” D’Bridie said. “A snapper. That’s what she is. She snaps. She’s as uptight as all get-out one minute, the next minute she’s snapped. Did she snap with you, Em?”
“Almost. I told her to calm down.”
“Far out.”
“She’s one of my greatest fans,” Ned said. “She sent a memo to Lewis praising my many talents.”
“She sent a memo to Lewis complaining bitterly about you,” I said.
“Why’d Montesquieu complain about Ned?” D’Bridie said.
“He is a menace to the good order of the ship,” I said. “He is the cause of mass hysteria.”
“Alas,” John Doe said. “The saint is often cast out from the pigsty of his own eyeballs.”
“What rubbish is that, John?” D’Bridie said.
Doe started to say something, but I cut him off. “Listen, you arseholes, I’m on this ship because I want to go home. I want to get home in one piece. I want to pass the time until we arrive at Newharp just doing my job and being left alone. I don’t want to become involved in saving the whole social structure of the ship from total chaos. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ned said quietly. “We’ve got it, Em. No one’s going to involve you.”
“Bloody Montesquieu already has,” I said.
* * * *
Ned Talking
The Delegate went into orbit around Skyros and stayed there. Round and round we went. Rumors abounded, the bane of shipboard life. It was said that the Skyroans were asking an exorbitant fee to allow us to land. It was said that they were all suffering from some hideous new disease and we’d be mad to land. It was said that they weren’t prepared to accord Her Excellency the pomp and ceremony she deserved. Her Excellency was deliberately delaying things until her latest organ replacement was given the all clear. All sorts of things were said.
* * * *
One afternoon Lewis and I were working on our cycle of epic poems. I asked her what was going on. She said the problem seemed to be that there wasn’t a single Skyroan authority to deal with. The place was divided up into countries, fiefdoms, principalities, no-go areas, and they were all at war with one another. Also, there was a rash of civil wars: some entities were simply ripping themselves apart for the fun of it.
“Best we give the place a miss,” I said.
“It wouldn’t look good,” Lewis said.
“It would look even worse if we took the runabout down and landed on a battlefield. Bang! Crash! Kaput!”
“Good strong words,” Lewis said. “Let’s put them in the poem.”
So we did. When we’d finished, that bit of the epic cycle read:
Bang! Crash! Kaput! The Heavens shook.
Kaput and Crash and Bang
No love nor peace was with the rook.
And the dove had fled the land.
Lewis said, “There’s some little suzerain called New Stoke-on-Trent. It’s said to be reasonably peaceful. They’re prepared to let us talk to schools.”
“Schools?” I said. “Not joint sittings of both houses of parliament?”
“I’m not sure that they’ve actually got a parliament.”
“What about shore leave for the crew?”
“That might not eventuate.”
“They’re not going to like that.”
“Can’t be helped.”
* * * *
Em Talking
They tricked us out, me and Ned, in ambassadorial robes. I looked like a dork. I felt a complete idiot. But I was excited all the same; the trip to this New Stoke-on-Trent place would be a change. We were about to get out of the spinning drum for a few days, breathe the air of a new planet, see new sights, hear new sounds. We went down to the Skyroan surface in the officers’ runabout. It was a damn sight more civilized than the crew’s runabout that we’d taken from Earth. There must have been about two dozen of us in the
