“All right.” She started to withdraw, stopped. “Can Padma come with us?”
“Check with Kensie. I’d say it’s best not to ruffle the Governors’ feathers by asking to let him sit in, right now.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “Kensie already thought not, but he said I should ask you.”
She went out.
“Sure you don’t want to be there?” I asked him.
“No need.” He got up. “There’s something I want to show you. It’s important you understand the situation here thoroughly. If Kensie and myself should both be knocked out, Amanda would only have you to help her handle things—and if you’re certain about being able to stay?”
“As I said,” I repeated, “I can stay.”
“Fine. Come along, then. I wanted you to meet the Conde de Nahar. But I’ve been waiting to hear from Michael as to whether the Conde’s receiving, right now. We won’t wait any longer. Let’s go see how the old gentleman is.”
“Won’t he—the Conde, I mean—be at this meeting with Amanda and the Governors?”
Ian led the way out of the room.
“Not if there’s serious business to be talked about. On paper, the Conde controls everything but the Governors. They elect him. Of course, aside from the paper, they’re the ones who really control everything.”
We left the suite of offices and began to travel the
corridors of Gebel Nahar once more Twice we took lift tubes and once we rode a motorized strip down one long corridor, but at the end Ian pushed open a door and we stepped into what was obviously the orderly room fronting a barracks section
The soldier bandsman seated behind the desk there came to his feet immediately at the sight of us—or perhaps it was just at the sight of Ian.
“Sirs’” he said, in Spanish
“I ordered Mr de Sandoval to find out for me if the Conde would receive Captain El Man here, and myself,” Ian said in the same language “Do you know where the Bandmaster is now?”
“No, sir He has not come back. Sir—it is not always possible to contact the Conde quickly—“
“I’m aware of that,” said Ian “Rest easy. Mr de Sandoval’s due back here shortly, then?”
“Yes, sir Any minute now. Would the sirs care to wait in the Bandmaster’s office?”
“Yes,” said Ian
The orderly turned aside, lifting his hand in a decidedly non-military gesture to usher us past his desk through a farther entrance into a larger room, very orderly and with a clean desk, but crowded with filing cabinets and with its walls hung with musical instruments
Most of these were ones I had never seen before, although they were all variants on string or wind music-makers. There was one that looked like an early Scottish bagpipe It had only a single drone, some seventy centimeters long, and a chanter about half that length Another was obviously a keyed bugle of some sort, but with most of its central body length wrapped
with red cord ending in dependent tassels. I moved about the walls, examining each as I came to it, while Ian took a chair and watched me. I came back at length to the deprived bagpipe.
“Can you play this?” I asked Ian.
“I’m not a piper,” said Ian. “I can blow a bit, of course—but I’ve never played anything but regular highland pipes. You’d better ask Michael if you want a demonstration. Apparently, he plays everything— and plays it well.”
I turned away from the walls and took a seat myself.
“What do you think?” asked Ian. I was gazing around the office.
I looked back at him and saw his gaze curiously upon me.
“It’s . . . strange,” I said.
And the room was strange, for reasons that would probably never strike someone not a Dorsai. No two people keep an office the same way; but just as there are subtle characteristics by which one born to the Dorsai will recognize another, so there are small signals about the office of anyone on military duty and from that world. I could tell at a glance, as could Ian or any one of us, if the officer into whose room we had just stepped was Dorsai or not. The clues lie, not so much with what was in the room, as in the way the things there and the room itself was arranged. There is nothing particular to Dorsai-born individuals about such a recognition. Almost any veteran officer is able to tell you whether the owner of the office he has just stepped into is also a veteran officer, Dorsai or not. But in that case, as in this, it would be easier to give the answer than to list the reasons why the answer was what it was.
So, Michael de Sandoval’s office was unmistakably the office of a Dorsai. At the same time it owned a strange difference from any other Dorsai’s office, that almost shouted at us. The difference was a basic one, underneath any comparison of this place with the office of a Dorsai who had his walls hung with weapons, or with one who kept a severely clean desktop and message baskets, and preferred no weapon in sight.
“He’s got these musical instruments displayed as if they were fighting tools,” I said.
Ian nodded. It was not necessary to put the implication into words. If Michael had chosen to hang a banner from one of the walls testifying to the fact that he would absolutely refuse to lay his hands upon a weapon, he could not have announced himself more plainly to Ian and myself.
“It seems to be a strong point with him,” I said. “I wonder what happened?”
“His business, of course,” said Ian.
“Yes,” I said.
But the discovery hurt me—because suddenly I identified what I had felt in young Michael from the first moment I had met him, here on Ceta. It was pain, a deep and abiding pain; and you cannot have known someone since he was in childhood and not be moved by that sort of pain.
The orderly stuck his head into the room.
“Sirs,” he said, “the Bandmaster comes. He’ll be here in one minute.”
“Thank you,” said Ian.
A moment later, Michael came in.
“Sorry to keep you waiting—“ he began.
“Perfectly all right,” Ian said. “The Conde made
you wait yourself before letting you speak with him, didn’t he?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, is he available now, to be met by me and Captain El Man?”
“Yes sir. You’re both most welcome.”
“Good.”
Ian stood up and so did I. We went out, followed by Michael to the door of his office.
“Amanda Morgan is seeing the Governors, at the moment,” Ian said to him as we left him. “She may want to talk to you after that’s over. You might keep yourself available for her.”
“I’ll be right here,” said Michael. “Sir—I wanted to apologize for my orderly’s making excuses about my not being here when you came—“ he glanced over at the orderly who was looking embarrassed. “My men have been told not to—“
“It’s all right, Michael,” said Ian. “You’d be an unusual Dorsai if they didn’t try to protect you.”
“Still—“ said Michael.
“Still,” said Ian. “I know they’ve trained only as bandmen. They may be line troops at the moment— all the line troops we’ve got to hold this place with— but I’m not expecting miracles.”
“Well,” said Michael. “Thank you, Commander.”
“You’re welcome.”
We went out. Once more Ian led me through a maze of corridors and lifts.
“How many of his band decided to stay with him when the regiments moved out?” I asked as we went.
“All of them, “said Ian.
“And no one else stayed?”
Ian looked at me with a glint of humor.
“You have to remember,” he said, “Michael did graduate from the Academy, after all.”
A final short distance down a wide corridor brought us to a massive pair of double doors. Ian touched a visitor’s button on the right-hand door and spoke to an annunciator panel in Spanish.
“Commander Ian Graeme and Captain El Man are here with permission to see the Conde.”
There was the pause of a moment and then one of the doors opened to show us another of Michael’s bandsmen
“Be pleased to come in, sirs,” he said.
“Thank you,” Ian said as we walked past. “Where’s the Conde’s majordomo?”
“He is gone, sir. Also most of the other servants.”
“I see.”
The room we had just been let into was a wide lobby filled with enormous and magnificently-kept furniture but lacking any windows. The bandman led us through two more rooms like it, also without windows, until we were finally ushered into a third and finally window-walled room, with the same unchanging view of the plains below. A stick-thin old man dressed in black was standing with the help of a silver-headed cane, before the center of the window area.