Vaughn was behind him, wearing a suit of vivid chartreuse and carrying a bottle. “Mistress President,” he said, offering the bottle to Woetjans. “I thank you as well. I hope you’ll accept this small addition to the festivities.”
It was brandy, a distillation from Pleasaunce and expensive even within the Alliance. Betts, peering past Adele’s shoulder, said, “God damn! The Marat’s wardroom got a case of that stuff at a souk on Rigoun. A shot of that’ll put lead in your pencil, let me tell you!”
Adele saw Daniel frown slightly. “Then it’ll make an excellent stirrup cup when we go on leave on Sexburga,” he said. “In ten days, I expect, at the rate we’ve been shaping.”
Woetjans nodded and handed the bottle to Hogg, who’d been drafted for the night along with Tovera and Timmins. She looked a trifle wistful, but she wasn’t the person to question her captain’s orders even when they were delicately phrased.
Adele knew perfectly well that alcohol impeded the physiology of mating, though no doubt a lot of the process was in the mind. It wasn’t an area in which she could claim expertise, of course.
The midshipmen entered last, carefully groomed and as stiff as if they expected to be shot. They were both eighteen, just out of the Academy and on their first operational deployment. In a large vessel they would have had as many as a score of other midshipmen to provide fellowship and a degree of concealment. Instead they’d been placed in a small ship with a picked crew and a captain little more than their own age and already famous. Of course they were nervous!
Adele thought of her own entry into the Blythe Academy. Her smile was grim.
She’d been an outsider—of course; she’d been an outsider all her life and perfectly happy about it. Her skills even at age sixteen were beyond those not only of her fellow students but of her instructors and most of the staff of the Academic Collections. She couldn’t imagine wanting to fit in with people whom she considered only a short intellectual step above lapdogs.
Dorst and Vesey couldn’t tell themselves that. Besides, from what Adele had seen, they were far too nice to consider doing so. For that matter, if Adele had been trained by instructors as able as the Sissies were at their different jobs, she wouldn’t have been so sure of her superiority.
“Be seated!” Woetjans said. Adele started to sit, then noticed everyone else was waiting till Daniel’s trousers touched the cushion. She grimaced. She would learn how to do this, because it mattered to people who mattered to her.
It was strange, and remarkably pleasant, to be around so many people who mattered.
Glasses of water were already at the places. Hogg was filling squat, four-ounce tumblers from the punch bowl on the sideboard. It looked like lemonade, but Adele knew to be cautious even before Tovera, handing the punch around, whispered, “From the hydraulics.”
“The Republic!” Woetjans said, rising. Adele rose with the others and sipped.
There was a choking sound from the end of the table. Dorst’s face was very red. He saw the others staring at him and quickly downed another gulp of the punch from the glass he’d half-emptied at the toast.
Daniel nodded approvingly at the lad. Adele supposed that displaying bravado in the face of adversity was a virtue the RCN wanted to inculcate in its young officers. Certainly it was behavior that Daniel himself could be expected to approve.
Hogg was refilling glasses. Tovera set a pitcher of water on the table to Adele’s right; the other diners politely pretended not to notice, the way they’d have done if she’d lost both arms and had to eat using her toes. Throughout most of her life Adele had never imagined she’d feel embarrassment at not being able to down the equivalent of eight or ten ounces of absolute alcohol in the course of an evening; but then, she’d never imagined that she’d be an RCN officer, either.
As Balsley took the first course, a tureen of soup, from an undercook at the doorway—hatchway, she had to remember to call it a hatchway—Vaughn said to Daniel across the table, “I’ve heard you’re a naturalist, Lieutenant. Are you familiar with the zoology of my Strymon? I think you’ll find it quite interesting. Our major predators are descended from flying species, while the herbivores are all semiaquatic.”