STARLINER by David Drake

“Ah, Captain?” said a voice from behind the two officers. They both turned, uncertain whether the speaker was a throaty woman or a high-voiced man.

A man, dressed as a Roman soldier: quite young, and quite obviously nervous,

Wanda peeled off expertly to field him while Ran nodded and moved away. The Second Officer’s cheerful “Welcome to First Night, sir,” blended with the passenger’s, “I was just wondering how often you’ve been shipwrecked?”

Hard to tell whether the poor guy was worried, or if he thought a shipwreck was romantic. It wasn’t romantic, though if a starliner’s systems failed in the sidereal universe, there was at least a chance the lifeboats would save the people aboard her . . . .

There was a stir from the entrance directly across the Social Hall where a party of Szgranians had appeared. The clan mistress, Lady Scour, was accompanied by four females of her entourage.

Commander Kneale was walking his dance partner back to the table where her husband waited. Ran saw the commander miss a step, then regain his composure when he realized that no Szgranian warriors were present. They had a right to use any of the First Class facilities as they chose, but the potential for trouble that posed in the loose atmosphere of First Night was terrifying to anybody who felt responsible for the consequences.

The orchestra was eleven pieces and live. Music synthesized by an artificial intelligence could be proven to be better by any number of objective criteria—but enjoyment was a subjective reaction, and the humans who made up the majority of the Empress’s First Class passengers overwhelmingly preferred live performers on authentic instruments.

The first violin acted as conductor. She glanced toward the doorway and called a direction to her fellows. The orchestra segued from a Franz Lehar waltz into a Szgranian tune in which the double bass rumbled the main melody while the other ten instruments, all strings, wailed in a complex and wholly separate pattern.

The Szgranians froze for a moment. Then Lady Scour strode into the center of the area cleared for dancing. One of her attendants protested by flinging herself to the floor in front of her mistress, but the lady stepped onto her and over with an extra twist of her heel.

It was a case of a little learning being a dangerous thing. The orchestra was playing Szgranian music, all right, but it was from a ritual which required both female and male participants . . . and there were no male Szgranians in the Social Hall. The load of hypno-chunked information which Ran’s mind had received but not fully assimilated told him that much. He hadn’t any idea what the result was going to be. He wasn’t a Szgranian expert either.

Lady Scour began to dance, waving her hands in a stylized pattern while her right leg beat time with the deliberation of a horse counting. She looked about the room, her gaze icy.

What the hell. Ran walked across the floor and joined her.

Lady Scour’s eyes were the color of amethysts. The orbits were rounder than a human’s, but the effect was exotic rather than freakish . . . to Ran Colville, at any rate.

Their bodies came into synchrony, two meters apart Ran had been following the music, while the Szgranian clan mistress led the notes. She adjusted her timing to match the human norm before he even realized the cause of the initial disjunction.

Ran didn’t know the proper motions at a conscious level, but so long as he left matters to the instinctive where the hypnogogue had imprinted the knowledge, he was fine. At any rate, his arms were moving, and he supposed it was proper because Lady Scour looked a great deal more friendly than she had when she began dancing alone.

The piece ended. “Lord have mercy!” Ran muttered, louder than he’d intended to speak.

Spectators all around the room began to clap.

Lord have mercy!

“And you are Junior Lieutenant . . . ?” Lady Scour asked. The pale skin of her forehead was lightly frosted with perspiration. One of the attendants scampered up and used the tail of her sash to dry her mistress. Ran was shocked and amazed when another tiny Szgranian female wiped his forehead.

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