Everything is fixable, except time. Time became Grey’s greatest enemy. The days piled up more rapidly than he thought was possible, one day melding into the next.
Emmie abided by their agreement and never failed to arrive at the Bridge at her appointed hour. She would sit just behind him as he went about his day, absorbing the minutia of his work and occasionally asking questions. Many of the questions he would redirect into research projects that would introduce her to yet another area of knowledge that would help her in the future.
But gradually her questions grew more pointed and specific, dealing with personalities and why Grey had responded in the way he had to the people he dealt with all day.
Sometimes he had to sit and think about what he had done to provide the answers she needed and the review helped him, too, forcing him to vocalize what had become second nature to him. At those times, he would send the others from the room and they would tease out the reasoning and logic between them.
She still insisted on wearing her outrageously rebellious clothing. Grey was noticing more and more skirts and dresses and decorative garments on the streets and corridors of the ship, too. Emmie’s influence over what she called “fashion” was more persuasive than Pericles’ influence over policy.
When Emmie was not at home with her general studies, or on the Bridge, learning her work, she took on the role of Pericles, debating Bridge decisions, ship policies and driving public debate in a way that had not happened in Grey’s memory or Yuli’s either. She generated churn—causing many people to question decisions and policy, which was exactly what they should be doing—although real, lasting change was far more difficult to achieve in a stable, never-changing society. Inertia was on the Bridge’s side.
However, Emmie insisted on trying. Pericles wrote endlessly on her Forum and appeared in the Aventine every month or so, to cajole and convince, despite the resistance she faced.
“They’re comfortable. You’re never going to get them to change while they have comfortable lives untroubled by anything greater than a bargaining dispute,” Grey pointed out.
“Maybe the ship needs greater troubles,” Emmie shot back.
“Those times are coming,” Grey reminded her, which always served to send her back into introspective and moody silence.
* * * * *
Three years later.
Grey rarely accepted invitations from the Dream Hawks to attend their games, even though the entire ship knew they were his favored team. Most of the time he refused the many invitations because he simply didn’t have the time. But he also didn’t like to show too much open favoritism, even if he did sit in his quarters and swear every time they lost.
He only attended the Hawks and Blues game because Yuli had nearly physically hauled him out of his chair and sent him here with instructions not to return until the morning. The warm and enthusiastic reception he got from the Hawks manager, Deyfloss, added to his guilt. He had a lot to do. He should be back in his office taking care of business, not being sociable in the high tier box at a tankball game.
But it did feel good to just sit for a moment and not think.
At the end of the first quarter, the Hawks were actually ahead by a single goal and the fervor and excitement in the arena was almost tangible, as everyone left their seats to grab refreshments and catch up with neighbors and friends they may have spotted on the other side of the tank.
Grey looked around the high rise seating, to see who he knew at the game. He didn’t need to move from the Managers’ box, where food and drink was delivered to them.
The tank of a tankball game was twenty meters high and the seats rose up on all four sides of the transparent tank walls. The level of seats at the top were the most eagerly sought because that was where the goal boxes were. It was also where the lightest gravity layer was and where the most acrobatic and dramatic sequences of the game tended to occur.
Down at the bottom of the tank, where gravity was at two gees, action was necessarily slower. A team did everything it could to keep the ball in the upper layers, where it could be more easily manipulated and thrown.
The audience didn’t like sitting at the bottom levels, either. Many people swore the two gees seeped beyond the tank walls and settled over the audience, making it harder to breathe and painful to sit for too long. Grey didn’t believe the technology that made tankball games possible, which had been invented before the Endurance had left old Terra, could be that imprecise. It was over-worked imaginations making people believe the extra gravity was bleeding through the walls. Suggestion was a powerful force.
For that reason, the seats at the bottom of the tank were usually the last to be filled and often went empty. Tonight, the game was particularly well attended. Even so, there were groups of empty chairs in the first two rows. The fifteen minute interval also drew people out onto the concourse beyond the chairs, too.
There were five people sitting in a tightly bunched group in the first row, heads together and talking very intently. One of them had gotten to his feet and shuffled closer so they could talk better, which hid most of the group from Grey’s sight. It was unusual for such a concentrated discussion to happen at a tankball game, especially in the seats themselves. There were often deals and agreements reached out on the concourse, during the half-time interval. They happened in the corners, out of the way of foot traffic, or in the private boxes.
There were two people sitting in the second row. The woman looked familiar yet Grey couldn’t place her. She was an attractive older woman. Then he recognized her.
Anat Vicario.
It meant the man next to her was Jakub Emmetore. He had changed so much Grey had not realized who he was. His hair was gray all over and shorn short, as if he had given up on the thick waves he had once sported. He was still tall, although he had lost a lot of the muscle that had powered his big frame. His shoulders were frail under the jacket.
Grey studied him. As the man was only in his sixties, his appearance was a concern.
He watched as the group shifted and reformed as one of the members who had been sitting moved between them and climbed the stairs to the concourse level and left. The man who had been standing sat in the vacated seat and now Grey could see everyone who was there.
He wasn’t surprised to see one of them was Emmie. It did surprise him she was the one sitting in the middle, apparently the driving force of the conversation. As she spoke, her hands lifted, shaping and emphasizing whatever it was she was talking about.
Given the company, Grey suspected she was in her Pericles role, only without the mask.
The man on her left was Claus Darrell, a spare man with a neat, fussy appearance and a tight moustache. Darrell coordinated and managed the stalls in the main square of the Aventine. Because he was in charge of assignments of space in the busiest and most popular market, he had considerable influence over others. The market he controlled was the one where Pericles most often made her personal appearances. It explained why he was sitting with Emmie and her parents.
There was another child of about Emmie’s age sitting with her—a boy with longish hair. Grey didn’t recognize him. From casual comments Emmie had made he suspected the boy was Yosef Reuter, also from the Esquiline and in Emmie’s opinion, not terrible smart. He was watching her now with large eyes, his devotion plain in his happy little smile.
The woman beside Yosef was the most interesting of the group. Grey recognized her immediately even though they had never met in person. Penka Bugarelli was tall and slender. Her Forum profile said she was forty-eight. From where Grey was sitting, looking down upon her, she looked much younger and very attractive.
She was wearing one of Emmie’s outrageous outfits. It was a longer version of the dresses Grey had started to see everywhere, the fabric glowing with a dull gleam that spoke of silk or satin, one of the fabrics that served no discernible purpose except to look good. The dress wrapped around Bugarelli’s middle, making her waist seem small. The front of the dress was a vee shape that seemed to deliberately draw his gaze to her breasts. He could actually see the dip between them, over the top of it. The view from up here was shocking.
Was this the way women were going to continue to dress in the future? The provocative fashion seemed to have been designed with nothing but decoration in mind. Trousers and shirts and jackets and the more specialized garments everyone had worn for decades all had a use, a reason for being worn. Usually, the clothing someone wore was related to their profession.
Engineers wore pants and shirts and jackets with lots of pockets and places to store tools. Scientists wore protective gear, depending on what work they were engaged in, or simple pants and shirt for more intellectual pursuits. Everyone on the ship wore aprons or coats when involved in messier work. Clothing was useful, an adjunct to the tools and equipment of one’s profession.
Ornamental clothing was an oxymoron.
Yet Grey couldn’t help but be pleased by Penka Bugarelli’s appearance. The reason he knew there were so many more dresses and skirts being worn on the ship was because he constantly noticed them, sometimes for a minute or more as he watched a woman moving in the garment, the way it swung around her legs….
He frowned. If fashion became a distraction, he would have to open a discussion on the Bridge about controlling its distribution, or restrict when it was worn.
But it wasn’t the reason he didn’t like that Penka Bugarelli was a part of the conversation grouped around Emmie, down in the bottom row where no one liked to go. Bugarelli was supposedly an engineer, working in the Meadows, yet she lived in the Palatine in a big house that had been given to her many years ago by a medic who said he wanted to live in the district where he worked and had taken a wall apartment in the Capitol.
There had been many rumors about Bugarelli over the years. She had influence that didn’t match her profession and status, which meant there was much more going on in her life that no one could see. Grey’s formal reports on the criminals and bootleggers on the ship had circled Bugarelli as possibly being one of the more active of the criminal class. As bootleggers and radicals stimulated the free trade market and kept more law-abiding citizens on their toes mentally and physically, they were allowed to continue their activities, unaware they were being carefully monitored. If anyone grew too strong or powerful, steps were taken to limit their activities.
No one had ever been able to confirm Bugarelli was a part of that base network. She was careful never to let anyone see her directly involved in anything illegal. The only proof was the indirect fact that she had more influence on the ship than a mere engineer should have. She knew and was intimate with all the powerful names on board.
And now she was sitting with Emmie and the Aventine’s busiest market manager.
Grey watched the group talk. The man who had left returned, as many others were. The interval was nearly over. He couldn’t identify the returning man because he didn’t see his face at all.
As the two teams emerged into the tank and were sealed in and took up starting positions, Emmie looked up at Grey and lifted her hand in greeting. She had known he was there all along.
He beckoned her with a flick of his fingers and turned his attention to the game.
It took her several minutes to make her way out to the concourse and up to his level. The guards at the door to the box would know her and let her in without challenge. Grey heard Deyfloss greet her at the back where the table of beverages stood. Emmie answered him, her voice low.
Grey turned to look at her as she sank into the chair beside him. It was Deyfloss’ chair. Deyfloss spent most of the game standing at the back of the box, talking to the team coach via the closed channel.
As the game started, Emmie crossed her legs and sat back in the chair. She was wearing shoes with heels. They were nothing like the shoes and boots most often seen on the ship. Grey leaned forward to look at them more closely. “What in Terra’s name are you wearing?” he asked.
“They’re called stilettos,” she said, turning her heel so the shoe was more fully revealed. The shoe itself, unlike working boots and shoes, left the top of her foot revealed, right down to just above her toes, he suspected. Everything, including her ankle, was on display. “I saw a picture,” she said. “It took me a month to get a workable pattern.”
The groundman for the Hawks, Santis, grabbed the ball by one of its handles and went into his trademark whole-body spin, whipping the ball around him, moving it into a sharp elliptic, before releasing it to let it rocket through the layers toward the top. The crowd roared their approval and Emmie looked up sharply, to see what was happening.
Like most groundmen, Santis was heavily muscled and powerful, his body trained and formed to work in the heavy gravity and to fling the ball up high as he had just done. This was Santis’ second year in the league and he was a crowd favorite—especially with the women.
But Grey found his attention coming back to Emmie’s shoes. It was the heel he had to look at. Work boots often had heels. His own shoes had heels. They were flat, low things that helped raise the foot and relieve some of the aches and tension that came from constantly standing. Emmie’s shoe heels were long and spindly and nearly the length of his palm. “How do you walk in them?” he asked curiously.
“It took a bit of practice,” she admitted, her eyes on the game. “But now I barely notice.”
“Does it hurt?”
“The first pair hurt like crazy. Then I researched more in the old Terra archives. There are all sorts of ways to make them more comfortable. This is my fourth pair. Penka asked me to make her a pair, too.” She clapped as one of the Hawks top men pushed the ball toward the goal, tumbling in the near-zero gravity in a slow spin to avoid the Blues guard.
“I noticed you were keeping some interesting company down there,” Grey said. “I thought I should warn you.”
“About Penka?” Emmie shook her head a little. “She’s trying to bribe the Hawks coach, to get him to lose the game, did you know?”
Tankball bribery wasn’t anything new. Usually, the coaches and players were too interested in winning to accept bribes.
There was a soft, collective groan as the Blues topman grabbed the ball as it hurtled past him, letting it take him along and fending off the Hawks player with an elbow. They both arrowed toward the Blues end of the tank while the Blues supporters in the audience screamed approval.
“You said she was trying to bribe the coach,” Grey said. “Does that mean she failed?”
“She doesn’t know I know she wanted the dress I made her to help convince the coach it will be worthwhile doing what she asks.” She grinned and there was a touch of wickedness in her expression. “She’s failing because she doesn’t know he doesn’t like women. She didn’t do her homework.”
“She doesn’t have all the Bridge resources at her disposal as you do, you mean,” Grey corrected her.
Emmie’s smile broadened. “Exactly.”
“So why does she want to spend her time with a privileged nineteen year old?” Grey asked her.
Emmie stopped smiling. “She’s spending time with Pericles,” she said softly. “She thinks Pericles is of the same mind as her.”
“Aren’t you?”
Emmie pressed her lips together. “She doesn’t understand the difference between dissension and healthy debate. She doesn’t know how to work within the available systems.”
“Then you know what she is. Good.”
“I suspected. You just confirmed it, thank you.”
Grey rolled his eyes. “Keep your shields up around her, Emmie. As you just said, she works outside the normal systems. That makes her unaccountable and what she does nearly untraceable.”
“When it comes to Penka Bulgarelli, you and I are in rare agreement,” she replied.
“Then why are you keeping her company, Emmie? What do you hope to achieve with her?”
“A lot of people listen to her,” Emmie said. “A lot of people look to her for guidance on how to think and act and Penka agrees with me about the mentoring system—”
Grey groaned. “Hell, Emmie, it’s been nearly six years and you’re still flogging that dead horse?”
“It’s wrong,” she said flatly. “It’s demoralizing and a demoralized ship is a dangerous one. You taught me that.”
“The only way to ensure the longevity of the ship is to make sure all the crucial functions are properly filled. That can only be done by assigning the correct number of people to each essential role.”
“Free competition would make sure the people who got the job want it. They would be enthusiastic and complete their work more efficiently and be happy. Morale would improve immediately.”
“Then everyone would chose to be artists and entertainers and scientists,” he shot back, with growing irritation. “Who would do the essential ship maintenance? No one would choose to be an engineer.”
“They would, if there was nothing else they could be chosen for. The professions could pick and choose the best from among any number of candidates. People would be chosen for the work they’re good at…it’s the same end result, only people would be free to choose.”
“If it’s the end result, why go through the upheaval of competitions and disappointment? The man who becomes an engineer because he cannot fill any other role would still resent his work.”
“More than he does now?” she asked sweetly. “When he thinks he has no choice in the matter? At least, if he tries for what he wants and fails, he can settle, knowing he had the option.”
Grey sighed. “You would really prefer to spend your days making pretty, useless things, Emmie?” he asked.
“After six years of training with you, Greyson Durant, I am more convinced than ever that self-determination would do more to maintain the fragile balance on the Endurance than all the tank games, festivals and creative distractions you could possibly wave in front of them.”
She got to her feet and Grey had to lift his chin to look at her. When had she gotten so tall? The shoes, of course, added extra height. Even so, she would still stand level with his shoulder and he was taller than a lot of men on the ship.
Curious, he stood, too, to measure. Yes, her head was very nearly level with his, thanks to the shoes.
The dress she was wearing tonight wasn’t nearly as provocative as the one she had created for Penka Bulgarelli. It didn’t dip at the front to nearly the same depth. There was a thin belt of the same material as the dress around her waist, pulling it in. The skirt hugged her hips, down to just above her knees, then flared out, so that when she walked, it fluttered, drawing attention to itself.
The top of it looked almost the same as a perfectly normal shirt. Except now he was paying attention, he realized the fabric was semi-transparent. Between the little abstract figures repeated all over the fabric, he could see beneath the dress. There was another layer underneath, a more skimpy layer with only two little straps going over her shoulders, that clung to her all the way down to where the excess material of the flaring skirt hid everything.
With a jolt, he realized he was staring at her and tore his gaze away hurriedly.
Emmie was watching the game and hadn’t noticed. The ball was in the bottom level and Santis was moving toward it using the wading stride the groundmen did when they tried to move fast in all that gravity. His arms swung powerfully as he raced to beat the Blues player to grab the ball, which settled with a heavy thud right up against the wall.
Then the ball turned white. Zero gravity.
The crowd went wild. A zero gravity ball was a bonus, when it was in the bottom layer.
Santis dove for the ball, grabbed the handle and whipped it out of the Blues player’s grasping fingers. He pushed himself up off the floor with his other hand, his back and shoulders working hard, then swung it in a powerful underarm throw, straight up into the air.
The ball rose like a rocket, propelling through the layers without resistance because it weighed nothing. As it reached the lighter layers it started moving faster. When it crossed the face of the goal, the Hawks’ lead man flipped himself around in the light atmosphere and kicked at the ball with both feet as it passed. It was perfectly timed.
The ball skidded sideways, ricocheting off his feet. It was still white, still weightless and shot across the two body lengths between the player and the goal mouth and dropped in.
The siren blared and the crowd went mad, banging on the tank walls and screaming.
Santis bowed and they screamed even more loudly.
Grey laughed. “The hero of the hour.” But his gaze was pulled back to Emmie.
She was watching him, a small frown between her brows. “You’re not going to do anything about Bulgarelli bribing the coach, are you?”
Grey sighed. Work never ended, even here. “If she wasn’t wasting her time trying to bribe tankgame people, she would be trying to bribe people who have an influence on life on the Endurance. She failed, anyway.”
“Next time, she won’t.”
“No one can counter the luck of the ball.” He nodded to where Santis was still accepting his accolades. “If the ball had been black, he would never have been able to throw it high enough for the goal. No one can anticipate chance, Emmie, so why not let Bulgarelli use up all her energy trying?”
“Where does it end, though?” Emmie demanded. “People like Bulgarelli…they will always find a way to work things for themselves. They’ll always find the weakness.”
“Exactly.”
Emmie’s mouth parted. Then she closed it and looked around quickly for eavesdroppers. “That’s why you let them go unchecked. You want them to find the weaknesses, so they can be strengthened.”
Grey lifted his shoulders in a tiny shrug. “Unchecked and closely watched. The balance really is fragile.” He nodded down toward the bottom row of seats. “You should go back to your parents. Yosef is starting to look unhappy.”
“Good night, Greyson.” She turned and walked back to the door into the box. Everyone watched her go, he noticed, including Defloss, who openly ogled her rear view and the fluttering hem of her skirt.
Grey made himself sit down once more. His irritation didn’t lift even when the Hawks won two-zero, forty minutes later. He reminded himself once more he didn’t like coming to the games.
His dislike had nothing to do with the fact that one of the first people to greet Santis as he emerged from the tank at the end of the game was Emmie, whom he swept up into a hard hug, her slender figure tiny next to his huge frame.