Rork! Read Free Page B

conclusion.
    Lomar felt not the slightest degree of anticipation at the thought. “Ah … you don’t think … tomorrow?”
    “Oh, no. Come along. Not a formal reporting in, just a visit. These quintennials take a lot out of the Old Man. He feels the letdown, he’ll be glad to see us. Come along.”
    • • •
    Servants snapped-to, bowed, saluted, rang gongs, trotted on ahead. The Residency was cool, spic-and-spotless, though crammed with furniture and pictures and cabinets of bric-a-brac. They came at last into a room with hidden lights. A servant was holding a uniform and the man who had just removed it stood beside him. For a moment more the man’s figure retained the molded outlines of formality. Then it seemed to sag and melt, found refuge in the quickly offered, quickly donned brocaded wraparound, and sank into an easy chair.
    “Aquilas! And a new person!” The voice was rich and mellow, eager, but with overtones of petulance and self-pity. “Oh, these ghastly Q Days! The strain, the strain …” The man squinted, slightly frowned. Then a smile distended his rather full, rather loose mouth. “Who is this you’ve brought along with you to divert my aching nerves? A drinky — we must all have a drinky. Boy, bring drink, quick-quick.” The wraparound drooped a bit, revealing his heavy, hairy breasts. Three Tock house-boys, well-fed and coarsely handsome, glanced at Lomar out of the corners of their eyes, hastily glanced away, set to work at the lavish bar.
    The Second Station Aide was once again all stiff and starchy. “Sir. I have the honor to present Edran Lomar, newly come aboard, with a rating of three, and not yet reported in. Three Lomar, this is His Respect, the Station Officer, Tan Carlo Harb.”
    Tan Carlo Harb jiggled in his chair with pleasure. “Not yet reported in! Then we can dispense with formality for the present; good. My dear boy! Let me take your hands. A fresh face — you can have no idea — Hark! Did I hear the sunset gun?” He giggled, helped himself from the tray of glasses, waggled his fingers at his guests to do the same. “Pardon the classical allusion. I know the classics are not popular nowadays…. ‘Nowadays’ — what do we here know of ‘Nowadays,’ isolated as we are on the very edge of empire, the staff about to fall from our nerveless, bloodless hands? Metaphorically speaking.
    “I hope you like the drinky, new face. My boys make good ones. Feckless, swinish lot, these Tocks, one has to observe them every little minute; although as to my own boys, their loyalty is beyond question, as it damned well ought to be, all that I have done for them.”
    His large, olive-colored eyes traveled Lomar up and down, taking in the whole slender figure from the unfashionably short brown hair and heavy eyebrows, the critical mouth and dissatisfied set of the chin, the rangy limbs to the almost defiantly non-regulation footgear. “Since you are not here, yet, officially,” the Station Officer said, “let us — if you will excuse my language while you still have to — cut the crap. What is a decent, alert-looking boy like you doing out here in the absolute ass-end of bloody nowhere?”
    Lomar smiled an unprompted, ungrudged smile. No one had asked him to, but nonetheless he felt that he rather liked Tan Carlo Harb. Out with it, then. And then perhaps smile no more. “You will find, sir,” he said, “in the official documents I hand over tomorrow when I report in, that although my regular rating is three, I am commanded by Their Serenities the Guild Directorate to function here under an assimilated rating of seven. My assigned duty is to investigate the decline in redwing production, and use all permissible means to increase that production.”
    He felt, did not see, the Station Aide stiffen with absolute astonishment beside him. He saw the full, full face of the SO lengthen with what was certainly surprise and might have been dismay as well. The olive eyes were large and