The Best of All Possible Worlds Read Free

serious thespians next to dilettante wannabes because theater companies
     have to take people as and when they become available. Your best King Lear might be
     the security guard at a small branch of a city bank. He’s only going to get two or
     three weeks off for performances, then you’re back to the understudy, the very earnest
     but not really that good retired schoolmate of the director.
    I offered two options: either a series of overnight trips to the urban belt or visits
     to the Sadiri homesteads by some of the touring companies.
    “Both,” said Dllenahkh.
    “Both?” I repeated, raising an eyebrow, my tone more flat than querying.
    He raised an eyebrow back.
    Both it was.
    I’ve mentioned my friend Gilda before. I love her dearly, but I swear she’s a bad
     influence on just about everyone. I suspect thatthree out of her six children aren’t her husband’s and that he knows it but doesn’t
     care. He’s so under her thumb, she must have had more than one Zhinuvian ancestor.
     She has three main groups she hangs out with, and she tries to annoy each one. She
     bores her housewives group with her science research, she makes her drinking buddies
     miserable with her tales of domesticity, and she scandalizes her coworkers (that’s
     me) with her lurid sex-capades.
    So Gilda was happy to hear that the Sadiri were venturing out, because she too wanted
     “the opportunity to experience other cultures,” if you know what I mean. She insisted
     on being the coordinator and guide. At first I was glad when she took it out of my
     hands so that I could go back to ordinary stuff, but this was Gilda, and something
     told me to inquire more deeply.
    “So,” I asked her at the office when she set up the first theater visits, “what’s
     the playbill for this trip?”
    “
Grease: The Space Musical
,
Titus Andronicus
, and that new monologue by Li Chen where he first spends ten minutes crisscrossing
     the stage in silence, then sits in a Bagua-inspired design in the center and periodically
     plays the Uilleann pipes.”
    “Aie-yi-yi,” I yodeled mournfully. “Do you
want
them to judge us?”
    “They’ll judge us anyway. They’re Sadiri, and we’re Terran—well, mostly Terran. Judging
     other humans and finding them wanting is what the Sadiri
do.”
She was quite unperturbed about it.
    At first I said nothing. Strictly speaking, it was true. The Sadiri and their fleet
     of mindships had been the backbone of galactic law, diplomacy, and scientific discovery
     for centuries. Even though other humans slightly resented them, I knew I wasn’t the
     only one who quietly hoped that the pared-down version of their government would be
     just as effective at running the fleet. On a personal level, I hadn’t noticed a judging
     attitude from Dllenahkh, butwhen one considered that their home planet was poisoned by their own close cousins,
     the Ainya, well, they didn’t have that much high ground to stand on to look down at
     others anymore, did they? Before I could voice that thought, there was a polite cough
     at my door.
    “Dalenak!” Gilda said in cheery greeting. How
did
Dllenahkh manage not to wince at the woman’s atrocious pronunciation? “Are you here
     for the inaugural trip?”
    Dllenahkh thanked her courteously and said no, he had but come to consult me regarding
     the matter of the hydroponics on the homesteads of the southwestern quarter, which
     had been experiencing some difficulty. She took the hint and her leave so that I could
     close the door and speak to Dllenahkh in privacy.
    “I thought lying wasn’t a Sadiri thing,” I began. Then I looked at him more closely.
     “Dllenahkh? Who hit you?”
    “It is an internal matter, already resolved,” he said.
    I frowned, but there was nothing I could say to that. “You seem”—
depressed
—“distracted. What’s brought you to town if it’s not Gilda’s entertainment tour?”
    “There is a visiting emissary from the Government of New