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"As long as I still get to call you 'Ms. Boltitz' in public . . . Helga."
"I suppose I can live with that under those circumstances . . . Ensign."
"Well, in that case, let me rephrase. Is there something I can do for you, Helga?"
"As a matter of fact, there is," Helga said with a rather more serious air. "The Minister will, of course, be present with the Prime Minister and the Governor General for the formal di
Helen managed to stifle a groan. It wasn't particularly easy. If there was one thing Aivars Terekhov hated, it was what he called the "fuss and feathers" side of his duties. Personally, Helen suspected it had something to do with all the years he'd spent in the Foreign Office's service, with their endless succession of formal di
On the other hand, she told herself rather hopefully, that same Foreign Office experience means he'll probably understand the importance of Krietzma
"Is anyone else pla
She allowed her voice to trail off hopefully, and Helga chuckled.
"Well, I doubt we could get everyone all dressed up," she said. "If it will help, though, I can go and have a word with at least a few of the others—Admiral Khumalo, Captain Shoupe, Commander Chandler, Captain Saunders—and suggest that the Minister would appreciate their attendance in mess dress, as well."
"Oh, good!" Helen made no particular effort to hide her relief. "If you can do that, I'll exaggerate a little myself and suggest that the Minister would appreciate it if Commodore Chatterjee and Captain Carlson came the same way. I mean, it wouldn't exactly be a lie. Minister Krietzma
"Oh, I'm sure he would," Helga agreed.
Getting Aivars Terekhov into full scale mess dress had been almost as hard as Helen had been afraid it would. He'd started to dig his heels in the instant she opened her mouth, pointing out that nobody had mentioned anything about stupid mess dress uniforms to him in the original invitation. She'd headed that one off by reminding him that although the request was a late change, it was also one which had been made at the Quadrant's Minister of War's personal request for important political reasons. He'd glowered at that one, then brightened and pointed out that he didn't have a commodore's mess dress uniform . . . at which point Chief Steward Agnelli had silently opened his closet and extracted the captain's mess dress which she had thoughtfully had re-tailored for his new rank during the voyage out from Manticore.
Balked on that front by his underlings' infernal efficiency, he'd tried arguing that Chatterjee probably didn't have the right uniform, and he wouldn't want to embarrass the other officer. Helen and Agnelli had simply looked at him patiently, rather the way Helen supposed a na
It was really a pity it took so much work to get him into the uniform, Helen reflected, since it could have been purposely designed to suit him. His height, blond hair, blue eyes, and erect, square-shouldered posture carried off even the archaic sword to perfection, and she saw eyes turning toward him as he followed her out of the official Navy air car on the landing stage of the downtown Thimble mansion that was the temporary Government House while the Governor General's permanent, formal residence was being built. There were quite a few air cars already there, or in the act of lifting off again after disgorging their passengers, and she saw Vice Admiral Khumalo—also in mess dress—waiting for them.
The vice admiral couldn't carry off his resplendent uniform—and sword—the way Terekhov could. Few could, after all, Helen thought just a tad complacently. But from his posture, it was obvious that he was quite accustomed to putting up with it, and Captain Shoupe, standing at his shoulder, looked almost as resplendent as Khumalo did as he extended his hand to Terekhov with a chuckle.
"I had a side bet with Bernardus that Ms. Zilwicki wouldn't manage to get you into mess dress!" he said.
"Well," Terekhov half-growled, glaring humorously at Helen, "you almost won. Unfortunately, she used to be Bernardus' aide. That's probably why he had a more realistic appreciation of her ability to . . . convince me than you did, Sir."
"He did say something about the Ensign's extraordinary persistence," Khumalo agreed with a smile. He glanced at Helen, but it was obvious even to her that at this particular moment, silence was the best policy.
"Well," Khumalo continued after a moment, "I suppose we should head on in. In some ways, you're the guest of honor tonight, Aivars, so they can't get this dog and pony show off the pad until you turn up."
"Wonderful." Terekhov sighed. Then he shook himself. "All right, I'm ready. I don't suppose it can be much worse than the Battle of Monica!"
The initial description of the evening as "an informal little supper with the Governor General and the Prime Minister" seemed to have been somewhat in error, Helen thought as she followed her commodore and Vice Admiral Khumalo down a broad hallway and into what was obviously the mansion's main ballroom. It was stupendous, and the tables which had been arranged in it filled it to capacity. There must have been at least three hundred chairs at those tables, probably more, and most of them were already filled.
Only someone who knew Aivars Terekhov well would have recognized the way his neck stiffened ever so slightly, the way his shoulders squared themselves that tiny bit further. He continued chatting with Vice Admiral Khumalo as the two of them headed for the head table, pausing occasionally for a brief aside with someone Terekhov had met on his original deployment to Talbott. From the vice admiral's expression, he wasn't surprised, Helen noticed, and began to wonder exactly what was going on.
As they finally approached the head table, she recognized three other commodores waiting for them. One of them—Commodore Lázló—she'd expected, as the senior officer of the Spindle Space Navy. The second startled her a bit, although she supposed that Commodore Lemuel Sackett, the uniformed commander of the Montana Space Navy, legitimately qualified as "a guest from Montana." How he'd happened to be there was something of a puzzlement, of course, but not as big a puzzle as the presence of Commodore Emil Karlberg, the senior officer of the Nuncio Space Force.
This time, Terekhov couldn't quite hide his surprise. Spindle was scarcely conveniently located for either of them—transit time between Spindle and their home systems was better measured in weeks than days; Montana, the closer of the two, lay eighty-three light-years from the Quadrant's capital system—but it would scarcely have been good ma