The buffet lunch for the ICfJ investigator's graduation is held outdoors, in a park beside the lake. This is a mercy, because outdoors one can put one's hat on, which leaves both hands free. There is an art to managing a plate and glass at a stand-up luncheon when one has one's hat under one's elbow, but the investigator's course didn't cover it. Even with both hands free, one hand to hold a plate, one to wield a fork, and one to hold a glass makes for a pretty problem. The old hands at this sort of thing reveal their expertise by the fact that they ate before they came, and are ignoring the food, the better to concentrate on drink.
About three hundred people a present: the graduands, the freshman class, the instructors and the staff of the residential college, the Deputy Commissioner and his staff in civilian morning suits.... Friends and relatives of the graduands are few and far between: most of the class have no family within ten light-years, nor has had time to make the sort of friends who will come to a boring official dress-luncheon in the middle of a work day. Kiloni is unique in having family who have made an interstellar journey to attend her graduation, and her flock of brothers and parents is in some demand for small-talk. Also, it seems, as possible escorts for tonight.
Five cadets are wearing medals, including Bear Karapyetchenko and Horus Vomact. Vomact has previously only made an impression of being rather good-looking and of making quiet comments that turn out on consideration to be rather barbed, and those few people who can read his ribbons are quite surprised to discover that he is wearing the Distinguished Service Medal, which has to be awarded by the Capital. Such jewellery is not found in crackerjack boxes.
Bear and Vomact have just got around to discovering that they are both veterans of the same regiment when the Deputy Commissioner, systematically greeting all the graduands with the help of smart nametags and a locating system, arrives to take over the conversation. He is wearing a civilian morning dress suit, and utters a flow of polished commonplaces, which fails to impress either of the marines. When he moves on, Vomact makes no attempt to take up the previous thread of the conversation.
VomactI'm stationed to Nahal, where one has to learn to do without that sort of thing. Trials of the Service.
KarapyetchenkoNahal? What's it like?
VomactI've never been there, but the people sound stark mad. It's an anarchy enforced by small-arms fire, and the locals pretend they can't tell men from women. On the other hand, everything is said to run on honour, and soft-soaping self-promoters are shot on sight as a general precaution. I think I'll be able to adjust. Where have you got?
KarapyetchenkoSome place called "Rohan", where everyone wears masks.
VomactAh! Hart told me about it. You'll be on his team?
KarapyetchenkoThat's right. Do you know Hart?
VomactMet him on the course.
Presently the Deputy Commissioner returns, and approaches from the other side. He says exactly the same things to Karapyetchenko that he previously said to Vomact, and then moves on to find #66 in class order.
Eventually the alloted time for this nonsense draws to a close, and the graduands' softly chiming computers lead them to their places for the start of the ceremony.