Night Watch

many others are doing the same thing.”
    “Which is not to say that the horizontal position doesn’t have its merits when it comes to, for example, sleeping,” said Albert.
    “Quite so. Obviously, that would not be done here.”
    “Oh, indeed. Indeed.” *
    A brisk lady in a magnificent purple dress advanced across the ballroom floor, her smile traveling in front of her.
    “Lord Selachii?” she said, proffering a hand. “I hear you have been doing sterling work defending us from the mob!”
    His lordship, on social automatic pilot, bowed stiffly. He wasn’t used to forward women, and this one was all forward. However, all safe topics of conversation with a Venturi had been exhausted.
    “I fear you have the advantage of me, madam…” he murmured.
    “I certainly expect so!” said Madam, giving him such a radiant smile that he didn’t analyze her actual words. “And who is this imposing military gentleman? A comrade in arms?”
    Lord Selachii floundered. He’d been brought up knowing that you always introduced men to women, and this smiling lady hadn’t told him her—
    “Lady Roberta Meserole,” she said. “Most people who know me call me Madam. But my friends call me Bobbi.”
    Lord Venturi clicked his heels. He was quicker on the uptake than his “comrade in arms,” and his wife told him more of the current gossip.
    “Ah, you must be the lady from Genua,” he said, taking her hand. “I have heard so much about you.”
    “Anything good?” said Madam.
    His lordship glanced across the room. His wife appeared to be deep in conversation. He knew to his cost that her wifely radar could fry an egg half a mile away. But the champagne had been good.
    “Mostly expensive,” he said, which didn’t sound quite as witty as he intended. She laughed anyway. Perhaps I was witty, he thought. I say, this champagne really is excellent…
    “A woman has to make her way in the world as best she can,” she said.
    “May I make so bold as to ask if there is a Lord Meserole?” he said.
    “So early in the evening?” said Madam and laughed again. Lord Venturi found himself laughing with her. My word, he told himself, this wit is a lot easier than I thought!
    “No, of course I meant—” he began.
    “I’m sure you did,” said Madam, tapping him lightly with her fan. “Now, I mustn’t monopolize you, but I really must drag both of you away to talk to some of my friends…”
    She took Lord Venturi by the unresisting arm and piloted him across the floor. Selachii followed morosely, being of the opinion that when respectable women called themselves Bobbi the world was about to end, and ought to.
    “Mr. Carter has extensive interests in copper, and Mr. Jones is very interested in rubber,” she whispered.
    There were about six men in the group, talking in low voices. As their lordships approached, they caught “—and at a time like this one really must ask oneself where one’s true loyalties lie…oh, good evening, Madam…”
    On her apparently random walk to the buffet table, Madam happened to meet several other gentlemen and, like a good hostess, piloted them in the direction of other small groups. Probably only someone lying on the huge beams that spanned the hall high above would spot any pattern, and even then they’d have to know the code. If they had been in a position to put a red spot on the heads of those people who were not friends of the Patrician, and a white spot on those who were his cronies, and a pink spot on those who were perennial waiverers, then they would have seen something like a dance taking place.
    There were not many whites.
    They would have seen that there were several groups of reds, and white spots were being introduced into them in ones, or twos if the number of reds in the group was large enough. If a white left a group, he or she was effortlessly scooped up and shunted into another conversation, which might contain one or two pinks but was largely red.
    Any conversation entirely between white spots was gently broken up with a smile and an “Oh, but now you must meet—” or was joined by several red spots. Pinks, meanwhile, were delicately passed from red group to red group until they were deeply pink, and then they were allowed to mix with other pinks of the same hue, under the supervision of a red.
    In short, the pinks met so many reds and so few whites that they probably forgot about whites at all, while the whites, constantly alone or hugely outnumbered by reds