by David Weber
"Is there anything we can do about it?" Jason asked.
"Not that I can think of right off the top of my head." Arnold's voice was sour. "I'm beginning to wonder if maybe she didn't deliberately let me entirely commit myself on the issue. Maybe she was just giving me enough rope to be sure I hung myself with every insider in Nouveau Paris. Everyone we've talked to knows exactly where I stand, and now that she's going to very publicly give me what I wanted all along, it cuts the legs right out from under any opposition to her I could mount."
He tipped his chair even further back and gazed up at the ceiling, eyes slightly unfocused in thought, and Jason watched him silently. He knew better than to interrupt his brother when he was thinking that hard, so he found himself a chair and sat down to wait it out.
It took a while, but finally Arnold's eyes dropped back into focus, and he smiled at Jason. It was unkind, but true, that Jason wasn't exactly the sharpest stylus in the box. He was loyal, energetic, and enthusiastic, but on his best day, no one had ever accused him of having an excess of intellect. There were times when he let his enthusiasm get the better of him, and he was entirely capable of putting his foot squarely into his mouth. And, to be honest, he had a way of asking irritating questions—the sort which either had no answer at all, or whose answer was so blatantly obvious any moron ought to know what it was without asking. But at the same time, there was something about him, something about those selfsame irritating questions, which had a way of striking sparks in Arnold's own thinking. It was as if the need to figure out how to explain things to his brother caused his own thoughts to gel magically.
Jason sat up straighter as Arnold smiled at him. He knew that expression, and his flagging spirits perked up instantly.
"I think, Jase, that I've been coming at this the wrong way ever since Theisman opened his mouth," Arnold said thoughtfully. "I've been thinking about the way Pritchart is about to try to take over my own position and squeeze me out. But when you come right down to it, she can't. Not as long as I'm Secretary of State. She can try to take credit for any success our negotiations might achieve, and she can try to convince the public that she's the one who decided to take a firmer position with the Manties. But in the end, I'm the one who's going to be carrying out those negotiations."
"So she's going to have to share at least some of the credit for any successes with you," Jason said, nodding slowly.
"Well, yes, she is," Arnold agreed. "But that isn't really what I was thinking about." Jason looked confused, and Arnold grinned. "What I was thinking about," he explained, "was that any communication with the Manties is going to pass through my office. Which means that what I really need to be concentrating on is the opportunity that offers to put my own little imprint on things."
Jason still looked less than totally enlightened, and Arnold decided not to be any more specific. Not yet. In fact, he almost wished he hadn't said as much as he already had, given Jason's propensity for occasionally blurting out things at inconvenient moments.
Fortunately, Jason was accustomed to leaving the heavy intellectual lifting to him. It wasn't really necessary to explain things at this point. Indeed, it might be just as well not to explain them at all. Jason was very good at carrying out instructions, as long as those instructions were specific and uncomplicated, so perhaps it would be wisest not to burden him with more than he absolutely needed to know.
Jason was also accustomed to the way Arnold wandered off into his own thoughts, and he was perfectly content to sit and wait in companionable silence for however long it took for Arnold to complete the process and remember his presence. Which was just as well, since Arnold was very busy thinking indeed just now.
Yes, indeed. He'd been overlooking his greatest single advantage all along. Or, no, not "overlooking" it precisely. He just hadn't realized how big an advantage it truly was if he handled it properly. But now that it had occurred to him, he could see all sorts of possibilities. The public might be gulled into believing any new, assertive negotiating stance was Eloise Pritchart's idea, not Arnold Giancola's. But whatever the public might be prepared to think, Arnold knew that, in the end, and despite any confidence she might project through her much anticipated speech, Pritchart lacked the intestinal fortitude to go to the mat with the Manties if that was what success required. If it came down to going to eyeball-to-eyeball with the real possibility of a resumption of hostilities, Pritchart—and Theisman—would blink and let the damned Manties walk all over them all over again.
But Arnold had spent too much time dealing directly with the Manticoran negotiators and corresponding personally with Elaine Descroix. He knew that if the Republic only had the guts to really turn the screws on them, it was the Manties who would blink. Baron High Ridge, Lady Descroix, and Countess New Kiev between them had the moral fortitude of a flea and the spine of an amoeba. It might have been different when Cromarty was Prime Minister, but that had been then, and this was now, and the present Manticoran government was composed of pigmies.
So the trick was going to be stage managing things properly. He had to create the right atmosphere, the right confluence of events. A situation in which anyone who didn't know the Manties as well as he did would believe the resumption of hostilities had to be the next step in the process . . . unless the Republic conceded every single thing they demanded. If he could generate a situation which gave Pritchart her opportunity to cave in and reveal her lack of grit to the electorate while simultaneously allowing him to step into the breach her indecision created and push things to a successful conclusion despite her . . .
Oh, yes. He smiled deep inside at the alluring prospect. It would be tricky, of course. He'd have to find a way to lure her into provoking the proper response from the Manties, but that shouldn't be too difficult, given the arrogance which was so much a part of High Ridge and Descroix. Of course, he'd need to find someone reliable he could assign as his direct contact with the Manties, especially since he might have to do a little . . . creative editing here and there. Whoever passed on those communiques would have to be in the loop and prepared to support the process, but he rather thought he had the perfect candidate for that job.
Of course, if it did become necessary to do any editing he'd have to be careful to see to it that that busybody Usher didn't find out what he was up to. After all, if the President wanted to get picky about it, what he was thinking about might technically be illegal. He'd have to check on that. Maybe Jeff Tullingham could advise him if he was careful to keep his inquiry sufficiently hypothetical? But illegal or not, it would certainly be embarrassing—possibly terminally so—if anyone ever figured out just how he'd shaped the international situation. But in the end, he would emerge as the iron-willed, insightful statesman who'd seen what was needed and done it despite the interfering instructions of the nonentity who happened to hold the presidency.
Of course, part of the trick would be to copper his bets by making certain the Manties wouldn't actually be willing to go back to war when Pritchart thought they would. But there was a way to see to it they were suitably distracted.
Now then, he thought. The first thing to do is to invite to the Andermani ambassador to lunch. . . .
Chapter Thirty-Two
"...The excitement we all feel at this historic moment. The honor of speaking for the entire Star Kingdom, of somehow finding the words to express the pride Her Majesty's subjects all feel in our incomparable scientific community on an occasion such as this, does not come often to any political leader, and I approach it with mingled pride and anxiety. Pride that it has fallen to me to attempt to speak aloud what all of us feel at this moment, and anxiety for how inadequate I know any words of mine must be. Yet I take courage from the reflection that, in the end, anything I may say will be only the first words spoken. They will be far from the last, and as the citizens of the Star Kingdom add their own, far more worthy thanks to my own, I know that . . ."
"My God," T.J. Wix muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "Is he never
going to shut up?!"
Jordin Kare and Michel Reynaud, seated to either side of him, managed not to glare repressively at him. They also managed not to grin in appreciative agreement with his plaintive tone . . . which was considerably more difficult. They sat with him on the raised stage of the press room, behind the lectern and the tall, narrow, stoop-shouldered form of the Prime Minister of Manticore, listening to his apparently interminable speech, and not one of them would have accepted the invitation to this prestigious moment if he'd had any choice in the matter.
Unfortunately, none of them had. And equally unfortunate, Kare reflected, was the fact that the High Ridge Government had found itself in greater need than usual of a public relations windfall at precisely the wrong moment.
I don't suppose we ought to have expected anything else out of them, he reminded himself. Not that knowing what was coming would have made it any better.
The Prime Minister and his First Lord of Admiralty had suffered a sharp downtick in their popularity and job approval ratings when the HD footage of Secretary of War Theisman's Nouveau Paris news conference reached the Manticoran public. The public's reaction hadn't been as severe as it might have been, but it had been undeniably sharp, and the Centrists and Crown Loyalists had done their best—with some initial success—to capitalize upon it.
Kare had entertained at least a faint hope that the shock of the news might weaken High Ridge's grip on power, and he supposed it could still have a cumulative effect in that direction. But damaging as the revelation of the Peeps' new naval capabilities might have been, it was obviously insufficient to do the job by itself.
It was difficult for the astrophysicist to keep his own highly disrespectful thoughts from shadowing his attentive expression as he sat watching the Prime Minister speak into the lenses of the newsies' HD cameras, but he managed. He didn't have much choice. Besides, disgusting as he might find High Ridge, he didn't have a great deal more respect for his fellow citizens, either. In any reasonably run universe, the Manticoran electorate and even—God help them all—the Manticoran peerage ought to have been smart enough to rise up in revolt now that the consequences of the High Ridge-Janacek naval policies had become manifest. In the universe they actually occupied, things hadn't quite worked out that way.
Although he knew his rabbi would disagree, Kare had often suspected that the Manticoran domestic political arena was the direct present day heir of the same divine thinking which had led to the Book of Job. Certainly he couldn't think of anything besides a deliberate decision on God's part to turn the Devil loose on hapless humanity under carefully delimited conditions which could explain the current political process in the Star Kingdom.
He scolded himself, more dutifully than out of any sense of conviction, for being too hard on the Manticoran public. Up until the past few weeks, after all, there'd been plenty of evidence which could be adduced to support the thesis that the war was over. Not a shot had been fired in almost four T-years, and there was no immediate prospect of that changing. And even leaving aside the obvious assumption on the Government's part that the Peeps had been licked once and for all, there'd been the heady assurance that if the Peeps had been foolish enough to start something new, the technical and tactical supremacy of the Royal Manticoran Navy would crush them with ease. Not to mention the fact that the generally conciliatory tone the Republic's diplomatic teams had pursued in the peace negotiations had been another example which could be cited by proponents of the theory that peace had actually come, whether it had been sealed by a formal treaty yet or not. Kare hadn't happened to subscribe to that theory himself, but he could readily understand why it had been so attractive to the public at large. After the pain, losses, and fear of fighting the war, it would have been profoundly unnatural for people not to have wanted to believe that the killing and the dying were over. The inevitable (and proper) need of individuals to focus on their individual concerns, to worry about the day-to-day details of their own lives, jobs, and families, only made the electorate's willingness to turn its attention to domestic concerns even stronger.
On the other hand, there'd also been plenty of countervailing evidence for people with the will to see it. And there'd been plenty of people like Duchess Harrington, Earl White Haven, and William Alexander who'd pointed that out. Unfortunately, in some ways the very strength and determination with which they'd made their case undermined it with those who weren't already disposed to share their views. If a politician was unscrupulous enough, it wasn't all that difficult for him to make his opponents look obsessed and vaguely ridiculous, or at least terminally alarmist, when they kept hammering away with warnings that the sky was falling.
Until, that was, Kare thought grimly, the sky finally came crashing down.
In his book, that was exactly what had happened the moment Thomas Theisman admitted that the Republican Navy had virtually completely rebuilt its war-fighting capabilities, apparently without anyone in the High Ridge Government even suspecting they were doing it. A sizable chunk of the electorate appeared to be inclined to agree with him, but not a large enough one. Government spokesmen—and especially "nonpartisan" representatives from the so-called strategic think tank of the Palmer Institute—had instantly begun providing tranquilizing public statements to prove things weren't really as bad as they seemed to be, and those statements were already beginning to have their effect. Even if they hadn't been, any immediate alarm on the part of the voters was completely unable to affect the Government's control of the House of Lords.
And then, of course, there was Jordin Kare's personal contribution to sustaining the High Ridge Government in power.
It became momentarily more difficult not to scowl ferociously as that thought flowed remorselessly through his brain. It wasn't really his fault any more than it was Wix's, but the timing of this first manned transit of the newly discovered terminus could not have come at a more propitious moment for Michael Janvier and his henchmen. The Government's spin strategists had recognized that instantly, and their successful drive to capitalize upon it had survived even the Prime Minister's unpleasant, droning voice and interminable speeches.
Which was what had brought all of them to this particular news conference.
" . . . and so," High Ridge said finally, "it is my enormous pleasure and privilege to introduce to you the brilliant scientific team responsible for making this momentous breakthrough so much more rapidly than even they were prepared to predict might be possible."
It was really a pity, Kare thought, that even at a moment like this High Ridge was unable to project the image of anything but the supercilious aristocrat presenting the unusually clever lowborn servants who had somehow stumbled into doing something of actual value. The man was clearly trying. Worse, from the smile painted onto his vulpine face, he seemed to think he was succeeding. The man had all the personality and spontaneity of an overaged cake of warm gefilte fish.
The Prime Minister half turned to sweep his right hand in an arc at the three men seated behind him. It was somehow typical of him that he should refer to them collectively as the "scientific team," completely overlooking the fact that what Michel Reynaud actually was was the extraordinarily competent administrator who'd somehow kept the RMAIA functioning despite the technical illiterates with which his own staff had been lumbered.
Or perhaps he hadn't "overlooked" anything. Perhaps he was deliberately choosing to ignore Reynaud for some reason. His next words certainly suggested that he was, anyway.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I present to you Dr. Jordin Kare and Dr. Richard Wix, the extraordinary intellects responsible for this historic moment."
Kare and Wix rose as the assembled dignitaries and newsies broke into applause. The fact that the applause was genuine, that the press corps of the Star Kingdom was as excited and eager as even the Prime Minister could have wished, only made it worse. Kare managed to smile, and he and Wix both inclined their heads in acknowledgment of the clapping hands. It was more of a semi-
bob than a bow on Wix's part, but at least he'd tried.
The Prime Minister beckoned for the two of them to join him at the podium in what was clearly intended as a spontaneous gesture of invitation. Kare gritted his teeth and obeyed it, as did Wix . . . after a surreptitious elbow-jab in the ribs. Kare's smile became a trifle more fixed as the applause redoubled. It was extraordinarily perverse of him, he reflected, that he should feel equally irritated by the Prime Minister's invincible aura of aristocratic dismissal of anyone else's competence, on the one hand, and by the other man's hyperbolic praise of his own sheer brilliance, on the other. He was entirely too well aware of how huge a part good fortune, not to mention the hard work of all the other members of the RMAIA research staff, had played in the chain of discoveries and observations leading to this moment.
"Dr. Kare will now offer a brief summary of his team's progress and immediate plans," High Ridge announced as the applause finally faded. "After that, we will entertain questions from the ladies and gentlemen of the press. Dr. Kare?"
He beamed at the astrophysicist, and Kare smiled back dutifully. Then it was his turn to turn to face the audience.
"Thank you, Prime Minister," he said. "Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I'd like to welcome you here aboard Hephaestus on behalf of the Royal Manticoran Astrophysics Investigation Agency, its scientific team, and its Director, Admiral Reynaud." He turned his head to smile at Reynaud, then returned his attention to the spectators.
"As you know," he began, "over the past two and a half T-years, we've been engaged in the systematic search for additional termini of the Manticore Wormhole Junction. It's been a painstaking process, and a time-consuming one. But thanks in no small part to the observations and diligent work of my colleague, Dr. Wix, and to a quite disproportionate amount of pure good fortune, we are considerably ahead of any schedule we could have realistically projected as little as six, or even four, months ago. In fact, we are now in a position to dispatch a properly manned survey ship through the Junction's seventh terminus.