“Actually it did,” Rafe said. “Actually it happened because of him…so what did he tell you?”
“It was in the news reports years ago—playboy, sex-crazed cradle-robber—” That would have been Ilsa, Rafe thought. He did regret Ilsa, but really—she had climbed into his lap that night, pressed herself on him, and he’d been only eighteen…“—all you care about, all you’ve ever cared about, is protecting your sugar-tit…” Malendy’s voice trailed away. Rafe realized that he’d let his hand slide down, approaching the part of a gentleman’s suit that—if the gentleman carried—would hold what it did in fact hold.
“Let’s calm down,” Rafe suggested. “Let’s look at the timetable, if you want facts and not the insinuations of a known traitor. Funds were misused—yes. They were misused for years—at least six years—while I was not on Nexus or anywhere near it, and while Lew Parmina was your friendly voice at ISC. You trusted him, and this is what came of it. Some of the documentation disappeared, but some we’ve managed to reconstruct: Lew Parmina, using my father’s name, authorized expenditures of two types: funding those now our enemies, and funding those whose votes he wanted to control. Not just within ISC but also in Nexus governmental circles.”
“You can’t make wild accusations—”
“And you can? Come now, Malendy. If you’re wondering if your name was on the list, you must have been a very minor beneficiary of Lew’s generosity…it’s not on the lists we’ve found so far.” Rafe watched Malendy’s face run through a sequence of expressions, ending in sullen resignation. “So…whatever you think of me, whatever you think of ISC, we’re going to have to work together if Nexus is to survive.”
“Someone else should head ISC,” Malendy muttered.
“In the long run, yes,” Rafe said. “But for now, you have me. I’m not quitting, and you can’t force me out—I have too much on your government and the means to make it public if you force my hand.”
“That’s…that’s blackmail.”
“No. That’s the result of stupidity and greed on all sides. ISC is culpable but so is the government of Nexus. And we have more important things to worry about than who’s most to blame for this mess. Now, quit acting like a primary teacher with a naughty boy and get me the SecDef.”
“He’ll have some serious questions for you!” Malendy said.
Rafe’s patience snapped. “I have questions for him, too.” Like why he had not yet met with Rafe, instead passing him from one flunky to another. Did he suspect the data that Rafe held, or was he looking for leverage?
Humphrey Isaacs did not rise when Malendy finally ushered Rafe into his office. He overflowed his chair, pudgy hands clasped on the edge of his desk, and glared at Rafe. “We are not pleased with ISC’s performance,” he began. One of the secretaries from the outer office darted in with a folder of data cubes for Isaacs’ desk, then withdrew.
“I wouldn’t expect it,” Rafe said. He pulled one of the heavy, leather-seated chairs to one side of the desk and sat down before Isaacs could stop him. “Let’s get past all the recriminations, shall we? ISC, in the control of Lew Parmina, did not maintain its fleet to the standard it should have. This impacts not only ISC’s ability to defend its monopoly, but Nexus Defense’s ability to defend the system, because you depended on us. All that’s a given—”
Isaacs’ cheeks puffed out. “It’s a disgrace. You promised—”
“Correction.” Rafe interrupted with a raised hand. “I did not promise anything. I wasn’t here, remember? ISC, a long time ago before my father was even born—before you were born—did a deal with the Nexus government to provide protection in return for certain government accommodations. Like any protection racket—” Rafe noted with pleasure that Isaacs did not like that wording, so he repeated it. “As with any protection racket, it weakened the protected. I will stipulate that ISC has had far too much power in Nexus for far too long. But that is not the immediate issue.”
“I could have expected that you would attempt to evade responsibility—”
“Do you confuse the entity with the individual?” Rafe asked. “Or do you want me to consider you fully responsible for everything the Nexus government has done over the centuries, as it crawled into bed with ISC?”
“That’s preposterous!”
“Is it? I think not. I think history offers many examples of relationships between business interests and governments that ranged from benign marriages to outright prostitution. Nexus was founded as a company planet. You know that; you took Jesperson’s history course at Central, and he always laid emphasis on it. That’s why they fired him.”
“Damned radical,” Isaacs said. “Trying to stir up trouble—” He picked up a letter opener, turned it around and put it down, then picked up a pen and twirled it in his fingers.
“Not really,” Rafe said. “Trying to point out the stress points in our system where trouble might erupt. As it has here. Nexus was founded as a company colony; the government has always considered the interests of ISC above the interests of other citizens…and always tended to believe whatever the leaders at ISC said. When these leaders were honest—and many of them were—Nexus prospered and was no worse off than it would’ve been with a different system. Financially better off. But the goals of a corporation are always both broader and narrower than the goals of a government. Broader here and narrower there.”
“You never went to business school,” Isaacs said, gelid gray eyes narrowed.
“Oh, but I did,” Rafe said. “I went to a very hard, very unforgiving business school.”
“Where?” Isaacs said, his tone challenging. He put the pen down then picked it up again.
Rafe looked him over as he might have looked over a side of beef. “How long would you survive if you were exiled? And how?” Isaacs looked angry but said nothing; Rafe went on. “I had of course grown up among businessmen and women. But when I was thrown out, I had to care for myself—”
“You had a remittance—”
“I had a pittance,” Rafe said. “And I didn’t use much of it, because I became a businessman. Several times over, in different systems, with different laws and different economic possibilities. I learned more there than any business school can teach about what interstellar commerce is really all about. What it depends on, what sustains it, what damages it. I had a perspective that you—who have never traveled beyond the Moscoe Confederation, who have never started your own business—lack. If you want to assess my understanding of business in general, and corporate structure in particular—bring in someone who knows something about it. I could not have found what was wrong in ISC as fast as I did, if I’d been as ignorant as you seem to think.”
Air huffed out of Isaacs, and he seemed to shrink a little. “It’s still wrong—”
“Many things are wrong, but we cannot deal with all of them now. What we need, you and I, is a clear grasp of reality as it is right now, today: what the threat is, what our resources are for meeting that threat. The past is, for the moment, irrelevant.” The past that included Ky Vatta alive and his feelings for her, his father undamaged, his belief that ISC was as powerful as it had always been.
“So what do you think reality is?” This time Isaacs opened the cube folder and began to roll several of the cubes in his hand.
“We—meaning the Nexus System and the people who live in it—are in imminent danger of attack by the same force that has attacked and overrun other systems, growing stronger with every resource captured. And—unless you have a nice modern fleet hidden away in a box somewhere—we’re as defenseless as a baby in a snowstorm.”
“And I suppose you have a solution?”
“No. I can help define the problem, but I do not have a solution.”
“Well, I do.” Isaacs tapped one of the cubes on the desk for emphasis. “You—ISC—are going to hire a fleet to protect us, and it’s not going to cost us a penny. You got us into this mess; you will get us out, if—” Isaacs stopped abruptly. Rafe was paring his
thumbnail with a knife. “Where—how—”
“Calm down,” Rafe said. “If I wanted to cut you, you’d be bleeding. I had a hangnail. Now let’s be serious. We can’t hire mercs for you. You’re the government; you have to do that or it’s illegal—”
“You have to pay—”
“We don’t have the money,” Rafe said. Isaacs stared at him, jaw hanging. “For over a standard year, our income has been well below norm, thanks to ansibles being out of service. No calls, no income. Second, when I got into this job, I found that a lot of our reserves had vanished. Some of that’s been traced to plain ordinary embezzlement, some to fraud, and some directly to the government. Third, as soon as I found out our fleet was in the shape it’s in, I started spending what was left to upgrade and supply it.”
“So it’s not that bad?”
“No, it is that bad. Do you have any idea how much it costs to run a fleet the size we had? You should, in your business, but then you always depended on us—” Rafe let some of the bitterness he felt about that edge his voice. “Cheaper to privatize, let ISC do it. Put it this way: if I sold everything my family owns—the houses, their contents, the clothes off my back and my sister’s and parents’ backs, my mother’s piano and harp—it would not supply one single warship for one single engagement. Our ships can’t even use modern munitions, most of them. It’s fortunate that rocks in space are lethal weapons because we’re in the Stone Age when it comes to ships.”
“How did it—who let this happen?”
Isaacs himself let it happen, among others. No use to say that. “That doesn’t matter,” Rafe said. “As near as I can tell, it started some thirty years ago, with budget cuts for the fleet because there wasn’t any need. To that you can add chicanery, not only in ISC but in your department, where inspectors were supposed to ensure that our fleet was maintained to standards you thought appropriate. They didn’t.”
“We depended on you—”
“Yes. For a consideration.”
“You can’t tell me—”
“I can tell you that I have a list of individuals in this department—and others—who took substantial bribes in return for not doing their jobs. And as I told your assistant, if you’re wondering whether your name is on the list, you know you’re guilty.”
Isaacs flushed. “I don’t recall,” he said. He dropped the cubes he had been handling and picked up another.
Rafe shrugged. “Fine. But be aware that the list exists, in more than one secure storage location, and that I have no more concern for the welfare of this government than you have for mine. As for hiring assistance, you will be lucky, at this date, to find anyone. I put you in touch with Mackensee months ago; you chose to delay and now they’re working for the Moscoe Confederation—”
“We have an agreement that I can still have some—”
“Good. But understand this—we can’t pay for them. I have already cut executive salaries, including my own of course, and all but essential expenses. We must keep the working ansibles going, and we must repair the ones that others can’t. That’s critical to military action. We don’t have any spare money—”
“You can borrow it—”
“And so can the Nexus government, at lower interest. Now I’ll need authorization to talk to your senior commanders, whoever you’re going to put in charge—”
“What senior commanders?” Isaacs said. “We don’t have anyone capable of running a real defense. You know that. We’re just the local police force.”
Rafe looked around the luxurious office, bigger than his own as CEO. “You…you fraud. So…what do you want to do now? Quit? You must have someone you think has some ability, unless you’ve done nothing for six years but sit here until you filled your chair side-to-side. Call ’em in, tell ’em to take over. Not Malendy, of course; he’s an idiot.”
“I can’t believe it’s that bad…” Isaacs was shaking his head. “Your father—Lew Parmina—they never said—”
“My father never knew—Lew Parmina knew, of course, but he was hiding it. Look—we need to get the Premier in here, contact Mackensee right away, get the commanders—”
“There’s no time,” Isaacs said. “They’re on the way—they’ll be here any hour—” He looked outside at the blue sky streaked with wisps of cloud. “They could be entering the system now—”
Rafe suppressed a strong desire to grab Isaacs by his jowls and shake him. “They could not,” he said instead. “The early warning system’s fine; if something jumped in, we’d be told.”
“We?”
“I’m linked to ISC’s Emergency Report Center, aren’t you?”
“No…why should I be? That’s for a specialist…”
“Well, then: there is no enemy spacecraft in our system at this time—”
“You’re sure—how can you be sure?”
“The rubigilliam hypercontractivity generator,” Rafe said with a straight face. “Put into service only four days ago.”
“Oh. I didn’t know about that.”
The man was worse than Malendy. The man was insane. Could he possibly be dragged back to what must be done? And if the rest of the Defense Department was this brain-dead, which of his own staff and commanders might take over?
“The Premier,” Rafe said. “And Mackensee…”
“Must inform the Premier at once,” Isaacs said. “Shocking—impossible—must—” He looked grayer. “Something—something’s wrong—”
Rafe threw open the office door. “Secretary Isaacs is ill—he may be having a heart attack—”
Malendy and several others rushed into the room while Rafe moved aside. Odd. Very odd. Humphrey Isaacs hadn’t been that muddled when Rafe first called to tell him about the problem with ISC’s fleet. Something had happened to him in the interim. Something had happened…before the conference on Cascadia Station? After? And why hadn’t anyone in the government noticed?
He stepped into the outer office as a squad of medics arrived, and picked up the headset one of the secretaries had abandoned. The desktop had a direct link to the Premier’s office, as he’d expected.
The Premier’s secretary was sorry, but the Premier was fully engaged…if Ser Dunbarger cared to leave his number? Rafe explained that Secretary Isaacs was suddenly unwell, some kind of emergency, and that he had information of urgent import.
“Ser Dunbarger. What’s going on?” The Premier’s resonant, reassuring voice replaced that of his secretary.
“Secretary Isaacs had some kind of medical emergency while we were in a meeting; I called assistance and they’re with him now. He was on the point of contacting you himself—”
“Why would he do that? We have a regularly scheduled meeting tomorrow morning.”
“You’re aware of the situation on Moray?” Rafe said.
“An invasion beaten back by that force from Moscoe Confederation and Slotter Key? Yes, what of it?”
“When the Secretary reported that, did he tell you that Moray is reasonably sure the attacking force is now headed this way?”
“What? No! Where are they?”
Isaacs should certainly have told the Premier at the daily briefing—why hadn’t he?
“I don’t know, sir. I do know that Moray is a minimum twenty-day transit in FTL, plus time insystem.”
“Thank heavens we have your fleet to protect us! Will you need any assistance from insystem patrol?”
Rafe felt a ball of ice falling down through his body. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, you do have enough of your fleet here, don’t you? Or you can retrieve them from someplace. Humphrey—the Secretary—would have arranged that—”
“I’m afraid not,” Rafe said. “I told him back when our fleet was defeated at Boxtop—”
“Defeated? What? Where?”
“Mr. Premier, I believe I should brief you immediately, but not over this unit. We have a situation.”
A moment of silence, then the Premier said, “How soon can you be here?”
“Give me that!” Malendy said, turning abruptly and striding toward Rafe. “I’ll deal with him.”
“I’m on my way,” Rafe said to the Premier before handing the headset to Malendy.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Malendy said. “It’s all your fault.”
“No,” Rafe said. “It’s not, and I’m to go to the Premier’s office as soon as possible.”
“Why? So you can kill him, too?”
“I did not kill the Secretary,” Rafe said. “I wasn’t even—”
“You probably poisoned him or something,” Malendy said. “He was perfectly healthy before you showed up. And you threatened me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rafe said. “I had no reason to kill either of you. Even if it weren’t illegal. Secretary Isaacs had a heart attack or a stroke or something. I had nothing to do with it.”
“You’re a dangerous rogue,” Malendy said. “You always have been; you always will be.”
Rafe just stopped himself from saying that Malendy was an idiot and always had been and always would be. So far, no security personnel were in the room to hear Malendy’s accusations, but they were probably on their way.
“I’m going to meet with the Premier,” he said, in his mildest voice. “Thank you for all your help.”
Malendy’s jaw dropped; in that moment of confusion, Rafe slipped out of the office and—instead of going to the elevator his own security was already holding for him, he signaled that he would take the utility stairs. He removed the official visitor’s pass he wore as he walked down the hall, peeled off the telltag on its back, and—hardly breaking stride—opened the door to a men’s toilet and slapped it onto the inside wall above the light switch. From his inner jacket pocket he took the small packet containing an apparent twin to the telltag, slipped it out, and pressed it onto his pass. Preprogrammed for just such occasions, the “tag” now deactivated door alarms and informed area controls that he was authorized anywhere in the building and also for unplanned entrances and exits.
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