Cauldron of Ghosts (eARC)

by David Weber

“The usual. Plausible deniability. Whoever came up with that term, incidentally? Whoever she or he is, they’ve got to be burning in hell somewhere.”

  “Freezing, more like,” said Hugh. “I’m willing to bet the guilty party is spending eternity in Malebolge, Dante’s eighth level of hell. That’s the level assigned to hypocrites, grafters, counterfeiters and counselors of fraud. As for who it was, the swindle goes back so far it’s impossible to say for sure. My money’s on Octavian.”

  “Who’s Octavian?” asked Berry.

  “Octavian De Brassieres,” said Ruth. “Makes sense. He was the Legislaturalist who proposed the ‘unfit for office’ provision in Haven’s new constitution back in the 1850s.”

  Hugh winced slightly, but said nothing. Ruth wasn’t looking his way in any event, since she was still focused on Radamacher.

  For his part, Yuri was smiling, but the source of his amusement might have been the general situation. “The reason I’m not official is because the government of Haven has, as yet, taken no position on the developments which Sharon is about to explain. For that matter, the government of Haven does not, as yet, officially know anything at all about these developments.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “I’m sure Cachat has figured it out by now. Who he’s told, though…” He waggled his hand. “Anton Zilwicki and Kevin Usher, almost certainly, and if so that means President Pritchart probably knows and so does the Countess of the Tor—and if she knows, she’s very likely to have passed the information on to Empress Elizabeth.”

  Ruth frowned. “Everyone who matters, in other words. So why bother with the pretense?” She shook her head. “Never mind. Silly question. So what are these developments?”

  Web came back with two cups of coffee and handed them to Sharon and Yuri. “I’m now filled with curiosity myself.”

  Sharon set down the cup without tasting it. “In a nutshell, Erewhon and Maya Sector have formed an alliance. Whether it’s informal or formal, I don’t know. Yet. But regardless, it’s a real alliance. The heart of it so far is that Erewhon is serving Maya as its armaments developer and manufacturer.”

  She paused to pick up the coffee cup and blow on it, which gave everyone some time to think over what she’d said.

  Yuri had been blowing on his coffee all along and now took a tentative sip from the cup. Still too hot, though. He moved the cup away but didn’t set it down.

  “Do you know,” he mused, “that just in the last two hundred T-years and just in the Republic of Haven alone—I looked it up once when I had way too much spare time on my hands—there have been eleven separate inventions to cool coffee in a cup. Well, any kind of hot liquids, I suppose. Yet not one of them has ever been commercially successful.”

  He tried the coffee again. Still too hot. He set it down. “Either we’re all a bunch of hopeless reactionaries—which is doubtful, given the giddiness with which fashion changes—or social conventions usually trump practicality. Blowing on a cup is such a nice way to pause a discussion without being awkward about it.”

  “Does he always philosophize?” demanded Jeremy.

  “Pretty much,” said Sharon. She finally took a sip from the cup and her eyes widened. “My, that’s good. Sumatran?”

  DuHavel bestowed upon her the approving look of one connoisseur encountering another. “Allowing for some evolution, yes. The coffee beans are actually grown on Gascogne, one of the moons of a giant gas planet near Aldebaran. But the strain originates from Terra’s Indonesia.”

  Ruth was looking impatient. Her knowledge of coffee extended far enough to distinguish it from tea and no farther. “What sort of manufacturing?” she asked.

  “Naval, mostly. Everything from SDs on down.”

  That caused everyone to sit back a little. “They’re building superdreadnoughts for Maya?” asked Hugh.

  “How many?” asked Ruth.

  “At least a dozen. As well as a lot of lighter warships. You name it, the Erewhonese are building them. Battlecruisers—with pod capability. Multidrive missiles for the arsenal ships that Roszak used so effectively in the Battle of Torch. Cruisers. Destroyers. No CLACs, so far I’ve been able to determine. Not yet, anyway.”

  DuHavel rubbed the top of his head. “Good Lord. I knew they were developing good relations, but I had no idea it had progressed that far.”

  “Who’s building the ships?” asked Hugh. “Specifically, I mean. And how long has this been going on?”

  “The work’s mostly being done by the Carlucci Group. Maybe all of it, although they’re bound to have sub-contracted a lot. As for how long…I’m not sure. At least two years, though.”

  “And how soon will the ships start being commissioned?” That came fr4om Jeremy.

  “For the wallers, probably another two years. But they’ll have functioning pod battlecruisers within a year. As for cruisers and destroyers…I can’t swear to it, but I think those have already entered Mayan service. I’m almost certain that Roszak has already been able to replace everything he lost at the Battle of Torch.” She smiled at Berry. “Giving you the Spartacus and the other ships they captured at that battle was generous, no question about it. But Roszak knew he’d be making up the loss very quickly.”

  “And with ships that didn’t pose the same problems with public relations,” said Jeremy. He grunted. “I’m still appreciative of the gesture.”

  Web finished with his scalp-rubbing. “We all are—but it now goes way beyond being appreciative.” He gave Sharon and Yuri a keen look. “Why are you telling us this—when you know perfectly good and well the end result will be to pull us away from Haven?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t put it that way,” said Yuri. The coffee had cooled enough for him to slurp from it, cheerfully and noisily. “Here’s the way I look at things—me and Sharon both. Given what happened to Filareta’s fleet at Manticore, we’re bound to see a full scale war erupting between the Solarian League and the Manties—with us now allied to them. That alliance is shaky enough—well, maybe not ‘shaky’ but certainly full of problems and pitfalls—that both Haven and the Star Empire are going to be pre-occupied with their own situations for a while.” He paused to slurp from his cup again.

  Sharon picked up the train of thought smoothly. “So what does that mean for Torch? Things could get pretty dicey—unless you solidify your relations with other protectors. Ones who are nearby, like Erewhon and Maya.”

  “And ones who, like Maya, have a proven and tested track record when it comes to protecting Torch,” said Hugh. “But I’d still like to know why you initiated this.”

  Sharon set down the cup, leaned back, and crossed her arms over her chest. “It seems like the right thing to do. Speed up a process that’s inevitable anyway—and one that causes Haven no harm at all. Nor the Manties, for that matter, although”—she gave Ruth a quick, semi-apologetic little tilt of the head—“that’s not my main concern.”

  Hugh nodded. “Yeah, I get that. But…” He got an odd smile on his face. “In my experience—even with Beowulfers—envoys extraordinary with special sauce etc. etc. are not famous for their bold initiatives.”

  Yuri had been about to finish his coffee. Now, he paused, looking a bit disconcerted. “Well…”

  “Face it, Yuri,” said Sharon. “Cachat’s rubbing off on you.”

  “Oh, God help me.”

  Chapter 29

  Andrew looked around the big room on the ground floor of the building they’d just purchased. “Well, this is going to take a fair amount of work. If you’re planning to set up a boutique down here, that is. How about we change the plan to running a day care center? Then all we have to do is coat the walls and put some sort of padding on the floor. As long as they’re bright colors, we’re fine. You know what kids are like.”

  Steph ignored him. She and Andrew had been a couple for less than a year, but that was enough time for her to figure out that he was the sort of person who needed to maintain a patina of silly jabber in order to steady his nerves
. It could be irritating, but as faults went she could live with it easily enough. Her daughter Nancy’s father had been a drunk who got violent at times.

  Well, with her, only once. There were advantages to being a professional cook. Knives—big knives—were readily at hand and she was proficient in their use. She hadn’t even had to cut him much. When he sobered up he contemplated the wounds and decided to search for greener pastures elsewhere. Since Nancy had only been eight months old, she had no memory of her father—which suited Steph just fine.

  She’d considered running a day care center, in fact. She’d even gone so far as to broach the idea to Anton and Victor. But after discussing the matter, they’d all agreed that the risks outweighed the benefits.

  The problem with kids was that they tended to have parents. And while you could explain away the comings and goings of strange people easily enough to four- and five-year-olds, that was a lot harder to do with adults. All the more so when the adults in question would initially be a bit wary of the people running a new day care center and would be watching them closely.

  No, better to stick with the boutique plan. No one would think anything of people entering and leaving such a shop, especially if they were women.

  All of which Andrew knew perfectly well since he’d been part of the discussion. It was odd, really, how a man who was almost astonishingly resourceful in so many ways could have such childish habits. But Steph had long since come to terms with the fact that the universe was an imperfect place. Here was just further proof—and by no means the worst she’d ever encountered. Far from it.

  “It’s mostly just putting up shelves,” she said. “And lots of racks, of course, but we can buy those.”

  With the funds at their disposal, they could have easily afforded to pay contractors to do all the work of putting up the shelving as well. But from the viewpoint of spies—that was a neutral way of saying professional paranoia—the term “outside contractors” was synonymous with “potential informants.”

  There was other construction they’d be doing beyond putting up shelves, after all. They’d also be creating a hiding place for people who needed to get out of sight of the authorities. To make such a hidey-hole effective they’d need more than just clever construction, too. They’d need to include scrambling and shielding equipment, some of which was fairly bulky. There would be no way to keep all that secret with contractors trooping in and out of the building.

  So, Andrew would have to do all of it, with whatever (none-too-expert) help Steph could give him. But she wasn’t worried about it. This was the same man, after all, who’d jury-rigged a starship’s hyper generator.

  * * *

  The thing about Mesa’s capital city of Mendel that struck Thandi the most, as she maneuvered the air lorry along the crowded primary traffic lane, was how wealthy even the poorest neighborhoods were. To be sure, compared to the districts inhabited by Mesa’s full citizens, the seccie quarters were rundown—and very badly so, in some areas. They were more crowded, more cramped, much dirtier and showed signs of disrepair and even outright decay almost anywhere you looked.

  Still, compared to her home planet of Ndebele and most worlds of the Verge, the seccies lived in relative luxury. Leaving aside buildings which were completely abandoned, everyone had power and climate control. The quarters might be over-crowded by Mesan standards but they were nothing like the teeming hovels she’d seen on many worlds—or the slum in which she’d grown up herself, for that matter.

  It was an ancient pattern, she knew. The degree to which people were dissatisfied by their lot in life was determined by their relative position in a given society, not by some sort of absolute and external measure. From time immemorial, reactionaries had pointed out (quite correctly) that the less privileged in their own societies were veritable Midases compared to paleolithic hunters and gatherers. Never understanding—mostly because they didn’t want to understand—that such comparisons were pointless.

  What mattered to a seccie mother tending her sick child was not that children in ancient times or on some far-off Verge worlds often died in infancy—and she should damn well be grateful that there was little chance her own child would actually perish. No, what mattered was that if she were a full citizen she’d be able to give her child the best possible medical care instead of the very sub-standard care she could actually afford.

  Even knowing all that, Thandi still found the situation a little disorienting. Subconsciously, she’d been expecting to encounter conditions in Mesa’s seccie quarters that were similar to those she’d grown up in.

  As she made her way through the canyon-like depths of the stacked traffic lanes between the tenement towers, though, Thandi began to realize that the differences were greater than they’d initially seemed—not just the differences with the well-to-do citizen quarters but even with those of her native Ndebele.

  Victor and Anton had explained the history to her, and now she was seeing it for herself. The seccie districts of Mesa, unlike the hovels on Ndebele or many other Verge worlds, were built along recognizably modern principles. That meant building up, using the benefits of contragravity, rather than sprawling outward. The advantages to that sort of hyperurban planning were manifold. High density populations had a much smaller ecological footprint than ones which sprawled into huge suburbs and exurbs. They were much more energy efficient, they were more economically productive, they invariably had a higher average educational level—the list went on and on.

  But Mesa’s seccie districts had been built on the cheap, so to speak. The residential towers had almost all been built long after the initial colonization period and were something of an afterthought. And they’d been intended from the outset to warehouse the manumitted slaves who were growing in numbers that hadn’t originally been anticipated, which explained quite a bit about how they’d been built.

  Because they were intended for poor folks—and for people in whom the full citizens of Mesa did not want to encourage any pretenses to equality—they were deliberately designed to be far more utilitarian and to have a generally second or third-class quality of life. At the time they were initially constructed, they had decent amenities (heat, air conditioning, grav shafts, etc.), but they were barebones. They were also shorter—never more than three hundred stories tall, less than half the height of most “proper” residential towers. That was to insure that anyone living in them would be looking up at the “high castle” of their genetic and legal betters—in essence, subject to what you might call residential sumptuary laws.

  The seccie districts had originally been designed to form a widely separated “ring ghetto” around the central portion of Mendel, with its green belts, parks, etc. Over the centuries, though, the inner core of Mendel had slowly expanded outward from its original size and enveloped most of the original seccie towers. Those had been demolished and replaced with “proper” towers, pushing the ghetto farther and farther out even as the number of seccies living in it got higher and higher.

  Worse, from the seccies’ viewpoint, since the initial colonization the construction of those residential towers had been handed over to the local branch of one of the transtellars, Maidenstone Enterprises of Mesa. MEM hadn’t wasted a whole lot of time and effort on meeting code standards. To the credit of the Mendel city government, it had at least tried to see to it that code was observed at the time of construction, but this was no longer something which was put out for bids. Maidenstone’s construction had become increasingly slipshod, with serious maintenance issues which the slumlords who owned the towers didn’t work very hard to put right. Accordingly, the population density per square kilometer was far lower than in the “good parts” of Mendel, but the population density per building was much higher, with people packed into very restricted space.

  The population of Mendel’s seccie areas was somewhere between ten and twelve million people. (The authorities made no attempt to take a rigorously accurate census. Why bother? Seccies couldn’t vote.) All tol
d it covered a little under two hundred square kilometers—but a good third of that space was taken up by industrial sections and commercial spokes. Those, while functional and modern, were considered eyesores which the full citizens didn’t want in their landscaped parts of the city. Having them in the seccie areas made sense anyway because seccies provided the non-slave labor force. The managers and supervisors, at least above the level of shop foremen, were almost always full citizens.

  The commercial spokes with their industrial nodes also served the purpose of dividing the seccie ghetto into distinct districts. The spokes and nodes were well-lit and patrolled by private security forces as well as the city’s own police which both protected the facilities they held and discouraged seccies from taking “shortcuts” across them anywhere except the duly authorized transit points. In effect, they served as social breakwaters, helping to prevent the seccies from organizing on a city-wide scale.

  These were modern industries, though, based on modern technology. They did not produce much in the way of pollution and environmental contamination, so they had little impact on the citizenry itself. But for the seccies and slaves working in those industries and commercial zones, they were still bleak, hard areas. Hectare after hectare of stark manufacturing facilities, transportation systems—and pavement everywhere else. The trees and shrubs that adorned the citizen districts were not to be found here. The most you’d see in the way of gardens were flowerboxes suspended from the windows of cheap restaurants and diners catering to the seccie workforce.

  It wasn’t the smoky hell of a pre-Diaspora industrial slum, and the poverty wasn’t as bad as it was on many Verge worlds. There were even a few parks, zoos and museums scattered about. But the most striking aspect of the seccie ghetto, to Thandi, was the apparent absence of law. More precisely, the absence of official authority. That had not been true on Ndebele. Granted, the law had been corrupt and often brutal. But it had still been present.

  Here…