by David Weber
"Which do you think?" she asked sarcastically.
"It was an honest question," Roger replied calmly.
"My real body. Of course. The thing is... I guess the question I'd ask if I were trying to trap you is: Does this body make me look fat?"
"No," Roger said, and it was his turn to chuckle. "But you know the old joke, right?"
"No," Despreaux said dangerously. "I don't know the old joke."
"How do you get guys to find a kilo of fat attractive?" he said, risking her wrath. She glared at him, and he grinned. "Put a nipple on it. Trust me, you don't look fat. You do look damned good. I suppose I do, too, but I'll be glad to get my old body back. This one feels like I'm maneuvering a grav-tank."
"This one feels like I'm maneuvering two blimps in front of me," she said, and smiled at last. "Okay, when this is over, we go back to our own bodies."
"Agreed. And you marry me."
"No," she said. But she smiled when she said it.
* * *
"Mr. Chung," Beach said, nodding as Roger came onto the bridge.
"Captain Beach."
Roger looked at the repeater plot. They were in normal-space, building charge and recalibrating for the next jump. That one would be into the edge of Saint territory.
"So, have you found someone to crosscheck me?" Beach asked an offhand manner.
"Yes," Roger replied, just as offhandedly.
"Good." Beach laughed. "If you hadn't, I would've turned this damned ship around and dropped you back on your miserable mudball planet."
"I'm glad we see eye to eye," Roger said, smiling thinly.
"I don't know if we do or not." Beach gazed at him for a moment, then tossed her head at the hatch. "Let's go to my office."
Roger followed her to her office, which was down the passage from the bridge. It had taken some damage in the assault, but most of that had been repaired. He grabbed a station chair and sat, wondering why it had taken this long for the "conversation" to occur.
"We're fourteen light-years from the edge of what the Saints consider their space," Beach said, sitting down and propping her feet in an open drawer. "We're in deep space. There's exactly one astrogator on this ship: me. So let's be clear that I'm holding all the cards."
"You're holding many cards," Roger responded calmly. "But let me be clear, as well. In the last nine months, I've become somewhat less civilized than your standard Imperial nobleman. And I have a very great interest in this mission's success. Becoming totally intransigent at this time would be, at the very least, extraordinarily painful for you. I'd taken you for an ally, not a competitor, although I'm even willing to have a competitor, as long as we can negotiate in good faith. But failure of negotiations will leave you in a position you really don't want to occupy."
Beach had raised an eyebrow. Now she lowered it.
"You're serious," she said.
"As a heart attack." Roger's newly brown eyes gave a remarkable imitation of a basilisk's. "But as I said," he continued after a moment, "we can negotiate in good faith. I hope you're an ally, but that remains to be seen. What do you want, Captain Beach?"
"Most of what I want, you can't give me. And I was raised in a hard school. If it comes down to force, you're not going to like the results, either."
"Agreed. So what do you want that I can give you?"
"What are you going to get from the Alphanes?" Beach countered.
"We don't know," Roger admitted. "It's possible that we'll get a jail cell and a quick trip to Imperial custody. I don't think so, but it's possible. We'll be negotiating, otherwise. Do you want money? We can negotiate you a more than fair fee for your services, assuming all goes well. If we fully succeed, and I believe we will, we'll be freeing my mother, and I'll be Heir Primus to the Throne. The next Emperor of Man. In that case, Captain, the sky is the limit. We owe you—I owe you. Do you want your own planet?" he finished with a smile.
"You do know how to negotiate, don't you?" Beach smiled in turn.
"Well, I really should be letting Poertena handle it, but you wouldn't like that," Roger told her. "But, seriously, Captain, I do owe you. I fully intend to pay that debt, and since it's an open one, you can draw on it enormously. Right now, I have virtually nothing you could want. Even this ship is going to have to go away—you know that?"
"Oh, yeah. You can't get this thing anywhere near Sol. We could only hang around the fringes, where it was easy to bribe the customs officials."
"So we can't give you the ship; we're going to need it to trade to the Alphanes."
"But you're going on to Old Earth?"
"Yes."
"Well..." Beach pursed her lips, then shrugged. "What I want, as I said, you can't give me. Now. Maybe ever." She paused and made a wince. "How... Who are you going to use as a captain on the Old Earth trip?"
"I don't know. The Alphanes will undoubtedly have at least one... discreet captain we can use. But he or she will be one of their people. Are you volunteering to captain the ship to Sol? And if so, why?"
"I will want money," Beach said, temporizing. "If you fully succeed, a lot of money."
"Done." Roger shrugged. "A billion here, a billion there, and sooner or later, you're talking real money."
"Not that much." Beach blanched. "But... say... five million credits."
"Agreed."
"In a UOW numbered account."
"Agreed."
"And..." She made a face and shook her head. "If— What are you going to do about the Caravazans?"
"The Saints?" Roger leaned back in his chair with a tight smile. "Captain, right now we're wondering if we can make it to Alphane territory in one piece! After that, we have the little problem of springing someone from a fortified palace and somehow keeping the Navy from killing us. I'm in no position to discuss anything about the Saints, except how we're going to sneak by them."
"But in the long run," Beach said, half-desperately. "If you become Emperor."
"I'm not going to start a unilateral war against the Caravazan Empire, if that's what you mean," Roger replied after a moment. "I have... many reasons I don't care for them, but they pale beside the damage such a war would cause." Roger frowned. "What do you have against the Saints? You were one."
"That's what I have against them," Beach said bitterly. "And so, I will ask this of you. If you see the opportunity, the one thing that I'll ask—screw the money!—the one thing that I ask is for you to take them down. All the way. Conquer the whole damned thing and kill the leaders."
"Not all of them," Roger said. "That's not how it's done." He gazed at her for several seconds, his expression almost wondering, and she half-glared unwaveringly back at him.
"So that's the deal, is it?" he asked finally. "For captaining the ship, for turning off the self-destruct, you want me to invade the Caravazan Empire?"
"If the time comes," Beach said. "If the time is right. Please. Don't hesitate. Don't... do it by half measures. Take the whole thing. It's the right thing to do. That place is a cesspool, a pit. Nobody should have to live under the Saints. Please."
Roger leaned back and steepled his fingers for a moment, then nodded.
"If we succeed, if I become Emperor, if war comes with the Saints—and I won't go looking for it, mind you—then I will do everything in my power to ensure that it's a war to the knife. That not one member of the Saint leadership is left in power over so much as a single planet. That their entire empire is either transferred to a more rational form of government, or else absorbed by the Empire of Man or other less irrational polities. Something close to that anyway. As close as I can get it. Does that satisfy you, Captain?"
"Entirely." Beach's voice was hoarse, and her eyes glittered with unshed tears. "And I'll do whatever you need done to ensure that day comes. I swear."
"Good," Roger said, and smiled. "I'm glad I didn't have to break out the thumbscrews."
"Hey, 'Shara,'" Sergeant Major Kosutic said, sticking her head into Despreaux's stateroom. "Come on. We need to
talk."
Kosutic was a blonde now, too, if not nearly as spectacularly so as Despreaux. She was also her regular height, with equally short hair, and a more modest bosom. She was stockier than she had been—she looked like a female weightlifter, which was more or less how she'd looked before, actually—but her stride was a little more... feminine, now. Something about the wider hips, Despreaux suspected. The transformation hadn't changed her pelvic bones, but it had added muscle to either side.
"What does Julian think of the new look?" Despreaux asked.
"You mean 'Tom?'" the sergeant major said in tones of minor disapproval. "Probably about what Roger thinks of yours. But 'Tom' didn't get the big bazoombas. I've detected just a hint of jealousy about that."
"What is it with men and blonde hair and boobs?" Despreaux demanded angrily.
"Satan, girl, you really want to know?" Kosutic laughed. "Seriously, the theories are divergent and bizarre enough to keep conspiracy theorists babbling happily away to themselves for decades. 'Mommy' fixation was an early one—that men want to go back to breast-feeding. It didn't last long, but it was popular in its time. My personal favorite has to do with the difference between chimps and humans."
"What do chimps have to do with anything?"
"Well, the DNA of chimps and humans is really close. Effectively, humans are just an offshoot of chimpanzee. Even after all the minor mutations that have crept in since going off-planet, humans still have less variability than chimps, and on a DNA chart we just fall in as a rather minor modification."
"I didn't know that," Despreaux said. "Why do you?"
"Face it, the Church of Armagh has to make it up as we go along." Kosutic shrugged. "Understanding the real why of people makes it much easier. Take boobs."
"Please!" Despreaux said.
"Agreed." Kosutic smiled. "Chimps don't have them. Humans are, in fact, the only terrestrial animal with truly pronounced mammary glands. Look at a cow—those impressive udders are almost all functional, milk producing plumbing. Tits? Ha! Their... visual cue aspect, shall we say, has nothing to do with milk production per se. That means there's some other reason for them in our evolutionary history, and one theory is that they developed purely to keep the male around. Human females don't show signs of their fertility, and human children take a long time, relatively speaking, to reach maturity. Having a male around all the time helped early human and prehuman females with raising the children. The males probably brought in some food, but their primary purpose was defending territory so that there was food to be brought in. In addition, human females are also one of the few species to orgasm—"
"If we're lucky," Despreaux observed.
"You want to hear this, or not?"
"Sorry. Go ahead."
"So, that was a reason for the female to not be too upset when the male was always having a good time with her. And it was another reason for men to stick around. Tits were a visual sign that said: 'Screw me and stick around and defend this territory.' Can't be proven, of course, but it fits with all the reactions males have to them."
"Yeah," Despreaux said sourly. "All the reactions. They're still a pain in the... back."
"Sure, and they're effectively as useful as a veriform appendix these days," the sergeant major said. "On the other hand, they're still great for making guys stupid. And that is what we're going to talk about."
"Oh?" Despreaux's tone became decidedly wary. They'd reached the sergeant major's stateroom, and she was surprised to see Eleanora waiting for them. The chief of staff had been modded as well and was now a rather skinny redhead.
"Oh," Kosutic confirmed. She closed the hatch and waved Despreaux onto the folded-down bed next to Eleanora, who looked at her with an expression which mingled thoughtfulness and determination with something Despreaux wasn't at all sure she wanted to see.
"Nimashet, I'm going to be blunt," the chief of staff said after a moment. "You have to marry Roger."
"No." The sergeant stood back up quickly, eyes flashing. "If this is what you wanted to talk about, you can—"
"Sit down, Sergeant," Kosutic said sharply.
"You'd better not use my rank when talking about something like this, Sergeant Major!" Despreaux snapped back angrily.
"I will when it affects the security of the Empire," Kosutic replied icily. "Sit. Down. Now."
Despreaux sat, glaring at the senior NCO.
"I'm going to lay this out very carefully," Eleanora told her. "And you're going to listen. Then we'll discuss it. But hear me out, first."
Despreaux shifted her glower to the chief of staff. But she also crossed her arms—carefully, given certain recent changes—and sat back stiffly on the bed.
"Some of this only holds—or matters—if we succeed," Eleanora said. "And some of it is immediately pertinent to our hope of possibly pulling off the mission in the first place. The first point is for everything—current mission and long-term consideration, alike. And that point is that Roger literally has the weight of the Empire on his shoulders right now. And he loves you. And I think you love him. And he's eaten up by the thought of losing you, which raises all sorts of scary possibilities."
Desperaux's surprise must have shown, because the chief of staff grimaced and waved one hand in the air.
"If he fails," she said, "if we go with the government-in-exile program and he becomes just some guy who was almost Emperor, you'd marry him, wouldn't you?"
Despreaux looked at her stony-eyed for two or three heartbeats, then sighed.
"Yes," she admitted. "Shit. I'd do it in a second if he was 'just some guy.' And I'm setting him up to fail so I can do just that, aren't I?"
"You're setting him up to fail," Eleanora agreed with a nod. "Not to mention contributing to the mental anguish he's in right now. Not that I think for a moment that you've been doing either of those things intentionally, of course. You're not manipulative enough for your own good, sometimes, and you certainly don't think that way. But the effect is the same, whether it's intentional or not. Right now, he has to be wondering, in the deeps of the night, if being Emperor—which he knows he's going to loathe—is really worth losing you. I presented the alternate exile plan because I thought it was a good plan, one that should be looked at as an alternative. It was Julian and the sergeant major who pointed out, afterwards, the consequences of the plan. Do you want Prince Jackson on the throne? Or a six-way war, more likely?"
"No," Despreaux said in a low voice. "God, what that would do to Midgard!"
"Exactly," Kosutic said. "And to half a hundred other worlds. If Adoula takes the Throne, all the out-worlds are going to be nothing but sources of material and manpower—cannon fodder—he and his cronies will bleed dry. If they don't get nuked in passing during the wars."
"So he has the weight of the Empire on his shoulders," Eleanora repeated, "and he's losing you. And there's a bolt-hole that he can go to that gets both of those problems off his back. It happens that that bolt-hole would mean very bad things for the Empire, but men aren't rational about women."
"That's another thing I can lay out in black and white," Kosutic said. "Lots of studies about it. Long-term rational planning drops off the chart when men are thinking about women. It's how they're wired. Of course, we're not all that rational about them sometimes, either,"
"Now, let's talk about what happens if we succeed," Eleanora went on gently and calmly. "Roger is going to end up Emperor—probably sooner than he expects. I don't know how bad the residual effects of whatever drugs they're using on his mother are going to be, but I do know they're not going to be good. And after what's going on right now gets out, the public's confidence in her fitness to rule is bound to drop. If the drugs' effects are noticeable, it will drop even more. Nimashet, Roger could well find himself on the Throne within a year or less, if we pull this thing off."
"Oh, God," Despreaux said quietly. Her arms were no longer crossed, and her fingers twisted about one another in her lap. "God, he'll really hate that."
&nbs
p; "Yes, he will. But there's much worse," Eleanora said. "People are neither fully products of their genetics, nor of their experiences, but... traumatic experiences can... adjust their personalities in various ways. And especially when they're still fairly young and unformed. Fairly young. Roger is fairly young, and, quite frankly, he was also fairly unformed when we landed on Marduk. I don't think anyone would be stupid enough to call him 'unformed' now, but the mold in which he's been shaped was our march halfway around Marduk. Effectively, Roger MacClintock's done virtually all of his 'growing up' in the course of eight months of constant, brutal combat ops without relief. Think about that.
"More than once, he's ended serious political negotiations by simply shooting the people he was negotiating with. Of course they were negotiating in bad faith when he did it. He never had a choice. But it's become... something of a habit. So has destroying any obstacle that got in his path. Again, because he didn't have a choice. Because they were obstacles he couldn't deal with any other way, and because so much depended on their being dealt with effectively... and permanently. But what that means is that he has... very few experiential reasons to not use every available scrap of firepower to remove any problems that arise. And if we succeed, this young man is going to be Emperor.
"There will probably be a civil war, no matter what we do. In fact, I'll virtually guarantee that there'll be one. The pressures were right for one—building nicely to one, anyway—when we left Old Earth, and things obviously haven't gotten any better. What with the problems at home, I'd be surprised if a rather large war doesn't break out—soon—and if it does, a man who has vast experience in killing people to accomplish what he considers are necessary goals is going to be sitting on the Throne of Man. I want you to think about that for a moment, too."
"Not good," Despreaux said, licking her lips.
"Not good at all," Eleanora agreed. "His advisers," she added, touching her own chest, "can mitigate his tendency to violence, to a degree. But only if he's amenable. The bottom line is that the Emperor can usually get what he wants, one way or another. If he doesn't like our advice, for example, he could simply fire us."