by Alec Saracen
Harod shrugged. “I'm no psychologist, but I'd say that if you're raising clones, maybe you're trying to perfect yourself.”
“I've met Violet, and I somehow doubt she's Parys's idea of perfection,” Zhai said. “Then again, I haven't seen the other two yet.” He checked his watch, which ran on the 24-hour Home clock. Tor's days were about half an hour shorter, so he was losing just over a minute per hour. “Almost time to go.”
“Well, good luck with Lissa Esmerski. Hey, maybe you'll get lucky and ResTore will storm the party.”
Zhai chuckled. “Nothing like a good hostage situation to add some spark to an evening. Although ResTore couldn't even storm a turnstile, let alone a secure government building.”
That was underselling them, and Zhai knew it. Landing was still a war zone, but the two sides were fighting completely different wars. The government was treating it as armed conflict, an attempt to violently crush an insurgency. ResTore, meanwhile, was waging an information war, absorbing the government's clumsy blows and repackaging the footage as slick propaganda. He wondered what Salmi was doing for them?
Both Roshi Comet and TruthTeller seemed to be acting as mouthpieces for ResTore now, Roshi with enthusiasm and TruthTeller with something approaching objectivity. As far as Zhai and Tetaine had been able to determine, ResTore's numbers and power were approaching a critical mass. If nothing changed, Landing would fall into Thier's lap on its own.
And then things would get interesting.
Ceq was allowed to accompany Zhai to the party, though she'd be herded away into a special security enclosure with the rest of the personal bodyguards once they arrived. They sat opposite each other in the car, avoiding eye contact.
As they approached the security checkpoints that divided the centre of Macard from its suburbs, Zhai finally broke the silence.
“If you want to resign after we're finished on Tor, Ceq, tell me, and I'll fire you instead. That way, you'll get full severance pay from the Coalition.” Ceq didn't reply, and Zhai sighed, staring out of the window at the skyline. The Torian flag was projected onto dozens of buildings, giving the city an eerie green glow. “I don't suppose there'd be any call for you anyway,” he said. “After Tor, I'm done. Retired. You can find someone else to protect. Someone better.”
“I don't get it,” Ceq said, after a long pause. “I only ever worked for you because I thought you were better than the rest. You seemed – I don't know. Human. Not like all the other snakes on Megereth Station. Don't get me wrong, I still thought you were a bastard, but...” She trailed off.
“A better class of bastard,” Zhai suggested.
That drew half a smile from Ceq. “Yeah. Maybe. I just – I liked you. What you told me made it real hard for me to keep liking you.”
Zhai fidgeted with his watch strap, unfastening and refastening it. He had grown fatter since the last time he'd worn it. His usual hole made the strap too tight, but the next one along was too loose.
“I don't blame you,” he said. He settled on the looser one. “Not in the least.”
“I can't square the Zhai I knew with the Zhai you say you were.”
“Well, it's been a long time.” Zhai shrugged. “People change.”
“Tell me truthfully,” Ceq said, “if you can. Replace the man you were with the man sitting in this car right now. Would you do anything differently? Or would you just do the same shit, but feel bad about it?”
The question stung. Zhai had asked himself the same thing several times over the last few days. He'd tried to puzzle out the what-if, balancing principle against cold, hard politics, and he knew the answer. There was no running away from it, no lying to himself. He knew.
“I'd do the same shit,” he said.
Ceq sat back, nodding. “I thought so. At least that's an honest answer.”
The ceremonial governor's mansion – president's mansion, Zhai reminded himself – perched on a small lake near the outskirts of Macard, protected by high walls, a forest of artificial trees, and at least six watchtowers. As the front gate, a mobile wall of steel, slid shut behind their car, Zhai saw lights on the lake from the inflatable warships protecting the mansion from waterborne attack. Wrought iron lamps flanked the driveway, which wound through the trees and under watchtowers with unobstructed lines of fire. There was no way to reach the mansion without being exposed to several security measures, and those were just the visible ones.
The mansion itself was architecturally unremarkable to Zhai's mind, a pale imitation of old Chetic country houses in yellow brick. Its sheer size was imposing, and the enormous spotlit Torian flag flying over the triangular pediment was striking, but it all rang hollow, as if the architect had tried to mechanically reverse-engineer grandeur.
As their car crunched to a halt in the driveway, now driven by the mansion security system, rain began to spatter against the windows. Without waiting for the approaching valet, Zhai got out and hurried to the porch before the rain could worsen. Outside, a treacly humidity seemed to slow the world to a crawl. It felt like Zhai could have caught hold of the air itself and squeezed moisture from it like a damp towel.
Once they were through the front doors and into the air-conditioned, dehumidified hall, innumerable security people with an array of gadgets that would have made Fleischer drool scanned them both. Ceq was led away in one direction, and Zhai was politely ushered in another.
The front hall was a decadent sprawl of marble, though it seemed curiously bare. As Zhai was on his way out, he realised that the dozens of black dots he'd seen lining the walls were empty portrait hooks. The only surviving painting had been, predictably, of Chang. There was no room for former Alliance governors on Chang's new Tor. Zhai wondered if he appreciated the irony.
The stateroom, at least, was magnificent. Real wood panelling rose twenty feet up on all sides to a ceiling ridged with polished timbers, where eight elegant glass chandeliers bathed the room in a soft yellowish light. A long table clothed in white ran two-thirds of the length of the room, leaving space at the near end where early arrivals were already mingling, flutes of sparkling wine in hand. A string quartet in the corner was competently playing Al-Siwara's Serenade No. 16.
“Gumeigo!” Audry Dance exclaimed. She appeared from behind the Volendeimer ambassador like the sun sliding out from behind the clouds, radiant as ever despite her age. Her own diplomatic robes were in Republic blue, which made her auburn hair fire-bright under the chandeliers' glow. She glided over to him, somehow already holding two glasses. She handed him one and immediately clinked it with her own. “How wonderful to see you again!”
Zhai bowed slightly. “Good evening, Audry,” he said, and smiled up at her. She was a head taller than him. “You're a sight for sore eyes.”
Her spherical pendant was at eye level, nestling just below the hollow of her throat. It was made of UBM, Unidentified Blue Metal, the ancient material found only in scattered deposits on Home. The prohibitive time, effort, and expense of shaping it with either human or Low People technology meant it was only ever used in complex industrial and technological processes, and even extracting the raw material from the protected deposits on the blasted surface of Home was beyond difficult. Only the spectacularly wealthy could dream of UBM jewellery. Audry wore more money around her throat than Zhai had earned in his life, and he wasn’t a poor man.
Her startlingly green eyes, a surefire sign of genetic modification, glittered under the chandeliers. “When was it we last met? GalCon '56, wasn't it?”
Zhai winced at the thought of ’56. It had been turgid even for the infamously tedious Galactic Conclave, and half it had been taken up with a protracted mining rights dispute between bitter, dirt-poor worlds in the galactic south-east. He’d spent most of it drinking with Audrey. “I think you’re right. The Ankra Kek and Oxudis show.”
“How time flies.”
“It didn’t then.”
Audrey laughed over the rim of her glass. “No. Have you recovered from it yet? How have you be
en?”
“Older,” Zhai said, with a smile.
“I sympathise. I'm a grandmother now. Me! A grandmother!” She shook her head at the injustice of it. “Twins. Literally, in fact. Identical grandsons.”
“A good omen. Congratulations.”
“A drink to the house of Dance,” Audry said, raising her glass. “Try the sparkling.”
Zhai did. “Excellent. Morin?”
“Greenway, in fact,” Tiris Beaumont said. The Nouveau Volma ambassador had ghosted into the conversation with textbook technique, and it was as if she'd always been there. In fact, she looked rather like a missing link between Zhai and Audry in everything from skin colour to height to weight, and she lent the trio a certain equilibrium. “An independence gift from the UR, non?”
Audry's smile was a mouthful of diamonds. “Guilty as charged.”
“Greenway,” Zhai said, and took another sip. Most sparkling wine in the galaxy was Nouveau Volmais in origin, with the rich world of Morin leading the way. Greenway was a Republic world; supplying sparkling wine – at a dinner with the Nouveau Volmais ambassador, no less – was a declaration of oenological war. “I don't believe I've ever tasted Greenway sparkling before. How unusual.”
“Quite common, these days,” Beaumont said, with glassy ambiguity. “The UR does so like to – explore new frontiers.”
Zhai and Audry exchanged a glance. Beaumont evidently had a government-mandated chip on her shoulder. The Unified Republic of Star Systems was proud of its name, and if it had to be bundled into a vulgar acronym, 'URSS' was preferred. 'UR' smacked of disrespect. Despite their mutual membership of the Interstellar Confederation, there was no love lost between the Republic and Nouveau Volma, heirs to the ancient Homebound rivalry between Chetis and Volma. The fact that Chetis and Volma were nothing but ash and dust on a dead planet hadn't dissuaded their descendants. Good feuds were so hard to come by these days.
“There are great many new frontiers these days,” Audry said, neatly redirecting the conversation away from the Confederation's dirty laundry. “We have the Coalition to thank for that.”
Her crystalline smile, directed at Zhai, filled in the next sentence without her having to speak it aloud. And you idiots have put us all on the road to a pan-galactic war.
“And here we are, standing on the threshold of a bright new tomorrow,” Zhai deadpanned. He'd scanned the crowd for Chang; the president hadn't made his grand entry yet, and the only member of his cabinet visible was Jon Weiv. “To borrow a phrase from our gracious host.”
“Yes, you must introduce me.” Audry took Zhai by the arm and steered him away from Beaumont, who raised her glass in farewell. It was a poor diplomat who took umbrage at being politely jettisoned from a conversation. “Do you believe him?” she said, as soon as Beaumont was out of earshot.
Zhai exhaled. “I believe we're on the threshold of something, all right.”
“'We'? Now, are we talking about us as ambassadors to Tor, or us as representatives of the last two superpowers standing?”
“Why not just us as old friends?” Zhai said.
Audry’s laugh was musical. Zhai had always imagined that she composed her laughter like a miniature concerto. “That we'll always be. Unless you get yourself killed. I heard you had a good shot at that – or rather, someone had a good shot at you.”
“All part of the game we play.” Zhai swallowed half a glass of sparkling. Bubbles prickled at his sinuses. “One can't begrudge the occasional assassination attempt.”
Audrey pulled a face. “Oh, no. It would be dreadfully gauche.”
He could never quite tell if Audry was joking, which was one of his favourite things about her. She kept him on his toes.
They passed Juan Rademacher, the gregarious Sirenese ambassador, who was making a mockery of the isolationist Siren stereotype by holding a loud and cheerful conversation about interplanetary football with bearded Uyanay Soloev, his Budush opposite number.
“Lots of familiar faces tonight,” Zhai observed.
Audry's sea-green eyes flashed over the growing crowd. Venerable old Matmi Dopaama of Autrice had just entered, wearing her familiar indigo robes. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Zhai nudged her. “Yours included.”
“Tor is in an interesting place at the moment. All the other ex-Alliance worlds are either lagging behind or streets ahead.” Audry waved an expansive arm at the room. “This is where the action is, so to speak. And besides, it was your lot that set precedent. If the celebrated Gumeigo Zhai is in town, that's a sure sign that the Coalition cares a great deal.”
“Or, at least, it once was.”
“Oh, don't sell yourself short. No matter what's going on inside the Coalition, you're a big hitter.” Audry's unpainted lips twitched into a smile. “A trendsetter, you might say.”
Zhai snorted. “I've been accused of many things in my lifetime, but never that.”
Over the next half hour, a cross-section of the galaxy's diplomatic elite trickled in. Giuna Smicer turned heads when she strolled in, for several reasons: her unconventional white suit; her stunning good looks; and, most importantly, the fact that nine ambassadors at the party represented worlds which didn't recognise Liberation. Zhai suspected that those worlds still imported an abundance of the cheap rekenon on which Liberation’s wealth and influence was built.
When Si-Ku Jeng swept imperiously into the room, wrapped in an elaborate parody of traditional Qienchuan costume, more eyes were on Zhai than on the Xanangan ambassador. Zhai ignored them and kept listening to the slickly tiresome Kozuo Grimsson of the FSN complain about trade disruption, but he could feel Jeng's haughty stare drilling into his back from half a room away. Xanang had made an art form of disgust.
An hour into proceedings, Chang made an appearance. The string quartet played a triumphant rendition of the old Torian national anthem, which Zhai recognised from endless propaganda broadcasts, to a quiet room.
Chang, wearing a tailored dinner jacket with a silk green-and-orange carnation in his buttonhole, grinned at the assembled ambassadors. There was nothing false about it, for once – Chang was genuinely beaming with pride. Galactic recognition of Torian independence had given him the legitimacy he craved. The question is, Mr President, Zhai thought, can you cling on? It didn’t matter how legitimate he was if he lost control of his planet to a messianic professor or a pack of clones – and Chrysia Salmi wasn’t in Chang’s corner any more.
Hopefully.
“Thank you all for coming,” Chang said, as the last notes of the anthem faded away. Lipal Sarma-Phung, in a figure-hugging mauve dress, hovered at his side. Zhai gazed at them, wondering if Chang was breaking the first rule of politics and screwing his deputy. Neither was married, as far as he recalled. “Welcome to Tor. Tonight, our world rejoins a galactic commonwealth of planets. We have awoken from the long nightmare of the so-called Free Planetary Alliance. Make no mistake, dawn has broken over Tor.”
“He likes that line,” Zhai murmured to Audry, whose smile didn't waver. The smile of Audry Dance was legendary in diplomatic circles. She conducted it like an orchestra. Whatever you saw was exactly what she wanted you to see.
“And so, as we take our first steps into a new realm of opportunity and amity, we hope to make new friends and new allies,” Chang continued. “Tomorrow, the hard work of independence begins, but tonight, we celebrate.” His smile broadened even further. “Tor has arrived.”
Jon Weiv began the applause, which rippled politely across the room as the string quartet launched into a jaunty arrangement of 'Freedom on the Wind'. The mingling resumed, this time shot through with a current of gossip about Chang's future.
“Non-existent,” Zhai murmured to Audry. “Dead and buried by year's end. Possibly literally.”
“So I've heard. Still,” Audry said, sipping delicately from her glass, “it never hurts to be polite. Who's your horse?”
“Trade secret.”
“Tease,” Audry said, and vani
shed into the crowd with practised ease.
Someone gently touched Zhai's elbow as he watched her go, and he turned to find himself face to face with Violet Hactaur. She wore a form-fitting white dinner jacket with an orange cummerbund, boldly setting off her night-black skin. For a moment, Zhai wondered if this was really Violet or one of her clone sisters, but he soon remembered her broken nose. It was definitely Violet.
“Evening, Ambassador,” she said. She glanced at Chang, who was enthusiastically speaking to Tiris Beaumont. “Big night for Tor, huh?”
“So it seems,” Zhai said. “You must be overjoyed.”
Violet smiled. “Yeah. We must be.”
The Salmi situation could wait, Zhai decided. Violet couldn't be blamed for his own ignorance about the significance of open codes. Besides, the advantage of that secret alliance wasn't one to squander over petty recriminations.
Still, though, recalling Salmi's story of her childhood made Zhai only more curious about Violet's. Life in a house of clones. It sounded like a sitcom – or a horror movie.
“It feels like a whole new world,” he said, plotting his course. “For so long, Tor has just been one small current rushing down the Alliance's river. Now, you've a little tributary of your own, branching off to Twins know where.”
Violet's eyes betrayed nothing. “Hope you're not going to tell me we don't have a paddle.”
Zhai laughed. “Wrong metaphor, then. Call it a baby bird leaving the nest. It's a dangerous world out there, especially when you're on your own – but all the more rewarding for it.”
“If we can avoid the hawks,” Violet said.
Zhai smiled and sipped his wine, hoping like hell that had been coincidence and not Violet revealing her knowledge of Grey Hawk. She couldn't know. Not unless Salmi had revealed Zhai's secrets to her. Was Violet tightening her grip on him? Paranoia, surely. Surely.
Through the crowd, Zhai caught sight of Parys Hactaur in her military dress uniform, and nodded her way.
“Tell me, Violet, what was your nest like?”