by David Weber
They had . . . and she hadn't. There were times she still felt guilty over that, but even on the worst nights, she knew any feeling of guilt was illogical. She'd done what she had not simply to survive, but to place herself in a position which might let her help others, like Giscard, survive as well. Standing up defiantly for her principles would have been noble and gallant . . . and unforgivably stupid. It had been her responsibility to stay alive to fight for those principles, however clandestinely, and that was precisely what she and Giscard had done.
In the end, they would have been found out and executed, anyway, if Theisman hadn't gotten to Saint-Just first. And just as Saint-Just had found her reputation as an Aprilist useful for State Security, Theisman had found it equally useful for his own purposes. He'd needed someone—anyone—to whom he could hand the position of head of state. Pritchart doubted that more than half a dozen people in the entire People's Republic had been prepared to believe he truly didn't want that position for himself. In fact, she hadn't believed it herself, at first. But, then, she hadn't really known him before he'd recalled her and Giscard to the Haven System, along with the rest of Twelfth Fleet, to reinforce his own Capital Fleet.
Only the fact that Theisman had always had a reputation within the Navy as a man with no political ambitions had permitted Giscard and Citizen Admiral Lester Tourville—both of whom, unlike her, had known him for years—to convince her to return to Haven. All three of them had been intensely wary anyway, despite the naval officers' acquaintance with him, but Pritchart had been stunned literally speechless when he informed her that he wanted her to organize the interim civilian government.
It hadn't been all pure disinterest on his part, of course. She'd recognized immediately how useful she could be to him as a figurehead. After all, she'd had more than sufficient experience in a similar capacity with Saint-Just. And she'd been sufficiently realistic to admit that he had an overwhelming responsibility to reach for anything he might be able to use to prevent the complete fragmentation of the People's Republic. If she was a potentially unifying force, then she had no more choice about accepting the job, figurehead or not, than he had about offering it to her. Or to someone like her, at least.
Ultimately, she felt certain, it had been her relationship with Giscard, with its resonances to his own relationship with LePic, which had made her acceptable to him. He'd known and trusted Giscard; by extension, he'd felt able to trust her because he knew Giscard did. But the thing which had truly astounded her was that when he offered her both the political and the military powers of the head of state, he'd meant it.
There hadn't been any strings, no reservations, no secretly retained authority. The one thing Thomas Theisman would never be was a puppet master. There'd been one, and only one, condition, and that had been that Eloise Pritchart prove to him that she was as committed as he was to the restoration of the old Constitution. Not the Constitution of the People's Republic of Haven, which had created the office of Hereditary President and legally enshrined the dynastic power of the Legislaturalists, but the Constitution of the old Republic. The Republic whose citizens had been expected to be more than mere drones and to vote. The one whose presidents and legislators had served at the will of an electorate which held them responsible for their actions.
Pritchart had felt almost awed when she realized she was in the presence of a true romantic. A man who actually believed in the rule of law, the sanctity of solemn oaths, and the inviolability of personal responsibility.
She wondered if he'd always been so divorced from reality, or if he'd become that way as his own defense mechanism as he watched the star nation of his birth go insane about him. It didn't really matter. What mattered was that he was truly and absolutely committed to the very principles for which the Aprilist Movement had come into existence . . . and that she was almost as hopelessly romantic, in that respect, at least, as he was.
And so, just over eighteen T-months from Oscar Saint-Just's death, Eloise Pritchart, after organizing the transition government and bringing the old Constitution back from the ash heap of history, had become the first elected president of the Republic of Haven in almost two centuries, with Thomas Theisman as her Secretary of War.
There were times when she was highly tempted to shoot him for that.
"You know, Tom," she said, only half-whimsically, "you're a coward."
"Absolutely," he agreed instantly. "It's a survival trait."
"Is that what you call it?" She cocked her head at him. "I'd assumed it was more a combination of laziness and a desire to put someone else in the line of fire."
"A burning desire to put someone else there, actually," he corrected affably. Then his smile faded just a bit, and he shrugged.
"There's not quite as much humor in that as I wish there were," he said in a quieter voice. "I think I know my strengths, Eloise. And I hope to hell I know my limitations. There's no way I could've done the job you've done. I know you couldn't have done it, either, if I hadn't been here to do my job, but that doesn't change a thing about what you've accomplished."
She waved her hand in midair again, uncomfortable with the sincerity of his tone.
"At any rate," she went on again, after a moment, both her expression and her voice determinedly light, "you managed to arrange things very neatly so that you don't have to deal with the damned Manties. Or, for that matter, the rest of the Cabinet when they hear about the Manties' latest antics."
"And just what do those antics consist of this time?" Theisman asked, accepting her change of mood. "Besides, of course, their failure to accept our most recent proposal?"
"Nothing," she admitted. "But they don't have to do anything else to create enormous problems for us, Tom, and you know it."
"Yes, I suppose I do." He shrugged. "But like I said earlier, the fact that they can't find their ass with both hands has been useful as hell from my perspective. At least I didn't have to worry about them while Javier, Lester, and I ran around pissing on forest fires!"
"There is that," Pritchart agreed with a sober nod.
Not everyone had been prepared to accept Theisman's overthrow of the Committee of Public Safety gracefully. In fact, initially, he'd controlled only the capital system and its fleet. Capital Fleet was the Navy's largest, of course, and two-thirds of the other core systems of the People's Republic had declared for him—or, rather, for Pritchart's interim government—within the first three T-months. The majority of the rest of the People's Navy had also supported him, as well. But a large minority of the Navy had been under the control of other citizen admirals or, even worse, StateSec system commanders, who'd refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the new government.
It was, as Theisman had just suggested, extremely fortunate that the Manticorans had chosen to continue the negotiations Saint-Just had finessed them into beginning. If they'd decided to resume active military operations, instead, especially with the enormous technological superiority of their new hardware, the entire Republic would have disintegrated—within weeks, probably, but certainly within mere months. As it was, Theisman, with Giscard and Tourville as his primary field commanders, had found himself fighting a vicious, multi-cornered war against a shifting kaleidoscope of enemies. Pritchart had had more than one reason for being unhappy about that. As President, she'd hated the way it had distracted her from concentrating fully on the stalled negotiations with the Star Kingdom. On a more personal level, Giscard's responsibilities as Theisman's senior fleet commander had kept him away from Nouveau Paris—and one Eloise Pritchart's bed—for all but a few weeks out of the last three-plus years. Which, she admitted, she resented even more than the official headaches it created.
Fortunately, she'd never really been concerned (unlike some people) that Theisman might not succeed in his pacification efforts in the end . . . as long as the Manties stayed out of it. The fact that most of his adversaries distrusted one another even more than they distrusted him had given him a powerful advantage, but not even their merry-
go-round of mutual betrayal would have been enough to permit the interim government to survive in the face of an active Manticoran resumption of the offensive.
"I know how important it was for you and Javier and Lester to keep the Manties talking while you tended to the shooting," Pritchart went on after a moment. "But the shooting is just about over now, isn't it?"
"Yes, thank God. I expect Javier's next report within another couple of days, and I'll be very surprised if it doesn't tell us that Mikasinovich is ready to call it quits."
"Really?" Pritchart brightened visibly. Citizen General Silas Mikasinovich was the last major StateSec holdout. He'd managed to hammer himself together a six-star vest-pocket empire which had proved a surprisingly tough nut to crack.
"Really," Theisman confirmed, then raised one hand in a brief throwing-away gesture. "I'm afraid you're going to have to amnesty him like the others, and I wish you weren't. But unless I'm badly mistaken, he's enough of a realist to recognize that his only real chance now is to cut the best deal with you that he can."
"I'll give him a lot better deal than he deserves," Pritchart said grimly. "But the bottom line is going to be that he surrenders every one of his capital ships, then gets the hell out of the Republic and stays out."
"I can live with that," Theisman agreed. Especially, he thought, the surrender of his ships. So far, as nearly as Theisman and his staff could tell, not a single Havenite ship above the size of a battlecruiser had managed to simply disappear. He knew damned well that at least some lighter units had elected to set up independent operations as pirates or small-scale warlords safely beyond his own reach, but at least he'd managed to prevent any ships of the wall from doing the same thing, and he intended to keep it that way.
"And now that Lester's moved in and kicked down Carson's little kingdom," he went on aloud, "all we have left are four or five isolated holdouts like Agnelli and Listerman. Give me another four months—six at the outside—and I'll have all of them out of your hair, as well, Madam President."
"And I will be delighted to see it happen," Pritchart said with a smile, then sobered. "But in some ways, getting Mikasinovich and the others out of the equation is going to make things even worse," she continued. "At least as long as they're still there and their units are still shooting back at yours, I can use him to keep the fire-eaters at bay."
"Giancola and his crowd?" Theisman asked, then snorted harshly at the President's confirming nod. "The man's an idiot!"
"Idiot or not—and much as I dislike him, I don't think he is one, actually—Arnold Giancola is also the Secretary of State," Pritchart pointed out. "I'll admit that the only reason I nominated him for the position was political expediency, despite a less than overwhelming admiration for his stellar intellect, but he does have the job. And the reasons I gave it to him are still in force."
"Which I hope you won't mind my admitting doesn't make me a lot happier," Theisman replied.
"I should think not. It damned well better not, anyway!" Pritchart glowered at the framed copy of the Constitution hanging on the wall opposite her desk.
Arnold Giancola's signature was on it, one of the block of convention delegates who'd solemnly pledged to recreate the ancient glories of the Republic of Haven. Eloise Pritchart's signature was on it, as well, although Thomas Theisman's wasn't . . . which she considered one of the worst miscarriages of historical justice on record.
But the fact that they'd both been at the Constitutional Convention was one of the very few things she and Giancola had in common. Which, unfortunately, hadn't been quite enough, in light of the Republic's current political realities, to keep him out of her cabinet.
Arnold Giancola had been a low mid-level Treasury bureaucrat under Hereditary President Harris. Like hundreds of thousands of other bureaucrats, he'd continued in his precoup position—in his case, administering disbursement of the Basic Living Stipend right here in Nouveau Paris—under the Committee. None of them had been given much choice about that, aside from the very senior Legislaturalist administrators, who'd all been purged by the new management, because someone had to continue to run the day-to-day machinery of the state, and Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just had innumerable ways to make sure they did. But to be completely fair (which Pritchart found difficult in her Secretary of State's case), Giancola had done his job better than most, and with what certainly appeared to have been a genuine concern for the Dolists under his jurisdiction.
His competence had drawn favorable attention from his new superiors, and after four or five T-years, he'd been transferred to the Department of State, which was always in search of capable administrators. He'd done equally well there, rising steadily in seniority, only to be shifted back to Treasury when Rob Pierre nominated Avram Turner to drive through his enormous economic reform package. Giancola's new position had brought him back to his old Nouveau Paris neighborhood, where he'd prospered despite the pain and economic dislocation involved in the Turner Reforms. He was, after all, an effective administrator who possessed an undeniable talent for attracting the loyalty of his subordinates, and he'd done his level best to minimize the reforms' traumas for the citizens for whom he was responsible. As a result, he'd emerged from the Committee's downfall with a base of genuine popular support—quite a large one, actually—on the Republic's capital (and most populous) planet.
He'd capitalized on that support shrewdly. His brother Jason was a senator; his cousin Gerard Younger was a representative; and Arnold himself had played a prominent role in reorganizing the capital following Theisman's overthrow of Saint-Just. He'd obviously had ambitions of his own at the time, but he'd been smart enough, whatever his other failings, to realize Theisman would have squashed him like a bug if he'd acted on them. So instead, he'd settled for building a powerful political machine in Nouveau Paris—still the most important single city in the Republic, although the Mob's heady days of power were a thing of the past. That had not only assured him his slot at the Convention but also allowed him to directly influence the election of a surprising number of representatives and no less than eight senators (including himself), which was not an inconsequential Congressional power base.
It had also made him Pritchart's most significant opposition when she ran for the presidency in the first election under the restored Constitution. Had it come down to a straight contest between the two of them, his candidacy would have been not only significant but a serious challenge, and she knew it. Fortunately, she'd enjoyed two enormous advantages he simply could not overcome: her status as the provisional head of government who'd actually kept her promise and held general elections when she'd said she would, and the endorsement of Thomas Theisman. There had been seven candidates on the ballot, and Pritchart had taken seventy-three percent of the popular vote. Arnold Giancola had taken nineteen percent, and the other five candidates between them had split the remaining eight percent.
The election hadn't even been close, but Giancola had clearly emerged as the second most consequential figure of the restored Republic's youthful political establishment. That was precisely why Pritchart had chosen him for what was technically the number one position in her cabinet. In actual fact, Theisman's combination of the offices of Secretary of War and Chief of Naval Operations made him the de facto second-ranking member of the administration, but Giancola was definitely the third. And under the Constitution, it was he who would lead the three-month caretaker administration and supervise the special election to replace Pritchart if something happened to her.
To say she wasn't entirely happy to have him in that position would have been a gross understatement, yet she'd seen no viable alternative. His allies in Congress would have demanded some significant appointment for him even without his showing in the presidential elections, and she'd hoped to bind him to the new administration by giving him a voice in it. Ambitious though he was, he also saw himself as a statesman, and Pritchart was well aware that he truly believed in his own vision for the Republic's future. That genuine patrioti
sm had made no small contribution to his ability to build his political alliances . . . and helped to encourage his personal ambition with a sense of mission. That was precisely what had made him so dangerous, and she'd hoped she could convince his patriotic side to rein in his ambitious side by supporting her in the interests of solidarity during the critical, early years of the restored Republic.
The Constitution had also just coincidentally required him to resign from the Senate to accept a cabinet-level post, and she'd calculated that he would be less dangerous in the cabinet where she could keep an eye on him and demand his loyalty than he would directly controlling a senate seat. But he'd foiled that part of her plans by securing his brother's election in his place in the special election his resignation had set up. Nor had her plans to co-opt him to support her policies proved an unadulterated success. As far as she could tell, he'd simply recognized that he had to work through a different set of rules and priorities in pursuit of his original ambition and policies, and he was building a steadily growing faction in Congress. The fact that he was also busy building support within the Cabinet for at least some of his policies had the potential to turn into a major nightmare, yet she couldn't demand his resignation. It was probably clear to everyone that he was maneuvering to put himself into position to challenge any reelection bid of her own when her term ended in another four T-years, but his alliances in Congress would provoke a bigger fight than ridding herself of him would be worth.
Or more than she thought it would be worth, anyway, she amended.
"That 'idiot' has plans of his own, Tom, and you know it," she said aloud. "I still cherish hopes he'll overstep and give me an excuse to bring the hammer down on him, but he's getting himself well enough entrenched to make it hard. And events are going to play right into his hands if the Manties persist in blowing off the negotiations."