by David Weber
“Well, at least the ’cats will vouch for Simões’ truthfulness,” Honor pointed out, stroking Nimitz, who lay curled in her lap. The treecat raised his head with an unmistakably complacent purr, and Ariel added a bleeking laugh of his own from the back of Elizabeth’s chair. The two of them looked so smug Honor laughed and gave one of Nimitz’s ears a tug.
“As I was saying,” she continued, “and at the risk of overinflating—further overinflating, I should say—two unnamed furry egos, the ’cats can confirm he’s telling the truth, and a lot of people here on Manticore will trust their judgment. That may not cut much ice anywhere else, but nothing we could say would convince someone like Kolokoltsov to just take our word for it, anyway. And while I could wish he’d been involved in developing this ‘spider drive’ of theirs, instead of the ‘streak drive,’ the stuff he’s already given Admiral Hemphill makes it obvious he knows what he’s talking about. And what he does know about the ‘spider drive’ dovetails entirely too neatly with what happened to us for him to be some delusional nut. Not to mention”—her voice hardened—“pretty thoroughly demonstrating that Mesa must have been behind the attack, since no one else could’ve gotten close enough to hit us that way.”
Something icy flickered in her eyes, and Nimitz’s purr cut off abruptly as he half rose with a sudden snarl. It was very quiet for a heartbeat or two, but then she gave herself a shake, touched the back of the ’cat’s head gently, and smiled apologetically at the other two women.
“You’re right about all of that, of course, Admiral,” Pritchart agreed in a tone which diplomatically failed to notice the anger and pain which were seldom far from Honor’s surface these days. “And it may convince us, and probably even Congress or your Parliament. But it isn’t going to change the woman in the street’s mind if she’s not already inclined to go along with it. And no conspiracy theorist worth her paranoia badge is going to buy it for a heartbeat.”
“The best we can do is the best we can do, Madam President,” Honor replied in something much closer to a normal tone. She smiled her thanks for the Havenite head of state’s tact, then glanced at her chrono. “And assuming the news got released on schedule, we’ll be finding out in the next couple of hours just how the Manticoran public, at least, is going to react.”
* * *
“—most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, Patrick!” Kiefer Mallory snorted several hours later. The tall, handsome political columnist was one of the Star Empire’s more sought-after talking heads, and he knew it. Now his dark eyes glittered as he waved both hands in a gesture of frustration. “Mind you, we’re all aware of the threat the Star Empire in general—and this star system in particular—faces. And I won’t pretend I wouldn’t be delighted to find someone prepared to support us. But really—!” He shook his head. “I know I’m not the only one who finds all of this suspiciously convenient for the people who got us into this mess in the first place!”
“Oh?” Jephthah Alverson, a longtime Liberal MP who’d thrown his allegiance to Catherine Montaigne following the High Ridge Government’s implosion, leaned forward to look down the HD set’s conference table and raise a sardonic eyebrow. “Let me see, now … That would be Baron High Ridge and Elaine Descroix, wouldn’t it?”
Mallory, who’d been associated with the Progressive Party for at least three decades (and who’d served as one of the now-vanished Descroix’s public spokesmen, before her spectacular downfall), flushed angrily.
* * *
“My, he didn’t take that one well, did he?” Emily Alexander-Harrington observed.
“No, he didn’t,” Honor agreed. Which, she thought, stretched out on the comfortable couch in Emily’s private suite, was remarkably foolish of him. Nimitz was comfortably ensconced on her chest, and she tasted his agreement. Even a complete novice should’ve seen that one coming!
“That’s because, despite any surface slickness, he comes from the shallow—very shallow, in his case—end of the gene pool … intellectually speaking, that is,” Emily replied from the life-support chair parked at the head of the couch. She’d followed Honor’s thought almost as easily as the ’cat, and the two of them glanced at each other with matching smiles.
Hamish was stuck in Landing, submerged in the latest deluge of Admiralty business, but Honor had decided she deserved at least one day at home at White Haven after her participation in the Elizabeth-Pritchart political marathon. She’d spent most of that day with her parents and her younger brother and sister, and her family’s still sharp-edged grief, especially her father’s, had taken their toll on her and Nimitz. At least Alfred Harrington was finally beginning to develop the emotional scar tissue he needed to survive, yet Honor was grateful to have this time with Emily to herself. She needed the older woman’s serenity at moments like this, and there wasn’t a more insightful political strategist in the entire Star Empire.
Which may be even more useful than usual over the next few weeks, she thought, watching the broadcast as Mallory responded to Alverson.
* * *
“There’s a limit to how long the Grantville Government can go on blaming High Ridge for its own current problems.” Mallory’s tone could have melted lead, but at least he’d paused long enough to be sure he had his temper on a tight leash. “No one’s trying to pretend mistakes weren’t made on High Ridge’s watch, although some of us continue to question the wisdom of sentencing an ex-prime minister to prison for the actions of his government. I know that’s not a popular position, but the precedent of criminalizing political opponents is likely to produce all kinds of ugly fallout down the road. And dragging out the ‘usual suspects’ to wave like some red herring whenever someone criticizes the current government’s policies is scarcely a reasoned response to the criticism, Mr. Alverson!”
“Really?” Madeleine Richter asked. “I was under the impression he was convicted of bribery, vote-buying, perjury, extortion, and obstruction of justice, not the actions of his government. Did I read the news accounts incorrectly, Kiefer?” She smiled brightly. “As for Jephthah’s point, while I’ll agree it’s not an extraordinarily polished response, in this instance it does have the virtue of cutting to the heart of the matter. And it’s not like your criticism was exactly nuanced and carefully thought out, either.”
Mallory’s flush darkened, and Rosalinda Davidson shook her head. Richter, the sitting MP for East Tannerton, was a senior member of the Centrist Party. As such, her support of the Grantville Government was as much a given as Mallory’s opposition to it. Davidson, on the other hand, had been a Liberal Party MP until she got washed out of office in the post-High Ridge tsunami. Since then, she’d earned her living as a columnist and lecturer, and although she and Mallory weren’t exactly bosom buddies, they were united in their distaste for the current government.
“You know,” she said, a bit pointedly, “bashing people for past or present political affiliations isn’t the reason we’re here tonight, Madeline. Or I was under the impression it wasn’t, at any rate. Minerva?”
She turned to Minerva Prince, who, with Patrick DuCain, co-hosted the awesomely popular and long-running Into the Fire. The syndicated show was only one of the flood of programs trying to cope with the bombshell revelation of Eloise Pritchart’s presence in the Manticore Binary System, but it had the highest viewership of them all.
“You’re right, of course, Rosalinda,” Prince replied. “On the other hand, you know Patrick and I usually let our guests have at least some voice in where the discussion goes.”
* * *
“That’s true enough,” Emily agreed, smiling more broadly at Honor. “All that blood in the water’s just what their ratings need!”
“I remember,” Honor said feelingly, recalling her own Into the Fire appearance, when she’d been beached by the Janacek Admiralty. “And they’re not above steering their guests’ ‘voices’ when the water isn’t sufficiently chummed, either.”
* * *
“At the risk of undermining my
own reputation as a troublemaker,” Abraham Spencer said from the HD, “I suggest we all hang up our partisan political axes for the moment and concentrate on our official topic.” The photogenic (and incredibly wealthy) financier smiled charmingly. “I know no one’s really going to believe I’m not hiding in the underbrush to bash someone over the head myself when the moment’s ripe, but in the meantime, there is this little matter of the Empress’s proposed treaty with Haven. And that other minor revelation about the ‘Mesan Alignment.’”
“You mean that so-called revelation, don’t you?” Mallory snorted. “It’s not as if anyone’s offering the kind of evidence we could take to court!”
“Whether the allegations are accurate or not, there’s not much question about their explosiveness, Kiefer,” DuCain pointed out.
“Assuming anyone in the entire galaxy—outside the Star Empire, at least—is going to believe in this vast interstellar conspiracy for a moment,” Davidson riposted. She gave Alverson a scathing look. “Especially given the open ties between certain members of Parliament and the Audubon Ballroom.”
It was Alverson’s eyes’ turn to narrow dangerously at the obvious shot at Catherine Montaigne, but Richter intervened before he could fire back.
“You might be surprised how many people will believe it, Rosalinda,” she said coldly, reaching up to stroke her dark blue hair. That hair hadn’t been dyed or artificially colored; it was the legacy of a grandparent who’d been designed to the special order of a wealthy Solarian with idiosyncratic tastes in “body servants.”
“I won’t say the devil is beyond blackening,” she continued, “but I will say that anyone who looks at Mesa with an open mind has to admit the entire star system, not just Manpower, has never given a single, solitary damn what the rest of ‘the entire explored galaxy’ thinks of it.”
“You know my own feelings where the Ballroom is concerned, Rosalinda,” Spencer put in, his expression turning hard. “No matter how much I sympathize with genetic slaves and detest the entire loathsome institution, I’ve never sanctioned the sort of outright terrorism to which the Ballroom’s resorted far too often. I’ve never made any secret of my feelings on that subject. Indeed, you may recall that little spat Klaus Hauptman and I had on the subject following the liberation of Torch.”
One or two of the guests snorted out loud at that. The “little spat” had taken place right here on Into the Fire, and the clash of two such powerful (and wealthy) titans had assumed epic proportions.
“But having said that,” he continued, “and even conceding that this information appears to have reached us at least partially through the Ballroom’s auspices, I believe it. A lot of odd mysteries and unexplained ‘coincidences’ suddenly make a lot more sense. And as Madeline says, if any star system in the galaxy is corrupt enough to have given birth to something like this, it’s sure as hell Mesa!”
“And on that basis we’re supposed to believe there’s some kind of centuries-long conspiracy aimed at us and the Republic of Haven out there?” Davidson rolled her eyes. “Please, Abraham! I’m entirely prepared to admit the Mesans are terrible people and genetic slavery is a horrible perversion, but they’re basically nothing more than examples of the evils of unbridled capitalism. And, no, I’m not saying capitalism automatically produces evil ends. I’m simply saying that where Manpower is concerned—and looking at all the other transstellars headquartered in Mesa with it—we’re talking about something that makes the worst robber barons of Old Terra’s history seem like pikers. People like that don’t try to destabilize something like the Solarian League when they’re doing so well swimming around in the corruption of its sewers!”
“Then why do you think President Pritchart made this unprecedented, dramatic voyage to Manticore?” Prince asked, and Davidson turned back to the hostess with a shrug.
“There could be any number of reasons. It’s even possible—however unlikely I think it is—that she genuinely believes Mesa is after both of us. On the other hand, I think it’s also possible she and her intelligence types, possibly with the cooperation of the Audubon Ballroom and its … allies”—she pointedly avoided looking in Alverson’s direction—“concocted the entire story. Or least embroidered it, shall we say?”
“For what possible reason?” Spencer demanded. Davidson looked at him, and it was his turn to shrug. “As Kiefer himself pointed out a moment ago, the Republic’s standing with us against the Solarian League. Could you possibly suggest any logical motive for people we’ve been fighting for twenty years to suddenly decide, completely out of the blue, to get between us and something the size of the Sollies at a moment when we’re more vulnerable than we’ve been in over a decade? Forgive me if I seem obtuse, Rosalinda, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why any Machiavellian worth his—or in this case, her—‘I am devious’ Evil Overlord’s badge would do something that stupid!”
* * *
“I believe Abraham, to use Hamish’s delightful phrase, is about ready to rip someone a new anal orifice,” Emily observed.
“Odd,” Honor said, “I don’t seem to recall his using those two words.”
“That’s because he doesn’t,” Emily replied with a smile, then elevated her nose with a sniff. “I, on the other hand, am far more genteel than he is.”
“That’s one way to describe it.”
“Hush!” Emily smacked Honor on the head with her working hand. “I want to see if Rosalinda has a stroke on system-wide HD.”
“You wish,” Honor muttered.
* * *
“I just acknowledged that Pritchart might genuinely believe all this,” Davidson told Spencer tightly. “I think there are other possibilities, as well—convincing us we’re both on someone else’s ‘hit list’ in order to extort such favorable peace terms out of us comes to mind, for example—but of course she could really believe it. Which doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t sold her a fabricated bill of goods and used her to sell it to us. You just mentioned the Ballroom. Surely if it would benefit anyone in the galaxy for us and the Republic to turn on the Mesa System with everything we’ve got, it would have to be the Ballroom and its ideological allies, don’t you think?”
“That’s the most paranoid thing I’ve ever heard!” Alverson snapped. “And I can’t believe the mental hoops you’re willing to jump through to avoid admitting even the possibility that this McBryde might conceivably’ve been telling the truth! For that matter, the treecats verify that Dr. Simões, at least, definitely is telling the truth. Which means—”
“If you’re prepared to take the treecats’ word,” Mallory interrupted. Several of the others looked at him incredulously, and he scowled. “What I mean is that we’ve had plenty of experience with people who’ve been brainwashed—or simply misled—into genuinely believing something that’s demonstrably false. So far as I’m aware, not even the treecats’ most fervent champions have claimed they can know when that’s the case. Suppose for a moment Rosalinda’s right about someone like the Ballroom wanting to fabricate a story like this. I’m not saying that’s necessarily what happened; I’m just asking you to consider the possibility. In that case, knowing you were going to have to sell your story to the Star Empire, wouldn’t it make sense to brainwash your ‘star witness’ into absolutely—and honestly—believing what you’ve primed him to tell us?”
“Oh, for the love of—!” Richter began.
“And, on that note, we have to go to break,” Prince interrupted, smiling brightly at the camera while DuCain struggled mightily not to laugh. “Don’t go away! Into the Fire will be back in just a few moments to continue this … lively exchange.”
JUNE 1922 POST DIASPORA
______________________________
“I want him hammered so hard even Sollies have to get the message that this … is a war—their war—and that wars have consequences!”
—Admiral Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington,
Steadholder and Duchess Harrington
Chap
ter Twelve
______________________________
“Well, this is unexpected.”
Admiral Stephania Grimm, Manticoran Astro Control Service, looked at Captain Christopher Dombroski and cocked her head.
“Since this is all you’re showing me,” she continued, without looking away from him as she twitched a thumb at the terse message he’d relayed to her display, “and since you’re a reasonably competent sort, I assume you queried them for additional details and they declined to provide them?”
“That’s about right, Ma’am. They were polite, but they wouldn’t say a word about who they’re sending. They just repeated that they’ll be inserting ‘an unscheduled diplomatic courier’ into the queue. They did apologize for any ‘inconvenience,’ but that’s about it. Given everything that’s been happening, I thought I should call it to your attention.”
“I see.”
Grimm looked back at her display. A little explanation would have been nice, she reflected, but it was hardly his fault he didn’t have one.
Dombroski’s official title on the Junction Astro Control Service’s organizational chart was Senior Officer, Traffic Management Division. That made him responsible for imposing order upon thousands of Junction transits, and his usual, unflappable composure had begun to fray. Grimm wasn’t even tempted to hold that against him given how hectic his task had become. First there’d been the torrent of recalled merchantmen. Then, as Lacoön Two hit its stride, there’d been the scores of Solarian-registry vessels—most with indescribably irate skippers—who’d suddenly discovered they were going to have to make it home the long way. And as if that hadn’t been enough, there’d been the need to accommodate the movement of all the warships and mobile repair platforms the Navy was juggling in the Yawata strike’s wake.
No, it was no wonder Dombroski looked a little stressed these days.