War Of Honor

The reporter nodded and sat down, and Reynaud moved on to the next holographic halo.

"Well, I thought Clarence did rather well," Baron High Ridge remarked as he held up his cup. He'd brought his own butler to the Prime Minister's official residence with him, and now that well-trained servant responded instantly with his coffeepot to the silent, peremptory command. High Ridge sipped the fragrant brew appreciatively. He did not, of course, thank the man or even acknowledge his existence.

"I suppose," Elaine Descroix conceded across the remnants of her own breakfast. She drank a little coffee, patted her lips with an old-fashioned linen napkin, and then grimaced ever so slightly.

"Clarence certainly did his best to see to it that credit went where credit was due," she told High Ridge." And I particularly liked the way he kept managing to slip our 'building the peace' slogan into his replies. But that Kare, and especially Reynaud—!" She shook her head. "What a deadly dull pair!"

"One can hardly expect acute political awareness out of career bureaucrats and scientists, Elaine," High Ridge chided gently.

"No," she agreed. "But I was watching Reynaud, in particular. He didn't care one bit for the way Clarence kept 'stealing his thunder,' and it showed. Are we going to have problems with him down the road?"

"What sort of problems?" High Ridge frowned.

"Oh, come now, Michael! He's the RMAIA's director, and however much I may dislike him, he obviously has a brain. I'm quite certain he can do simple math, and not even Melina can change the fact that he has access to his own books."

High Ridge set down his cup, and glanced over his shoulder at the butler. Descroix had a disturbing tendency to ignore the ears of servants. The Prime Minister was particularly aware of it because it was something he had to constantly watch in himself, but he'd seen too many examples of what ungrateful and resentful servants could do to their employers when those employers were careless about what they said in front of them. It wasn't a lesson he intended to forget, and although his butler had been in his employ for almost thirty T-years, there was no point in taking chances.

"That will be all, Howard," he told the man. "Just leave us the coffeepot. I'll buzz when we're done."

"Of course, My Lord," Howard murmured, and disappeared with discreet promptness.

"Now then, Elaine," High Ridge said, gazing at her intently, "what, specifically, are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that he has access to his own books. I admit that Melina has done a better job than I'd expected in managing the fiscal details, but in the end, she can't simply refuse to let the man who's technically her superior look at his own agency's accounts. And Reynaud may be an admiral, but he came up through Astro Control, Michael. He's had plenty of bureaucratic experience of his own. He may not be an accountant, but I'm not at all sure that he wouldn't be able to see through Melina's little ... subterfuges. And given that he so obviously disapproves of Clarence, and so, by extension, of us, he also has the potential to see himself as a knight on a white horse. It's just possible that his delicate conscience could turn him into a whistleblower."

"I think that's unlikely," High Ridge said after a moment. "If he were likely to do something like that, why hasn't he already done it? So far as I'm aware, he hasn't even asked any difficult questions, much less shown any inclination to take his suspicions—if any—public. And even if it turned out that he were so inclined after all, it would effectively be his word against the full weight of Her Majesty's Government." He shook his head. "No. I don't see any way he could hurt us under the circumstances."

"You're probably right . . . for now," Descroix replied. "On the other hand, I wasn't thinking about right this minute, or even any time in the next several months or even the next few years. But let's face it, Michael. You and I both know that eventually there's going to be a change of governments."

"Cromarty hung on to the premiership for the better part of sixty T-years with only three interruptions," High Ridge pointed out just a bit stiffly.

"And he had the enthusiastic support of the Crown the entire time. A happy state of affairs which," Descroix observed dryly, "scarcely obtains in our own case."

"If the approval of the Crown were critical to the survival of a government, we'd never have been permitted to form one in the first place!" High Ridge shot back.

"Of course we wouldn't have. But that's not really the point, is it? However temperamental the Queen may be, she's also an astute political observer, and she was right. Our differences in priorities and ideology—especially between you and me, on the one hand, and Marisa, on the other—are too fundamental for us to maintain our cohesion indefinitely. And that completely overlooks potential outside forces. Like that idiot Montaigne." Descroix grimaced. "I don't think she has a hope in Hell of pulling it off, but it's perfectly clear what she's up to with that dramatic renunciation of her title. And while I think the odds against her are high, I didn't expect her to win her precious little special election, either. So I don't have any desire to stake my own political survival on my faith that she can't do it after all."

"You think she could effectively challenge Marisa's control of her party leadership, then?" High Ridge asked.

"Probably not as things stand," Descroix replied. "But that's my point. You and I both know politics are a dynamic process, not a static one. Things change, and Montaigne's challenge could weaken Marisa enough for someone else higher up in the party hierarchy to challenge her successfully. Or, for that matter, to pull Marisa back towards the Liberals' 'true faith' and away from her coalition with us. Frankly, I think that's what's most likely to bring this Government down in the end, because let's face it, she's never really been comfortable working with us in the first place."

"It doesn't help any when you snipe at her in Cabinet meetings," High Ridge said in a painfully neutral tone.

"I know that. It's just that she's so damned sanctimonious and pious that I can't help myself. Come on, Michael! You know that when it comes right down to it, she's at least as willing as you or I—probably more willing—to do whatever it takes to hang on to power. But, of course, she's only doing it because of the absolute sanctity of her holier-than-thou, save-the-universe, rescue-mankind-from-original-sin ideology."

"I suppose so." High Ridge drank a little more coffee, using the cup to obscure his expression until he was certain he had it back under control. He'd known Descroix's impatience with New Kiev had been growing steadily, but the sheer venom in the Foreign Secretary's biting tone still came as something of a shock. Particularly if it proved to be the first rumbling of the very discord Descroix was warning him against.

"Oh, don't worry," she told him, almost as if she could read his mind. "I detest the woman, and I'm quite sure she detests me, right back. But we're both fully aware of how much we need one another right now, and neither of us is likely to do anything stupid.

"In the end, however," she went on, promptly undermining his momentary sense of relief, "we're either going to accomplish what made us political bedfellows in the first place, or else Alexander and the Queen are going to manage to take us out of office before we do. In the first case, I think we can take it for granted that there's going to be a certain . . . acrimoniousness to the ultimate dissolution of our partnership. And in the latter case—which, I hasten to add, I consider an unlikely, worst-case scenario—you can bet anything you like that Her Majesty's going to be out for blood. Our blood. Either way, there are going to be plenty of sharp knives waiting to be parked in someone's back, and Reynaud could be one of them."