War Of Honor

Jason was also accustomed to the way Arnold wandered off into his own thoughts, and he was perfectly content to sit and wait in companionable silence for however long it took for Arnold to complete the process and remember his presence. Which was just as well, since Arnold was very busy thinking indeed just now.

Yes, indeed. He'd been overlooking his greatest single advantage all along. Or, no, not "overlooking" it precisely. He just hadn't realized how big an advantage it truly was if he handled it properly. But now that it had occurred to him, he could see all sorts of possibilities. The public might be gulled into believing any new, assertive negotiating stance was Eloise Pritchart's idea, not Arnold Giancola's. But whatever the public might be prepared to think, Arnold knew that, in the end, and despite any confidence she might project through her much anticipated speech, Pritchart lacked the intestinal fortitude to go to the mat with the Manties if that was what success required. If it came down to going to eyeball-to-eyeball with the real possibility of a resumption of hostilities, Pritchart—and Theisman—would blink and let the damned Manties walk all over them all over again.

But Arnold had spent too much time dealing directly with the Manticoran negotiators and corresponding personally with Elaine Descroix. He knew that if the Republic only had the guts to really turn the screws on them, it was the Manties who would blink. Baron High Ridge, Lady Descroix, and Countess New Kiev between them had the moral fortitude of a flea and the spine of an amoeba. It might have been different when Cromarty was Prime Minister, but that had been then, and this was now, and the present Manticoran government was composed of pigmies.

So the trick was going to be stage managing things properly. He had to create the right atmosphere, the right confluence of events. A situation in which anyone who didn't know the Manties as well as he did would believe the resumption of hostilities had to be the next step in the process . . . unless the Republic conceded every single thing they demanded. If he could generate a situation which gave Pritchart her opportunity to cave in and reveal her lack of grit to the electorate while simultaneously allowing him to step into the breach her indecision created and push things to a successful conclusion despite her . . .

Oh, yes. He smiled deep inside at the alluring prospect. It would be tricky, of course. He'd have to find a way to lure her into provoking the proper response from the Manties, but that shouldn't be too difficult, given the arrogance which was so much a part of High Ridge and Descroix. Of course, he'd need to find someone reliable he could assign as his direct contact with the Manties, especially since he might have to do a little . . . creative editing here and there. Whoever passed on those communiques would have to be in the loop and prepared to support the process, but he rather thought he had the perfect candidate for that job.

Of course, if it did become necessary to do any editing he'd have to be careful to see to it that that busybody Usher didn't find out what he was up to. After all, if the President wanted to get picky about it, what he was thinking about might technically be illegal. He'd have to check on that. Maybe Jeff Tullingham could advise him if he was careful to keep his inquiry sufficiently hypothetical? But illegal or not, it would certainly be embarrassing—possibly terminally so—if anyone ever figured out just how he'd shaped the international situation. But in the end, he would emerge as the iron-willed, insightful statesman who'd seen what was needed and done it despite the interfering instructions of the nonentity who happened to hold the presidency.

Of course, part of the trick would be to copper his bets by making certain the Manties wouldn't actually be willing to go back to war when Pritchart thought they would. But there was a way to see to it they were suitably distracted.

Now then, he thought. The first thing to do is to invite to the Andermani ambassador to lunch. . . . 

Chapter Thirty Two

"…The excitement we all feel at this historic moment. The honor of speaking for the entire Star Kingdom, of somehow finding the words to express the pride Her Majesty's subjects all feel in our incomparable scientific community on an occasion such as this, does not come often to any political leader, and I approach it with mingled pride and anxiety. Pride that it has fallen to me to attempt to speak aloud what all of us feel at this moment, and anxiety for how inadequate I know any words of mine must be. Yet I take courage from the reflection that, in the end, anything I may say will be only the first words spoken. They will be far from the last, and as the citizens of the Star Kingdom add their own, far more worthy thanks to my own, I know that . . ."

"My God," T.J. Wix muttered out of the corner of his mouth. "Is he never going to shut up?!"

Jordin Kare and Michel Reynaud, seated to either side of him, managed not to glare repressively at him. They also managed not to grin in appreciative agreement with his plaintive tone . . . which was considerably more difficult. They sat with him on the raised stage of the press room, behind the lectern and the tall, narrow, stoop-shouldered form of the Prime Minister of Manticore, listening to his apparently interminable speech, and not one of them would have accepted the invitation to this prestigious moment if he'd had any choice in the matter.

Unfortunately, none of them had. And equally unfortunate, Kare reflected, was the fact that the High Ridge Government had found itself in greater need than usual of a public relations windfall at precisely the wrong moment.

I don't suppose we ought to have expected anything else out of them, he reminded himself. Not that knowing what was coming would have made it any better.

The Prime Minister and his First Lord of Admiralty had suffered a sharp downtick in their popularity and job approval ratings when the HD footage of Secretary of War Theisman's Nouveau Paris news conference reached the Manticoran public. The public's reaction hadn't been as severe as it might have been, but it had been undeniably sharp, and the Centrists and Crown Loyalists had done their best—with some initial success—to capitalize upon it.

Kare had entertained at least a faint hope that the shock of the news might weaken High Ridge's grip on power, and he supposed it could still have a cumulative effect in that direction. But damaging as the revelation of the Peeps' new naval capabilities might have been, it was obviously insufficient to do the job by itself.

It was difficult for the astrophysicist to keep his own highly disrespectful thoughts from shadowing his attentive expression as he sat watching the Prime Minister speak into the lenses of the newsies' HD cameras, but he managed. He didn't have much choice. Besides, disgusting as he might find High Ridge, he didn't have a great deal more respect for his fellow citizens, either. In any reasonably run universe, the Manticoran electorate and even—God help them all—the Manticoran peerage ought to have been smart enough to rise up in revolt now that the consequences of the High Ridge-Janacek naval policies had become manifest. In the universe they actually occupied, things hadn't quite worked out that way.

Although he knew his rabbi would disagree, Kare had often suspected that the Manticoran domestic political arena was the direct present day heir of the same divine thinking which had led to the Book of Job. Certainly he couldn't think of anything besides a deliberate decision on God's part to turn the Devil loose on hapless humanity under carefully delimited conditions which could explain the current political process in the Star Kingdom.