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"I imagine you've deduced most of it, Ginger," he conceded after a moment. "And you're probably right that Hope isn't going to be delighted when she finds out. Assuming, of course, that worse comes to worst and we do end up provoking a major interstellar incident."
"You remember, back in 281, when Duchess Harrington blew that Peep Q-ship out of space in Basilisk, Skipper? You know, the one that got her convicted as a mass murderer in absentia by the Peeps?" Ginger asked, and he nodded.
"Well, that was 'a major interstellar incident,'" she said. "What you've got in mind is going to be something else entirely. Something I'm not sure they've actually invented a word for yet. Although, now that I think about it, 'act of war' might come pretty close."
He considered disagreeing with her, but he didn't.
She was right, after all.
"I knew Yvernau was an idiot," Dame Estelle Matsuko said over the appetizer. "I never realized he was directly descended from a lemming, though."
"'Lemming,' Milady?" Gregor O'Shaughnessy repeated, and she wrinkled her nose and reached for her wineglass. She sipped, then set the glass back down and brushed her lips with a napkin.
"It's a species they have on Medusa," she told him. "Actually, the name goes back to an Old Earth species. The Medusan version was named because it has some similar habits. Specifically, at irregular intervals, enormous masses of them get together and either charge off the edge of a high cliff or swim straight out to sea until they drown."
"Why in the world do they do that?"
"Usually because they breed like Old Earth rabbits, only more so. Their numbers grow to a level which threatens to destroy their environment, and that seems to be their genetically programmed mechanism for reducing the population pressure."
"It seems a bit excessive," the analyst observed.
"Mother Nature can afford to be excessive," Medusa pointed out. "There are always plenty more where they came from, after all."
"True," O'Shaughnessy conceded, then cocked his head. "Actually, that's not a bad metaphor for Yvernau, now that I think about it. He and his fellow oligarchs really are threatening their own environment, and like those... lemmings of yours, there are, unfortunately, plenty more where he came from. Although, to be fair, I was also rather taken with Alquezar's metaphor during the debate."
"'Dinosaurs with stomachs full of frozen buttercups,'" Medusa quoted with a certain relish. "Something wrong with it, though. I don't think it was dinosaurs with buttercup-stuffed tummies. I think it was... elephants? Hippopotami? Something warm-blooded, anyway. But it was a nice turn of phrase, I'll grant you that."
"And Yvernau didn't like it very much, either," O'Shaughnessy said with poorly suppressed glee.
"No. No, he didn't," the baroness agreed judiciously.
She and her guest fell silent as uniformed Navy stewards, assigned to her support staff along with Colonel Gray's Marines, removed the appetizers and replaced them with the soup course. It was a delicious local concoction of chicken, rice and a local grain which closely resembled pearl barley, and the Provisional Governor sampled it appreciatively.
"So how do you think the New Tuscan government's going to react to his little fiasco, Milady?" O'Shaughnessy asked. He was officially her analyst and intelligence chief, but he'd long since discovered that in political matters, she was often better at his job than he was.
"Hard to say," she replied thoughtfully. "What they ought to do is get behind him and help him over the cliff, of course. I just wish I were confident they'll see it that way."
"About a third of his own delegation would cheerfully shoot him on the Convention floor," O'Shaughnessy observed, and she nodded.
"They certainly would. And they could make a nice profit selling tickets. Did you see Lababibi's expression when she realized his motion was going to fail?"
"Yes, Milady." O'Shaughnessy smirked. Undeniably, he smirked. "I'll almost guarantee you her instructions were to support him. She must've been delighted that Spindle's position as host meant she had to vote last."
Medusa nodded. She'd been watching Yvernau's expression almost as closely as Lababibi's when the Spindle System President rose to cast her vote. The New Tuscan had obviously counted hers as being in the bag, and his furious consternation when she voted against his motion had been almost as obvious as her own delight.
"It's been obvious for weeks-months-Lababibi despises Yvernau," she said. "He's probably the only person in the entire Convention who didn't know it. And you're right about her instructions. But the motion had already failed before the vote got to her, so she's not even going to have to pay the price of disobeying orders. She's the woman who put them firmly on the wi
She and her analyst smiled nastily at one another. Then she shook her head.
"It should be evident to anyone with a measurable IQ that Yvernau's policy's been proven a disastrous failure, Gregor. Sheer, cynical pragmatism, as well as principle, ought to turn his supporters back home against him. But the members of the New Tuscan political elite-I use the term loosely, you understand-have more than a little lemming in their own genotypes. Why else would they have set up the rules for their delegation the way they did?"
"It probably seemed like a good idea at the time."
"So did the first Peep attack on Grayson," the baroness said dryly, and the analyst chuckled. But his humor was fleeting, and he frowned.
"You may be right, Milady," he said slowly. "Everything I've managed to put together about Yvernau suggests that even now, he's not going to relinquish control of the delegation without direct, nondiscretionary orders from home. And as long as he wants to stay obstinate, there's nothing the rest of the New Tuscan delegates here on Flax can do about it. I'd like to think the system government's bright enough to send instructions from home to override him, though."
"You'd like to think that, but do you?"
The analyst sighed after considering it for several seconds. "Not really."
"I'm not overly optimistic myself. I thought Tonkovic was bad, but at least the Kornatians called her home and hammered her hard enough for her to resign." The dispatch boat from Split had brought the news the day before. "But I'm afraid the New Tuscan oligarchs are even more stubborn and a lot more monolithic than the Kornatians."
"Yes, Milady, they are. My best prediction at the moment is that there's about an eighty percent chance they'll leave Yvernau here, still heading their delegation. I figure there's a seventy percent chance they won't send him any new instructions, either. They'll let him continue standing in front of the air lorry until it runs him down, hoping for the best. After that, though, I don't know what they'll do. That's why I was asking you. It looks to me as if it's too close to call at this point. There's almost an even chance they'll buy into this notion of his that they can do just fine without us, thank you."
"That's my reading of the situation, too," Medusa said. "And he's probably right that we'll find ourselves obliged to prevent anyone else from moving in on them. But for the rest of it-" She shook her head. "Either New Tuscany's going to turn into some sort of police state, or else the current management's going to get bounced out on its collective posterior when the New Tuscan electorate sees what's happening to the rest of the Cluster without their participation."
"Which could be even messier than Nordbrandt's efforts on Kornati," O'Shaughnessy said grimly.
"That's what happens to closed, exploitative ruling classes which insist on trying to tie the cork down more tightly instead of reforming themselves or at least venting the pressure in some controlled fashion," Medusa agreed sadly. Then she shook herself.
"There's not much we can do if they're going to insist on some sort of mutual suicide pact," she said. "On the other hand, it looks like the rest of the Cluster's falling into line behind Alquezar and Krietzma
"Yes, it does." O'Shaughnessy made no particular effort to hide his satisfaction, and the Provisional Governor returned his broad smile with interest. "Given what Terekhov and Van Dort did to Nordbrandt and the FAK, and now the approval of the Alquezar draft Constitution virtually in its entirety, I'd have to say the a
"I think you might've been underestimating both Her Majesty's grip on the present Parliament and the electorate's intestinal fortitude," Medusa said. "On the other hand, you might not have been. Either way, I'm glad there's not going to be any more spectacular bloodshed and explosions coming out of the Cluster."
"Very well, Amal," Terekhov said. "General signal to the Squadron. All units prepare to depart Montana orbit and proceed in company to Point Midway."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Lieutenant Commander Nagchaudhuri acknowledged, and Terekhov glanced around his bridge.
Hexapuma was understrength, what with the Marines she'd left on Kornati, the casualties she'd suffered when Hawk-Papa-One was destroyed, and the detachment of Ansten FitzGerald's party to Copenhagen . The same number of casualties and detached perso