At All Costs

Cardones nodded again.

"And what about this summit?" Honor didn't really need her empathic ability to feel the hope in his question. "You think it could really lead to something?"

"I think there's always that possibility, How likely it is I can't say. But like you, I spend a lot of time hoping."

The lift came to a halt, the doors slid open, and Honor stepped out, leading the way towards her flag briefing room and yet another conference with her senior officers.

"And the time I don't spend hoping," she said, just a bit grimly, "I spend pla

"Thank you for seeing me, Madam President."

Secretary of State Leslie Montreau shook Eloise Pritchart's hand as the President walked around her desk to greet her. Pritchart smiled, and waved for the Secretary to be seated in one of her office's armchairs, then sat herself, facing her guest.

"Given the general tenor of your message when you requested a meeting, Leslie, I was delighted to make room for you in this morning's schedule. I take it we've heard back?"

"Yes, Madam President."

Montreau opened her thin briefcase and extracted a sheaf of old-fashioned hard copy. There were several documents, each with the matching electronic document's chip attached, and she laid them out on the coffee table.

"Basically," she went on, "we've gotten a very favorable response, overall. This," she tapped one document, "is a personal letter from Queen Elizabeth to you. It's mainly polite formulas, but she does specifically thank you for the care our people have taken of our POWs, and for releasing her cousin, Admiral Henke, as your messenger.

"This one," she indicated another, thicker document, "is an official response to our proposal, drafted by their Foreign Office over Foreign Secretary Langtry's signature. There's quite a bit of diplomatic boilerplate in it, but what it boils down to is that they officially welcome our suggestion of a conference, and they accept our offer of a military standdown until after the summit, to begin twenty-four standard hours after the expected arrival time of their response here in Nouveau Paris. I think you'll want to read it for yourself, especially since there are a couple of passages which are just a bit testy. Most of them, I'm afraid, refer to our decision to launch Thunderbolt without formal notice we intended to resort to military action, but I think it's significant that they don't mention our dispute over who did what to the official diplomatic correspondence.

"In addition," she went on, in a slightly different tone, "they've responded to our request that they nominate a neutral site."

"Which is?" Pritchart asked as Montreau paused.

"Torch, Madam President," the Secretary said, and Pritchart sat back in her chair with a suddenly thoughtful expression.

"You know," she said, after a few seconds, "that really should have occurred to us. It's the one neutral port where we both have contacts." She chuckled suddenly. "Of course, if it had occurred to me, I probably wouldn't have suggested it anyway. I'd have figured they wouldn't want to risk their monarch anywhere near our half-tame lunatic, Cachat!"

"Then you feel the site's acceptable?" Montreau asked, and Pritchart cocked her head to one side.

"You don't?"

"I think it's very inconveniently placed for us, Madam President," the Secretary of State replied after a brief hesitation. "Their delegation could make the trip in less than a week, thanks to their Junction and the Erewhon Junction. It's going to take over a month for our delegation to make the trip from Haven. And it's going to take over three weeks for our acceptance and their acknowledgment of our acceptance to travel back and forth between here and Manticore. So the absolute earliest we could actually sit down with them is the next best thing to two months from today."

"That sort of time constraint's going to be part and parcel of any peace conference, Leslie," Pritchart pointed out. "It always takes time, and finding a suitable site we can both agree to is worth going a little out of our way. I suppose," she smiled thinly, "that we could always ask them to guarantee our safe conduct and take Haven One through their Junction. That would cut about a week off of our total transit time."

"And Thomas Theisman would have me shot at dawn if I proposed any such thing, Madam President."

"Probably not," Pritchart disagreed.

"If it's all the same to you, Madam President, I'd prefer not to find out."

"Wise of you, I suppose." Pritchart sat for another moment, studying the Secretary of State's expression, then frowned very slightly. "Somehow, though, Leslie, I don't think the time element is the only issue you have."

"Well," Montreau began, then stopped. She seemed uncomfortable, but finally she inhaled and started again.

"Madam President, I have to confess I'm just a little anxious about the notion of the President of the Republic attending a peace conference on a planet inhabited almost exclusively by freed genetic slaves. As far as I can tell, at least half of them have some co

She shook her head.

"Madam President, I question whether or not this planet can really be considered a 'neutral site,' and I have some fairly severe reservations about your personal security and safety on Torch."

"I see."

Pritchart leaned back in her chair, her own expression thoughtful, and considered what Montreau had said. Then she shrugged.

"I can see why you might be concerned," she said. "I think, though, that you're making a not unreasonable mistake by failing to recognize that Torch is something new and unique. Yes, Queen Berry is the daughter of Anton Zilwicki and Catherine Montaigne. She was born on Old Earth, though, not Manticore, and I'm quite confident her primary loyalty is to her new planet and her new subjects. I have... certain highly covert contacts within the Torch government which keep me quite well informed in that regard.

"As for my personal security and safety among a bunch of ex-terrorists, you might want to recall just exactly what the Aprilists were." Her smile this time was thin and cold. "I was a senior member of the Aprilists, Leslie. I personally killed over a dozen men and women, and InSec labeled all of us 'terrorists.' I'm not going to worry all that much about my safety among people someone like Manpower's labeled terrorists simply because they chose to strike back violently at the butchers who made their lives living hells. And while Anton Zilwicki may head their intelligence services, I have complete and total faith in the young woman who commands their military."

Montreau looked at her. Pritchart suspected the Secretary wanted to press her objections, but she had the good sense not to.

"Very well, Madam President," she said instead. "If the site's acceptable to you, I'm not going to raise any more objections. Although, with your permission, I intend to discuss my specific concerns with the Attorney General and Presidential Security, as well as my own security people."

"Of course you have my permission, Leslie."

"Thank you."

The Secretary smiled, then tapped the last stack of hard copy.

"This was perhaps the most surprising part of the entire package," she said. "It includes a copy of two official messages to Erewhon. One is from Foreign Secretary Langtry, and the other's from Queen Elizabeth. They're proposing that both sides agree to bring no military units into the Congo System, aside from a single escort vessel for the ships transporting our delegations, and that the Erewhonese Navy assume responsibility for the system's security during the conference. The official messages they've copied to us are requests to Erewhon to agree to undertake that role."