The doors, like much of the furniture in Mount Royal Palace, were made of ferran. Even at the still-considerable distance, Anton could easily recognize the distinctive grain of the wood, as well as the traditional designs which had been carved into it. Ferran was native to the highlands of his home planet of Gryphon, and he'd done quite a bit of work with the stuff in his youth. Most Gryphon highlanders did, at one time or another.
Part of him—the rational, calculating side which was so prominent a feature of his personality—was pleased to see the wood. The wooden doors, and the carvings on them even more so, were a subtle reminder to everyone by the Winton dynasty that they valued their Gryphon highlander subjects as much as Manticorans proper. But Anton couldn't help remembering how much he'd hated working with the stuff as a boy. The root of the word "ferran" was a none-too-subtle indicator of its most outstanding property other than the attractive grain and rich color.
The enormous muscles in Anton's forearms were the product of his weight-lifting regimen as an adult; but, already as a boy, those muscles had been hard and powerful. Ferran could not be worked by weaklings. The stuff was almost as hard as iron, and just as easy to shape with hand tools.
Ferran iron-wood grows on Gryphon.
Ruth Winton, then, the daughter of the Queen's sister-in-law Judith Winton. Ruth had been sired by a Masadan privateer but adopted by the Queen's younger brother Michael when he married Judith after her escape from captivity. If Anton remembered correctly—and his memory was phenomenal—the girl had been born after Judith's escape, so Michael was the only father Ruth had ever known. She'd be about twenty-three years old now.
Those being the events of "Promised Land," and yes, the Queen's little brother is married to a Grayson held in captivity most her adult life by Masadans. Ruth doesn't stand in the succession, but is in all other ways a member of the royal family.
True, the encounters were still relatively few and far between, because the Queen faced an awkward political situation. While Elizabeth herself shared Cathy's hostility to genetic slavery—as did, for that matter, the government of Manticore itself, on the official record—Cathy's multitude of political enemies never missed an opportunity to hammer at Cathy's well-known if formally denied ties with the Audubon Ballroom. Despite Manticore's position on slavery, the Ballroom remained proscribed in the Star Kingdom as a "terrorist" organization, and its leader Jeremy X was routinely reviled as the galaxy's most ruthless assassin.
Well, Jeremy is pretty ruthless. Remember the time he killed a phenotype technician by impaling him through the rectum? Then again, Elizabeth was probably one of the handful that found it funny, or at least poetic justice.
But whatever the circumstance of her parentage might be, Ruth Winton was a Winton, and the House of Winton, like most capable and intelligent royal dynasties in history, had a long tradition that its young scions went into public service. The normal career course was either the foreign office or the military; in the latter case, with a heavy emphasis upon the Navy, that being Manticore's senior service. Some, those with an inclination for it, chose instead a career in the clergy, however. The Star Kingdom had no established church, as such, but the House of Winton were and had always been members of the Second Reformation Catholic Church. Any number of Wintons, over the centuries, had become clergymen. A few had even gone so far as to adopt the celibacy which was optional for Second Reformed Catholic clergy, but more or less expected for those of them who attained the rank of bishop.
A lot of things came together in Anton's mind. "She wants to be a spy—you're right, Your Majesty, it's a bit shocking—and she wants me to train her. Makes sense, that last, even if the rest of it borders on lunacy. No way she could learn the trade properly through official channels. The Naval Academy would choke on the idea, and the Special Intelligence Service would probably have outright apoplexy. You could force them to it, of course, but they'd be so twitchy about security they'd scramble her brains for sure and certain."
Ruth Winton wants to be a spy, so Elizabeth has found Anton to be her teacher in tradecraft. It helps that she's been as low-profile as possible for a royal all her life, first to protect her and then at her request. And to being, with, that means taking the girl to Erewhon for the funeral.
"An excellent move, if you want my opinion, and on at least three fronts. Remind everyone that the Wintons despise slavery, and Solarian-style neocolonialism just about as much; help counteract some unfavorable publicity about the Star Kingdom in the minds of Solarian commoners—who number in the untold trillions, though people seem to forget that—and give Montaigne a subtle boost in her election campaign without either officially endorsing her or even—oh, yes, it's shrewd; good for you, Your Majesty—having to officially rescind her banning from the royal presence and the House of Lords."
Cathy got banned again, the three major reasons to send an envoy to Stein's funeral.
"It's probably not a good idea, Your Majesty," he said abruptly. "The part involving your niece and Berry, I mean. I admit the notion has a certain charm, being about as antique a maneuver as there is in the books. Still—"
Oh yes, and they want Berry to be Ruth's body double for the event, allowing Ruth to stand outside the spotlight and focus on learning sneakiness. Anton disagrees, passionately until Berry volunteers, reminding her dad she's seventeen now and it's her choice.
"You just can't pull it off, in this day and age," he'd argued. "All someone has to do is get a scrap of DNA from either one of the girls to expose the switch, and sooner or later someone will manage that. With modern technology, you can manage it from traces of sweat left on a doorknob. Yes, sure, Berry was born on Earth so her DNA will be as much of a mélange as any human's in the galaxy. But Ruth's of Grayson-Masadan stock, and that genetic variation has far too many distinct traits not to be spotted easily."
Sophistication of DNA testing in the honorverse.
"You're thinking too directly. You don't need an actual double, Your Majesty. All you need is misdirection. At no point—ever—will you or I or anyone else directly involved in the affair ever come right out and say 'this girl is Ruth Winton and that one is Berry Zilwicki.' All you need to do is announce that Ruth Winton will be accompanying Captain Anton Zilwicki and Professor W.E.B. Du Havel on their voyage to pay the Anti-Slavery League's respects to the family and associates of the martyr Hieronymus Stein. She'll be coming along to pay the personal respects of the House of Winton. That is it. Somewhere along the line—but not in a communiqué from the dynasty—we'll drop a casual mention that Captain Zilwicki's daughter Berry will be coming along also."
So a lie of omission, where a princess is in the group and one girl is in fancy dress and manners? W.E.B. Du Havel is a former slave, professor of history and slavery expert associated with the Manticoran Anti-Slavery League.
Elizabeth studied the two girls herself. She seemed a bit uncertain, although Anton was quite sure the hesitation was not because of the expense involved. Biosculpt would have been cheaper, but biosculpt was—literally—only skin deep, and they needed more than that in this case. Although Berry and Ruth were very similar physical types, aside from Berry's dark brown hair and Ruth's golden blond, they weren't quite the same height. And while neither of them would ever be called stocky, Ruth was noticeably finer-boned than Berry. It wasn't anything which would be hugely apparent to a casual observer, but it would show up instantly if anyone decided to run a side-by-side comparison of their HD images.
Unless, of course, the differences were reversed before the HD cameras ever saw them.
There were drawbacks to that approach, however, and Elizabeth was clearly aware of them. Even leaving aside the fact that doing the procedures in the short time they had available would be uncomfortable at the very least, nanotech body transformations were unsettling in the best of circumstances. Although the changes were easily reversible, it was still disturbing to most people to have their bodies start changing shape on them. All the more so, when the two people involved were very young women, their physical aging furthered retarded by prolong, who were still getting accustomed to the bodies they had.
Nanotech transformation, and it's benefits and drawbacks vs. biosculpt. Of course, NT involves injecting them with nanites programmed to literally re-do everything. It also takes four days, and that was a rush job.
"Paranoid" was not the right term, Berry finally decided. The connotations of that word involved fear, worry, fretfulness—whereas the princess had about as sanguine a temperament as possible. But if the expression "optimistic paranoiac" hadn't been a ridiculous oxymoron, it would have described Ruth fairly well. She seemed to take it for granted that half the human race was up to no good, even if the knowledge didn't particularly worry her much—because she was just as certain that she'd be able to deal with the sorry blighters if they tried to mess around with her.
Ruth's attitude as the two girls get to know each other during their transformation (they actually spend most of the time sleeping.) In fact, they become close friends.
"Don't blame me for that idiocy! If they'd asked my opinion—they didn't, I was only a few years old, but they should have—I would have told them to shout it from the rooftops. As it was, the truth didn't become public knowledge until after Yeltsin's Star had joined the Manticoran Alliance, at which point the Manticoran public reacted by making my mother a national hero. Ha! The same thing would have happened right from the start, even before the treaty was signed! You can be damn sure that releasing the naked, unvarnished truth about the brutality with which Masada treated its women would have made the choice of an alliance with Grayson rather than Masada a no-brainer."
She scowled fiercely. "Which, of course, is exactly why the cretins didn't do it. 'Reasons of state.' Ha! The truth is that until the Foreign Office made up its mind once and for all to pursue the relationship with Grayson, the bureaucrats had to 'keep their options open'—there's another weasel phrase for you—with the benighted barbarians who ran Masada! So of course the entire episode had to be swept under the rug."
Judith became a national hero after her whole story was released, almost a decade later after Honor's death-ride against
Thunder of God. Until then, the polticos wanted to keep the truth buried until they were absolutely sure they didn't prefer a relationship with more populous Masada.
"Boredom is certainly one thing we won't have to worry about," Griggs agreed with another chuckle. "Actually, I think we're all going to deserve the Spitting Kitty for this one, Sergeant. Riding herd on the Princess, a seventeen-year-old pretending to be the Princess, an ASL intellectual, and the Star Kingdom's most notorious ex-spook, all in the middle of a three-ring circus like the Stein funeral on a planet like Erewhon?" He shook his head. "Spitting Kitty time for sure."
"I hope not, Sir!" Hofschulte replied with a laugh.
The "Spitting Kitty" was the Queen's Own's nickname for the Adrienne Cross. The medal had been created by Roger II to honor members of the Queen's Own who risked—or lost—their own lives to save the life of a member of the royal family other than the monarch herself. The cross bore the snarling image of a treecat (rumor said that then-Crown Princess Adrienne's own 'cat, Dianchect, had sat as the model), and eleven people had won it in the two hundred and fifty T-years since it was created. Nine of the awards had been posthumous. Of course, the lieutenant reflected, this trip wasn't really going to kill them all. It was just going to make them feel that way.
The Princesses' bodyguards don't think much of this trip, the body-double plan or Ruth's ambition to be a spook.
"I'm quite certain that you did. On the other hand, even with good luck and an excellent crew, it took a captain a cut or two above the average to polish off four Solarian heavy cruisers. Even," she added, raising a hand to stop him as he began to open his mouth, "when the cruisers in question had Silesian crews. You did us proud, Captain. You and your people."
Meet Captain Michael Oversteegen, a cousin to High Ridge, who is actually a decent guy and a fine officer. With the most annoying drawling accent. The events here refer to when his ship, the
Saganami-B class cruiser
Gauntlet, carrying one Midshipwoman Abigail Hearns, was investigating the disappearance of an Erewhon destroyer and found four Solly heavy cruisers with Silly crews running a piracy operation. He defeated them, thanks in no small part to Manty cruisers now packing bow and stern walls at great difficulty, and Hearns did great for herself with the Marines on the ground. That story is related in "the Service of the Sword" anthology, story of the same name. The major point being that Oversteegen was never an asshole to Hearns about being from Grayson, unlike a lot of officers who were also noblemen.
"Obviously, the Sollies didn't just 'lose' four modern cruisers, whatever their government's official 'we don't have any idea what happened' position may be," Draskovic continued. "On the other hand, the Solarian League is huge, and we all know how little genuine control over its internal bureaucracies—including its military bureaucracies—its government really has. One theory is that some Frontier Fleet admiral decided to provide for her retirement by putting some of her ships up for sale rather than mothballing them. Which would be a neat trick, if she could do it. Personally, I don't see it. In the first place, those ships were too modern for anyone to be disposing of them on any pretext, including mothballing, I can think of. And even if they hadn't been, I can't quite convince myself that even the Sollies' logistics people wouldn't notice the complete disappearance of a million and a half tons worth of warships sooner or later!"
"Unless it was someone a lot more senior than any Frontier Fleet commander," Oversteegen said thoughtfully. "Someone with the reach and authority t' make embarrassin' paperwork vanish at its destination, instead of its origin point."
"That's more or less the thought that had occurred to me. I've spent enough time wrestling with our own paperwork to realize how much easier it would be for some bureaucratic chip-pusher at the top to arrange for their disappearance. Especially someplace like the League." She shrugged. "My personal theory is that somebody very senior in their equivalent of BuShips probably has a bank account somewhere with a very high credit balance."
Sollies and how the pirates might have gotten such shiny new cruisers.
"You've demonstrated that you have a good general awareness of the situation in the Erewhon area. That's a major plus. And the fact that you found and took out the pirates who'd ambushed one of Erewhon's own destroyers and killed its entire crew is another one, especially in light of the current . . . strain in our treaty relationship with Erewhon." And, she did not add, so is the fact that your mother is the Prime Minister's second cousin.
Oversteegen's expression didn't even flicker, but something about his eyes suggested to Draskovic that he'd heard what she carefully hadn't said. Well, no one but a complete political idiot could have been unaware of that consideration in his place. But that was all right. In fact, it was considerably more than all right. Too many of the officers who'd earned reputations in combat against the People's Republic of Haven had made their disagreement with the current Government's policies abundantly clear. Having one of their own demonstrate that he was just as capable—at least!—as the Government's detractors had been a godsend.
They're sending Oversteegen into Erewhon space to show the flag, since his stock is higher than most officers right now. Plus, there are precious few naval heroes supporting the present government.
"I'm not certain that assigning an officer who has publicly advocated the use of torture to obtain information to a politically sensitive position would be wise, Captain," she said after a moment, her tone decidedly on the frosty side.
"Actually, Admiral, Lieutenant Gohr never advocated the use of physical coercion," Oversteegen corrected politely. "What she said was that the proliferation of military conditionin' programs and drug protocols t' resist conventional interrogation techniques has substantially restricted the options available t' intelligence gatherin' officers. She discussed torture as one possible solution, and noted that under certain circumstances, it might be an effective one. She also observed, however, that torture is often and notoriously unreliable under most circumstances, in addition t' its morally objectionable nature, and proceeded t' examine other options available t' an interrogator at considerable length. Her phrasin' was, perhaps, unfortunate, since certain casual readers failed t' grasp that she was analyzin' and dismissin' certain techniques, not recommendin' them. The outcry and hysteria her article provoked resulted, in my opinion, entirely from the manner in which both her purpose and her arguments were misconstrued, however."
Draskovic regarded him with hard eyes. He might very well be correct, she thought, admitting to herself that she'd never personally read the offending article. But whatever Lieutenant Gohr might actually have said, the "outcry and hysteria" Oversteegen had just mentioned had been . . . severe. The allegation that the lieutenant had specifically suggested the use of torture by Queen's officers, in direct contravention of at least a dozen interstellar treaties to which the Star Kingdom was a signatory, had hit the newsfaxes like a laser head. Collateral damage had threatened to splash all over the lieutenant's superiors, which was why Second Space Lord Jurgensen had declined to defend her. Personally, Draskovic didn't much care one way or the other; the entire debacle had been Jurgensen's problem over at ONI, not hers. But the spectacular fashion in which Gohr's career had nosedived would make assigning her to Gauntlet a tricky proposition. The potential public relations drawbacks were obvious enough, but if Jurgensen decided that Draskovic was going behind his back to rehabilitate an officer he'd personally cut adrift . . .
Oversteegen requests an intelligence officer, Betty Gohr, who liaisoned with Erewhon intelligence for a decent chunk of the war. And got beached at half-pay for mentioning maybe using torture under some circumstances in a public article. I wish we could have that sense of public outrage. Of course, this also lets Oversteegen salvage her career.
He glanced down at his ample belly, encased in a costume whose expensive fabric seemed wasted, as brightly colored as it was. Red, basically, but with ample splashes of orange and black—all of it set off by a royal blue cummerbund, parallel white and gold diagonal sashes running from left shoulder to right hip, and a slightly narrower set of the same colors serving as pinstripes for his trousers. The trousers were also blue; but, for no discernable reason Du Havel could make out, were at least two shades darker than the cummerbund.
The shoes, needless to say, were gold. And, just to make the ensemble as ludicrous as possible, ended in slightly upturned, pointed tips festooned with royal blue tassels.
"I feel like the court jester," he muttered. "Or a beach ball."
He gave Cathy a skeptical glance. "You're not playing some sort of practical joke on me?"
"How fucking paranoid can you get, anyway?"
"Well, at least your language hasn't changed since Terra. That's something, I suppose."
They were almost at the top of the stairs, entering an area where the left wall of the corridor gave way to an open vista over a balustrade, looking down upon a huge foyer which seemed packed with people. Du Havel's steps began to lag.
Cathy reached back, grabbed his elbow, and hauled him forward. "Relax, will you? Neo-Comedia is all the rage this year. I had that outfit made up special for you, just for this occasion, by the second best tailor in Landing City."
Apparently though court dress on Manticore means a ruffled shirt and tailcoat, regular formal-wear is subject to fashion, which at the moment means men dressing like colorblind court jesters.
"Catherine Montaigne, former Countess of the Tor! And her guest, the Right Honorable W.E.B. Du Havel, Ph.D.!"
A voice piped up from the back of the room. A youthful feminine voice which Du Havel recognized. His eyes immediately spotted the tall figure of Anton Zilwicki's daughter Helen.
"You're slacking, Herbert! How many Ph.D.s?"
A quick laugh rippled through the crowd. The majordomo let the laughter subside before booming onward.
"Too many to count, Midshipwoman Zilwicki! My feeble mind is not up to the effort! I can recall only—"
He began reeling off the list of Du Havel's academic degrees and awards—not missing many, Du Havel noted—and ended with the inevitable: "Nobel-Shakhra Prize for Human Aspiration, and the Solarian Medallion!"
Web's credentials, apparently he's an old friend of Cathy's, and thus a family friend of the Zilwickis. Hence the set-up with the announcer.
Not bad, really, for a man who'd come into the universe in a Manpower Unlimited slave pit, with the birth name of J-16b-79-2/3.
Web's Manpower alphanumeric code. I believe J-line is also heavy labor, sixteenth variant inside that, male, batch 79 and second of three. First time we've seen a batch number other than five.
"Gladiators, Web. The Solarian League Navy's most recent class of heavy cruisers. They've got completely up-to-date weaponry and EW capability, probably as good as anything we've got. Solarian ships of the wall are nothing much—leaving aside the sheer number of them—because the League hasn't fought a real war in centuries. But their lighter warships always stay a lot closer to cutting edge, since those are the ones that do the SLN's real work."
Her eyes grew a bit unfocused, as if she was thinking far back—or far ahead. "Nobody's defeated a Solarian heavy cruiser in open battle in over half a century, Web. And nobody's ever beaten four of them at once, with a single vessel of any kind short of a dreadnought—much less another cruiser. Not, at least, that there's any record of, in the Academy's data banks. I know. I did a post-action study of Gauntlet's engagement for a course I just finished. Part of the assignment was to do a comparative analysis."
Apparently the cruisers of the SLN stay on the bleeding edge, even if the capital ships are a little ossified. I doubt their EW is quite up to Manty standard, but remember that it shouldn't be much more than ten to fiteen percent less effective, allowing for the usual variables like skilled operators, familiarity with the other side's tricks etc.
"I guess I probably shouldn't say this, but . . . what the hell, it's nothing that hasn't been speculated on in the news media. There's really only one way they could have gotten them, Web. For whatever reason, somebody in the League with big money and just as much influence must have been behind that 'pirate operation.' Nobody that I know has any idea what they were up to, but just about everybody—me included—thinks that Manpower must have been behind it. Or maybe even Mesa as a whole."
Yes they were, and it was just to raise hell in Erewhon's backyard. Another good reason for them to want the Congo situation
dealt with.
Du Havel shifted his gaze back to the Manticoran captain under discussion. With far greater interest, now. However much distance there might be between him and most, in terms of intellectual achievements and public renown, there was one thing which Web Du Havel shared with any former genetic slave.
He hated Manpower Unlimited with a bone-deep passion. And though, for political reasons, he disagreed with the violent tactics used by the Audubon Ballroom, he'd never once had so much as a qualm about the violence itself. There was not a single responsible figure in that evil galactic corporation—not a single one, for that matter, on the entire planet of Mesa—whom Web Du Havel would not himself have lowered into a vat of boiling oil.
Capering and singing hosannas all the while—if he thought it would accomplish anything.
Web is quite civilized, but no one who went through a Manpower childhood is going to shed any tears over the brutal deaths of slavers.
Helen pursed her lips. "I thought you were supposed to be the galaxy's expert—okay, one of maybe ten—on political theory? So how come you don't know your ass from— Uh. Sorry, didn't mean to be rude."
He really is one of the best, he's just still playing catch-up in Manticore. Only been here two weeks and doesn't get all the subtleties. Also, Helen is Impatient because Web doesn't get the big deal over Oversteegen being invited, and coming, to Cathy's ASL soiree.
As it happened, Web Du Havel was thick-skinned by nature—and enjoyed few things so much as a sleeves-rolled-up, hair-hanging-down, intellectual brawl in which quarter was neither asked nor given. Which was the reason he and Catherine Montaigne had become very close, many years earlier. That had happened the first time they met, within an hour of being introduced at a social event put on by the Anti-Slavery League on Terra.
The argument rolling properly, Cathy had informed him, in her usual loud and profane manner, that he was a damned bootlicker with the mindset of a house slave. He, for his part, had explained to the assembled crowd—just as loudly, if not as profanely—that she was a typical upper class dimwit, slumming with the chic downtrodden of the day, who couldn't bake a loaf of bread without romanticizing the distress of the flour and the noble savage qualities of the yeast.
It had gone rapidly downhill from there. By the end of the evening, a lifetime's friendship had been sealed. Like Du Havel himself, Cathy Montaigne was one of those ferocious intellectuals who took their ideas seriously—and never trusted another intellectual until they'd done the equivalent of a barbarian ritual. Matching intellectual wound to wound, sharing ideas—and derision—the way ancient warriors, meeting for the first time, mixed their actual blood from self-inflicted wounds.
How Web met Cathy.
"The Star Kingdom is a polity of five whole settled planets in only three star systems, since Trevor's Star's annexation—and assuming you can call Medusa a 'settled planet' in the first place. Even with San Martin added, your total population does not exceed six billion. There are five times that many people living in the Solar System alone—or Centauri, or Tau Delta, or Mithra, or any one of several dozen of the Solarian League's inner systems. The 'Old League,' as it's popularly known. The Solarian League as a whole has an official membership of 1,784 planets—that's not counting the hundreds more under Solarian rule in the Protectorates—which exist in a volume of galactic space measuring between three and four hundred light-years in diameter. Within that enormous volume, there are literally more stars than you can see here at night with the naked eye. No one has any idea what the total population might be. The Old League alone has a registered population of almost three trillion people, according to the last census—and that census grossly undercounted the population. No serious analyst even tries to claim they know how many more trillions of people live in the so-called 'Shell Worlds' or the Protectorates. I leave aside entirely the untold thousands—millions, rather—of artificial habitats scattered across thousands of solar systems. Each and every one of which star polities has its own history, and its own complex politics and social and economic variations."
About 30 billion people on Earth, well in the Solar System, don't know if they've settled Mars or the moon. Probably a lot of orbital habitats though. Similar populations on "several dozen" League Worlds with a low-ball population estimate of 3 trillion just for their core worlds. 1784 planets in the League, with hundreds of protectorates, meaning Henke was pretty low in her estimate in the main book.
"Let me just leave you with the following thought, Helen: It's only been since the human race spread across thousands of worlds that political science has really deserved the term 'science'—and it's still a rough-and-ready science at that. Sometimes, it reminds me of paleontology back in the wild and woolly days of Cope and Marsh, battling it out over dinosaur bones. If nothing else, the preponderance of the League in human affairs skews all the data. But at least now we have a range of experience that allows us to do serious comparative studies, which was never possible in pre-Diaspora days. But that's really what someone like me does. I look for patterns and repetitions, if you will. The number of individual star systems whose political details I'm familiar with is just a tiny percentage of the whole. The truth is, I know a lot more about ancient Terran history than I do about the history of most of today's inhabited worlds. Because that's still, more often than not, the common history we use as our initial crude yardstick."
Web at least is an expert on Earth history. I wonder how many people are just because it's a shared history between all humanity, sort of like Europe's preoccupation with Rome? Not sure I agree about the social sciences, but it's an interesting idea on how an interstellar civilization can give you a different perspective.
He gave the large crowd a quick overview. Diehard members of the Liberal Party, for the most part—and the ones who weren't, with not more than a handful of exceptions, departed from the Liberals to the left of the political spectrum. "I'd have thought that as likely as a Puritan agreeing to attend a witches' Sabbath."
"What's a 'Puritan'?" she asked. "And why would witches—silly notion, that—hold a soirée on— Never mind."
It's alright Web, we all get you.
"Been wantin' t' meet you for years," the captain stated, speaking in a drawl which Du Havel immediately recognized. Not specifically, of course—the galaxy had easily ten times as many dialects and verbal mannerisms as it did languages and inhabited worlds. But he knew the phenomenon for what it was, since it, too, was as ancient as privilege. Members of an elite group—"elite," at least, in their own minds—almost invariably developed a distinctive style of speech to separate themselves from the common herd.
But mostly it's just annoying.
"Indeed they are. Providin', however, that the one breakin' the rules is willin' t' pay the price for it, and the price gets charged in full."
-snip-
"Otherwise, breakin' rules becomes the province of brats instead of heroes. Fastest way I can think of t' turn serious political affairs int' a playpen. A civilized society needs a conscience, and conscience can't be developed without martyrs—real ones—against which a nation can measure its crimes and sins."
Du Havel's interest perked up sharply. He understood the logic of Oversteegen's argument, naturally. It would have been surprising if he hadn't, since it was a paraphrase—not a bad one either, given the compression involved—of the basic argument Du Havel had advanced in one of his books.
Oversteegen immediately confirmed his guess. "I should tell you that I consider The Political Value of Sacrifice one of the finest statements of conservative principle in the modern universe. Havin' said that, I also feel obliged t' inform you that I consider the arguments you advanced in Scales of Justice: Feathers Against Stones t' be—at best!—a sad lapse int' liberal maudlinism. Principles are principles, Doctor Du Havel. You, of all people, should know that. So it was sad t' see you maunderin' from one compromise t' another, tradin' away clarity for the sake of immediate benefit. Sad, sad. Practically gave social engineerin' your blessin', you did."
Oversteegen can at least debate on even terms with an academic. As he goes on to prove thus-
"Consider your own aristocratic system here on Manticore, if you would. Blatant social engineering, Captain. As crude as it gets. A pack of rich people, creating a constitution deliberately designed—with greed aforethought, if not malice—to keep themselves and their descendants in a blessed state of privilege. Or are you going to try to argue that the principles of aristocracy arose from the native soil of what was then an alien planet? Like weeds, as it were—which, by the way, is a pretty apt analogy for any variety of caste system. Weeds, preening like roses."
Oversteegen grinned, acknowledging the hit. A splendid intellectual warrior, Du Havel noted gleefully, not fazed in the least by a mere dash of blood. He was practically clawing at the sleeves, now.
"You'll get no argument from me on that issue, Doctor. Indeed true. Can't even argue that my ancestors were better murderers and robbers and rapists than anyone else, I'm afraid, the way a proper Norman baron could. Just bigger moneybags and an earlier arrival date, that's all. Lamentable, isn't it, the lengths to which modern nobility is driven by the advance of social conscience? Still, I'll argue in favor of an aristocracy."
Now he argues that there are benefits to social stability conferred by having an aristocracy, though as far as he's concerned they can draw lots.
Du Havel had been bred a J-line by Manpower. That was—supposedly; as usual, their claims fell wide of reality—a breed designed for technical work. Thus, an emphasis on mental capability, at least of a low and mechanical variety. But also, since J-lines were designed basically for engineering work, a breed which was physically quite sturdy. Web wasn't particularly tall, and his long years of sedentary intellectual activity had put thirty kilos of fat on his frame. But the frame beneath was still square and solid.
So were the muscles which went with it.
Oh, alright. Technical work.
"That's not possible," the man proclaimed firmly, frowning. "I know my ancient history, and the United States—you are referring to the American one, yes?—arose long before genetic slavery." He half-sneered. "Long before they even knew anything about DNA, for that matter. Bunch of primitives."
Du Havel closed his eyes briefly. God, give me the patience to suffer fools gladly.
Alas, he was an atheist.
"Who said anything about genetic slavery? Slavery's been around since the dawn of civilization, you—you—"
Fortunately, a woman cut him off before he could begin alienating the crowd.
"But—on what basis?"
He stared at her. "I mean," she continued brightly, "they certainly couldn't just enslave anyone. There had to be some genetic basis for it."
I'm assuming all of you know enough of the real history it doesn't need sharing. Just a facepalm moment. Oh and none of the crowd can see when he mentions US slavery specifically how such a vague term as race could be applied.
He proceeded to give a quick sketch of the phenotype generally to be found among Africans of that ancient time. When he was done, most of the people in the crowd had a rather strained look on their faces. The Zekich woman herself had taken a full step away from him, as if trying to distance herself from the suddenly revealed regicide in their midst.
Well. Not "regicide," precisely speaking. Du Havel tried to dredge up his very rusty Latin. Hm. What would be the proper jargon for someone who advocated enslaving royalty?
-snip-
"I can't believe it," gasped a woman nearby. She was quite literally clutching her throat with distress. "Why . . . that would describe Queen Elizabeth!"
"Most of the House of Winton, going all the way back," growled a man standing next to her. He glanced around. "Not to mention a considerable number of the people in this room. I knew the ancients were full of insane superstitions, but—" He gave Du Havel a look which fell just short of a glare. "Are you sure about this?"
Yeah, it would.
. For all their often vociferous public disputes with the Queen of the Star Kingdom, even the members of the Liberal Party shared the general cultural attitudes of most Manticorans. Even the members of the left wing of that Party, who made up most of the crowd, shared them.
Yes, the Queen was sadly misguided by her advisers. Especially those warmongering imperialists in the Centrist and Crown Loyalist crowds.
Still.
She was the Queen!
Interesting that they can be such bitter opponents of all the Queen wants and consider her simply misguided.
"That would be simplifying too much. You really must understand what two thousand years of the Diaspora has done to human genetic variation. The combination of a gigantic population explosion—less than ten billion humans, all told, at the time the Diaspora began, to how many trillions today—spread across thousands of planetary environments instead of a relative handful of regional ones, many of them far more extreme than anything the human race encountered on Earth itself. Then, factor in the endless cross-mixing of the species, not to mention intentional genetic alterations . . ."
Genetic variation in the 20th Century PD. Skin color is more a sign of environment than ancestry, and so a useless gauge even if anyone cared about vague notions of race.
"That's because it doesn't stand for anything except the initials themselves. I didn't know what they stood for myself, when the immigration officer on Nasser insisted I give him a name for their records. I'd only escaped a few months earlier, so my knowledge of history was still pretty limited." He shrugged. "I just combined what I remembered from two names of ancient men I'd read about, briefly, and who'd struck me as righteous fellows. W.E.B. Du Bois and Vaclav Havel. When it finally dawned on me—that night, as it happened, when my fellow escapees demanded to know what they were supposed to call me, now that 'Kami' was out of bounds—I couldn't think of anything except 'Web.' "
Web's name.
