"Let's not get too paranoid, Omosupe," Abruzzi said dryly. She glowered at him, and he shrugged. "I'm not saying I'd put it past them to . . . tweak the information, let's say. But they're not really idiots, you know. Lunatics, maybe, yes, if they actually mean what they've said in this note, but not idiots. Sooner or later we're going to have access to Byng's version of the data. You know that, and so do they. Do you really think they'd falsify the data they've already given us knowing that eventually we'll be able to check it with our own sources?"
"Sure they would," Quartermain retorted, her dark-complexioned face tight with intense dislike. "Hell, I shouldn't have to tell you that, Malachai! You know better than anyone else how much the successful manipulation of a political situation depends on manipulating the public version of information."
"Yes, I do," he agreed. His position made him effectively the League's chief propagandist, and he'd manipulated more than a little information of his own in his time. "But so do the Manties, unless you want to suggest that they haven't built themselves a very effective public relations position right here on Old Terra? And let's not even get into the contacts they have on Beowulf!"
"So?" Quartermain demanded.
"So they're not stupid enough to hand us information that's demonstrably falsified," he said with exaggerated patience. "It's easy enough to produce selective data, especially for a PR campaign, and I'm sure they're very well aware of that. But from what Innokentiy's been telling us, they seem to have given us the entire sensor files, from beginning to end, and the complete log of Byng's original communication with the Manties when they arrived in New Tuscany. They wouldn't have done that if they hadn't known our own people's sensor records and com logs were eventually going to confirm the same information. Not when there's any possibility that the information's going to leak to the newsies."
"Probably not," MacArtney said. "On the other hand, that's one of the things about this entire situation that most bothers me, Malachai."
"What is?" Abruzzi frowned.
"The fact that they haven't already handed this to the newsies," MacArtney explained. "It's obvious from their note that they're pissed off as hell, and, frankly, if the data's accurate, I would be, too, in their place. So why not go straight to the media and try to turn up the pressure on us?"
"Actually," Kolokoltsov said, "I think the fact that they didn't do that may be the one slightly hopeful sign in this entire damned mess. However angry their note may sound, they're obviously bending over backward to avoid inflaming the situation any farther."
"You're probably right," Abruzzi said. "Of course, the question is why they might be trying to avoid that."
"Hah!" Quartermain snorted harshly. "I think that's probably simple enough, Malachai. They're accusing an SLN admiral of destroying three of their ships, and they're demanding explanations, 'accountability,' and—by implication, at least—reparations. They're not going to want to go public with something like that."
"For someone who doesn't 'want to go public' they seem to be perfectly willing to push things," MacArtney pointed out. "Or did you miss the bit about this admiral of theirs they're sending off to New Tuscany?"
"No, I didn't miss it, Nathan." Quartermain and MacArtney had never really cared for each other at the best of times, and the smile she gave him was thin enough to sever his windpipe. "But I also observed that they're sending only six of their own battlecruisers, whereas Byng has thirteen. Do you honestly believe they're stupid enough to think a Solarian flag officer is going to tamely surrender to a force he outnumbers two-to-one?"
She snorted again, more harshly than before, and MacArtney shook his head.
"I don't know if they are or not, Omosupe. But I do know that the mere fact that they're sending one of their own admirals off to issue what are clearly demands, not requests, to a Solarian task force is going to raise the stakes all around. If Byng's already fired on their warships, and if they send still more warships into the area to press demands against him, then they're clearly willing to escalate. Or to risk escalation, at least. And as they've pointed out in their note, what Byng's already done can certainly be construed as an act of war. If they're already making that point to us, and if they're ready to risk escalation, then I'd have to say that I don't see any reason to assume they're not prepared to see all this hit the 'faxes eventually."
His expression was unwontedly serious, Kolokoltsov realized. Then again, he might well be feeling a little excessively gun-shy at the moment. In fact, Kolokoltsov took just a bit of vindictive satisfaction from the thought that MacArtney might be feeling a certain degree of . . . anxiety. As far as Kolokoltsov was concerned, the Office of Frontier Security clearly ought to have come under the authority of the Foreign Ministry, since it spent so much time dealing with star systems which weren't officially part of the League just yet. Unfortunately, the Foreign Ministry had lost that particular fight long, long ago, and OFS was officially part of the Interior Ministry. He could see the logic, even if he didn't much care for it, since like the Gendarmerie—which was also part of the Interior Ministry—Frontier Security was effectively an internal security agency of the League.
And at this particular moment, that wasn't necessarily such a bad thing in Innokentiy Kolokoltsov's considered opinion, either, given the hullabaloo over that business in Monica. Which, now that he thought about it, probably also helped to explain why Quartermain was even more pissed than usual where Manticore was concerned. The revelations about Technodyne and its collusion with Mesa had quite a few of her colleagues over at Commerce all hot and bothered. Attorney General Brangwen Ronayne had actually had to indict several people, and that was always messy. After all, one never knew when one of those under indictment was going to turn out to have embarrassing connections to one's self or other members of one's ministry. The folks over at Justice would do what they could, of course, but Ronayne wasn't really the sharpest stylus in the box. There was always the distinct possibility that something might slip past her, or even evade Abruzzi and make its way into the public datanets, with potentially . . . unpleasant consequences even for a permanent senior undersecretary.
Still, those occasional teapot tempests were a fact of life in the League. They were going to happen from time to time, and MacArtney and Quartermain were just going to have to suck it up and get on with business.
"As I say," he said just a bit loudly, retaking control of the conversation, "the fact that they haven't said anything to the newsies yet probably indicates one of two things. Either, as Omosupe says, they're trying to avoid pumping any hydrogen into the fire because of its potential for blowing up in their faces, or else they're trying to avoid pumping any hydrogen into the fire because what they really want is to get this whole thing resolved before the public ever finds out about it. In fact, those two possibilities aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, now are they?"
"Not so far, at any rate," MacArtney replied. "But if there's another exchange of fire, or if Byng tells this Admiral Gold Peak to kiss his arse, that could change."
"Oh, come on, Nathan!" Abruzzi snorted. "You know Omosupe and I don't always see eye-to-eye, but let's be realistic here. It's obvious Byng is an idiot, all right? Let's be honest among ourselves. Anyone who fires on warships just sitting there in a parking orbit without even having their wedges on line is clearly a nut job, although I'm sure that if our good friend Admiral Kingsford were here he'd find some way to explain this whole thing away as a completely reasonable action. Obviously it couldn't possibly have been the fault of one of his Battle Fleet friends or relations, could it?"
He rolled his eyes expressively. Malachai Abruzzi was not among the Navy's greatest admirers.
"But unlike Kingsford or Rajampet, we're not handicapped by having to defend Byng's actions, so why don't we go ahead and acknowledge, just among ourselves, that he overreacted and killed a bunch of Manties he didn't have to kill?"
He looked around at the others' faces for a moment, then shrugged.
"All right, so the Manties are pissed off. Well, that's probably not all that unreasonable of them, either. But however pissed off they may be, they aren't really going to open fire on a Solarian task force which, as Omosupe's just pointed out, outnumbers them two-to-one. So what they're actually doing is basically running a bluff. Or, more likely, posturing. They may be prepared to 'demand' that Byng stand down and submit to some sort of Manty investigation, but they know damned well they aren't going to get anything remotely like that. So what they're really hoping for is that Byng will settle for effectively flipping them off, then pull out of New Tuscany and let them claim that they 'ran him out of town' for his high-handed actions."
"And the reason they'll do that is exactly what, Malachai?" MacArtney inquired.
"Because they need to do it for domestic consumption." Abruzzi shrugged again. "Trust me, I know how this sort of thing works. They've got three dead destroyers, they've been fighting a war for twenty-odd T-years, and they've just finished getting their asses kicked when the Havenites hit their home star system. They know as well as we do that even if they hadn't taken any losses at all from the 'Battle of Manticore,' they couldn't possibly take on the Solarian League Navy. But they also know their domestic morale has just been shot right in the head . . . and that the loss of three more destroyers—especially if it looks like the opening step in getting the League added to their enemies—is only going to hit it again. So they issue these incredibly unrealistic demands to us here in Chicago, and to Byng at New Tuscany, in order to show their own domestic newsies what big brass balls they've got. And then, when Byng basically ignores them and sails back to Meyers in his own good time, they trumpet that the big, bad Sollies have backed down. They tell their own public that the League's cut and run and that, purely in a spirit of magnanimity, Queen Elizabeth has decided to exercise moderation and settle for a diplomatic conclusion to the entire affair."
He shrugged.
"To be honest, they almost certainly realize that they've got enough economic clout that we'll decide to offer reparations—pay them off out of petty cash so they'll go away and leave us alone—just so we can get on with moving our commerce through their wormhole network. The bottom line is that it's no skin off our noses if we offer reparations as long as we make it clear that it's totally voluntary on our part and that we completely reject their right to press any demands against us. They get a settlement they can wave under their public's nose to prove how resolute they were, and we avoid establishing any actual diplomatic or military precedents that might come home to bite us on the arse later."
Kolokoltsov looked at him with a thoughtful frown. It was entirely possible that Abruzzi was on to something, he reflected. That particular explanation of what the Manties were up to hadn't occurred to him, of course. Not immediately, at least. But looked at logically, especially in light of the hammering they'd reportedly taken from the Havenites barely four months ago, there was absolutely no way they could really be seeking some sort of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the SLN. He should have seen that for himself, but unlike Abruzzi, he wasn't accustomed to thinking in terms of massaging public opinion or how to shore up what had to be a badly battered civilian morale.
"I'm not so sure about that," MacArtney said with a mulish grimace. "They didn't exactly avoid an incident at Monica, now did they?"
"Maybe not," Abruzzi conceded. "On the other hand, that was before the Battle of Manticore, wasn't it? And that captain of theirs—what's-his-name . . . Terekhov—is obviously as big a lunatic as Byng! The fact that he dragged them into what could have been a direct confrontation with the League doesn't mean they're stupid enough to want to go there. For that matter, they've got to be aware that they just finished dodging that particular pulser dart. Which is going to make them even less eager to run straight back into our line of fire."
"All of this is very interesting," Quartermain said. "But it doesn't change the fact that we've got to decide what to do about this note of theirs."
"No, it doesn't," Kolokoltsov agreed. "But it does suggest that there's no reason we have to fall all over ourselves responding to it. In fact, it may just suggest that there are some very valid reasons for us to to deal with this in a leisurely, orderly fashion. And, of course, spend a little effort depressing any pretensions of grandeur on their part along the way."
Quartermain looked noticeably more cheerful at that, he noticed, and suppressed a temptation to smile at her sheer predictability.
"As a matter of fact," he continued, "this may turn out to be useful to us." Abruzzi and MacArtney both looked a bit puzzled, and this time he let a little of his smile show. "I think our friends in Manticore have been getting just a little too full of themselves," he went on. "They got away with demanding that technology embargo against the Havenites. They've gotten away with raising their Junction fees across the board to help pay for their damned war. They've just finished dividing the Silesian Confederacy right down the middle with the Andermani. And they've just finished annexing the entire Talbott Sector and shooting up the entire Monican Navy, not to mention turning the League into the villain of the piece in Monica and the Talbott Sector. They must feel like they've been on a roll, and I think it may be time for us to remind them that they're actually only a very tiny fish in a really big pond."
"And that we're the shark in the deep end," Quartermain agreed with an unpleasant smile of her own.
"More or less." Kolokoltsov nodded. "It's bad enough that the accidents of astrophysics give such a pissant little 'Star Kingdom' so much economic clout. We don't need them deciding they've got enough military clout that they can rattle their battle fleet under our nose and expect us to automatically cave in to whatever they decide to demand from us next time."
"Don't you think it might be a good idea to talk to Rajampet before we make our minds up to tell them to pound sand?" MacArtney inquired mildly.
"Oh, I think it's a very good idea to talk to Rajampet," Kolokoltsov agreed. "And I'm not suggesting that we tell them to 'pound sand,' although I must admit the idea has a certain attractiveness." MacArtney cocked an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "All I'm suggesting at this point is that we refuse to fall all over ourselves responding to them. We may even decide to give them a little bit of what they want, in the end, exactly the way Malachai's been suggesting. But, in the long run, I think it's more important that we make it clear to them who the big dog really is. We'll get around to handling this on our timetable, not theirs. And if they don't like it . . ."
He let his voice trail off, and shrugged.
"Ah, there you are, Innokentiy!" Marcelito Roelas y Valiente's smile was a bit more restrained than usual, Kolokoltsov noticed as he stepped into the Foreign Minister's office.
"I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, Minister," he said gravely, crossing to Roelas y Valiente's desk. He seated himself without invitation, in the same chair Carmichael had occupied earlier that morning, and Roelas y Valiente leaned back in his own chair.
"As I told you I expected it to earlier, Sir," Kolokoltsov continued, "it took a little time to consult with my colleagues in the other ministries. Obviously, we needed to consider this matter very carefully before we could feel comfortable that we were in a position to make any useful policy recommendations. Especially in the case of an incident with so much potential for setting what could be extraordinarily unfortunate precedents."
"Of course," Roelas y Valiente agreed with a sober smile.
That smile didn't fool Kolokoltsov any more than it fooled Roelas y Valiente himself.
Kolokoltsov would literally have found it difficult to remember (impossible, really, without consulting the archives) how many foreign ministers had come and gone during his own tenure. Given the number of political factions and "parties" in the Assembly, it was extraordinarily difficult for any politician to forge a lasting majority at the federal level. The fact that everyone knew that any government could have only the appearance of actual power meant there w
as really very little reason to form lasting political alliances. It wasn't as if the continuity of political officeholders was going to have any real effect on the League's policies, yet everyone wanted his own shot at holding federal office. Status wasn't necessarily the same thing as power, and a stint as a League cabinet minister was considered a valuable resume entry when one returned to one's home system and ran for an office that really possessed actual power.
All of that combined to explain why most premierships lasted less than a single T-year before the current prime minister was turned out and replaced by someone else—who, of course, had to dole out cabinet positions all over again. Which was why Kolokoltsov had so much trouble remembering the faces of all the men and women who'd officially headed his ministry over the years. All of them—including Roelas y Valiente—had understood who truly made the League's policy, just as all of them—including Roelas y Valiente—had understood why that was and how the game was played. But Roelas y Valiente resented it more than most of the others had.
Which doesn't mean he thinks there's any way to change the rule book, Kolokoltsov thought, and felt a moment of something almost like regret. But he wasn't the one who'd deliberately created a constitution, all those centuries ago, which had precluded the real possibility of any strong central government. He wasn't the one who'd created a system in which the permanent bureaucracies had been forced to assume the roles (and the power which went with them) of policy-setters and decision-makers if the Solarian League was going to have any sort of administrative continuity.
But at least we can give him an illusion of authority, the permanent senior undersecretary bought almost compassionately. As long as he's willing to admit that it is an illusion, anyway.
"We've considered at some length, Sir," he said, "and it's our opinion that this is a time to exercise restraint and calm. What we'd recommend, Minister, is that—"