“I’m afraid that’s true,” he said. “It’s not that I think she’s wrong, you understand. In fact, I’m positive she’s right most of the time, at least theoretically. The problem is that where she sees glittering possibilities, a lot of my other people see harebrained notions produced by someone without any real tactical experience of her own. No one’s done it explicitly yet, but sometime soon someone’s going to bust her chops on exactly that issue, at which point things are going to get . . . lively. And even if we weren’t having that problem in-house, eventually we’ll have to come out into the open with at least some of our notional hardware. We’ll have to sell whatever we come up with to a lot of thick-skinned dinosaurs, most of whom have backgrounds as ‘shooters’ themselves, and they’re going to feel exactly the same way about it. For that matter, I feel that way sometimes. The woman really is brilliant, Roger, but she needs a bigger dose of . . . reality? Experience? I don’t know the exact word, but something to . . . temper that enthusiasm of hers.”
“I agree, and I’ve been thinking about it.” Roger took another pull on his cigar, then waved it once more. “She’s going to hate it, and you can blame it on me or Rodriguez to take the heat off you, but we’re going to put her back into shipboard command. I know she’ll feel like a square peg in a round hole, at least at first, but you’re right—she needs that experience for her own perspective, and she needs her ticket punched if she’s going to have credibility with those dinosaurs of yours.”
“You’re right, she won’t like it,” Jonas said. “But you’re also right that she needs it.” He grinned. “And it’ll do her good to have to put on her big girl panties and get out there in the trenches with the rest of us mere mortals!”
“I don’t think I’d be too quick to use that last sentence when you explain the situation to her,” Roger said dryly.
“Oh, I’m far too wise to do that!” Jonas reassured him. “But it really will do her maturity quotient some good.”
“I think it will, too,” Roger agreed. Then he glanced at his chrono, set his cigar regretfully aside, and stood. “In the meantime, and speaking of maturity quotients, I believe you and I have a date with your favorite niece. I’ve noticed that she’s not exceptionally patient at moments like this. Can’t imagine where she gets it from.”
“Neither can I,” Jonas agreed straightfaced, climbing out of his own chair as Monroe thumped down from his perch. “But, considering her mother’s ‘maturity quotient,’ and speaking as one of your loyal and admiring subjects, Your Majesty, I’d earnestly recommend using a lot of that new nanotech air freshener of yours. And while you’re at it, you better squirt me and Monroe, too, or she’s going to wonder what trash incinerator we got downwind of!”
February 1877 PD
“—so while no one can possibly fault His Majesty’s willpower, moral courage, and determination to do the right thing, I think it is legitimate to ask whether or not his commitment to confronting the People’s Republic militarily is the best option available to us.” Joseph Dunleavy looked into the pickup, his expression suitably serious and just a touch troubled. “Obviously, when a star nation has been expanding its borders by force of arms, as well as voluntary annexations, for so long, it’s necessary, as one Old Earth politician expressed it over two thousand T-years ago, to ‘Speak softly, but carry a big stick.’ My concern, and that of those who approach these things from the same perspective as I do, is that His Majesty is giving too much emphasis to the stick and not enough to speaking softly.”
“‘Speaking softly’ hasn’t done any of the rest of the Peeps’ victims a single bit of good, as far as I’m aware.”
Hillary Palin’s crisp Sphinixan accent was a sharp contract to Dunleavy’s cultured, uppercrust Landing accent. She sat across the table from him on the deliberately old-fashioned, face-to-face set of the recently created yet already incredibly popular syndicated Into the Fire. That set was designed to bring guests into direct physical proximity rather than through a safely insulated electronic format (which helped generate more than a few of the fireworks for which the program was already famous), and her expression was far more scornful than his had been.
“I’ll agree with you that a big stick is necessary to get the Peeps’ attention,” she went on, “but I’m pretty sure the two of us differ on whether the best negotiating ploy is to simply keep it handy or break their kneecaps with it.”
Dunleavy rolled his eyes. A onetime professor of political science at Landing University, he’d been associated with any number of liberal-leaning think tanks for over forty T-years and served as one of Sir Orwell Lebrun’s senior foreign policy advisers for the last decade or so. Palin, on the other hand, had exactly zero academic credentials in the social sciences. Instead, she’d been trained as a nano and materials engineer and founded an industrial application firm specializing in the development of advanced composites and (according to unconfirmed reports) radically advanced anti-energy weapon armors. No one had ever been able to prove the reports were true—the RMN was fiendishly good at protecting its technology, after all—but Palin, Holder, and Mitchell, Ltd., had sold its patents to the Navy for upwards of seven billion dollars almost twenty-five T-years ago, when she first stood for election to the House of Commons as the Liberal Party’s candidate for the Borough of South Thule on Sphinx. She’d won that election quite handily, but she’d never had a great deal of patience with ivory tower theorists who’d never won election to anything in their entire lives and refused to acknowledge inconvenient truths that clashed with their own preconceptions. That was quite enough to explain why she and Dunleavy had thoroughly detested one another from the moment they first met, and the fact that she’d shifted her membership from the Liberals to the Centrists eleven T-years ago over the Basilisk annexation—and won reelection quite handily two more times since, despite the change in party affiliation—only made her even more irritating to him.
Besides, if those rumors about the nature of her patents were true, he thought now, she had a vested interest—all that Navy money in her accounts—in supporting the knuckle-draggers who thought warheads were the answer to any problem whenever they demanded yet another superdreadnought.
“That’s precisely the sort of attitude which can be guaranteed to preclude the possibility of any rational resolution of the tensions which have been mounting between the People’s Republic and the Star Kingdom over the last twenty T-years, Hillary,” he more than half snapped now.
“Ah? Since His Majesty’s coronation, you mean?” Palin shot back in dulcet tones, and Dunleavy’s expression darkened.
Manticoran politicians always had to be careful about how they criticized the royal family. The Star Kingdom had a lively tradition of freedom of speech and even livelier political debate, and as the head of government as well as head of state, the monarch was expected to take his or her lumps along with everyone else. But there were limits to how those lumps could be administered. The sort of character assassination by innuendo and the politics of personal destruction which tended to rear their ugly heads from time to time in Parliamentary contests could not be applied to the reigning king or queen. Not unless the person foolish enough to make the attempt was prepared to kiss his own political career goodbye, at any rate. The Manticoran voting public was sufficiently cynical—or pragmatic, perhaps—to recognize the often sordid realities of political ambition, careerism, and what was still known as “spin doctoring,” and it put up with a great deal in the political arena, but there were some things it was not prepared to tolerate.
Which, in Joseph Dunleavy’s opinion, was completely irrational and gave people like Hillary Palin a grossly unfair advantage when it came to the reasoned debate of public policy issues. All she had to do was tar him by implication with attacking Roger III personally, and his argument was cut off at the knees so far as anyone but the Party’s fully committed base was concerned. And that, Dunleavy thought, was as unfortunate as it was unfair, given the fact that King Roger was c
learly . . . significantly less than rational where the People’s Republic of Haven was concerned.
“His Majesty’s ascension to the Throne is scarcely the only thing that’s happened in the last twenty T-years, Hillary,” he said after a moment. “I believe his policy and his attitudes have clearly played a role in creating the . . . dynamic we face today, but they’re hardly the only factors involved. And I trust you’ll do me the courtesy of remembering that I’ve never argued the People’s Republic isn’t expansionist—or, for that matter, that its foreign policy isn’t being driven by its own militaristic clique. Obviously a star nation of that size and that power, with the military establishment virtually dictating to its civilian leadership, is a very, very serious threat to the interstellar community in general. I am not now and never have been one of those idealistic but unfortunately misguided souls who favor some sort of unilateral disarmament on our part as the best way to defuse the tension between Nouveau Paris and Landing. In the face of a major star nation with a powerful fleet and a clear commitment to using that fleet in the furtherance of its expansionist policies, discarding that ‘big stick’ I spoke of a moment ago would be the height of foolishness.”
“Then, forgive me, Mr. Dunleavy,” Patrick DuCain, one of Into the Fire’s cohosts, said, “but what exactly are the policy points on which you differ with Prime Minister Cromarty and Foreign Secretary Nageswar?”
Dunleavy showed his teeth for a moment. DuCain was the program’s conservative voice, whereas Minerva Prince, his cohost, provided its liberal viewpoint. Another thing that made their broadcasts so popular, however, was that neither DuCain nor Prince were ideologues. Both were actually registered independents, eschewing party labels (although Dunleavy suspected they both probably voted Centrist, though he was less certain in Prince’s case), and while DuCain was substantially more hardline on foreign policy issues, he was actually closer to the Liberals on many social issues than Prince. Of course, Prince made up for her foreign policy rationality by being somewhere to the right of Adam Smith on matters of fiscal policy, he thought resentfully.
And both of them had elevated their gift for choosing guests with . . . lively differences of opinion—and injecting plenty of blood into the political water when they did—to a fine art. That was yet another reason for their program’s high viewership.
“The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are, as I’m fully aware, intelligent, patriotic, and experienced servants of the Star Kingdom,” he said, wishing with all his heart that he dared to speak the truth. They weren’t servants of the Star Kingdom; they were servants of Roger Winton and his dangerously militant foreign policy. Could none of them see the holocaust—the millions of dead—which had to result from a headlong clash with the People’s Republic?
“Obviously, however, I and other members of the Liberal Party don’t see eye-to-eye with them on all matters,” he continued. “Specifically, in terms of foreign policy, we believe the Star Kingdom has a moral responsibility—to itself and to the galaxy at large—to go the extra kilometer in its efforts to avoid what would inevitably be the biggest, bloodiest, and most destructive war in the last millennium of human history. It’s entirely possible, little though any of us like to contemplate such an outcome, that war is inevitable. That the so-called ‘Big Navy’ advocates are correct, and that only the actual use of military force will be sufficient in the end to bring a halt to the People’s Republic’s expansion. Given that possibility, one cannot but be grateful for His Majesty’s unflagging efforts to build the military wherewithal which will be so sorely needed on that grim and terrible day.”
Dunleavy’s expression was sober, solemn, and he inhaled deeply.
“Yet, granting all of that, do we not have a responsibility—indeed, given the difference between our open, representative political system and the closed, military-dominated system which has plunged the once bright beacon of the Republic of Haven into darkness, do we not have a greater responsibility than Haven—to do all we can to prevent such a hugely destructive, bloody conflict? Whatever we may think of the People’s Republic’s leadership, we are an open system which believes in freedom, the worth of the individual, opportunity, the value of hard work and talent, and freedom of choice. As such, we owe the galaxy better than to simply abandon any hope of stopping short of war. It doesn’t matter what the People’s Republic does or doesn’t owe to itself or to anyone else; we owe ourselves the knowledge that we didn’t simply follow a brutish, militaristic, repressive regime into the maw of warfare without first making every possible effort to avert that outcome.”
“Ms. Palin?” DuCain looked at his other guest. “I have to say that doesn’t sound all that unreasonable. Surely Mr. Dunleavy is correct that every alternative should be considered before we resort to brute force.”
“No one’s advocating resorting to ‘brute force’ if any other alternative presents itself, Patrick.” Palin shook her head, her expression just as sober as Dunleavy’s. “The problem is that the Peeps—and I include their civilian leadership in this, as well as the military; Joe’s mistaken if he thinks there’s any actual difference between them—believe in the use of ‘brute force.’ And, on the face of it, it’s hard to argue with their view that it’s been working pretty well for them for the last thirty T-years or so. They’ve built an enormous military machine, and that military power and their acceptance that they have no choice but to expand or die—politically and economically speaking, at any rate—has developed a momentum that isn’t going to stop before it runs into something it can’t devour. I’m afraid that by this time the Legislaturalists are completely captive to the so-called ‘Duquesne Plan.’ I would love, more than anyone—including Joe—might be prepared to believe, for him to be right that it’s possible to stop the Peeps short of direct military conflict. Unfortunately, I’m no longer confident anyone can . . . or that it’s even possible for them to stop, which is why I shifted my party affiliation to the Centrists. That wasn’t an easy decision for me to make, but I believe I owe my constituents and the Star Kingdom as a whole support for the best available foreign and military policy.”
She looked directly across the table at Dunleavy, and this time there was nothing in her eyes but somber sincerity.
“I don’t say I think the Prime Minister’s policy options are good ones, Joe. I only say they’re the best of the bad options available to him. Don’t think for a moment that he likes them any better than you do, either. But we live in the same galaxy, and the same tiny part of it, as the Peeps, and Duke Cromarty would be grossly derelict in his responsibilities to the Star Kingdom if he didn’t prepare for the one argument he knows the Peeps will have to listen to if and when the time comes.”
“It sounds to me,” Minerva Prince said, “as if the disagreement here is more a matter of degree than kind.” She looked back and forth between Palin and Dunleavy. “Would the two of you agree with that?”
“Not without some significant qualifications, I’m afraid,” Dunleavy said heavily. “I have to agree with Hillary that if worse eventually comes to worst, the existence of the battle fleet Prime Minister Cromarty—and His Majesty—are committed to building is, indeed, an argument the People’s Republic will be forced to ‘listen to.’ As I’ve said from the beginning, the Star Kingdom must have a big stick in reserve if it expects soft speech to accomplish anything.
“But, with all due respect, Hillary, the very way in which you state your argument only underscores the extent to which Cromarty and the Centrists have already abandoned—ruled out—any ‘argument’ that isn’t based on raw force and brute firepower. Have you actually listened to yourself? I don’t believe I’ve heard you refer to the Havenites by anything other than the pejorative, jingoistic label of ‘Peep’ since this broadcast began. That kind of polarization reveals a demonization of our potential adversaries which is symptomatic of the Cromarty Government’s tunnel vision where the People’s Republic is concerned. It’s very possible, perhaps even probable, t
hat the simplistic view of the PRH’s entire leadership as jackbooted thugs isn’t as invalid as I would like it to be. But at this time we have to find some means of engaging them in debate, some way to build a constructive dialogue that allows us to show them how much more valuable stable relations between our star nations would be. They can gain so much more by trading with us, by opening their borders to our technology and investment bankers, by relying on peaceful commerce rather than the inevitable cost in both blood and treasure war must exact from both of us! We need to find a way to convince them to take that path, demonstrate where their true self interest lies, rather than continuing blindly on the road of conquest and repression.
“I’m not naïve enough to believe we can do that simply by appealing to their better natures! For that matter, I’m not at all confident the current military-dominated clique running the People’s Republic has anything remotely like a ‘better nature.’ But rather than simply abandoning the effort, we have to choose an ‘all of the above’ approach to our foreign policy. We have to be willing to be at least modestly accommodating to them where opportunities for peaceful interaction present themselves. Without that willingness on our part, there genuinely is no hope for any sort of constructive engagement which might lead to something less cataclysmic than a head-on clash of arms.”
“If the last thirty T-years of the People’s Republic’s existence have demonstrated a single thing,” Palin said flatly, “it’s that anything remotely like ‘constructive engagement’ is seen as a sign of weakness, an opportunity to push for still more advantage before the hapless victim slides down the Peeps’ throat.”
She shook her head, and when she spoke again her tone was regretful, almost gentle.
“We’ve tried talking to them, Joe. For that matter, there was a time when we had a very close, cordial relationship with the Republic of Haven. When our naval units cooperated with theirs in the enforcement of the Cherwell Convention, for example. When we traded openly and freely with them. But that relationship is gone. Their markets are closed, sealed off by a combination of trade restrictions and punitive import duties, and the thought of Manticoran and Peep naval units cooperating to accomplish anything—short of one another’s destruction, at any rate!—is about as realistic as expecting a planet to reverse its rotation. It’s possible we may be able to talk them into stopping short of our own frontier, short of the Junction, but the only way we’ll convince them is by presenting an argument they can’t ignore. And that, Joe, is why the Cromarty Government is so focused on continuing the Navy’s buildup, stitching together an alliance of independent star systems in a collective security arrangement intended to give even the Peeps pause, and drawing an unmistakable line in the sand that tells them—tells them in terms clear enough, stark enough, not even they can misinterpret our resolve—that we are not simply another juicy target, bigger and richer than any of the others they’ve already engulfed. These people have persuaded themselves they have a manifest destiny to continue their expansion indefinitely, and they’ve built a military machine big enough and strong enough to convince them nothing short of the Solarian League itself could possibly stop them. And the truth is that, on the basis of their record to date, they’re right.”