Assegai

by S J MacDonald

  If the success of a dinner was rated on how much the host enjoyed it, that dinner was a big success. President Prince Glynvawr, it turned out, had an intellectual interest in the concept of infinity which had, he said, fascinated him since childhood. He attended any Academy of Sciences talks he could which involved what he humorously called his favourite mathematical symbol, the sideways 8. He was, indeed, very well informed about it and thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to discuss Kate’s theorem with people who were as interested in it as he was, and as his own level.

  And there was, too, the factor with which he’d persuaded Shion to attend this dinner in her chamlorn regalia. It could, he’d admitted, be quite a lonely thought, at times, being the last monarchy standing in the League. In that, he clearly did not include the Canelonian kings, identified as genetic descendants after centuries of republicanism, reinstated at the point where the Canelonians recognised that having a few ‘real’ kings and queens around would go down well with the tourists.

  Camae was, in fact, the only planet in the League with a still extant monarchy, albeit in their modern role as ceremonial figureheads and functional ambassadors. Observing the fate of royal houses on every other known world, they had come to the sorrowful conclusion that the decline and eventual extinction of their traditional titles and role were pretty much inevitable. So it was a validation and a cause for kindled optimism, finding that one of the worlds beyond League borders had, in fact, maintained a hereditary monarchy for as long as they had, themselves.

  And there he was, hosting a princess from another world, as charmingly urbane as she was wonderfully exotic. For Shion, too, this was a pleasure, a rare opportunity for her to share her culture with another on equal terms. But President Prince Glynvawr was, as his people put it, riding on the breath of angels.

  Even the interruption between the sixth and seventh courses didn’t ruffle the prince’s enjoyment. Etiquette required guests to deactivate comms as they entered the palace, even those who were always on call to some degree, like Alex. If a situation arose which made it imperative to contact someone at the dinner, there was a procedure for that. It led to an aide moving unobtrusively to the prince’s side once the current course was being removed, murmuring into his ear. Only then, if the prince deemed it appropriate, would the host himself inform the guest that a call was waiting for him, with gracious consent to excuse themselves from the table in order to take it.

  That happened now, with a half-minute of murmuring before the prince turned to Alex.

  ‘There is a call,’ he informed him, ‘from Port Admiral Dulsta for you – do step aside, should you need to take it.’

  Alex picked up the subtext from the choice of words, recognising that the prince was passing the message along but did not really consider the interruption to be warranted.

  ‘Is my house on fire, sir?’ he asked. That was a Camag saying, a shorthand for some disaster which needed immediate response. Which was just about the only situation justifying the departure of a guest from a royal table.

  ‘No.’ President Prince Glynvawr smiled at the colloquialism, and replied in the same terms. ‘Not even a smoulder at the end of the garden, I’d have said.’

  Alex wasn’t greatly surprised. Since their talk in the shuttle a few days before, Port Admiral Bemmy Dulsta had been calling him a lot. It was as if he felt that, having confided his distinctly anti-League views, he and Alex had a special bond. He called him to talk about things that really could have waited for a routine check-in, and he was not always considerate either in the times he called or in his use of priority call-code. He had called Alex for a chat just the night before, at a time when he and Migan had been otherwise engaged.

  ‘Then I offer my apologies,’ said Alex, ‘and would be indebted to your lordship if your staff would inform Port Admiral Dulsta that I will return his call after the meal.’

  The prince smiled, gratified and approving of Alex’s courtesy, the aide glided away again and the dinner resumed.

  It was, therefore, only when the guests rose from the table that the prince offered to show Alex into his closet, where he might make his call privately.

  Alex thanked and went with him. A royal closet was no kind of boxy storage space. Though smaller than the state rooms and supposedly in a more informal style, it was the prince’s private room, more of an office than a lounge.

  It didn’t look at all informal to Alex, with its bulbous furniture and walls lined with portraits. But it was private, the prince withdrawing once he had invited Alex to make use of his desk.

  Alex made the call, finding Bemmy Dulsta apologetic for having disturbed him at a royal dinner but clearly buzzing with news.

  ‘I just thought you should know,’ he explained. ‘The Chartsey courier’s arrived.’ He paused just for a moment, for dramatic effect. ‘And you won’t believe this, Alex – great news, really is! The Third Lord,’ he declared, milking the moment for all it was worth, ‘has resigned!’

  Just like that, Alex thought. Really? Just like that. After all these years of Cerdan Jennar attacking him, spitting fury and engaging in dark, dishonourable plots… after all that, could it really be that sudden, that simple, that final? The Third Lord has resigned.

  It felt weirdly like a bereavement. A shock, anyway. Alex found himself with nothing to say. But it hardly mattered, as Bemmy was still talking. He had all the news, and all the goss, the crew of the courier evidently rather better informed about the details than was contained in the mail that they’d brought. The words seemed to be moving around Alex rather than penetrating his consciousness, but he pulled himself together after a minute or two.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but can we talk about this later?’ And as an excuse for that brusqueness, ‘I am with Prince Glynvawr.’

  The call ended, he sat there for perhaps half a minute, unmoving, his gaze looking far out beyond the palace walls. But then he pulled himself together and got up, reminding himself that Prince Glynvawr and the other guests were waiting.

  As he moved towards the door, though, the prince looked in, and after a glance at him, came in and closed the door behind him.

  ‘Please,’ he indicated seats set in front of a carved marble hearth where no fire had been lit for centuries.

  Alex sat down, glad of the respite before he had to face the rest of the company.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Prince Glynvawr said, evidently having been made aware of the reason for the call. ‘I was unaware that the news would be of more than professional interest…’ he could see the shock in Alex’s eyes. ‘Are you,’ he asked delicately, ‘and the Third Lord on close terms?’

  The horrible suggestion jolted Alex out of his shocked reverie, making him jump almost as if the prince had poked him.

  ‘No!’ he said, and only just managed to stop himself exclaiming, ‘God, no!’ It was disorienting, for a moment, even to realise that the president of Camae had no idea about the nature of the relationship between the Third Lord and the Fourth’s CO. So much out of the loop, Alex realised. ‘He has hated me,’ he said, ‘for almost as long as I’ve been in the Fleet.’

  Prince Glynvawr’s eyebrows rose. His beliefs about the Fleet, evidently, were founded more in their mythology about themselves than in reality.

  ‘Hated you?’ In his understanding of the Fleet, their senior officers were above that kind of thing. Alex had once believed that too.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Alex could see that the prince wanted to understand, and so did his best to explain as best as he could without, himself, bringing the Fleet into disrepute. ‘It started,’ he said, ‘when I was a Sub-lt. There were two things going on in the Fleet at the time – a candidacy process for the appointment of a new First Lord, and an enquiry into the practice of senior officers accepting highly paid consultancies from corporations whilst still in service. The two became entwined, with a polarisation between the modernising element within the Fleet, represented by one candidate, and the traditional, represented by a
nother. Dix Harangay stood on a proposal to take the Fleet forward, banning corporate consultancies as compromising to the Fleet’s perceived integrity. Cerdan Jennar stood on a proposal to ‘restore the Fleet’s traditional values’, in which corporate consultancies would be allowed to continue.’ He paused, and Prince Glynvawr gave a slight nod to indicate that he understood that and that he wished Alex to continue. ‘The enquiry,’ Alex went on, ‘wished to hear the views of a wide range of serving Fleet officers. And, as a recent graduate and because I was on the tagged-and-flagged rapid promotion scheme, I was called in to give them, for what it was worth, the benefit of my opinion. I was only one of fifty officers the panel heard, and I know that my opinion really carried no weight at all – in fact it is clear with the benefit of hindsight that they’d already made up their minds before I stepped into that room. But at the time, I was very young, very idealistic, and prepared to step up and be counted on an issue that I felt very strongly about. So the statement I made – true as I still feel it to be – was, I now recognise, unnecessarily offensive.’ He gave a slight, wry smile. ‘I stood up, on record,’ he explained, ‘and declared my opinion that corporate consultancies were tantamount to corruption.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Prince Glynvawr, who was quick on the uptake. ‘That, I expect, was widely talked about within the Fleet. And Admiral Harangay got the First Lordship, and corporate consultancies were banned. And Admiral Jennar, perhaps, was benefiting from such consultancies at the time?’

  ‘Excessively so, yes,’ said Alex. ‘Even by the standards of the time, holding seven corporate consultancies was regarded as excessive, each of them paying him rather more than his Fleet salary for the use of his name on their letterheads. And he, at some level I have never been able to really understand, went beyond being justifiably angry with me for the ‘tantamount to corruption’ statement, but in some way even seemed to consider me responsible for his not getting the First Lordship, too. It was a factor, no doubt, that Dix Harangay was then, as he is now, a professional mentor to me, as all senior officers are with juniors they consider promising.’

  ‘I believe,’ said the prince, ‘that I am beginning to understand… would I be right in surmising that your ship was moved onto irregular terms of service because Admiral Jennar – who is, I believe, or was, in charge of Internal Affairs – objected to some aspect of the way you were running the ship?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex. There’d been a lot more to it than that, but Alex didn’t really want to go into the appalling situation of a rating set up to a biased court martial under a nearly senile and positively vindictive judge, or into his own battle for justice for his crewman and the compromise which had eventually resulted in the founding of the Fourth. ‘We were running as a rehab unit, even then,’ Alex said. ‘and I wanted to go beyond what the Fleet considered normal, or even perhaps acceptable practice. Admiral Jennar certainly objected to that, and objected even more vociferously when Dix Harangay arranged for us to be moved onto irregular terms as a rehab unit. There are grounds to suspect that it was Admiral Jennar who told the media that what we were doing, and that I personally, was a disgrace to the Fleet. There were other incidents, too, which I prefer not to go into. But very few months have gone past without some kind of attack being made either against the Fourth or on me, with every imaginable effort being made to get us disbanded, or at least brought back under regular terms, and to have me brought to court martial on charges which would end my career. Every such effort has failed, obviously, try as he might to spin something out of nothing. But he has, at least, had the satisfaction of seeing me vilified by the media and howled at by mobs of infuriated anti-Fourth campaigners.’

  ‘Until…’ the prince realised, ‘the Beeby Disclosure…’

  ‘Until,’ Alex confirmed, ‘the Beeby Disclosure. The celebrations at Chartsey were bile and wormwood to him, no question; the tickertape parade, stadia full of cheering crowds, even having to shake my hand and say nice things about me on camera. And there was, I know, an incident – Dix Harangay told me about it in a letter I received at Karadon. He – Cerdan Jennar – had been suspended from his club for walking off the links. From what Admiral Dulsta just told me, it’s apparent that, having been asked to resign from his club, he considered it untenable to continue at the Admiralty, so has resigned from that, too.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, forgive my ignorance,’ the prince requested, ‘but I do not comprehend the significance of ‘walking off the links’.’

  Of course, Alex remembered. There were no golf courses on Camae. And no snootily exclusive country-club culture, either. They had palace culture here, which went out of its way to be gracious.

  So Alex explained about golf – not about the game itself but about the role of that exclusive type of club in Chartsey’s society.

  ‘The more exclusive it is,’ he said, ‘the more tightly binding are the rules they have devised to make it exclusive, not just on what conditions you have to satisfy in order to get in, but in the conduct you must maintain in order to retain your membership. Those rules are often quite bizarre to outsiders – I know of one club, for instance, where members are fined if they fail to buy a drink for the statue of a Cartasayan Emperor on a given day.’

  ‘And this – walking off the gaming course, leaving equipment behind, that is cause for the withdrawal of membership?’

  ‘Not in itself,’ Alex said. ‘But in the context. A member racing off the course in an emergency, leaving their golf clubs behind in distraction, of course, would be entirely understood. But to walk off in a loss of temper is ‘conduct unbecoming’ to a code far stricter, even, than that of military service. And the context, too, will include consideration of other factors – in which, I am guessing, they may have had to put up with a lot of ill temper over the last year or so. Anyway, they asked for his resignation. And the social impact of that, at Chartsey, having been asked to resign from such a club for misconduct, is such that many of the people in his social sphere will drop him like a stone. He will be snubbed, no question, by people who would previously have pressed invitations upon him. And that does constitute a professional issue, too, that social disgrace reflecting poorly on the Admiralty and the Fleet. It isn’t sufficient to bring him to court martial for bringing the Fleet into disrepute – only actions taken in uniform can do that – but it would be enough for Dix Harangay to issue a formal expression of concern. And with everyone at the Admiralty and throughout the Fleet knowing that, his position as head of Internal Affairs was so compromised, the only honourable thing he could do there, really, was resign. I’m surprised, though, I thought he’d stick it out, brass-necked, regardless. So there it is. He’s gone. Technically on leave till a replacement is appointed, but effectively, gone.’

  ‘And you are not,’ the prince observed, ‘rejoicing, or even relieved, at the downfall of a man who has caused you so many problems.’ A slight smile. ‘I believe I understand why. It is as if you have been walking for a long time with someone right in front of you, hand on your chest, pushing you back – sometimes more strongly than others, but always a contrary pressure. And now, suddenly, that pressure has been removed, and you find yourself staggering a little, off balance, almost as if you’d come to depend on that pressure as a support.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alex, struck by the analogy. ‘Yes… that’s it. That is it exactly, sir.’ He looked at the prince and saw from his smile that he’d been speaking with the voice of experience… a long-standing opponent, perhaps, in Camag politics, a rare but impassioned republican railing against the self-evidently unfair and anti-democratic principle of hereditary power. And then, suddenly, that voice was gone.

  ‘We define ourselves,’ the prince observed, ‘by the people we oppose, as much as by our friends. But you do understand, do you not, that another will emerge, and very rapidly, to take his place?’

  Alex nodded. He had always understood that. Which was one of the reasons he had never retaliated against Cerdan Jennar’s attacks, rec
ognising philosophically that getting rid of him would not solve the problem, only change the face of the person standing there.

  ‘He is – or was, as I suppose I should say now,’ Alex said, ‘a figurehead for that element within the Fleet resistant to change, finding security and even their sense of identity in upholding tradition. And those people, that element, will quickly find another representative, for sure.’

  ‘The next Third Lord?’ The prince enquired.

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Alex, and explained, ‘The militant traditionalists are a fading force in the Fleet – largely, it must be said, because of Admiral Jennar’s own vitriolic and sometimes less than wholly ethical behaviour, causing many to disassociate themselves with the Old School cadre that he represents. Most officers these days align themselves with a more moderate central position, with a representative emerging who stands for high honour and tradition but is at the same time open to some degree of modernisation. That representative is Admiral Tennet, and if you took soundings through the Fleet she would be the one the majority of people would choose, no question of that.’ He paused for a moment, considering. ‘An important matter to the Fleet, of course,’ he said. ‘But not worth interrupting your dinner party, sir.’

  There was a little silence after that, the epitaph spoken on Cerdan Jennar’s career. Then the prince smiled.

  ‘It is,’ he said charmingly, ‘of no consequence.’ It was understood that Alex had been shaken, had talked about it and had regained his equilibrium – and now he just wanted to move on, pretending it had never happened. So the prince got to his feet, gesturing hospitably, ‘Shall we join the others?’