Usurper

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Dee regarded him for a moment. Apparently at ease, but she knew from personal experience just how deceptive that could be.

  “Mr. Forsythe, I am aware that meeting me can be somewhat unnerving for people. But I sat in that very chair myself many times, up until only a few weeks ago, before the Empress Ilithyia I. So I would ask you to please just relax. Everything’s fine. We’re just going to have a little chat.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Forsythe took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He seemed to relax a bit, get a little less stiff.

  “Much better, Mr. Forsythe. Now, Mr. Pullman tells me you told Mr. Finn you were disgusted with my legal system.”

  “The legal system you’ve inherited. Yes, Ma’am.”

  “And why is that, Mr. Forsythe?”

  “Because what I had admired and loved in the law no longer exists, Ma’am.”

  “Explain, Mr. Forsythe.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. I was moved to the new school curriculum when I was thirteen, and it allowed free-reading time. I spent my free-reading on the law. Reading all the big cases – the complaints, the motions, the briefs, the opinions. All of it. I was fascinated by it. Rich man and poor man enjoyed equality under the law. One was not assumed guilty and the other innocent. All were equal. I saw it as a quintessential achievement of the human race.

  “And that’s no longer true. If you have money, you can hire the best lawyers. Better than those of your opposition. If you are the prosecutor charging a poor man, he gets a public defender, generally a young inexperienced lawyer just starting out in the law. The government can spend millions prosecuting a case against which even a rich man can struggle to defend, and thereby be rendered penniless. And if all else fails, you can buy off the prosecutor, or buy off the judge.

  “Where the law of my imagination was a beautiful fairy princess, the law in reality is a tawdry whore, for sale to the highest bidder.”

  Forsythe reddened suddenly.

  “Sorry, Your Majesty. I forgot where I was.”

  “That’s perfectly all right, Mr. Forsythe. I like your passion.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.”

  Dee nodded.

  “But if we are to talk any further, Mr. Forsythe, I need a commitment from you. You are not to discuss our conversation with anyone. Not a single person. Not even your companion.”

  Forsythe’s eyes widened.

  “It is a necessity of my position, Mr. Forsythe, that anyone brought to meet with me is first investigated. You and Mr. Hawker have been careful, but not that careful.”

  “And it doesn’t matter to you, Ma’am?”

  “Why should it, Mr. Forsythe? In fact, it puts further point to your fondness for equality under the law, does it not?”

  Forsythe nodded.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “But I do need your commitment, Mr. Forsythe.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. That is, I will keep this conversation confidential.”

  “You may ultimately be able to file it under attorney-client privilege, Mr. Forsythe.”

  Did she just offer him a job? The possibility of one, anyway.

  “It is my goal to reform the law, Mr. Forsythe, to make it once again deserving of the admiration you had for it in your childhood naiveté. I can think of no better person to assist me in this task than one so disgusted with the way it is now. We may need, however to move it in steps, to accumulate partial measures over time to get it to where you and I both want it to be. Can you sully yourself to work at rehabilitating your tawdry whore, even if she backslides or picks the occasional pocket, as long as she is heading in the right direction?”

  “Yes, Ma’am, I think I can do that. I want to do that.”

  “It may be the job of more than one lifetime, Mr. Forsythe. You and I may not see it done before we pass beyond the veil.”

  “Understood, Ma’am. But it needs doing. On such a noble task, I would much rather fail trying than fail for having never made the effort.”

  “Very well, Mr. Forsythe. That is all for now. And not a word to anyone. As you know or should be able to guess, there are powerful people who will attempt to stop us. We must not give them any more time to assemble their forces than we have to.”

  “I understand, Ma’am.”

  Dee rang for Perrin.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Have Mr. Forsythe escorted to the palace exit, Mr. Perrin.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. This way, Mr. Forsythe.”

  “Be seated, Mr. Pullman.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Your opinion of Mr. Forsythe, Mr. Pullman?”

  “I think we should bring him aboard, Ma’am. He’s young, but he’s capable, and he has a passion for the law.”

  “I agree, Mr. Pullman. He wants to reform the law so badly he can taste it. Let’s bring him aboard. See to it.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  Shadow Councilor

  “So how did the meeting go? Was it in the palace?” Darrel Hawker asked.

  “Yes, Pullman’s office is in the palace, so it was good I was dressed to the highest standard. You were right about that. As for how it went, we’ll see.”

  It was Monday of the next week before Forsythe heard from George Pullman. Hawker recognized his change in mood immediately he came in the door from work.

  “Boy, you’ve got a spring in your step. What’s up?”

  “I got a mail from George Pullman. It’s a job offer.”

  “In the palace?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ooo. Time to buy clothes. Lots of clothes.”

  “Yes, I think you’re right. Won’t be a problem, though. Not with a fifty-thousand-credit sign-on bonus.”

  “Oh, my God. Stefani at least. Or Maxwell Brothers.”

  “Yes, and shoes by Georgy Topov or the like. The whole shebang. People there really dress it up.”

  “You need a better stylist, too. And a manicure.”

  “All that is clear. What isn’t clear is what I will be doing.”

  “Well, lawyering, I assume. Whatever they need.”

  “I suppose.”

  “They’ll tell you when you get there. You are taking the job, right?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, there you go then.”

  With a job transfer to the Empress’s personal staff, his current supervisor in the Justice Department would let him go at any time. There was no notice requirement. Andrew Forsythe set his start date for the next Monday, with most of a week off so he could take some time to whip his wardrobe into shape.

  The next Monday, he reported to the Imperial Park West entrance to the palace at 9:30, and was shown by a page to the same elevator lobby receptionist he had met during his last trip to the Imperial Palace.

  “Ah, Mr. Forsythe. Come with me, please.”

  She led him through the glass doors as before, down the hallway past George Pullman’s office, and to a door on the opposite side of the hall. She let him in to a small but well-appointed office.

  “This will be your office for the time being, Mr. Forsythe. Personnel and IT will be up shortly to brief you on access and computer accounts and the like, and to have you sign some things. Oh, and the men’s room is down the hall on your right. Any questions?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Very well. I’ll let Personnel know you’re here.”

  Personnel came and went, and then IT. Left to his own devices, he searched through his account in the palace computer system He found to his shock that he had a share directory to the Empress. He knew the Empress’s personal staff numbered ten thousand or more people. She couldn’t have a share directory with everybody. Just how deep was he?

  It was going on noon when George Pullman stopped by.

  “Hi, Andy. Feel like some lunch?”

  “That would be great, George.”

  “Come with me.”

  They took the elevator down a couple
of floors to a large cafeteria.

  “This is where most of the legal and planning staff eat. It’s subsidized by the Empress. So free lunch is one of the bennies.”

  “Well, that’s nice.”

  They mostly talked small talk. Forsythe got the impression this wasn’t a place to have more substantive discussions. At one point, a young woman walked by. She was dark, in her early thirties, slim and attractive.

  “Cindy!”

  She turned and came over to their table.

  “Hi, George.”

  “Cindy, I want you to meet Andrew Forsythe. He’s the new attorney working in planning. Andy, this is Cindy Dunham.”

  Dunham! That was the Empress’s maiden name. Andy stood to shake her hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Dunham.”

  “Cindy, please.”

  “And I’m Andy.”

  “I’ll see you later, Andy.”

  She walked off. Andy sat back down and George explained.

  “Cindy’s sort of the head of planning. We aren’t really big on formal titles in certain areas. I’ve asked her to brief you this afternoon, after we’ve had a chance to talk.”

  “And it’s Cindy Dunham, right? As in Deanna Dunham Garrity?”

  “Yes, she’s married to Her Majesty’s brother. Has been for, oh, maybe seven years or so now.”

  “Ah.”

  They finished lunch, and went back to Forsythe’s office.

  “All right. It’s a little easier to talk here. So. Andy. You’re probably wondering what it is you’ll be working on, so let me give you some of the story, and I’ll let Cindy flesh it out for you a bit later.

  “Empress Ilithyia I had an idea to have a sort of Shadow Council, a group of people, divided by departments in a mirror to the Imperial Council, who would research and brief her on things in their area. So if she was meeting with a Councilor, and they said, ‘Oh, Your Majesty, it’s impossible to do this and that because of so-and-so,’ she could say, ‘Well, what about this? I know that’s possible.’ And she would, because it had been well researched and she had been briefed on it.

  “Now, in the best of all possible worlds, that’s the Imperial Council’s job, right? To decide what is possible in carrying out Her Majesty’s wishes, and then do so. But the Council now has their own wishes, and they don’t give, shall we say, the priority to Her Majesty’s wishes that Her Majesty often desires.

  “You spoke eloquently to Her Majesty and I about one of those areas, Justice. We don’t really have a system of justice in the Empire right now, we have a system of legally enforced privilege for the rich and well connected. That needs to change. But Her Majesty is interested in systemic change, not specific change. Rather than take this crooked prosecutor or this crooked judge out and shoot them, how do we modify the system, how do we change the rules, to reduce the incentives and the opportunities for corruption? How do we build a culture of honest law in which corruption is not tolerated by the system itself? That is what Her Majesty wishes to accomplish.

  “This sort of change can take a long time. That said, this Empress has kicked the process into high gear. I don’t know if you’ve seen anything about the construction next door?”

  “I did see a news piece about it. There wasn’t much detail.”

  “We haven’t released much detail. Just that we need more office space. And we do. But the building going up next door is for the research and planning staff. It’s going to be organized along the same lines as the Imperial Council, so they can concentrate on the individual Councilors and their departments. And the building is going to be an exact duplicate of the Imperial Council building.”

  “That’s going to cause some heartburn, I imagine.”

  “Well, the excuse is that the Imperial Palace is bilaterally symmetric, so if we’re going to build a building next door on the other side from the Imperial Council building, it ought to look like the Imperial Council building so the palace retains its balance. But you’re right. Her Majesty plans on pushing the Council in the direction she wants them to go at least in part by having a not-so-well-hidden threat hanging over them.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yes, exactly. So what we want you to work on is the Justice Department. We haven’t selected a Shadow Councilor there yet – it’s still way too early for that – but you’re in on the ground floor, and it’s a possibility. That’s all between you, me, Cindy, and the Empress. What’s more or less public within Her Majesty’s close personal staff is that we’re setting up research and planning staff to focus on each of the government departments. Not even that is for anyone else, anyone not on Her Majesty’s close personal staff, which is basically these floors.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. All right. That’s it for me. Cindy should be around shortly. See you later, Andy.”

  “See you, George. Thanks.”

  A Shadow Council? Ye gods.

  Pullman had left Forsythe’s office door open when he left. It was about twenty minutes later when Cindy came in, closed the door behind her, and flopped into one of his guest chairs.

  “Nope, don’t get up, Andy. Damn, I’m beat running around. I’ve been looking forward to just flopping here while we talk. So how’s your first day going?”

  That all came spilling out in one breath. Cindy was like a force of nature.

  “Good, I think. George was just here laying out the big picture,” Forsythe said.

  “OK, good. So you know about the new building, and the Shadow Council, and trying to get systemic reforms in place, and all that. So let me tell you about what I want you to be doing, at least on the short term.”

  “OK.”

  “We have this group in the palace. The new ideas group. They try to re-imagine what the government does. No preconceptions, no loyalty to how things are done now. Just, Why don’t we do it like this? Yeah, and then we could do this, too. That sort of thing. All those ideas go into another group, the one I started out heading, that tries to separate the wheat from the chaff. What makes sense, what would never work, what could work if we played with it a bit. You with me?”

  “Yes, I’m good.”

  “Great. So coming out of that group, some of those get implemented and some get put on the back burner for now. We can only move so fast without the Council getting their backs up. Some would say we’re going too fast as it is – and the Council is already getting their backs up – but successive Empresses have been at this for twenty-five years now. And this Empress is trying to move things along.”

  “Twenty-five years?”

  “Yup. You were in the new school program, right?”

  “Yes. Since thirteen or so.”

  “OK, so there’s fifteen years. How long do you think it took to write and test the new school program?”

  “Got it.”

  “OK. So what I want you to do first is work with the new ideas group. They’ve been looking for something else to deconstruct and re-imagine, and there’s nobody in there who knows the justice system we have now. I want you to get in there, tell them how it all works now, and let them pull it apart and come up with ideas of how it could work better. Don’t worry if the ideas seem all over the map, we’ll sort them out later. The goal right now is to get fresh ideas and get ‘em down on paper. Can you do that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Great. I’ll have Valery Markov stop by. He heads that group. He can introduce you around and set up a schedule and such. OK. Off to the next thing. Good to have you aboard, Andy. See ya.”

  And with that she was up out of her chair and out the door.

  Cindy Dunham had only been in his office ten minutes, but after her visit Forsythe felt like he needed a nap.

  Valery Markov was next to stop by.

  “Hi, Andy. Call me Val. Cindy mailed me that you’re ready to meet the group.”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Markov led him to the elevators and down several floors. They went down th
e hall to the cafeteria on that level. Even now, in the late afternoon, the room was full of people in groups at tables, deep in discussions. Some people sat off to the side at small tables, apparently reading or writing in VR.

  “We’re overcrowded, so this is our main office space. We also have some offices, but not enough for everybody, so we use those for private meetings and quiet space for study. When we move into the new building, we’ll all have offices, but I worry we’ll lose the energy and the connectedness.”

  “What do you do about meals?”

  “Oh, the kitchen staff comes in and lays out the food on the cafeteria counter, and everybody grabs food and pretty much just keeps going. The kitchen staff thinks it’s kind of funny. They’ve adopted us.”

  Forsythe watched the ongoing chaos for several seconds.

  “So what do you need from me first?”

  “What I was thinking is a presentation on what the justice system is like now, both how it is structured and how it is failing. Perhaps a couple of hours. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, of course. Where would we do it? Here?”

  Forsythe looked around dubiously.

  “No. I think we should do it in VR. Go to channel 591.”

  Forsythe selected channel 591, went immersive, and found himself standing in the well of a bowl-shaped lecture hall like one of those in the Imperial City School of Law.

  “How about this?” Markov asked.

  Forsythe looked around. There was a large display behind him on which he could display his slides or movies.

  “Yes, this will work.”

  “Excellent.”

  They both left VR and were back in the cafeteria.

  “When do you want to do this?” Forsythe asked.

  “Can you do it Wednesday? That’s our normal meeting day. It gives you all day tomorrow to prepare.”

  That was quick. Forsythe raised an eyebrow.

  “Everyone is very excited about this. We haven’t really had the expertise before, so it’s a new area for us.”

  “OK. Sure. I can present Wednesday.”

  “Excellent.”