Empery

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  “Because it isn’t that easy, and you know it.”

  Wells did, but was not about to concede the point. “What will be different from last night, except that I’ll also be voting?”

  “Nothing. They will be just as reluctant to remove me as they were to remove you. They may be perfectly happy with you doing what you do best and me doing what I do best, even if we end up fighting because of it.”

  Wells shook his head. “I see one vote to retain you, no more.”

  “I see three—and one of them should be yours. You wouldn’t have the budget and the program you do if the rest of the Service weren’t well run and fiscally healthy.”

  “Maybe that’s how we should vote,” Wells said. “But it’s not how we will vote.”

  Erickson showed a faint smile. “Perhaps not. But what makes you think that any majority you whip together will stay intact once the Chancellery’s open? Every one of them will bethinking about their own chances—and why not? There’s nothing you can give them. They’re already all one step from the top. Why should they go for someone else at your say-so?”

  “Because they have a clear idea of the direction we need to take.”

  “That’s wishful thinking. If you were going to put yourself up for the Chancellorship, you might hold them together—might possibly, if you fought for it hard enough. But you don’t want to be Chancellor.”

  She was not supposed to have known that; it was to have been a concession she would think cost him more than it did. Now it had been devalued. It had to have been Berberon. “Did I say that?” he asked lamely.

  “Why would you, when it’s to your advantage if I think otherwise? But you implied it when you talked about a replacement who was ‘to your liking.’ And besides, you wouldn’t want to trade spending all of your time directly involved in what you think most important for five Branches worth of administrative duties.”

  “No—but I’d take the post myself before letting someone who thinks as you do have it,” he said wamingly.

  “You can only be talking about Rieke. I’m realist enough to never have considered her as a possible successor—just as you need to be realistic and understand that Loughridge can never be approved as Chancellor.”

  There was no point in denying that that was his intent. “Why not?”

  “Because I won’t allow it.”

  “What makes you think it’s up to you?”

  The faint, annoying smile played on her lips again. “You’re still being too idealistic. It’s much easier in this kind of situation to muster votes against someone than for them. It’s going to be a long time before anyone puts together four votes addends it. And, you know, you may not be the one that does it.”

  “If it took a month, six months—a year, even—it would be worth it.”

  “Would it be worth having the World Council of Commissioners nationalize our ground facilities?”

  Wells gaped in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”

  “The orbital injectors, all sixteen operational ports—I don’t need to inventory our investment for you.”

  “They wouldn’t do that—”

  “They’re itching to do that, and more if we give them the opportunity. Why are you surprised? Your friends downwell have put this bug in their ear. The Commissioners want us fighting, Harmack. They want to take advantage of us while we’re distracted. And how long do you think it would take King Parath and Elder Barsihlev to decide that Liam-Won and Rena-Kiri ought to do the same? I wouldn’t put it past the First Mistress of Maranit to follow suit, once she saw everyone else getting away with it.”

  “They wouldn’t get away with it.”

  “No? What are you going to do? Make war on our own people?”

  “Of course not. But economic pressure—”

  “So we refuse to send anything down while they’re control ling the ports. Who can stand that the longest?”

  “We’re self-sufficient. And they depend on us. We sell them twenty times what they sell us—”

  “Which means suspension of trade hurts us twenty times as much as it does them—more, really, since they number eleven billion to our one million. It’s fiscal suicide for a net exporter to suspend exports. Didn’t you ever study macroeconomics?”

  “There would be things we could do. We could cut off communications—”

  “All you would accomplish is legitimizing their anxiety about us.” Hands resting on her knees, she leaned forward in her chair. “Let me tell you what you’d do: nothing. And then you’d learn how to get along without the income we’ve been generating by charging them for the privilege of doing business with us. Do you think they don’t know that the landing fees and transshipment levies far exceed the actual cost of running the ports? That money paid for the Defenders—just try to build Triad without it.”

  “And the alternative—”

  “I already told you. I resign—and a neutral candidate agreed on between us now becomes Chancellor.”

  “How do you know I won’t turn right around and get rid of the new Chancellor too?”

  Erickson settled back in her chair. “I’ll take that chance. My guess is you’re only going to be able to stampede them once. You try this again six months down the road and they’re going to start to think the problem’s with you.”

  Regrettably that, too, conformed to Wells’s own appraisal of the situation. “I get to build Triad?”

  “Probably,” Erickson said, her voice registering her unhappiness about it. “But I can’t promise it. That’s not part of the deal. You’ll have a chance to make your case to a new face. I can’t tell you what they’ll decide when they’re sitting here.”

  “That doesn’t make this very attractive for me. Maybe I should just take my chances with the Committee and the Council.”

  “Go ahead—if you really believe in taking chances. Here’s how if adds up: You don’t know that you can replace me. Even if you do, you don’t know that you get to pick my replacement. And even if you do, it won’t come easily or quickly—and the planetary governments will be gnawing away at us the whole time we’re squabbling.”

  Appalled by the prospect, Wells shook his head. “I can’t believe that you’re willing to see us pushed to the wall over a point of personal pride.”

  “You had better believe it if you want to prevent it,” she said coolly. “Harmack, I love the Service. I don’t want to see it crippled by bureaucratic fratricide. I don’t want to see it preyed upon by little men with little minds—”

  “But you’re threatening to let both those things happen.”

  “Yes—if you try to seat yourself or Loughridge as Chancellor. I’d rather see the Service chopped up by the Worlds than see you in command of a combat force with no checks on your authority.”

  Wells considered that for a moment. “Who do you propose, then?’ ”The list of candidates isn’t terribly long. Vandekar has the most experience—”

  “No,” Wells said emphatically. “He’s too much a monarch’s minister.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Liamese are bred to believe that authority comes by blood and divine right. Vandekar is uncomfortable sitting at the top of the ladder, as though he doesn’t believe he truly belongs there. You can see it in the way he handles Operations, always looking for someone else to make the decision. The Service would end up being led either by King Parath or by no one. And what you said earlier was right—for Defense to be strong, the rest of the Service has to be strong too.”

  “That narrows the list to one.”

  “I know.”

  “And?”

  Wells tipped his head back and stared up at the ceiling. It was less than he had come here expecting—less, even, than he had thought assured of a week ago. The whole question centered on Triad, but it had gotten enormously more complicated than that. All he had was one uncertainty to weigh against another. Even so, the scales were tipping heavily in one direction.

  “Each of us del
ivers our vote and one other,” Wells said slowly.

  “Yes.”

  “You bow out quietly, and we cheat the World Council out of their opportunity for mischief.”

  “Yes.”

  “And neither of us tries to attach any preconditions to the nomination. We both take our chances.”

  “That’s right.”

  Wells pursed his lips. There are no unqualified victories, after all, he thought. Erickson will be gone—the Council will be frustrated—

  At last he nodded. “All right. I can live with Sujata.”

  “Then it’s time to find out what she thinks,” Erickson said. “Do you want to be there?”

  “Of course.”

  “Let’s break for lunch,” Erickson said, rising. “I’ll ask her to come in at thirteen.”

  “Fine,” Wells said. “Except I think we’d best go to lunch together and agree how much we’re going to tell her.”

  Curiously, the only three times Sujata had been inside the Chancellor’s suite had been prior to her appointment as Director of the Resource Branch.

  On returning to Unity from Ba’ar Tell, she had been invited in for what seemed on the surface to be a formal welcome back from the Chancellor to a moderately important servicrat. A week later, she had been called back for an undisguised and far more thoroughgoing interview for an unspecified job. The third occasion, which came three days later, had lasted only long enough for Erickson to tell Sujata of her appointment to the Committee.

  But that had been the end of it, rather than the beginning. Except for the periodic Committee meetings, Erickson was content to communicate her concerns and requests by memo and phone. So coming as an exception to Erickson’s insular management style, the summons to Erickson’s office itself loudly proclaimed that something both important and out of the ordinary was to happen.

  Forewarned, Sujata managed to sit quietly while Erickson, with Wells a silent spectator, announced without embellishment that she was leaving the Chancellor’s office, and how would Sujata feel about stepping into the vacancy?

  But the outward calm with which Sujata received those words was not reflected inside her. While listening, she recalled the Maranit game of tossing a seedpod from a ghirlu plant back and forth in a circle of children. Eventually the pod mistook the shaking it received in the course of the game to mean that the late-summer winds had begun and thereupon obediently exploded, splattering anyone nearby with its cache of sticky, foul-smelling seeds.

  Sujata viewed the offer of the Chancellorship with the same apprehension felt by a Maranit child preparing to make a catch on a well-shaken ghirlu pod. And we always tried to toss it to someone we didn’t like

  Knowing Erickson and Wells would take her slowness to respond as a natural consequence of surprise, Sujata allowed herself a moment to try to read them. She focused first on Wells but found the Defense Director’s expression as unrevealing as ever. Sujata was always discomfited dealing with a male as skilled at self-concealment as a Maranit high woman;under the present circumstances her unease was magnified.

  Looking back to Erickson, Sujata saw a weariness in the Chancellor’s eyes. You may be doing this voluntarily, but you are not doing it willingly, she thought. What’s going on? “Why me?” she said at last.

  “Because you’re the best candidate,” Erickson said.

  “Best how?” Sujata said skeptically. “I’m the least experienced member of the Committee. I’ve barely begun to master the workings of my own branch, much less that of the rest of the Service. I’m still thirty years out of sync—both with what’s happening here and out in the Affirmation. How can you say that I’m most qualified?”

  Wells answered. “She didn’t. She said that you were the best candidate.”

  “Would you explain to me the difference?”

  “The Chancellery is a post you grow into,” Erickson said with philosophical detachment. “No one comes to it qualified—I certainly didn’t. You come to it with potential.”

  “Which you’ve demonstrated you have,” Wells added.

  Flattery from Wells? An even more flagrant warning sign.“Even so—I can’t believe the Committee would rather have me as Chancellor than you,” Sujata said, looking straight at Erickson.

  “That’s not the choice facing them,” Erickson said, “since I’m resigning.“This time Sujata looked at Wells. “I don’t understand why. The Committee would never remove you—”

  Glancing sideways at Wells before she began, Erickson replied, “I’ve been in this post for eight years. As rewarding as it is, it is also very demanding. The time has come for me to do other things.”

  The glance, which Sujata caught in her fringe vision, had the effect of negating Erickson’s words. Neither one of them is going to be honest unless I force them to be, Sujata realized.

  “So you and Comité Wells have agreed that I should be the new Chancellor. It hasn’t been that long since I read the bylaws—I thought this sort of thing was up to the Committee. How is it that you two are making the decision for us?”

  Now Erickson and Wells exchanged glances, as though neither was eager to be the one to answer. “Because there are considerations that are not obvious to you right now,” Erickson said at last. “The integrity of the Service is best served by a smooth transition.”

  “There is nothing underhanded in our trying to guarantee that that’s what takes place,” Wells said. “Why are you both trying so hard to hide what’s really involved here?” Sujata demanded. “What you’re telling me would make a fine face-saving press release. But I’m not a netcaster. I’m the one who’s being asked to stand in for one side in a scrap. This has nothing to do with being tired or with a graceful succession. It has to do with you two and Triad. Isn’t that right?”

  “I am tired,” Erickson said tersely. “And there are reasons other than the cosmetic why the transition must be smooth.”

  Wells began, “It’s true that we have had—”

  “Continue to have,” Erickson said quietly.

  “—profound differences,” Wells said. “But at the moment we are in agreement—that you should be the next Chancellor of the Unified Space Service.”

  “So you’ve struck a compromise, then,” Sujata said.

  “Yes,” Erickson acknowledged. “And since you insist on addressing it, you should know it’s a delicate compromise and that you are a key part of it.”

  “Or would be—if you agree to our proposal,” Wells said.“But you don’t seem eager to do that—”

  “I find that more reassuring than disturbing,” Erickson said before Sujata could answer. “I’ve learned to be suspicious of those who are too eager for power.”

  Wells ignored the dig. “You clearly are not flattered by the offer. I would have thought that to be asked would be a pleasant surprise, no matter whether you were disposed to accept or not. Would you mind explaining why I was wrong?”

  “You wouldn’t approve me if you didn’t think I was going to be either ineffective or sympathetic. Why should I be flattered?”

  “Not at all,” Wells said, gesturing with his right hand. “I would be delighted if you proved merely to be realistic. What matters most is that you bring to the Chancellery the same quality of administration you’ve shown in all your previous billets.”

  “That is my hope too,” Erickson said.

  Liar, Sujata thought. You don’t realize—your face is so open. You give away so much. You show things that Maranit highwomen share only in xochaya, if then. “I don’t know but that Resource isn’t too big for me to manage,” she said. “How can I take on an even greater responsibility before I find out?”

  “By trusting our judgment,” Erickson said. “By putting the Service’s needs above your own anxieties. Comité Sujata, if you say no, it will in all likelihood precipitate a difficult time for the Service. It would be unfair to lay the responsibility for that on you. But you can prevent it—by saying yes.”

  “Do I really have a choice?” Sujata
asked. “I was under the impression that I was being drafted, not asked to volunteer.”

  “Of course you do,” Wells said. “If you tell the Committee you don’t want to be Chancellor, you can be sure they won’t elect you, our compromise notwithstanding. You have a choice.”

  Yes—the same choice I always had during the game. To catch the ghirlu and risk it dying in my hands—or to let it drop and risk being thought a coward. “I want to think it over.”

  “I would insist on it. But please, do not take too much time deciding,” Erickson said. “If you do, I’m fairly certain Comité Wells will lose his enthusiasm for the compromise—”

  “In all probability,” Wells said.”—and we’ll all have to start looking at the less attractive options,” Erickson finished.“I’m not the kind that takes forever to make a decision,” Sujata said, standing. “I’ll let you know before long.”

  Chapter 9

  * * *

  The Path Regained

  Janell Sujata did not know where her footsteps were taking her. Her legs carried her along of their own volition, taking this corridor, that lift, picking a path through the animate obstacles that were other pedestrians. She moved as though pursued, as though she feared being caught from behind, except that she never stole a glance back over her shoulder.

  Instead, her gaze was focused on the far distance. She saw without seeing, in the sort of trancelike state that suggested she was following a path so familiar that the instructions for retracing it had been added to her repertoire of reflexes. Except that, as often as she had gone walking in Unity, she did not know where she was.

  After leaving the Chancellor’s suite, Sujata had avoided her office and her apartment. Several of her staff knew where she had been and would want to know what had transpired at the meeting, but Sujata instinctively moved to protect her own decision-making process from the opinions of others, especially those with a vested interest. None of the complexities affect them. They’ll think it’s wonderful and expect to move up with me. How can I tell them and then face their disappointment if I refuse—