Cauldron of Ghosts

by David Weber

  “ ‘A moon is made out of green cheese,’ ” said Anton. “That’d get a PD rating of 0.01—or maybe 0.02 or 0.03. Nothing is ever ranked an absolute 0—or an absolute 1. On the opposite end, let’s take the statement ‘a moon orbits a planet.’ That’d get a PD rating of .9 something.”

  He looked at the screen. “What that number tells us is that the perspective of the Star Empire’s population as a whole—Ruth didn’t point to that figure but it’s on the upper left of the screen—you see it? 0.99? that means the analysis applies to the entire population within one-hundredth of a point of certainty—”

  “To anybody except statisticians playing cover-your-ass that means absolute certainty,” said Victor.

  Anton continued. “—is two-thirds of the way toward being rock solid that the events and statements of fact shown in the recent The Star Empire Today are correct.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all!” protested Andrew. “Not the two-thirds part, that’s probably okay. But what’s this nonsense about 0.99 certainty of the opinion of the entire population.” Her threw up his hands. “You said the number of people who’ve seen the show so far isn’t more than half a billion, right? That’s short—way, way short—of even the Manticore System’s total population. That’s what? three billion?”

  “Just about,” Anton replied. “A bit over, as I recall.”

  “That’s not even twenty percent, then.”

  Ruth was about to explode. How can anybody be so grossly ignorant of the simplest and most—

  But this time, Berry came to her rescue. “That’s a sample of half a billion, Andrew. That’s gigantic. Most opinion samples are quite satisfied their results are accurate if they sample just one or two percent.”

  “Less than that,” said Victor. “The number doesn’t mean that 99 percent of the Star Empire’s opinion was taken. It just means that there’s at least a 99 percent chance—it’s actually a 100 percent chance, for all practical purposes—that the opinion sample represents that of the entire population.”

  He scratched his jaw. “That number’s not the surprise. It’s the density number. I’d expected something in the 0.3 range. 0.4 if we were lucky.”

  “The AV number’s even more surprising,” said Cathy Montaigne. She was perched on the armrest of the couch occupied by Anton.

  “AV means ‘adjustment velocity,’ right?” said Steph. “The number means squat to me anyway, but why is it surprising?”

  “It refers to the speed with which people’s perspective is changing,” Cathy explained, “and it’s always closely associated with perspective density. The basic rule-of-thumb—although there are exceptions—is that the more densely someone holds an opinion, the more slowly it’s likely to change. And vice versa, of course.”

  Andrew grunted. “Okay, I get it. To use an example, my opinion that Victor and Anton railroaded me into getting a horde of subatomic golems set loose inside my body to torture and torment me for no better motive than spite is so densely held that it will only change—if it does at all—at the speed with which a proton decays. What would that number be, by the way?”

  Cathy laughed. “That number would approach infinity—or eternity, I should say. Sociometricians would give it a ‘less than 0.01 percent.’ That’s as low as they ever go on account of”—she pointed at Victor—“what he says. Cover their ass.”

  “Why do they express it as a ‘less than’ instead of just giving it a straight number?” asked Berry.

  “Because they’re a bunch of cone-heads,” said Victor. He nodded toward the screen. “What that number up there means—the AV figure of greater than 36 percent—is that opinions are shifting toward greater density at a rate that is thirty-six percent above the norm for perspective shifts at that density.”

  “Huh?” said Andrew.

  Ruth tried to come back in at that point. “What they’re trying to measure is how fast a perspective is shifting compared to how fast you’d normally expect that solidly held an opinion to shift. If the shift is in the direction of favoring the new opinion, it’ll be expressed in the positive using the symbol for ‘more than.’ If it’s shifting against, it’ll be expressed as a negative.”

  “Huh?” Andrew repeated.

  “The gist of what it means in the here and now,” said Victor, “is that the impact of Yael Underwood’s broadcast about—about—”

  “About you, dear,” said Thandi smiling broadly. “Just suck it up.”

  “About me,” Victor said sourly, “is that the public opinion of the Star Empire is shifting in favor of our perspective on the real nature of interstellar politics a lot faster than such solidly held opinions—remember, that number was 0.67—usually shift. When they shift at all, which usually they don’t—or shift in a negative direction.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Steph said, “Wow. I’m right, aren’t I? It’s a ‘wow’?”

  Finally, Ruth felt back on sure ground. “It’s a great big huge ‘wow.’ The only explanation I can think of is that the emotional impact of seeing a young StateSec officer risk his own life in order to save the life of an RMN officer’s daughter just blew away a lot of established preconceptions. And then their continuing close friendship—which it obviously is even if both of them will probably try to make light of it—added layers of density to the new perspective.”

  “I think she’s right,” said Cathy. “The personal history between Anton and Victor makes their intelligence concerning Mesa plausible to people. Which it wouldn’t be at all if someone said: ‘Hey, guess what? A couple of spies—one from Manticore, one from Haven—decided to work together and look what they discovered. Imagine that!’ ”

  “So what does that last number mean?” asked Berry. “The one labeled ‘reversal prospect’?”

  “That’s sociometrician gobbledygook for ‘how likely is it that this perspective development will be reversed?’ ” said Victor. “And it’s a bunch of twaddle, since all it does is say the other way around what the PD and AV numbers already established.”

  Anton smiled. “Leaving aside Victor’s commentary, it is true that the RP number closely correlates to the other numbers.”

  “Closely correlates,” sniffed Victor. “As in the chance for losing a game is ninety percent ‘closely correlates’ with the chance of winning being ten percent.”

  While they’d been bantering, Cathy had been monitoring her watch. “It’s about time. Ruth, change to the live feed, will you?”

  “Sure.” The Manticoran princess tapped her tablet a few times and the image on the big virtual screen shifted to an outside view of Mount Royal Palace. A shuttle was coming in for a landing.

  A minute or so went by, while the shuttle settled in and an armed security detachment took positions near the hatch through which the passengers would be disembarking.

  The hatch opened and the first passenger came down the ramp. The reporter, who’d been prattling vacuities while she waited for something to happen, immediately said: “As expected, that’s President Eloise Pritchart, arriving for her scheduled meeting with the Empress and the Prime Minister. Following her is Haven’s Secretary of War Thomas Theisman. And now, if our private sources are accurate, we should be seeing . . .”

  A short, very wide-shouldered man started down the ramp. “Yes, that’s him. The now-famous Captain Zilwicki, formerly an intelligence officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy and now operating on his own. Or, often, in tandem with his unlikely partner . . .”

  Another man came down the ramp. He was dressed all in black, in garments which were very closely patterned on the former uniform of Haven’s now-defunct State Security.

  “And that’s Victor Cachat, who has become just as famous as Zilwicki.” The reporter chuckled. “The more sensational news outlets have started referring to him as ‘Black Victor,’ we’re told.”

  “Yes!” exclaimed Anton, pumping his fist. “Join the Notoriety Club, buddy.”

  Victor was back to looking disgruntled; s
our; even sullen.

  “When are we leaving?” he demanded. “At least on Mesa I’ll be able to get some privacy.”

  Ruth pursed her lips. “That may be the single most deranged statement I’ve ever heard in my life.” Then, with a grin: “But what else could you expect from . . .” Her voice lowered an octave and took on a pronounced tremor. “. . . Black Victor?”

  Chapter 24

  “Just what I always wanted,” Yana Tretiakovna said sardonically, gazing at the detailed holograph floating before her. “My very own starship.” She paused for a moment, head cocked, then frowned. “It’s smaller than I thought it would be, though. Is this the compact version?”

  Her appearance had changed radically, shifting from a Slavic to an East Asian template and becoming increasingly voluptuous. The process wasn’t complete, but it was close enough for her to begin the necessary therapy to adjust for her . . . rearranged (and considerably more top-heavy) physique, and she was not pleased by the discomfort level that her new physique imposed as she grimly jogged on the gymnasium’s treadmill every day. That was probably the real reason she’d been so enthusiastic about taking a break from that strenuous exercise routine, Anton Zilwicki thought.

  Of course, the fact that she was thoroughly pissed off that he’d required so little in the way of alterations and virtually no PT or specialized exercise programs suggested it might be . . . unwise of him to twit her over her enthusiasm. On the other hand, he’d loyally spent his gym time right beside his new partner, since his own idea of a “mild workout” would have reduced half the galaxy’s professional bodybuilders to tears.

  “It’s not actually your starship, you know,” he pointed out mildly. “I’m sure the BSC would like to get her back intact at the end of the day.”

  “I’m not planning on breaking it,” she replied a bit snippily. “And it’s not like I’m really going to be the one in charge of this side of the operation, either. If memory serves, you’re the senior member of this team.”

  “Nonsense! No Technician class worker from Hakim could possibly be senior to a Patrician like you. Your lightest whim is my command, Mistress. Within reason, of course.”

  “Oh, of course!” Yana’s tone was sarcastic, but her eyes were thoughtful as she studied the lines of the sleek little starship’s image. “And speaking of handing ships back over intact, just how was the Survey Corps able to lay its hands on this one so promptly?”

  “They didn’t.” Anton shrugged. “That is, they didn’t have to ‘lay hands’ on anything; they own the Brixton’s Comet outright, and have—according to Uncle Jacques—for over thirty T-years. They just didn’t get around to mentioning it to anyone.”

  Yana smiled at Anton’s use of the we’re-less-than-totally-fond-of-him-but-he’s-not-all-that-bad nickname Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou had received from the small party of spies planning on sneaking onto the most dangerous planet in the galaxy. No one was quite certain how it had begun, although Yana suspected it stemmed from the conferences which both he and his formidable niece had attended in the Old Star Kingdom, but it had been Victor Cachat who’d first used it—completely deadpan—to Benton-Ramirez y Chou’s face. To his credit, the half-sized Beowulfer had simply gone right ahead with the abstruse point he’d been explaining at the time without so much as a blink. From his reaction and from what she knew about the BSC, Yana wouldn’t have been especially surprised to discover that some of his team members during his own time in Beowulf’s special forces had called him the same thing. Or something even more disrespectful, given the BSC’s informality in the field and just how well he’d performed there. It was the sort of backhanded compliment elite forces routinely paid to those they most respected. Whatever the reason, he seemed perfectly comfortable with it.

  And it certainly took less time to say than his surname did.

  “And just how sure are they that no one outside the BSC knows that they’ve owned her outright for years and years?” she asked.

  “Fairly confident.” Anton shrugged again. “That’s about as good as it gets in this business, you know. They bought her—had her built, really, right here in the Hidalgo Yard—through about six layers of shell companies, and they’ve operated her on a lease basis ever since. And according to Uncle Jacques, she’s only been used twice in all that time for specific covert operations. They’ve actually earned back her construction costs several times over by now, all through legitimate leases, and she’s been leased so many times, by so many different lessees, that she has an absolutely ironclad history, no matter how deep anyone looks from the outside. About the only way anyone could consider her suspect would be for the ‘anyone’ in question to have someone deep enough inside the BSC to know all about her. And if they’ve got anyone that deep, we’re all screwed before we ever leave Beowulf, so I figure we might as well operate on the assumption that her identity’s at least as secure as ours are going to be.”

  Yana considered that for a moment, then nodded. For all her often deliberately “lowbrow” public persona, the ex-Scrag was ferociously intelligent, and while her actual experience and skill set tended more towards focused mayhem than covert operations, she’d had enough experience operating with the duo of Cachat & Zilwicki to accept Anton’s analysis without too many qualms.

  Now he manipulated the image, expanding it until they could make out the hull’s details.

  “She’s a nice little ship, actually,” he pointed out with a connoisseur’s enthusiasm. “Only about forty-five thousand tons, of course, but in most ways she’s a lot like Duchess Harrington’s personal yacht, the Tankersley. She’s fitted up on a rather more luxurious scale than the duchess ever considered necessary, and she doesn’t have accommodations for quite as many warm bodies, but the basic power plant and automation are virtually identical.”

  “That’s good, considering how little I know about the guts of a starship,” Yana observed dryly. She was a skilled small-craft pilot, at home behind the controls of anything from high-performance air-breathing atmospheric craft to heavy-lift cargo shuttles or an all-up armored assault shuttle, but all of that experience was strictly sub-light.

  “Don’t worry,” Anton said reassuringly. “I know my way around a starship’s innards just fine, and this design incorporates so much automation—and so many multiply redundant backup systems—that the possibility of any sort of serious malfunction’s effectively nonexistent. And,” he added feelingly, “she’s not only one hell of a lot younger than Hali Sowle, but she’s been properly maintained for her entire life.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I’ve spent long enough drifting around playing cards for one lifetime, thank you very much.”

  “Me, too.” Anton grinned. “And while we’re on the subject of reasons not to worry, the reason she’s got all that automation is that she was intended from the beginning to be operated by a two-person crew. It’s not like I’m going to need a lot of assistant engineers, and I’ll probably be able to find time in my arduous schedule to do any astrogating we need, as well.”

  “You get us there in one piece, and I’ll be happy,” Yana told him. Brixton’s Comet’s normal-space controls were essentially little more than an upgraded and fancified version of a regular cargo shuttle. In fact, they were a bit simpler even than that, since the yacht had never been intended for atmospheric flight. Of course, there was the minor matter of the Visigoth Wormhole to consider. Which reminded her . . .

  “You do realize that getting us there in one piece includes getting us through the damned wormhole, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Between Visigoth’s traffic control, the ship’s computers, and my own odd few decades of naval service, I’m sure we’ll be able to limp through it somehow,” he assured her.

  “Yeah, sure,” she agreed, eyes fixed on the holograph.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said in a rather more reassuring tone. “We’ll be fine at least as far as the transportation’s involved. And we’ll be a lot more comfortable than the
others will.”

  “Well, than Andrew and Steph will be, anyway,” Yana corrected him with a smile, and he chuckled.

  “Actually, I think they’re probably going to be more comfortable than Victor is,” he said. “Working crew berths aboard liners like the Pygmalion may not be luxury suites, but they aren’t exactly dungeon cells, either. Their quarters will actually be more comfortable—and probably more spacious—than anything Andrew had growing up on Parmley Station, and they’ll be a hell of a lot better than anything Steph had as a seccy growing up in Mendel. But poor Victor! Can you even imagine how badly his revolutionary’s instincts are going to revolt against a first-class suite on one of the fanciest luxury liners in space?” Anton shook his head, his sad expression belied by the twinkle in his deep eyes. “I foresee great angst on his part!”

  “Bull.” Yana laughed. “You know exactly how he and the kaja will be spending their time in that first-class suite of theirs!”

  “I have no idea what you could possibly be talking about,” Anton said virtuously, and Yana laughed again.

  She had a point, Anton conceded, and even if she hadn’t had one, Victor Cachat was nothing if not adaptable. And the fact that Mesa was one of Pygmalion’s regular stops (and that her captain owed Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou several very sizable personal favors) was going to prove very useful. The ship, one of the Tobias Lines’ elite vessels, had exactly zero connection with anything Beowulfan and the line’s owners had been among the Solarian League’s most vociferous critics of “Manticoran mercantile imperialism” for the last forty or fifty T-years. They deeply resented Manticoran penetration of what they considered to be rightfully “their” markets, especially as that penetration pushed them further and further out of the bulk freight carrying trade and into the passenger traffic. They couldn’t complain about their profit margin on the fast, sleek liners they continued to operate, but a very high profit margin on a couple of dozen vessels came in a poor second compared to a moderate profit margin on several score vessels.