“Ah, excellent.” Fowler cleared his throat. “Time is short, I’m afraid: Got a meeting of the Construction Subcommittee to chair in an hour. You have something that calls for extreme measures?”
“Yes.” Reynolds smiled again, concealing his minor irritation at being so preempted. “Alas, we have a minor problem. That fine fellow Mr. Burgeson is apparently trespassing on our turf. I’ve had a tipoff from certain sources”—not mentioning Elder Cheung and his magical powers, or his strange associate, the Dutch doctor—“that Erasmus is, not to put too fine a point on it, dealing with persons of interest. There’s some question as to what he is doing; I haven’t been able to get an informer into his organization. But the secrecy with which he is conducting his affairs is suggestive. Certainly it’s not any activity that falls within the portfolio of the commissioner for state truth. I believe he is in league with wreckers and subversives, and I would appreciate the cooperation of your departments in, ah, distinguishing the sheep from the goats.”
Jennings tilted his head on one side thoughtfully. “I’m sure we can work together on this matter—if Citizen Burgeson is acting against the best interests of the people.” A caveat from Justice was to be expected.
Reynolds nodded. It didn’t signify opposition as such, merely that Jennings knew exactly what was going on and had no intention of being strung up as a scapegoat for Reynolds’s move against the rival directorate. “Of course,” he said unctuously. “There must be proceedings with all due process to confirm or disprove guilt, absolutely! But I think it would be best if they were handled in the Star Court with all available speed, precision, and discretion”—in other words, secretly and hastily—“and the prisoners segregated. If there’s actual subversion within the party’s highest echelons, we will need to obtain absolute proof before we arrest a party commissioner. And if not—again, it would be best if it were handled quietly. The scope for embarrassment is enormous and it would reflect badly on the party as an institution.”
Fowler shrugged. “It can be done, but it’ll cost you,” he said bluntly. “There’s a new interrogation and processing block scheduled for development on Long Island. Or I could do you a prison hulk.”
“A prison hulk?” Reynolds’s eyes lit up: “Capital! That would be just the ticket!” After the initial shock, he’d paid close attention to Cheung’s sales pitch—and spent time in subsequent meetings attempting to deduce the limitations of the world-walkers’ abilities. A steam yacht with decent owner’s quarters and a train with sleeping car were already on his department’s budget—officially to make it easier for the commissioner for internal security to travel safely between offices, unofficially to insure his safety against world-walking killers. “Do you have anything offshore near the Massachusetts coastline? Preferably with an antimutiny plug?” (Explosive scuttling charges had proven a most effective tool in preventing prison mutinies under the ancien régime.)
“I think something along those lines can be provided.” Fowler pulled out a notebook. “How many berths do you need, and when and where will the arrests take place?”
“Number: unknown, but not more than a thousand at the absolute maximum. More likely under a hundred in the first instance, then a flow of stragglers for processing. Somewhere within a couple of hours of Boston. To be moored in deep water—not less than thirty feet beneath the keel—and not less than a mile offshore. If you could set it up within the next two days I would be eternally grateful…?”
“I’ll see what we can do.” Fowler put his notebook away. “I take it the detainees are, er, disposable?”
“If necessary.” Reynolds nodded.
“I didn’t hear that,” Jennings said fastidiously.
“Of course not.”
“Jolly good, then.” Jennings stood. “I’ll see that a circuit tribunal under Star Rules is at your men’s disposal in Boston two days hence. Now if you don’t mind, I have a dreadful pile of paperwork to catch up on…?” He sighed. “These wreckers and subversives! I swear we’re going to run out of rope before they’re all hanged.”
* * *
The fortified great house had seen better days: Its walls were fire-scorched, half the downstairs windows were bricked up, the hastily applied mortar still weeping salts across the stone blocks of its facade, and the stable doors had been crudely removed. But it was still inhabitable—which counted for something—and the ten-meter radio mast sprouting from the roofline made it clear who its inhabitants must be.
“You wanted to see me, sir.”
The office on the second floor had once been a squire’s wife’s boudoir; it still smelled faintly of rosewater and gunpowder. The bed had been broken up for firewood and scrap, used to reinforce the shutters during the brief siege, and today the room was dominated by a green folding aluminum map table.
“Yes. Come in, sit down, make yourself comfortable. I’ve got Pepsi if you need a drink.”
“That would be wonderful, sir.”
Rudi sat tensely on the narrow edge of the camp chair while Earl-Major Riordan poured him a mug of foaming brown cola with his own hands. The lack of a batman did not escape his notice, but if Riordan wanted to preserve the social niceties … It must be bad news, he decided, a hollowness below his ribs waiting to be filled by the exotic imported beverage.
“I want to pick your brains about aircraft,” Riordan said stiffly. “Think of this as an informal brainstorming session. Nothing we discuss is for ears beyond this room, by the way.”
Really? Rudi leaned forward. “Brainstorming, sir?”
Riordan sighed. “Her Majesty”—he paused, and poked at a paper on his desk—“has written me a letter, and you’re the man to answer it.” He looked slightly pained, as if his lunch had disagreed with his digestion.
“Sir.”
“You know about the British.” They spoke hochsprache. “She is talking to them. She wants an aircraft. Something that can be built for them within two years and that outstrips anything they can imagine. Something for war.”
“To be built there?” Rudi shook his head. “I thought they were stuck in the steam age?”
“They have aircraft. Two wings, spaced above each other like so”—Riordan gestured—“slow, lumbering things. Made of wood and sailcloth.”
“Really?” Rudi perked up. “And Her Majesty wants to build something better? What for?”
“They’ve got a war on.” Riordan finally sat down in the chair opposite, and Rudi relaxed slightly. “The French are blockading them, there is a threat of bombardment from aerial tenders offshore. I told her to give the British something for their navy, one of those submarines—you’ve seen Das Boot? no?—but she says ships take too long. They understand not to expect too much of aircraft, so build something revolutionary.” He took a deep breath. “Give me an eagle’s view. What should I be asking?”
“Huh.” Rudi rubbed his chin. It was itching; he hadn’t had a chance to shave for three days, scurrying hither and yon trying to arrange bodies to haul across the ultralight parts he’d been buying. “What engines do they have? That’s going to limit us. And metallurgy. Electronics … I assume they’ve got vacuum tubes? It’ll have to be something from the nineteen-forties. A warbird. Two engines for range, if it’s going offshore, and it needs to be able to carry bombs or guns.” He paused. “You know a plane on its own isn’t going to do much? It needs tactical doctrine, pilot training, navigation tools and radar if they can build it, ideally an integrated air defense—”
Riordan waved an impatient hand. “Yes, that’s not the point. We need what Her Majesty calls a technology demonstrator.”
“Can they do aluminum engine blocks?” Rudi answered his own question: “Maybe not, but aluminum goes back to the nineteenth century—we can work on them. Hmm. Engines will be a bottleneck, but … P-38? No, it’s a pure fighter. Hard to fly, too. If they’re still doing wood—” He stopped.
“Wood?” Riordan frowned.
“We’d need to work out how to produce the en
gines, and we’d need modern epoxy glues instead of the shit they had back then, but. But.” Rudi shook his head. “I think I know what you want,” he said.
“Do you?”
“The de Havilland Mosquito. The British built tons of them during the war, kept them flying until the nineteen sixties—it was originally a fast two-seat bomber, but they hung guns on it and used it as a fighter too. Made out of plywood, with two Merlin engines—they were a nineteen-thirties design, so the metallurgy might be up to it. Long range, fast; if they’re still using biplanes it’ll run rings around anything they’ve seen. If the metallurgy is better and quality control is up to it, I’d go for the P-51D, the Mustang. Faster, single-engined, similar range, more maneuverable. But for a first cut, I’d go for something made of wood with two engines. Safer that way.”
Riordan nodded slowly. “Could you build one?”
“Could.” Rudi carefully placed his half-full mug on the map table. He tried not to exhale Pepsi. “Build one?”
“For the British.” Riordan wasn’t smiling. “With unlimited resources, but a knife over your head.”
“Urk.” Rudi thought for a while. “Maybe. But I’d hedge my bets.”
“How?”
“I’d start by talking to their existing aircraft designers. And bring the biggest damn library of metallurgy, electronics, materials, and aerodynamics textbooks I can find. The designs for those nineteen-forties warbirds—you can buy them on eBay for a couple of hundred dollars—CD-ROMs with just about everything on them, technical manuals, patents, blueprints, everything. But you’ll probably take longer to build an exact replica of one from the blueprints than it would take a clued-up manufacturer on a war footing to invent a new one and build it from scratch. Much better to grab all the textbooks and histories, copies of Jane’s Aircraft, manuals, ephemera—everything—and drop them in front of a team who’re already used to working together. Hell, give them a history of air warfare and blueprints of the aircraft and they’ll have a field day.”
“Huh.” Riordan’s frown deepened. “That may not be possible.”
“Oh.” Rudi deflated slightly. “That would make it a lot harder. If we can only use Clan members, it’s nearly impossible. There aren’t even a dozen of us who know an aileron from a slotted flap. But we could do the liaison thing, act as librarians, figure out what a design team needs to know and get it for them. Hell. We could go recruiting, you know? Look for aerospace engineers in trouble with the law, offer them a bolt-hole and a salary and a blind eye if they’ll work for us.”
“Not practical. That last idea, I mean. But the liaison idea, hmm. Can you get me a list of names?”
“Certainly, sir. When do you need it by?” But what about the ultralights? he wondered.
“You have two hours. Here’s a pad and a pen; Comms and Crypto are downstairs on the left if you need to ask any questions. You have my seal.” Riordan tossed a heavily embossed metal ring on the table in front of Rudi. Rudi flinched, as if from a poisonous mushroom. “I’ll be back at five and I need to send the answer to Her Majesty by six. Your task is to identify those of our people who you will need in order to help the British develop their aerospace sector. Oh, and remember to include runway construction, fuel and repair equipment and facilities, munitions, bombsights, gunsights, training, and anything else I’ve forgotten. That’s a higher priority than your ultralight squadron, I’m afraid, but it’s a much bigger job. The Pepsi’s all yours.”
* * *
Late afternoon of a golden summer day. On a low ridge overlooking a gently sloping vale, a party of riders—exclusively male, of gentle breeding, discreetly armed but not under arms—paused for refreshment. To the peasants bent sweating over sickle and sheaf, they would be little more than dots on the horizon, as distant as the soaring eagle high above, and of as little immediate consequence.
“I fear this isn’t a promising site,” said one of the onlookers, a hatchet-faced man in early middle age. “Insufficient cover—see the brook yonder? And the path over to the house, around that outcrop?—we’d stick out like pilliwinked fingers.”
“Bad location for helicopters, though,” said a younger man. “See, the slope of the field: makes it hard for them to land. And for road access, I think we can add some suitable obstacles. If the major is right and they can bring vehicles across, they won’t have an easy time of it.”
Earl Bentbranch hung back, at the rear of the party. He glanced at his neighbor, Stefan ven Arnesen. Ven Arnesen twined his fingers deep in his salt-and-pepper beard, a distant look on his face. He noticed Bentbranch watching and nodded slightly.
“Do you credit it?” Bentbranch murmured.
Ven Arnesen thought for a moment. “No,” he said softly, “no, I don’t.” He looked at the harvesters toiling in the strip fields below. It didn’t look like the end of the world as he knew it. “I can’t.”
“They may not come for a generation. If ever. To throw everything away out of panic…”
Ven Arnesen spared his neighbor a long, appraising look. “They’ll come. Look, the harvest comes. And with it the poppies. Their war dead—their families used to wear poppies to remember them, did you know that?”
“You had your tenants plant dream poppies in the divisions.”
“Yes. If the bastards come for us, it’s the least I can do. Give it away”—he looked out across his lands, as far as the eye could see—“for free.” He coughed quietly. “I’m too old to uproot myself and move on, my friend. Let the youngsters take to the road, walk the vale of tears as indigent tinkers just like our great-great-grandfathers’ grandsires once more. These are my lands and my people and I’ll not be moving. All this talk of business models and refugees can’t accommodate what runs in my veins.”
“So you’ll resist?”
Ven Arnesen raised an eyebrow. “Of course. And you haven’t made your mind up yet.”
“I’m … wavering. I went to school over there, do you remember? I speak Anglische, I could up sticks and go to this new world they’re talking of, I’d be no more or less of a stranger there than I was for seven years in Baltimore. But I could dig my own midden, too, or run to Sky Father’s priests out of mindless panic. I could do any number of stupid or distasteful things, were I so inclined, but I don’t generally do such things without good reason. I’d need a very good reason to abandon home and hearth and accept poverty and exile for life.”
“The size of the reason becomes greater the older one gets,” ven Arnesen agreed. “But I’m not convinced by this nonsense about resisting the American army, either. I’ve seen their films. I’ve spent a little time there. Overt resistance will be difficult. Whatever Ostlake and his cronies think.”
“I don’t think they believe anything else, to tell you the truth. If—when—they come, the Americans will outgun us as heavily as we outgunned the Pervert’s men. And there will be thousands of them, tens of thousands. With tanks and helicopters. Sure, we’ll kill a few of them. And that will make it worse, it’ll make them angry. They’re not good at dealing with locals, not good at native tongues. They’ll kill and they’ll burn and they’ll raise every man’s hand against them and their occupation, and it will still take a bloody five years of pain and tears and death before they’ll even think about changing their approach. By which time—”
“Look.” Ven Arnesen raised his arm and pointed.
“Where?”
“Look up.” A ruler-straight white line was inching across the turquoise vault of the sky, etching it like a jeweler’s diamond on glass. A tiny speck crawled through the air, just ahead of the moving tip of the line. “Is that what, what I think it is?”
“A contrail.” Bentbranch’s cheeks paled. “It’s them.”
“Are you sure? Could it be something else? Something natural—”
“No. Their jets make those cloud-trails, when they move through the sky.”
“And they look down on us from above? Do you suppose they can see us now? Lightning Child st
rike them blind.”
“I very much fear that they’re anything but blind.” Bentbranch looked away as the aircraft’s course led it westwards, towards the sunset. “Though how much detail they can see from up there … well, that tears it, of course. They will be drawing up maps, my lord. And they care naught that we know their mind. I find that a singularly ominous sign. Do you differ, can I ask?”
“No.” Ven Arnesen shook his head as he stared after the aircraft. “No.” But Bentbranch was unable to discern whether he was answering the question or railing against the sign in the heavens.
Ahead of them, the main group of riders, Lord Ostlake and his men, had noticed the contrail; arms were pointing and there were raised voices. “We should warn them,” Bentbranch said, nudging his horse forward. Ven Arnesen paid him no attention, but stared at the sky with nerve-struck eyes.
Out over the ocean in the east, the U-2’s contrail was already falling apart, like the dreams of future tranquility that it had so carelessly scrawled across.
It would not take many more forty-thousand-foot overflights to update the air force’s terrain maps.
* * *
The old woman had been reading a book, and it still lay open on her lap, but her attention was elsewhere. There was a discreet knock at the door. She looked up as it opened, and adjusted her spectacles, unsurprised at the identity of her visitor. “Yes?”
“Your grace.” The door closed behind him. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
“No, no…” She slid a bookmark into place, then carefully closed the book and placed it on the table beside her. “I’ve got plenty of time. All the time in the world.”
“Ah, yes. Well, I’d like to apologize for leaving you to your own devices for so long. I trust you have been well-attended?”
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