Cauldron of Ghosts (eARC)

by David Weber

  Purely as an idle exercise, Anderson tried to calculate how much money it would take to get Ganny to withdraw her proclamation. The number would be large, certainly, but very far short of infinity. The Parmley clan’s matriarch wasn’t exactly avaricious, since it was never her own wealth that concerned her. But she kept an eye out for the interests of her kin like no one Nancy had ever seen.

  Now that she’d finagled a full suite of prolong treatments for every member of the clan who could benefit from them and also bargained to get excellent educations for all the youngsters—and even a few of the adults who had a mind to go to school—what fresh field could she aspire to conquer?

  There had be something, knowing Ganny, but what?.

  Loren Damewood had apparently been undertaking the same exercise. And, as was the XO’s way, didn’t hesitate from putting his speculations in words.

  “Oh, come on, Ganny. There’s got to be some price you’d settle for. What have you got a hankering for these days? Mansions on the shores of the Emerald Sea for each and every one of your kinfolk, down to the babes and toddlers? All-expenses-paid cruises on luxury liners through the Core worlds?”

  Nancy couldn’t resist joining in. “How about precious metals and jewelry? That’s been a winner for going on ten thousand years.”

  Ganny’s sneer was every bit as flamboyant as her cursing. “Even if such a price existed—which for the record, it doesn’t—what difference would it make to you? Between the whole lot—scrape it up from every member of the BSC anywhere in the galaxy—you couldn’t come close. Seeing as how ‘BSC’ really stands for Beggars’ Succor and Care.’”

  Damewood clutched his chest. “Oh, Ganny! That’s cold!”

  * * *

  Csilla Ferenc watched the departing freighter on the screen. She had no interest in the vessel itself. The receding image was just something to look at—and wasn’t even real any longer, at this distance. The software used by Balcescu Station’s astrogation control substituted a stylized symbol for an actual image of a ship when it was too far away to be seen clearly with optical equipment.

  She was just brooding. The departure of the Hali Soul—no, Sowle—had gone with even less notice than a tramp freighter normally would have gotten. That was because traffic through Balcescu had risen sharply over the past few weeks.

  What bothered Ferenc wasn’t the heavy workload, so much. She didn’t enjoy it, but the overtime pay was nice. No, what bothered her was that she didn’t know the reason for the increase in traffic.

  Sure, the extra ships that came through were all from Mesa and had impeccable papers. (Which were electronic, not molecular, of course; but the old term was still used by most traffic control services.) But maybe that was the problem. Their documentation was too good, in a way. In Ferenc’s experience, the documentation for real shipping concerns got frayed at the edges after a while.

  Not that of this additional traffic, though. Their credentials and bona fides and bills of lading looked like they’d just come out of the virtual presses at the headquarters of Manpower, the Jessyk Combine, Axelrod Transtellar, and Technodyne.

  They had serious backing behind them, too. Any questions beyond the routine ones got stonewalled—and both times she’d tried to push a little, Csilla had gotten slapped down by her superiors.

  Slapped down hard and fast.

  It was the speed of the reprimands that had struck her the most. The management of Balcescu were rude bastards and had been as long as Ferenc had been at the station. Reprimands were always a lot harsher than they should have been.

  But they never came all that quickly. The station’s bosses were as lazy as they were nasty. Usually, you’d find out a tick had been placed in your records a week or two—sometimes a month or two—after the incident that triggered it.

  Not now. Those two reprimands had been given to her within hours. Within less than an hour, in the case of the second one.

  And all she’d asked for was identification for the three individuals listed as “supercargo; special assignments”! Normally, she would have gotten chewed out if she hadn’t insisted on an explanation.

  Something was going on. And what bothered Ferenc was that the explanation that kept coming to her made her profoundly uneasy.

  At that moment, as it happened, the person sitting at the control station next to her voiced her own worries.

  “Csilla, do you think there’s really anything to all the Mantie hollering about a ‘secret conspiracy’ behind Manpower?”

  Ferenc glanced around the control room quickly. The only other person within hearing range was András Kocsis, and he wasn’t paying any attention because he was in the middle of directing an incoming freighter.

  She wasn’t worried about Steve anyway. He was just a working stiff like them.

  Reassured, she turned to the man who’d asked the question, Béla Harsányi. “Are you trying to get into trouble?”

  Béla looked uncomfortable—but stubborn. “Come on, Csilla. You’ve got to have been wondering about it yourself.” He motioned toward his own control screen. “I mean, look at the traffic we’ve been getting. Some of these ships we’ve never seen at all before, and many of the ones we have are acting…You know. Weird.”

  Weird. Depending on how you looked at it, that was either discretion or circumlocution. In plain language, what Harsányi meant was that the crews of the slave ships—some of them, anyway—hadn’t been behaving in their usual manner when they came into the station on what was still called “shore leave.”

  First off, a lot fewer of them took shore leave than normal.

  Secondly, and more tellingly, they hadn’t been behaving like arrogant assholes when they did. They’d seemed a little subdued, actually—as if they knew something themselves that was making them a little nervous.

  She kept her hair in a braid when she was on duty. That was an old habit from her days on a station whose artificial gravity had been erratic. One experience with being caught trying to follow traffic with her long hair flying all over and impeding her vision had been enough.

  She might have given up the habit after she got to Balcescu, since there was no danger at all that this station was going to suffer from the same problem. Balcescu Station wasn’t a flea-bitten third rate transfer point in the sticks, it was Manpower’s principal depot in this whole star region. But by then she’d found that being able to fiddle with the braid was a way of calming herself down when she got a little agitated.

  She was fiddling with it now. “I don’t know, Béla. Yeah, sure, I’ve wondered myself. But…:

  She let go of the braid and shrugged. “First, we’ll probably never know. And second, let’s hope we never know because the only way I can see we’d find out…”

  She decided to let the sentence die a natural death. But Harsányi’s lips peeled back, revealing clenched teeth.

  “Yeah, right,” he said. “The only way we’ll find out is if the Manties decide to prove it—in which case we’re dead meat anyway.”

  That was…something of an exaggeration, Csilla thought. Balcescu Station wasn’t anywhere near the most likely avenues of approach the Mantie fleet would take if it decided to strike at Mesa. But it couldn’t be ruled out.

  Not with the Manties. Unlike the great majority of the population of Mesa—not to mention the morons in the Solarian League—Ferenc and Harsányi knew the realities of interstellar warfare.

  Some of those realities, anyway. Enough to know that the Manties, if they decided to be, could be the scariest people in the universe for people like her and Béla.

  First, the Manties hated slavers—and she and Béla were part and parcel of the slave trade even if they didn’t have any personal contact with slaves themselves. Second, Csilla had just celebrated her fortieth birthday—and the Manties had been at war for more than half her lifespan. Thirdly, going by the record, they were awfully damn good at it.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Csilla said. “’Dead meat’s a little ext
reme, don’t you think?”

  But by the time she finished the sentence, she was back to fiddling with her braid.

  * * *

  Elsewhere in Balcescu Station, in a much fancier work area, someone else was fretting over the same issue. That was the station’s CO, Zoltan Somogyi, Csilla Ferenc’s ultimate boss in the depot and the originator of the two reprimands that she was still smarting from.

  Somogyi himself had forgotten about the reprimands—and done so within hours. He hadn’t issued them because he was worried about Csilla Ferenc. He barely knew the woman. She worked for him but he was the top manager of the Station. So did almost eight hundred other people.

  No, he’d issued those reprimands, along with more than a dozen similar ones, because he’d been told in no uncertain terms by people he knew even less well than he did Ferenc that they would tolerate no interference with what they were doing—about which he knew even less. The one thing—the only thing, really—he did know about the people who’d given him those instructions was that their authority was paramount. Within Manpower, Inc., as well as…

  Beyond it. How far beyond it he didn’t know. And that was what was causing him to lose sleep.

  People like Ferenc and Harsányi knew nothing of the Mesan Alignment, not even of its existence. So far as they knew, they were simply employees of one of the giant corporations that effectively ruled their home planet. And if the work that corporation did was unsavory in the eyes of much of the human race, they were largely indifferent to the matter—just as, in ages past, men who went into the bowels of a planet to dig out its mineral wealth didn’t think much about the fact that many people thought the work they did was crude, dirty and beneath their own dignity.

  In truth, Zoltan Somogyi didn’t know much more about the Mesan Alignment than his employees. The difference was that he knew it did exist although he thought it was nothing more than an organization dedicated to the secret uplift of the Mesan genome. He had hopes he might eventually be asked to join, in fact.

  But there were less benign forces in Mesan society, who were even more secretive and a lot more dangerous. Somogyi was highly placed enough to have realized years before that someone, somewhere, was pulling the strings.

  Who they were…he didn’t know, although he suspected they were Manpower’s innermost circle.

  What their goals were…he didn’t know.

  What their plans were for him…he didn’t know that, either.

  What worried him was that he thought such plans probably existed. And whatever they were, probably weren’t going to be good for him. Not because those mysterious hidden powers bore any animosity toward him but simply because he was beneath their notice.

  When a behemoth makes plans to go somewhere, do those plans take into consideration the small and fragile creatures that might get underfoot along the way?

  Chapter 28

  “Well, we’re back.” Berry started toward Hugh but then stopped and gave him a wary look. “Any problems while we were gone?”

  Hugh marked the place and set down his tablet on a side table next to the very comfortable-looking armchair he was sitting in. “Other than two insurrections—both suppressed with great bloodshed—three attempted coup d’états—you’ll find the heads of the ringleaders on pikes lining Vesey Boulevard—and one disgruntled constitutional fetishist who exiled himself rather than submit to royal tyranny, no. There were no problems. I don’t count the six plays, three street performances, eighteen vids and two old-fashioned pamphlets which denounced the brutal rule of the Usurper Arai. Speaking of which—”

  A large forefinger swept across the group entering the salon behind Berry. “You’re all under arrest. It turns out I have a long-suppressed megalomaniacal personality. Who knew?”

  Berry gave him a look that combined exasperation and (some) amusement. Then, proceeded to squelch the usurper’s scheme by the simple expedient of sitting on his lap, wrapping her arm around his neck and giving him a kiss.

  Meanwhile, Jeremy took a seat facing Hugh while Princess Ruth and Web DuHavel sat on a couch at right angles to him. “Out of idle curiosity,” asked Ruth, “how much of that has any truth at all to it?”

  Hugh extricated himself from the royal embrace. “There were a couple of vids made. One of them was a spoof, the other was…deranged. And there really was a guy who went into exile in protest against what he called constitutional irregularities. He posted a long list of them on a public web site. It’s still up, if you’re curious. It’s called ‘The Road to Serfdom.’”

  “Constitutional irregularities, it is?” DuHavel shook his head. “Interesting concept—given that Torch hasn’t yet adopted a formal constitution.”

  “Yup. He listed that as Irregularity Number One.”

  Ruth frowned. “Now that I think about it, why haven’t we adopted a constitution?”

  Jeremy nodded in the direction of DuHavel. “That’s the prime minister’s doing. He’s been stalling the matter with all his legendary skill and cunning. I’d accuse him of plotting against the nation except that I agree with him. The last thing we need to be doing right now is wasting time and energy wrangling over the provisions of a formal constitution.”

  Ruth looked at DuHavel. “Can you explain your reasoning? I’m not necessarily quarreling with you, but it seems…I don’t know. Kind of”—she chuckled—“well. Irregular.”

  “I think we’d do a lot better to let things shake down for a few years before we tried to put anything in writing.” DuHavel made a face. “Right now is not the time. We don’t have much in the way of collective experience and most of our individual citizens have even less. Slavery’s not exactly a great school for learning constitutional principles.”

  Web started rolling up his sleeves, which was a habitual mannerism whenever he was expounding on something. “One of the keys to a good constitution is to keep it short and sweet. The great-great-grand-daddy of them all, the constitution of the ancient United States of America, was less than five thousand words long. That includes what they called the ‘Bill of Rights.’ Part of the reason they were able to keep their constitution that short was because they’d had years of experience trying to manage their affairs with an earlier version of it that proved to have a lot of defects. In contrast, lots of constitutionally-based polities have tried to rush the process. Sometimes it works, but usually what results are hideously massive and tortuous documents that please nobody except lawyers. I’d just as soon avoid that.”

  “But what—” Ruth was interrupted by a chime. That came from a large screen on the wall behind her which was currently depicting a pastoral scene but doubled as the salon’s com unit.

  “Are we expecting to hear from anyone?” Berry asked.

  Hugh scratched his chin. “Well…not exactly ‘expecting.’ But I’m pretty sure that’ll be either Yuri Radamacher or Sharon Justice. Or both, more likely.”

  Berry’s eyebrows went up. “They’re here? On Torch?”

  “Got here two days ago.”

  “Well, accept the call, then.”

  Hugh pressed the acceptance key built into the side table and the big screen came to life.

  Sure enough, it was Radamacher and Justice. The high commissioner had presented his credentials to Queen Berry and Prime Minister DuHavel a couple of weeks ago. But that had been in the course of a very short visit he’d made to Torch shortly after he reached his new post. He’d spent most of his time on Erewhon.

  “Hello, Your Mousety,” said Radamacher.

  “I love that title,” Berry said, beaming.

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “Ramses and Nebuchadnezzar are spinning in their graves.”

  Radamacher smiled and continued. “We’d like to speak to you, please.”

  Berry looked around. “Uh…which one of us? Or two or three?”

  “All of you. Or at least, all of you that I can see in the screen. To enumerate, in addition to yourself, that would be Princess Ruth, Prime Minister DuHavel, Secretary of War
Jeremy X and Secretary of the Posterior Arai.”

  Berry burst into laughter. “Did you really use that title?”

  Hugh shrugged. “It was your idea, remember? What the hell, I thought it was sort of charming—and it helped keep tempers from rising since most people understood that my so-called ‘post’ was ad hoc and jury-rigged.”

  While he’d been talking, Berry had pressed the key which indicated to the security guards outside that the callers were to be allowed into the royal presence.

  A short time later, the door opened and the two Havenites came in. Berry indicated the unoccupied couch to her left that faced Ruth and Web. The four pieces of furniture in the center of the room—two couches and two large armchairs—formed an oblong around a low and large table.

  “Have a seat,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”

  After Radamacher and Justice sat down, the high commissioner etc. etc. nodded toward his companion. “Sharon has some information she thinks we should share with you. Officially, I’m not here, by the way.”

  Web got up and moved toward a side table. “Something to drink? Tea? Coffee? Khava juice?”

  Yuri peered suspiciously at a beaker filled with a thick-looking liquid colored somewhere between amber and terra cotta. “What’s khava juice? And what does it taste like?”

  “It’s made from khava—that’s a root, apparently, not a fruit—grown on Kapteyn 2. I have no idea what it tastes like. And I’m not about to find out, either.”

  Jeremy chuckled. “That’s our prime minister. Set in his ways. Conservative through and through.” Which was perhaps an odd way to describe the head of government of a nation created by a slave revolt—but the former leader of the Audubon Ballroom had his own way of looking at things.

  “As for what it tastes like,” Jeremy continued, “it tastes crappy. I mean, look at the stuff.”

  “Coffee, please,” said Sharon.

  “Unofficially, me too,” said Yuri.

  “Why are you not official?” asked Ruth. She waved her hand. “That’s an unofficial question, of course.”