She could see Howie was upset. “I should have known,” the President said simply.
“Yes, sir. But sir, you fire people. To the fearful, that means you might fire them for giving you bad news. In spite of the fact that you’ve only fired people for not telling you things, or getting them wrong.”
“Damn it! It’s Howie!”
“Yes, sir, of course, sir. Would you like me to leave the two of you alone to discuss what you’re going to do?”
He opened his mouth and shut it. After a pause, Howie shook his head and turned to the PM. “I realized Steph was playing me from the first time we met. But, I thought, she was going where I wanted to go, so no harm, no foul.
“Since then I’ve learned the meaning of ‘slippery slope.’ Steph, executive decisions are just that. Surely you understand?”
“Howie, one day I will be standing over the shoulder of an earnest young man or woman. I will tell them to shoot. And a dot on their screen will be turned into incandescent gas, along with every man, woman and child aboard. And make no mistake, Howie, our enemies will make sure that we’ll know everything significant about those who die. We’ll see their pictures, we’ll learn about their lives.”
“In the first Gulf War I dropped bombs on innocent women and children. It happens.”
“And did you whisper to yourself ‘If only I had the ear of the President, we could do this better?’”
He looked away. “Maybe.”
The Australian laughed. “I wasn’t even in the military and I thought that!”
“All I’m asking, sir, is to be heard. I’m satisfied with that. But, like anyone else, I wouldn’t mind the big jackpot — being in on the final decision.”
“Not yet,” he told her.
Both men were startled when Steph stood up, came close to the President and leaned up to kiss him on his cheek. “And you’ll understand, then, why some day I’ll be standing on that deck, giving that order, with you out of the loop? And more than anything, that’s what I want from this meeting?”
She turned and left without another word.
Bob spoke softly. “There’s an old saying: ‘Rather beard the lion in his den, than the poet amongst his pens.’ Clearly, the wag hadn’t met a professor of physics.”
Howie shook his head. “My problem is her motivation. She just wants to slide under the radar. Her idea of heaven is if no one knows her name a hundred years from now.”
“She’s leaving it to us to hog the limelight,” the PM said, agreeing. “Why does it bother you so much that she doesn’t seek fame?”
“Bob, we both know we took our jobs with one eye on the history books. I’m uncomfortable with someone who so clearly — and coldly — forgoes that.”
“Howie, men — and women — do things for different reasons. We know that; it’s the foundation of political power. Be it position, title, power, money — there’s always something. There are those, however rare, who seek their legacy in making things happen. She’s right, you know. If she was famous, she couldn’t do this. How many reporters, do you think, are asking her for interviews? I mean, she led the first manned interstellar expedition and she’s virtually unknown. She’s...”
He stopped talking suddenly and his face went gray. “Dear God!”
“What?”
He turned away and walked to a window and looked out.
“What?” Howie repeated.
Bob looked at him. “Once, long ago, after I won my first election, I told my wife I wasn’t a brave man. I avoided military service, having no desire to risk my life when bullets were flying around. Australians are fond of service with bullets flying around.
“She laughed at me. ‘You just told me that one day you want to be Prime Minister.’ Well, I had. And she looked me in the eye and said, ‘And just how many politicians have been murdered over the last few decades?’” He looked at Howie. “It seemed to me to be a reasonable risk; I have guards and all, right?
“Howie, she just said it. One day, she, or someone like her, will have to pull the trigger. That’s the real bottom line of this whole thing. Besmirch. That’s the operative word here. Besmirch. She doesn’t want to besmirch the exploration of space with events of a particularly hard nature that might become necessary. Benko and Chang are safe; they’ll never be close to a decision like that. And, if Stephanie Kinsella has any say in it, we won’t be either.
“We will have a Fleet, only it will be a Federation Fleet. It will be organized, more or less like Kinsella wants. If not now, as what happened to your Space Service, eventually. And one day, when someone has to pull the trigger — as we are all sure it will have to be pulled — the repercussions will rise up in the Fleet, to the Federation. Not to us. Not to our individual nations, but to something grander and bigger than all of us. A group, who, Kinsella willing, that has been designed to take the heat.”
“I’m not afraid of giving such an order,” the President mused.
“Nor would I hesitate. But that’s not the point. If either of us had to do it, it would get all wrapped up with hundreds of years of our history and related baggage. Questions would be raised about all sorts of issues — not necessarily having to do with why it had to be done. She’s right. The focus has to be on the Federation and its Fleet. They have to be seen to independent of all of us.
“I would have no objection if she stayed for our ‘executive’ executive sessions.”
“I don’t suppose I have any valid objections, either. Still, you have to admire one slick operator!”
“Howie, Australia has thirty-two nuclear weapons. Technically they aren’t weapons, since they are disassembled.”
The President blinked in astonishment. “And you’re telling me this because?”
“Because one reason you’ve never heard about it, is that any Australian PM who admitted to having a hand in secret nukes could kiss his job goodbye. But we all have. The day the Fleet is established and has some ships, I’ll announce we’re giving them all to the Federation.”
Howie exhaled long and slow. “And it doesn’t bother you that she either knew or guessed, and that you are doing exactly what she wants?”
“Just as it never bothered you to shower her with a couple of billion dollars and a nuclear reactor. She did what she said she would. She delivered the bacon. Dear God, I hope she delivers the bacon on this off-planet stuff.”
Howie wiped his face with both his hands, looking down. “You’ll pardon me if I hope she never has to deliver on her promise to shoot.”
“Except I hope if she has to, she will. And Howie, from here on out, I’m on her side. I’ll do anything I can to facilitate that outcome.”
In the lounge, Stephanie lifted her feet and put them on a coffee table, sipping on her ice tea. Charlie looked at her. “You’re suddenly smug.”
Stephanie Kinsella cocked her head to one side and then shrugged. “Sometimes I get carried away with my own importance. I don’t suppose you have a slave handy to whisper in my ear: ‘You are mortal, not a god. A woman, no more.’”
“Does that mean the conference isn’t going like you hoped?”
“No. Actually, the opposition wasn’t as formidable as I expected. With few exceptions, everyone sent the second string.”
“So, you’re smug, right?”
“I’m getting what I want. There are days I revel in it. Then I realize what it is I want and I want to hide myself away in a closet so I never have to face myself in the mirror.”
Charlie Rampling sighed. “I’m not stupid, Steph! When I sit down and think about what you’re up to, the things you’re doing, I go ‘Sheesh! I couldn’t do that!’”
“Do you know what Admiral Delgado told me the other day?”
“I can’t begin to imagine.”
“That, for the time being, expedition commands are going to be few and far between. That’ll ramp up steeply in the next five or ten years, but it’ll take time. After Procyon, I’ll have commanded one and a half missions. Time, he
told me, to let someone else have a shot.”
“I know you want to explore, Steph. I know what you’ve contributed to this... but maybe he’s right.”
“No maybe about it, Charlie. He is right. We don’t need one commander trained over and over at the expense of everyone else. He wants me to head up the transition of Space Service to Federation Fleet.”
“That’s important! Something you’ve worked really hard for! And this is a problem?”
Stephanie Kinsella patted Charlie’s hand. “No, no problem. It’s something I can deal with. It would help, though, if you could convince a certain Marine it would be in his best interest to rescue me sooner, rather than later. If nothing else, fake it.”
Kinsella (Kinsella Universe Book 1) Page 24
