by Victor Milán
The image of the Smiling One promulgated within the Draconis Combine was of a benevolent aesthete, of discriminating tastes and affable manner, a man who might pat schoolchildren on the head when they visited his own extensive gardens to present him poems they had written in praise of the Coordinator. Outside the Combine it was generally assumed that Indrahar would be happiest boiling those happy schoolchildren in a pot. Even Liao's dreaded Maskirovka viewed him thus, and admired him all the more for it.
Ninyu Kerai knew the truth. His adoptive father would boil those schoolchildren in an eyeblink if his duty to the Dragon demanded it. But he would take no pleasure in it. Giri overcomes ninjo; duty overrides human sentiment. That was the law of the Dragon.
Yet Subhash constantly badgered his heir not to neglect those human feelings, ninjo. Ninyu did not fully grasp that. But his father bade him, and he obeyed; so he was learning to appreciate sunset and salt-spray and the perfume of Hachiman lilacs.
But not so much that he didn't note instantly the scuff of a shoe against the paving stones. Something clicked, paused, clicked again, like someone trying to emulate the cricket's stridulation with a pair of dinner forks. He grimaced, and felt the muscles between his shoulder blades tighten. Just as he began to grasp that serenity toward which his adoptive father guided him, here came the hateful Katsuyama to spoil it.
He turned and there he was, dressed in his ludicrous beret and smock. In his hand was something that suggested a chronometer, though there were tiny dots and numbers arranged around the perimeter of it, and slim pointers, and no space for a digital readout.
Ninyu Kerai bit back his anger at the interruption. In the past, your anger has served you as a magnificent weapon, adoptive son, Subhash had told him. Yet it can turn in the hand and cut one like a Muramasa blade; it is a servant which can easily become one's master. The time has come to learn to put it aside.
Ninyu was trying. But he'd hated Enrico Katsuyama on sight.
"What do you have there, Associate Director?" he barked.
Katsuyama held the device up in his face, clicked the knob on top of it. Ninyu resisted the impulse to seize it and hurl it over the cliff into the sea. He observed that the thinnest pointer was sweeping around the circle, and the middle one more slowly.
"It's a stopwatch," the lumpy man said.
"Ridiculous. How would one ever read such a thing?"
Katsuyama turned it, peered at it as if he'd just found it under a leaf in the garden. "These hands sweep around and point out the time."
Ninyu scowled. "You joke."
"No, no, truthfully, Assistant Director. This is a very special stopwatch. It's almost a thousand years old. It was used in the credits and framing sequences on the ancient Terran flatvision show 60 Minutes."
"Indeed," Ninyu grunted. He actually had no idea what was appropriate to say, but he was damned if he'd let this toad set him at a loss.
Katsuyama bobbed his head enthusiastically. Moisture glistened at the corners of his mustache, Ninyu noticed with disgust, as if he had been chewing them.
"It's the newest addition to my collection," Katsuyama said. "I have Joseph Goebbels' microphone, a half-meter tall statue of Mickey Mouse, Indiana Jones' fedora, and the sweater worn by Franklin Roosevelt in his fireside chats, though I suspect it's merely a replica. All from the twentieth century."
"Why this obsession with that particular era?" asked Ninyu, who had no idea what Katsuyama was on about.
"Why, that period saw the dawn of the era of mass communications!"
Ninyu's eyes narrowed. "So?"
"So it also saw the dawn of media manipulation. Joseph Goebbels first discovered the principle of the Big Lie, on which all public-opinion molding is based. My relics are artifacts of Herr Goebbels and other greats of the art, who specialized in shaping popular opinion, whether through manipulative entertainment, cleverly biased news reports, falsified polling, or direct rabble-rousing."
"Are you sure that thing is real?" Ninyu asked. "It doesn't look a thousand years old."
Katsuyama blinked at him. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"Gentlemen."
Both turned to see the Right Honorable Percival Fillington, Earl of Hachiman, walking toward them from the great house. He was a slender young man in his early thirties, with pale, handsome features and curly hair on the light side of brown. He carried himself well enough, but inwardly Ninyu sneered. The man's fitness was that of the gym, of trainers and saunas and masseurs. He practiced kendo, as was almost mandatory for the Combine's upper classes. He had even seen brief action as a BattleMech pilot. But he was no warrior; he was soft at the core.
Which is why we conduct our real business with the yakuza, though policy requires me to treat with you.
"Have you heard? MBC has just picked up a story from elsewhere in the Inner Sphere that Chandrasekhar Kurita has discovered some kind of hyperpulse communications technology!"
Ninyu did not glance at Katsuyama, but he felt the little man's grin like warmth from a 'Mech's heat sink. The Planetary Chairman blinked from one of them to another. His eyes were large, brown, long-lashed, and slightly protuberant.
"You both know of this," he said, in a tone as close to accusing as a Planetary Chairman dared get with the number two man in the ISF and the deputy chief of the propaganda branch.
"The story originated with Associate Director Katsuyama," Ninyu acknowledged grudgingly.
The Earl's mouth became a startled "O."
"But that will bring Word of Blake fanatics swarming to Hachiman!" he exclaimed. "They'll do anything to keep the hyperpulse monopoly intact, even under ComStar control."
"So it will, Mr. Chairman," Katsuyama said smugly.
"But, Ninyu-san, I thought the ISF was conducting a campaign against the Word of Blake."
I have to tell the fool something, don't I? He might prove inconvenient if his ego is not massaged. Tact was another quality Ninyu's adoptive father was trying to instill in him. The Smiling One was nothing if not exacting.
"We have firmly repressed all efforts by the Word of Blake to carry out attacks against ComStar facilities within the Combine, my Lord." He smiled, an expression not at all suited to his scarred lips. "If they agree to leave ComStar alone, Internal Security is willing to allow them some leeway in handling other matters."
"Oh," the Earl said. A kabuki actor's concept of a conspiratorial expression stole across his face. Ninyu had to bite down a laugh. "So you're going to let them put fat old Chandrasekhar in his place for you, eh?"
Among other things, Ninyu thought. His representatives were on the alert for feelers from the Word of Blake at any time. The Blakes knew better than to try to work the Combine without clearing it with the ISF, now.
As he indicated to Fillington, Internal Security was going to grant the Word of Blake permission to deal with this new heresy—as long as they accepted guidelines, which he and Subhash were certain they would. He and his adoptive father were also sure that, in the Word of Blake's eagerness to smash HTE and its presumptuous Chief Executive, they would compromise many of such assets as they had managed to infiltrate into the Combine without the ISF's knowledge.
The Smiling One was a master of games within games.
Fillington looked from Ninyu to Katsuyama. "Well, I'll just leave your gentlemen to fine-tune your plans. Dinner awaits after you've had enough of our fine evening sea air." Being around Ninyu seemed to make him nervous.
As the Planetary Chairman made his way quickly back inside the house, Ninyu stood there, willing Katsuyama to follow. The lure of a full table wasn't something the little man was much good at resisting.
But Katsuyama insisted on hovering at his elbow, gray in the twilight, like a lumpy ghost. "You have done well, Associate Director," Ninyu said.
Katsuyama bobbed his head gratefully. "Thank you, Lord Ninyu. Thank you so much." He made no move to leave.
Ninyu turned to him and raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
Katsuyama's tongue crept across
his lips like a rat across temple steps. "I know you are skeptical of the value of media manipulation, Lord. I was hoping this demonstration would open up to you the glories of the art."
"It appears to be working adequately in this case. My adoptive father displayed his usual wisdom in sending you to me."
"I trust you'll soon see his wisdom in bidding me stay with you to see this through." The media man took off his glasses, began to polish them with the tail of his smock. "Have you never heard the phrase, 'Let them eat cake,' Lord Indrahar?"
It was incorrect for Katsuyama to refer to Ninyu in that way. He would have to reprove him for it—eventually.
In the meantime he nodded, warily and slow. "I've heard it."
Katsuyama's face lit like a star-shell. "And do you know who said it, Lord?"
"Some queen or other, in the days before spaceflight." A moment's thought; Ninyu's adoptive father had urged the study of history upon him. Life had been so much simpler when he'd been merely an ISF agent. "They cut her head off for it, I believe."
"That's the one. Only she never said it. It was invented by the royal family's political opponents. On the basis of that bold lie the king and queen were beheaded, an ancient monarchy deposed, the social order of all of Europe ultimately overturned." Katsuyama shook his head. His eyes glistened with moist devotional fervor, as if he were being privileged to view the Coordinator on his birthday. "Do you not see the transcendent power and beauty of propaganda, Lord? That very same lie is used to good effect by social activists to this very day, put in the mouths of those who oppose their reforms, to discredit them."
"We usually have to put such activists to death, don't we?" Ninyu asked.
"Well, yes." Still the toad refused to be squelched. "Yet the principle remains valid. Very valid indeed. As we've just now demonstrated again."
"We have?"
"Do you have any evidence that Chandrasekhar Kurita has the slightest interest in faster-than-light communications, Lord."
"No."
Katsuyama showed him his uneven assortment of large, yellowed teeth. Fortunately, it had gotten too dark to discern much detail. "Then what is this news report but a Big Lie? And you'll see, it will serve us as well again."
"Let's hope it doesn't have to." Ninyu looked out at the sea. A hint of purple iridescence seemed to lie upon the restless water, bled from the sungleam that edged the bottoms of the banks of black clouds. He turned to see that one of Hachiman's lesser moons had begun to peek over the great Trimurti Mountains, far inland. A few stars shone tentatively overhead.
"I'm going in," he said brusquely.
Katsuyama adjusted his beret to a jaunty angle. "I do believe I'll join you."
* * *
"The conditions out here are absurd, papa," Gavilah Camacho's handsome face was saying from the communicator on Don Carlos' desk. "We haven't been able to hire adequate support staff. The plumbing keeps seizing up. The food is terrible. The—"
The Colonel tuned his son out. Mother Mary forgive me, he thought, for I have made the boy what he is. But I cannot bear to listen to his whining any longer.
The Mech Warriors of First Battalion were actually a good group, but like soldiers throughout time they loved to gripe. Instead of dealing with it, or simply disregarding the bulk of it as sheer white noise, the younger Camacho's solution was to pass it along to his father.
Gabby was a good boy, within his limitations. But even his proud father Don Carlos could see that his maturity left something to be desired.
Gavilan's appointment as battalion commander had caused a certain friction in the ranks. The other battalions were commanded by a rabbi and a Singer. The Protestant chaplains, Reverends Odegaard and Poteet, and the Catholic padres alike sometimes wondered aloud why no good Christian cleric had been given a battalion.
It wasn't an easy question to answer—at least, not to the faces of the men who asked it. Poteet was a blustering fool. Odegaard was not command material. Neither was Father Elfego Goldstein, whose family had been pious Catholics ever since the era when many politically alienated Jews had converted to the Church of Rome. Don Carlos' own confessor, Father Montoya, wasn't even a combatant. As for Father Doctor Roberto Garcia—he'd never take such a job, fortunately. He was not exactly a leader, either. And the Colonel could hear Father Montoya now: But we wished you to appoint a Catholic as Battalion Commander, my son. Instead you give us a Jesuit.
Ah, well. Gabby was a fine MechWarrior, everybody acknowledged that. He had even graduated from House Steiner's elite Nagelring military academy, as his sister had gone through Davion's New Avalon Military Academy. He had proven himself in combat.
Even so, he was no more than a shadow of his sister as a MechWarrior, Don Carlos told himself. You could never forgive either of them for that, could you? And so Patsy killed herself, and Gavilan spends his life in endless pursuit of a ghost.
He noticed a light blinking on the console of his desk communicator. "Gavilan" he said, "I have another call."
His son frowned petulantly. "But, Father—"
"It is on our employer's direct line. I will speak to you later." He broke the connection, not without relief.
Gavilan's face was replaced by that of HTE's security chief. "Colonel Camacho," the Mirza said, "I hope I find you well."
"As well as can be expected, praise the Virgin. And yourself?"
"My health is excellent, Colonel, thank you. But I admit I've done better."
"What can I do for you, Mirza?"
"Have you heard the evening news?"
The Colonel smiled and shook his head. "My duties leave me little time to watch HV."
"Permit me to replay you a segment from this evening's broadcast."
When he had watched the piece about the spurious "breakthrough" at HTE, Don Carlos sighed heavily.
"We can expect a visit from los ateos soon, can't we?" he asked.
"I beg your pardon? I'm not familiar with that name."
"The atheists. The Word of Blake adherents." To pious Caballeros, the mainstream ComStar fanatics were no less atheistic, but the Colonel saw no need to explain that.
"Yes." The ascetic face studied him a moment. "Colonel, duty compels me to ask a question that I find personally distasteful."
Don Carlos smiled. "I never hold the doing of one's duty against a man."
"Very well. You and most of your people are natives of the Free Worlds League. Many of your MechWarriors formerly held commissions in the Marik military. You yourself had a history of distinguished service to House Marik before you became a mercenary."
The thin lips compressed momentarily before the Mirza went on. "Captain-General Thomas Marik is practically the Word of Blake's Primus-in-exile," he said. "Colonel, is there any possibility of a conflict of interest here?"
Were my son listening, he would call you out for impugning my honor as a Knight of Galisteo. The thought came without heat; Don Carlos had acquired far more sophistication than he was comfortable with during his decades away from the quaint, archaic, and thoroughly insular Trinity. He understood full well why the Mirza had to ask the question. What he felt was consternation; before he could retire and hand the regiment over to Gavilan, the boy had a great deal to learn.
"Do you know why I left Marik service, Mirza?" he asked, all the while thinking, I'll bet you do, you bloodless old cabron. He respected the Mirza, but he understood what he was.
Abdulsattah shook his narrow saint's head.
"Many years ago I backed Duggan Marik as successor to the Captain-Generalship. After he and his father Janos were killed by an assassin's bomb, I retired from Marik service. I knew that whichever surviving heir won power, Thomas or Duncan, neither would find my services indispensable."
Abdulsattah laughed softly. "You are a wise man, indeed."
"As to my people—" Don Carlos shifted in his chair in an attempt to find comfort. It sometimes seemed to him as if the weight of every one of the two thousand warriors, support personnel, and dep
endents who made up the Regiment—and for whose well-being he was responsible— rode directly on his shoulders. "Most of them are from the League, yes. And most are voluntary exiles. We of the Trinity—what most of the Inner Sphere calls the Southwestern Worlds—prize our autonomy above all things. As Captain-General, Thomas Marik has usurped more power than any of his predecessors. He is pressuring our people sorely back home, trying to bring them into line.
"And as for this business of his being set up to become Primus-in-exile, there are fears, back on our homeworlds, that he intends to approve the Word of Blake as the established religion of the Free Worlds League. We Caballeros are religious folk, indios and Protestants as well as good Catholics like myself. We have learned to live—mostly—at peace with one another's faiths, and over centuries of strife we have come to accept that the best way to protect our own freedom of worship is to respect the same right in others. If the Captain-General wishes to worship Blake, that is his concern. When his followers try to tell us that we must bow down before his false prophets, then we fight."
"Thank you, Don Carlos," the Mirza said gravely. "I am satisfied, and I speak for Chandrasekhar Kurita as well. I hope you understand that I did not ask the question lightly."
Colonel Camacho inclined his head. "I will begin recalling my troops at once," he said. "If it can be arranged, it might be best to bring them in at night, under cover on the river barges. No point in alerting our enemies to our preparations if we can avoid it, ¿qué no?"
"Indeed not. If I might make a suggestion, Colonel?"
"I would be honored, Senor Abdulsattah."
For a moment a smile almost threatened to break out on the Mirza's ascetic's mouth. Don Carlos noted again how it always seemed to startle these culebras that people from elsewhere in the Inner Sphere were as fond of ritual courtesies as they.
