Orphan's Alliance (Jason Wander) (13 page)

At eight o’clock that evening, their majesties received their choice to fill the vacancies. At nine o’clock, General Audace Planck was sworn in as one of three generals serving as a joint Prime Ministrate, with plenipotentiary powers, and charged by the unified monarchy to form a cabinet and restore order. At midnight the same evening, ten minutes before the last moment we could lift to the
Kabul
and still meet the
Eisenhower
on schedule, Howard, Ord, and I strapped in to a fresh transport. Jude remained behind, newly appointed to Planck’s personal staff. Jude couldn’t come to see us off, but he sent a runner with a note for me that ended, “Love, Jude.”

I chose a window seat, and stared out into the darkness all the way up, so Howard and Ord couldn’t see the sheen on my eyes.

Four weeks later, the same transport tÓame anransferred us from the
Kabul
to the
Eisenhower
as they matched orbits above Bren.

Until and unless we made something out of Mousetrap, Bren was a waypoint between Tressel and Earth anyway. Earth needed help from Bren to develop Mousetrap almost as much as Earth needed Bren’s Cavorite.

So, if I believed what Nat Cobb had said about the importance of personal relationships and trust counting for more in diplomacy than protocol, I belonged here now.

When I had overnighted on Bren while I returned from my previous visit to Tressel, I passed the night with old friends in low places. When Howard, Ord, and I climbed down the disembarkation ladder from the transport, its cold skin’s crackle echoing in one of the
Ike
’s launch bays, one of those old friends was waiting for us.

TWENTY-EIGHT

THE HUMAN UNION ASSOCIATE CONSULto the Court of Her Majesty Marenna the Fourth, Deliverer of the Stones, Protector of the Clans of Marin, and Sovereign of the Near Seas, was a duck. Actually, Eric Muscovy’s lips just stuck out a little, and he walked splay-footed. But that was plenty for his classmates, from grade school through the Harvard Center for Asian Studies. I hugged him, then held him at arm’s length and grinned. “Why’d you burn fuel to come up here, Duck?”

The Duck’s eyes twinkled as he shook Howard’s hand. “I shouldn’t have. Howard tacked on a fuel surcharge last quarter. But I could bury our bar bill from your last visit in Spook travel expenses.”

I rubbed my forehead. The memory of my most recent evening with the Duck still made my head ache. Ord smiled at the Duck, and stuck out his hand. “DeArthur Ord, Consul. We met in Tibet.”

The Duck shook Ord’s hand, nodded, and smiled. “I’d never forget
that
.”

If it hadn’t been for Ord, the Duck, and a bamboo ladder, I would have rotted in the infirmary of a Chinese prison, with two broken femurs and a collapsed lung.

Duck’s smile faded as he waddled to the bay’s exit hatch with us in tow. “I met you up here because I just heard you left a bad situation on Tressel.”

“It should improve.”

Duck nodded. “So I thought I’d relieve your anxiety about this situation. This one’s a done deal.”

I shook my head. “I don’t like it. I doubt that Bassin does, either.”

“Bassin has no say about it. His mother’s the monarch. He’s the spare heir. Bassin’s mother and my boss ironed out the details last night. We deliver two hundred seventy-six Kodiaks, plus trainers and technicians. Marin personnel will operate them to secure the Cavorite caravan routes against Casuni and Tassini raids. In exchange, Marin will deliver, and replenish as needed, sixty thousand trainable workers, plus civil engineering cadre, until Mousetrap is completed.”<Ön e/p> I spun in the corridor, and grabbed Howard by the shoulders. “Exchange? The Marini are gonna build Mousetrap?”

“It’s a fair trade. Mousetrap enhances Bren’s security as much as Earth’s and Tressel’s.”

“And you get to bury the project off the Spook balance sheet. This is hideous.”

Howard pouted. “It’s just bookkeeping. You always overreact.”

“I’m not talking about money. Trainable workers? They’re
slaves
, Howard! Replenished means that when overwork kills one, Marin will send another.”

The Duck spun me away from Howard, and pointed a finger at my chest. “I don’t like it either. But I don’t make policy, and neither do you. And neither does your old friend Bassin, the abolitionist. So right now he’s on his way back to Marinus from the front, because a good Crown Prince supports his mom’s decisions. Just like you’re going to support your chain of command’s decisions.”

I crossed my arms and huffed. Then I asked, “So. What are Bassin and I supposed to do tomorrow?”

“Shut up while she signs. Smile. Wear your medals. It sucks, but I’ve had to do it for years.”

“Except without the medals.” It was a dirty shot, and I knew it even as the words left my lips. The corners of Duck’s mouth turned down, then he cocked his head at the ribbons on my chest. “How many GIs got replenished so you could get those medals?”

I balled my fists as we faced each other. The Duck had saved my life, and I knew he was still just an Associate Consul because he had objected too often to inhumane host-country policies. But if we had both been fifteen years younger I would have decked him.

Besides, the Duck was half right. If I came to a fork in the road where the army and I had to part company, I could resign. But meanwhile, I had to follow orders just like I had when I was a Spec 4. Aud Planck had come to such a fork. Maybe I was approaching one. But I didn’t have to choose, yet. So I took a deep breath, then asked the Duck, “What time’s the signing ceremony tomorrow?”

“High noon. Don’t keep the old girl waiting.”

TWENTY-NINE

THE NEXT MORNING ORD, Howard, and I met the Duck at the town gate to the Summer Palace two hours early. One hour of that cushion was because it takes an hour to get from the gate to the Hall of Mirrors, where Her Majesty and the Duck’s boss would sign the Kodiaks-for-slaves deal. The Summer Palace has more square footage than the Pentagon. The other hour was because the Duck wasn’t kidding about not keeping the old girl waiting.

With time to spare, the captain of the queen’s householders escorted us not to the Hall of Mirrors, but to Bassin’s apartments.

As crown prince, Bassin had no authority, but lots of room in which to exeÞparrcise it. The “parlor”

where he received us was a gilded, dome-ceilinged rotunda bigger than most U.S. state capitols’. He strode across the room’s marble floor wearing the unadorned, brown uniform of a colonel of engineers. Like every other grown man who still lived in his mom’s house, Bassin was stuck with her decor. But he could have taken any rank he chose. For that matter, he could have invented one, and some cape-and-plume uniform to match. But an engineer, a brick-and-mortar builder, was what he was, and with Bassin what you saw was what you got.

Unless he was masquerading as a prospector, to spy on the slave trade he despised. That misadventure had cost him an eye, and a leg. And his mother’s good will, which may have wounded him worse. I started to kneel, but he pulled me up straight and gave me a shoulder-pat hug, and another to Howard, to Ord, and even to the Duck.

Bassin frowned. “I had looked forward to seeing Jude again.”

“He stayed on Tressel. He thinks he has to save the world.”

Bassin wrinkled his forehead above his eyepatch. “Wasn’t saving this one costly enough?”

“You should talk.”

Bassin turned to the Duck, stiffly. “Consul Muscovy, please understand Marin’s gratitude for the Motherworld’s generous offer.”

The Duck bowed about a half inch. “And please understand Earth’s gratitude to Her Majesty for accepting it. How are things at the front, sir?”

The Duck knew exactly how things were at the front. Tactical Observation Transports loitering above the caravan routes relayed real-time overhead intelligence to our Consulate all twenty-four point two Earth hours of every Bren day. The TOTs showed that things stunk at the front for Marin, so badly that Bassin’s convoy had been ambushed by Casunis. He had only arrived at the palace an hour before we had. It was the Duck’s way of reminding Bassin why his mom had made this deal.

“I’d say not bad enough to export slaves. But it isn’t up to me, Consul.” Bassin turned to me. “We have an hour before the ceremony, Jason. I know Mother would love to share a social moment with her son and her former commander-in-chief.” It was Bassin’s turn to make a half-ass bow, as he extended his palm toward a door that opened into the corridor to the queen’s apartments. I glanced at the Duck and shrugged.

He fingered his blue cummerbund. He knew Bassin was going to lobby his mother to kill the deal, and I was being carted along like an apple for the teacher. The Duck didn’t like it, but associate consuls couldn’t argue with royalty. Neither could high school dropout generals. As our escort’s polished armor rattled and echoed in the hallway, which was so big that I expected to see a train headlight coming at us, I asked Bassin, “How’s your mother?”

“I haven’t seen her since her birthday party, eight months ago.”

The queen was pushing eighty by now, which was impressive, given the state of medicine on Bren. I had worn outã I /di combat boots that weren’t as tough as Marenna the Fourth. The first time I met her, the queen had been seventy-two and prickly. She said then that her temperament didn’t improve with age. She had aged, so I swallowed at the prospect of another audience.

Bassin shrugged. “She’s grumpier than ever, I suppose. But don’t worry. She’s always liked you.”

Bassin was kidding himself if he thought his mother would change her mind because that nice young man from Earth was visiting again.

The escort admitted us to the queen’s sitting room, then backed out as he pulled the double doors shut. The queen’s parlor was bigger than Bassin’s, with better ceiling art, rimming a clear crystal dome through which cloud-patched blue showed. Her Majesty reclined on a divan centered below the dome, which matched the silver of her gown. She had her back to us, her head upturned toward the ceiling. Bassin said, “Mother, it’s me. I was delayed.”

She didn’t say a word. We had arrived an
extra
hour early because Her Majesty genuinely didn’t tolerate tardiness any better than she tolerated barbarians at her gates. Bassin muttered under his breath, then he walked to her, his heels clattering on the marble floor. I stood fast. I’m no diplomat, but I’ve been at this long enough to know that a commoner doesn’t approach a queen unless bidden. Especially this queen.

Bassin said to her, “Don’t be like that. There’s still time to discuss this.”

Bassin reached the divan, stopped, hands on hips, and looked down at his mother. His jaw slackened, his eyes widened. “Mother?”

He dropped to one knee, and touched her cheek. Then he started to shake, and tears welled in his eye. I ran to the divan.

The queen, as slight and as brittle as ever, lay still with her eyes wide and staring to the sky. I breached protocol, and laid my fingers on the royal cheek.

It was as cold as marble.

Bassin lay across his mother’s body, sobbing.

I breached protocol again, and patted my friend’s royal shoulder.

Only now he wasn’t just my friend. He was king.

NIGHT HAD FALLEN AS ORD, Howard, the Duck, and I slumped in a half circle of chairs upholstered in ochre dinosaur feathers, in Bassin’s parlor. A clock that looked like a calliope ticked, and the tick echoed off the dome above us. Beyond the palace, muffled bells chimed from every steeple in the city.

The royal physician, læe peather bag in hand, stepped out of Bassin’s bed chamber and we all stood. The doctor whispered something to the valet who sat in a straight backed chair outside Bassin’s door, patted his shoulder, then walked to me. “I’ve given His Majesty something to help him sleep. I’ve treated Bassin since he was four. Strong boy. He’ll be fine, tomorrow. Physically.”

“What happened to his mother?”

He tapped the back of his head, behind his ear. “There is a vessel, at the base of the brain. Increasingly fragile with age.” He snapped his fingers. “Gone like that.”

I nodded. “We call it a stroke.”

“Painless. A blessing.” He shook his head. “But for Marin . . .”

The Duck rubbed his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Most of us have never known Marin without Her Majesty. And with the war, I don’t know . . .”

The doctor shook each of our hands, then left us.

The Duck shook his head, as he crossed his arms. “Well, I know. When Bassin wakes up, our deal’s as dead as his mother.” Then the Duck looked over at Howard, who was sucking on a nicotine-substitute lollipop, and said, “Colonel, if you expect to build a better Mousetrap, I suggest you bring your own shovel.”

Howard tugged the lollipop out of his mouth, and it made a little
poink
that echoed up to the parlor ceiling. “We still need the Cavorite, though. We’ll just give Bassin the Kodiaks, anyway.”

The Duck said, “No, we won’t. Our negotiating sideboards were very narrow. The Kodiaks may be buried in your budget, but State is in charge of treaties. We can’t cut a new deal to support hostilities. The Constitution reposits the war power with Congress, not you, and not with the rest of us here. Jason learned that lesson in Tibet.”

“Duck’s right, Howard.”

Howard studied his lollipop, then sighed. “The scourge of the universe is preparing to eradicate the human race, our new ally is collapsing into anarchy, our old allies are killing each other, our fleet is running out of gas, and our only fortress is a rock we can’t improve.”

The Duck sat with his elbows on his knees, chin cupped in his hands. “Thanks for cheering me up.”

Outside, the muffled bells rang in the dark. Howard said, “Well, I hear the funeral will be a show. Nobody on Bren would miss it.”

The Duck sat up straight, cocked his head, and stared at the tapestries hung on the parlor’s distant wall.

“There is that.”

THIRTY-ONE

THE STATE FUNERALof Marenna the Fourth was the first of its magnitude in nearly a century, but the royal household took it in stride. The trappings and protocols would replicate those for her mother’s funeral, and those for the funerals of every sovereign of Marin for two thousand years. But the Clans cremate their dead, and the timber for the royal pyre, which would resemble îfora small Egyptian pyramid, had to be gathered. And the dignitaries needed time to travel to Marinus. So, it was a cool, cloudy morning a week after Bassin’s mother died that she would finally ascend to heaven as oily smoke. I stood in the second row of the halted cortège, behind the royal bier. The royal bier was a gilded wagon with ten-foot tall, jewel encrusted wheels that had borne every monarch’s remains for a thousand years. The route never varied, from the Summer Palace, three miles down the Grand Boulevard of Marinus, lined today with four million mourners, to the royal pyre. The first row of walking mourners behind the bier was reserved for family, which, because Marenna had outlived so many people, was Bassin.