The Trade of Queens (4 page)

“Another…?” Ven Hjalmar was at a loss.

“Yes.” She smiled, a crinkling around the eyes that hinted at amusement. “If you are to stay with us, you will have to find a wife.” She clapped her hands. “Nephew.” James Lee bowed. “Take the doctor back to his room.”

*   *   *

Erasmus Burgeson strode through the portico of the People's Palace as if he owned it, his brown leather duster swinging around him. His usual entourage followed him—a pair of guards in the black peacoats and helmets of Freedom Riders, a stenographer and a pair of messenger boys to race his orders to the nearest telautograph, three secretaries and assistants. It was impossible to fart without his entourage recording the event and issuing a press release to reassure the masses that the commissioner of state propaganda had eaten a healthy breakfast and his bowels were in perfect working order.
Such is the price of being on the winning side,
he reminded himself whenever it got a bit much; the alternative—a short walk off the end of a long rope—was far less attractive.

Just one month had wrought great changes. The pompous neoclassical building was crawling with Freedom Riders and guards from the newly formed Security Committee, checking passeportes and getting underfoot: but with some justification, for there had been three assassination attempts on members of the Radical government by Patriot renegades in the past week alone—one of them successful to the extent of having cost Commissioner of Industry Sutter half the fingers on one hand and the use of his left eye, not to mention a secretary and a bodyguard. Erasmus had made much of this shocking martyrdom, but it was hardly the most onerous fate the Patriot mob had in mind for any commissioner who fell into their hands, as the full gibbets in rebel-held Rio de Janeiro could attest.

But the guards didn't impede Burgeson's progress through the entrance and up the stairs to the Avenue of Ministries; they stood aside and saluted with alacrity, their faces expressionless. It was only at the door to the receiving room that he encountered a delay: Commissioner of Security Reynolds's men, of course. “Citizen Burgeson! You are expected, but your colleagues must identify themselves. Your papers, please!”

Erasmus waited impatiently while the guards confirmed that his aides were indeed on the privileged list, then nodded amiably to the underofficer on door duty. “If you please?” he asked. The man practically jumped to open the door, avoiding eye contact: Erasmus was of the same rank as the head of his entire organization. Erasmus nodded and, not waiting for his entourage, walked through into the outer office. It was, as usual, crammed with junior people's commissioners and bureaucrats awaiting instruction, cooling their heels in the antechamber to the doctor's surgery. Not pausing for idle chatter, Burgeson walked towards the inner door.

A stout fellow who overtopped him by a good six inches stepped sideways into his path, blocking the doorway. “You can't—” he began.

Erasmus stopped and looked up at him. “Don't you recognize me?” It was genuinely curious, to be stopped by anyone—even a bruiser in the uniform of the Security Committee.

The bodyguard stared down at Erasmus. Then, after a second, he began to wilt. “No sir,” he admitted. “Is you expected by 'is citizenship this mornin'?”

“Yes.” Burgeson smiled, showing no teeth. “Why don't you announce me?”

The ability to intimidate secret policemen didn't come easily or lightly to Erasmus; he still found it a thing of wonder as he watched the big bodyguard turn and push the door ajar to announce his arrival. He'd spent years in the camps, then more years on the run as a Leveler underground organizer in Boston, periodically arrested and beaten by men of this selfsame type, the attack dogs of power. It was no surprise after all these years to see these people rising in the armed wing of the revolutionary democratic cadres, and leaders like Reynolds gaining a certain reputation—especially in view of the unfolding crisis that had first provoked an abdication and then enabled the party to hold its coup—but it was a disappointment.
Meet the new boss, just like the old boss
: Erasmus remembered the Beckstein woman's cynical bon mot. Then he dismissed it from his mind as the thug threw the door wide open before him and stood aside.

“Hail, citizen.” Sir Adam Burroughs smiled wearily at him as the door closed at his back. “Have you been keeping well?”

“Well enough.” Erasmus lowered his creaking limbs into one of the ornate chairs that faced Sir Adam's huge, gilt-tooled leather-topped barge of a desk. And indeed, it was true: With the tuberculosis that had threatened to kill him cured by Miriam's magic medicine, he felt like a new man, albeit a somewhat breathless one upon whose heels middle age was treading. “Drowning in paperwork, of course, but aren't we all? My staff are just about keeping on top of the routine stuff, but if anything out of the ordinary comes up they need their reins held.” Barely a square inch of Sir Adam's desk was occupied, but that was one of the privileges of office: There was another, discreet servants' door in the opposite wall, and behind it a pool of stenographers, typer operators, and clerks to meet his needs. “What can I do for you, citizen?”

“It's the French business.” Sir Adam sounded morose. “I've asked Citizens Wolfe and Daly to join us in a few minutes.” Wolfe was the commissioner for foreign affairs, and Daly was the commissioner for the navy: both cabinet posts, like Burgeson's own, and all three of them—not to mention Sir Adam—were clinging on to the bare backs of their respective commissariats for dear life. Nobody in the provisional government knew much about what they were supposed to be doing, with the questionable exception of the Security Committee, who were going about doing unto others as they had been done by with gusto and zeal. Luckily the revolutionary cadres were mostly used to living on their wits, and Sir Adam was setting a good example by ruthlessly culling officials from his secretariat who showed more proficiency in filling their wallets than their brains. “We can't put them off for any longer.”

“What are your thoughts on the scope of the problem?” Erasmus asked carefully.

“What problem?” Sir Adam raised one gray eyebrow. “It's an imperialist war of attrition and there's nothing to be gained from continuing it. Especially as His Former Majesty emptied the coffers and mismanaged the economy to the point that we can't
afford
to continue it. The question is not whether we sue for peace, it's how—ah, John, Mark! So glad you could join us!”

So am I,
Erasmus thought as the two other commissioners exchanged greetings and took their seats. Being seen to proceed by consensus on matters of state was vital—at this point, to take after the king's authoritarian style would be the quickest way imaginable to demoralize the rank and file. “Are we quorate?” he asked.

“I believe so.” Wolfe, a short, balding fellow with a neat beard, twitched slightly, a nervous tic he'd come out of the mining camps with—Erasmus had had dealings with him before, in Boston and parts south. “Is this about the embassy?” he asked Sir Adam.

“Yes.” Sir Adam reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a slim envelope. “He insisted on delivering his preliminary list of demands to me, personally, ‘as acting head of state' as he put it.” He made a moué of distaste. Wolfe grunted irritably as Sir Adam slid the envelope across the desk towards him. “I don't want to preempt your considered opinion, but I don't consider his demands to be acceptable.”

Erasmus raised an eyebrow: Daly, the naval commissioner, looked startled, but Wolfe took the trespass on his turf in good form, and merely began reading. After a moment he shook his head. “No, no … you're absolutely right. Impossible.” He put the paper down. “Why are you even considering it?”

Sir Adam smiled with all the warmth of a glacier: “Because we
need peace abroad
. You know and I know that we cannot accept these terms, but neither can we afford to continue this war.”

“May I?” Erasmus reached for the letter as Sir Adam nodded.

“But the price they're demanding—” Erasmus scanned quickly. After the usual salutations and diplomatic greetings, the letter was brusque and to the point. “It's outrageous,” Wolfe continued. “The money is one thing, but the loss of territory is wholly unacceptable, and the limitation on naval strength is—”

“Choke them,” Erasmus commented.

“Excuse me?” Wolfe stared at him.

“There is stuff here we can't deal with, it's true. War reparations … but we know we can't pay, and they must know we can't pay. So buy them off with promissory notes which we do not intend to honor. That's the first thing. Then there's the matter of the territorial demands. So they want Cuba.
Give
them Cuba.” He grinned humorlessly at Wolfe's expression. “Hasn't the small matter of how to put down the Patriot resistance there exercised us unduly? It all depends
how
we give them Cuba. Suppose we accede to the French demands. The news stories at home will run, the French have
taken
Cuba. And to the Cubans, our broadcasts will say, sorry, but the Patriots stabbed us in the back. And there is nothing to stop us funneling guns and money to the Patriots who take up arms against the French, is there? Let it bleed them, I say. They want Nippon? Let them explain that to the shogun. It's not as if he recognizes our sovereignty in any case.”

“What naval concessions are they demanding?” asked Daly. “We
need
the navy, the army isn't politically correct—”

“They want six of our ships of the line, and limits on new construction of such,” Erasmus noted. “So take six of the oldest prison hulks and hand them over. Turn the hulls in the shipyards over to a new task—not that we can afford to proceed with construction this year, in any case—those purpose-built flat-topped tenders the air-minded officers have been talking about.” Miriam had lent Erasmus a number of history books from her strange world; he'd found the account of her nation's war in the Pacific with the Chrysanthemum Throne most interesting.

“These are good suggestions,” Sir Adam noted, “but we cannot accede to this—this laundry list! If we pay the danegeld, the Dane will … well. You know full well why they want Cuba. And there are these reports of disturbing new weapons. John, did you discover anything?”

Daly looked lugubrious. “There's an entire
city
in Colorado that I'd never heard of two weeks ago,” he said, an expression of uneasy disbelief on his face. “It's full of natural philosophers and artificers, and they're taking quantities of electricity you wouldn't believe. Something about a super-petard, made from chronosium, I gather. Splitting the atom, alchemical transformation of chronosium into something they call osirisium in atomic crucibles. And they confirm the French intelligence.” He glanced at Erasmus: “I mean no ill, but is everyone here approved for this news?”

Sir Adam nodded. “I wouldn't ask you to report on it if I thought otherwise. The war is liable to move into a new and uncertain stage if we continue it. The French have these petards, they may be able to drop them from aerodynes or fire them from the guns of battleships: a single shell that can destroy a fleet or level a city. It beggars the imagination but we cannot ignore it, even if they have but one or two. We need them likewise, and we need time to test and assemble an arsenal. Speaking of which…?”

“I pressed them for a date, but they said the earliest they could test their first charge would be three months from now. If it works, and if ordered so, they can scale up production, making perhaps one a month by the end of the year. Apparently this stuff is not like other explosives, it takes months or years to synthesize—but in eighteen months, production will double, and eighteen months after that they can increase output fourfold.”

“So we can have four of these, what do you call them, corpuscular petards?—corpses, an ominous name for an ominous weapon—by the end of this year. Sixteen by the end of next year, thirty-four by the end of the year after, and hundreds the year after that. Is that a fair summary?” Daly nodded. “Then our medium-term goal is clear: We need to get the bloody French off our backs for at least three and a half years, strengthen our homeland air defenses against their aerodynes, and work out some way of deterring the imperialists. In which case”—Sir Adam gestured irritably at the diplomatic communiqué—“we need to give them enough to shut them up for a while, but not so easily that they smell a rat or are tempted to press for more.” He looked pointedly at Erasmus. “Finesse and propaganda are the order of the day.”

“Yes. This will require care and delicacy.” Erasmus continued reading. “And the most intricate maintenance of their misconceptions. When do you intend to commence direct talks with the enemy ambassador?”

“Tomorrow.” Sir Adam's tone was decisive. “The sooner we bury the hatchet the faster we can set about rebuilding that which is broken and reasserting the control that we have lost. And only when we are secure on three continents can we look to the task of liberating the other four.”

*   *   *

An editor's life is frequently predictable, but seldom boring.

At eleven that morning, Steve Schroeder was settling down in his cubicle with his third mug of coffee, to work over a feature he'd commissioned for the next day's issue.

In his early forties, Steve wasn't a big wheel on the
Herald
; but he'd been a tech journalist since the early eighties, and he had a weekly section to fill, features to buy from freelance stringers, and in-depth editorial pieces to write. He rated an office, or a cubicle, or at least space to think without interruption when he wasn't attending editorial committee meetings and discussing clients to target with Joan in advertising sales, or any of the hundred and one things other than editing that went with wearing the hat. Reading the articles he'd asked for and
editing
them sometimes seemed like a luxury; so he frowned instinctively at the stranger standing in the entrance to his cubicle. “Yes?”