Except for the April Tribunal, and that was what had made them fundamentally different from most of the CRUs membership. Whereas the mainstream CRU often attacked civilian Legislaturalist targetsthey were, after all, waging a terror campaignAprilist attacks had been directed solely against InSec, the military, and official government offices. Their demand had been for justicewhich had, by the nature of things, admittedly slipped over into naked vengeance all too oftennot power. It was a sometimes subtle distinction, but an important one, and like most Aprilists, Eloise Pritchart had joined the CRU only after suffering a cruel and bitterly personal loss.
But the Aprilists had found themselves in a delicate position following the Harris Assassination. On the one hand, they had enjoyed a reputation, even among people who disapproved of the CRUs violence, as a faction which had fought a "clean" war as urban guerrillas, not terrorists. From that perspective, their inclusion among the Committee of Public Safetys supporters had been invaluable to Rob Pierre and his fellows, for it had brought with it an element of moderation and reason. One might almost say respectability.
Yet the Aprilists had also been suspect in the eyes of people like Cordelia Ransom precisely because of their reputation for moderation, and that had been dangerous, especially as the promises to the Dolists grew more extreme and the pogroms and purges of the "enemies of the People" mounted in intensity.
Fortunately for Pritchart, her pre-Coup prominence had put her in a position to be coopted by Saint-Justs new Office of State Security very early, and shed been too intelligent to refuse the honor shed been offered and make StateSec suspicious of her. Which meant that by the time many of the other Aprilist leaders had been made to quietly disappear in favor of more... vigorous defenders of the People, she had been firmly ensconced as a peoples commissioner.
Her years as an underground fighter had served her well in terms of learning to assume protective coloration, and unlike some of her less wary (and since vanished) companions in arms, she had refused to succumb to the heady euphoria of the Committees early days. And when the Committee moved to consolidate the cold iron of its power and those less wary companions found themselves quietly detained and "disappeared" by those they had thought were their allies, Pritcharts carefully crafted public persona had already made the transition from apolitical guerrilla fighter to committed guardian of the New Order in the Peoples name. It had been a dangerous tightrope to walk, but Saint-Just had been deeply impressed by her insightful reports on the relatively junior officers she had initially been assigned to watchdog. Indeed, if the truth be told, he valued her moderation even more because it had been so rare among the peoples commissioners. And so shed been tapped for ever more sensitive duties, rising higher and higher in StateSec without the people who ran that agencys ever realizing what actually went on in the privacy of her own thoughts.
Until she was assigned to Giscard. Had it really been less than four T-years ago? It seemed impossible whenever he thought about it. Surely it had to have been longer than that! The intensity of life on the edge, of finding oneself adrift in the fevered turbulence of Rob S. Pierres new, improved Peoples Republic and locked in a war where ones own superiors were as likely to shoot one as the enemy, lent a surrealism to every aspect of existence, and especially to anything as insanely dangerous as a love affair between a Navy officer and his peoples commissioner.
And yet, somehow, theyd managed to survive this long. Every day was yet another triumph against the odds in a game where the house always won, sooner or later, but deep inside, both of them knew no streak lasted forever. All they could do was go on as they had, walking their tightrope and dodging each days bullet as it came at them, and hope that someday, somehow, things would change...
The truly odd thing, though it never occurred to Javier Giscard to see it so, was that even now, neither of them had even once seriously considered defection. A handful of other officers had made that choice, including Alfredo Yu, Giscards old mentor. Yet much as he respected Yu, that was one example he simply could not follow, and he wondered, sometimes, whether that was a virtue or the ultimate proof of his own idiocy.
"Do you really think McQueen can pull it off?" he asked after a moment. Pritchart drew back enough to look up at him and raise an eyebrow, and he shrugged. "Do you think she can actually reorganize the War Office enough to make a difference without getting herself purged?" he expanded.
"I think she has the ability to do it," Pritchart said thoughtfully. "And shes certainly been given a better opportunity to use that ability than anyone else has had. But whether or not she can make all the pieces come together?" It was her turn to shrug.
"Id feel a lot better if I hadnt heard so many stories about her ambition," he sighed.
"Saint-Just has heard them all, too, I assure you," she said much more grimly. "I havent seen her dossier, of course; shes not my responsibility. But Ive heard the scuttlebutt among the other commissioners, and there was a lot of nervousness when Pierre picked her to replace Kline."
"Even after she squashed the Levelers?" He tried to make it a jest, but the joking tone fell flat, and she grimaced.
"Maybe even especially after she squashed the Levelers," she replied. "She did it too well and displayed too much initiative and raw nerveand ruthlessness. And picked up too much approval from the Mob. Besides, half of them figure she would have kept right on moving herself if her pinnace hadnt crashed. I happen to think theyre wrong, and so does Fontein and, Im pretty sure, Saint-Just himself. I think she recognized that her lack of a power base would have prevented her from supplanting the Committee, and I honestly believe she also would have refused to provoke the kind of anarchy that would have resulted from any failed putsch on her part. But that doesnt mean anyone else trusts her... or that even I think she might not make a try if she thought shed managed to build a strong enough support base to have a shot at success."
"Surely she realizes that, though," Giscard thought aloud. "She has to be smart enough not to do anything that might seem to play into her opponents hands."
"Id like to think so, and to give her credit, she has been so far. But shes got some of the same problems we do, Javier. The better she does her job, and the more successful she becomes, the more dangerous she becomes."
"Wonderful," he sighed bitterly. "The goddamned lunatics are running the asylum!"
"They are," Pritchart agreed unflinchingly. "But theres nothing we can do about it except survive, and maybe accomplish a little something for the Republic along the way."
Their eyes met once more, and Giscard smiled crookedly. Like himself, she never spoke of "the People" when they were alone. Their loyalty was to the Republic, or at least to the tattered remnants of the ideal of the Republic, which Rob Pierre had promised to restore. And that, of course, would have been the final proof to StateSec that neither of them could be trusted.
He chuckled at the thought, and she raised an eyebrow again, as if asking him to share the joke. But he only shook his head, then bent to kiss her once more. Her lips warmed under his, clinging with desperate longing, and he felt the urgency rising within him. It had been months since theyd last been alone together, and he pulled back from the kiss, just far enough to look deep into her shining topaz eyes.
"Oh, I think there might be a little something else we might do, as well, Citizen Commissioner," he murmured, and stood, cradling her in his arms as he crossed to his sleeping cabins hatch.
Chapter Eighteen
"And come out of there, you worthless piece ofAh ha! "