“So?”
“Those two dissenting Community votes, theoretically, could have cost those years of investment.”
“If it wasn’t for Indi abstaining.”
Dimitri smiled at the frozen holographic landscape. “Now why did they do that?”
Adams didn’t respond.
“The coalition Indi is crafting shouldn’t like Rasputin, should they? They see the whole operation, legalities aside, as a bad precedent for TEC interference in planetary affairs. And because of the Centauri-Sirius monopoly on prime seats, they see the TEC as a tool of the Europeans.”
Dimitri turned around and faced Adams. “Obviously, Indi decided to ignore the obvious. They wanted Rasputin to pass.”
Adams smiled. “Why would they want to do that?”
“The same reason you wanted it to fail.”
“Can you get to the point without the obscure Machiavellianism?”
Adams was one of the few members of the Terran Congress who wasn’t enamored of diplomatic forms and procedures. If Dimitri admired Adams for anything, it was his bluntness. That and the fact that Adams was secure enough to talk that way to Dimitri. Few others dared.
“The point,” Dimitri said, “is the fact that this coming Congress has the potential of disrupting the power structure of the Confederacy. Indi is on the ascendancy. Their expansion during the last century is paying them with seats on the Congress; their coalition will have a majority on a straight vote shortly into the promotion process.”
“So far this is all common knowledge.”
“Is it common knowledge that Indi plans to bump some nonvoting seats in the Congress straight to prime?”
Adams’ expression cracked a bit. It was fractional, the man had terrific control, but it was obvious that Dimitri had just hit a point that disturbed him greatly. Slowly Adams said, “That is a severe breach of form.”
“Form, yes,” Dimitri said. “Law, no. Promotion through the ranks is traditional but not compulsory. All a planet has to achieve is continuous human occupation for eighty years and a population over half a billion.”
“And its name on the Charter.”
Dimitri nodded. “And its name on the Charter. There’s even a precedent—”
“The first five primes were promoted immediately upon signing the Charter. Yes I’m aware of that. I fail to see what any of this has to do with Rasputin.”
“Everything,” Dimitri said.
* * * *
Robert Kaunda sat in one of the Hotel Victoria’s private dining rooms. The hemispherical holo that surrounded him and the Protectorate delegate created the illusion that they were alone on the roof of the hotel. The open sky and the Pacific’s surf were both fake, as was the sprawl of the Confederacy’s capital city behind them. In reality, they were a few layers behind guards and other diners.
What counted was the fact that they were isolated behind that holo just as well as if they were really dining alone on top of Sydney’s premier hotel.
Kaunda drank his tea and repeated himself. “Even if it is, as you say, a win-win situation, I do not like giving the Confederacy—especially the Executive—this kind of power.”
Sim Vashniya, the delegate to the Executive Command from the People’s Protectorate of Epsilon Indi, representative to the Terran Congress from Shiva, and the Gods knew what else, reclined on a chair considerably higher than Kaunda’s, his expression betraying nothing but slight amusement. “You were satisfied with my reasoning before—”
“That was when we were counting seats. As you kept pointing out, the Centauri Alliance and die Sirius Community had a majority. But with those two Sirius dissenters we could have blocked the whole thing.”
Vashniya sat impassively. Kaunda thought that the dwarfish Shivan looked like some graven icon, carved from nutwood. Like something the gift shops on Mazimba might sell to rich tourists from Waldgrave or Banlieue. The kind of thing that old women in Mulawayo knocked off by the hundreds to sell to the off-worlders at 100 credits each. After the tourist shops took their cut, it amounted to a credit an hour—if the women were lucky. It let them eat.
“Well?” Kaunda asked.
“Yes, we could have blocked it. That, in fact, was why two of the Sirius votes dissented.”
Kaunda set down his tea. “Pardon?” He didn’t like these intelligence games, political games. He’d gotten to represent the intelligence community of the Union of Independent Worlds—such as it was—by being a strong leader and taking no shit from his seconds. The trail might be a little bloody, but it was less bloody than those of most of his contemporaries on Mazimba. However, being chief of police in Mulawayo, and then chief of intelligence for the whole planet of Mazimba, had never trained him for subtlety. It forced him to trust his betters in those matters, like Vashniya, and he didn’t like trusting people.
“Nothing in an Executive delegation happens by accident. Those two Sirius votes were well planned.”
“They wanted the proposal to fail.” Kaunda kept his voice flat, betraying none of his surprise.
After a moment of thought, Kaunda realized that they might not want TEC involvement. “They expected us to be solidly against and defeat them twenty-two to twenty. But if they wanted it to fail, why bring up the proposal?”
Vashniya patted his beard. “Rasputin is no spur of the moment enterprise. The latter phases of the plan have required nearly five years of delicate groundwork by the Centauri and SEEC intelligence services. They needed the TEC to allow them that.”
“I see.”
The TEC jealously guarded its place in the Confederacy intel community. If any planet, or group of planets, decided to do this kind of covert action unilaterally ...
Well, it would be bad.
“So,” Kaunda said, “the proposal to the TEC was a smoke screen—”
“To cover the realignment of the Centauri and Sirius intelligence apparatus. They wanted the idea to be shot down.”
“But they were—still are—primed to slip in on their own before the TEC could intervene.” Politics was a twisted arena. Things were much simpler when he was just a policeman.
“Just so. The plan was to set up the groundwork for Rasputin, have the TEC proposal fail, then slip in SEEC or Alliance military with no TEC involvement, and take over. Then they’d present the Congress with a fait accompli.”
“But because of the Protectorate’s abstention, the TEC is in charge of this.”
“And we have a hand in.” Vashniya smiled a little wider.
“I think I liked it better when we were simply divorcing ourselves from the operation.”
“Oh, we’ve done that. And more.” Vashniya looked out over Sydney. “When the dust settles, when the Congress meets for the first time in this new century, we are finally going to see the Europeans lose their primacy. Take the long view, Kaunda.”
Kaunda looked out over Sydney as well but said nothing.
“If the operation fails, it fails. But if it succeeds ...”
“If,” Kaunda said.
* * * *
It took him over a month to leave Mars.
It was harder to do than he had ever imagined. In his nine years he had grown attached to the severe landscape, the lethal weather, and, most of all, the isolation.
Even the knowledge that, fifteen light-years away, all hell was about to break loose on Bakunin, couldn’t hurry him. The events on Bakunin were, in a real sense, over already. What mattered was the coming Terran Congress and what would happen there.