Without her robe, LizAlec could suddenly smell herself clearly in the heat that rose from her body. Sweat, fear and shit. Unpleasant and feral. It wasn’t pretty. All humans must have smelt like that once, LizAlec reminded herself and then shrugged. So what? That didn’t make her like it any better.
Chapter Ten
Find a wall/Sit on it...
Lady Clare casually nicked at the purple lapel of her velvet jacket, even though she knew it was spotless. She had to do something with her trembling hands and smoking in the Imperial presence was forbidden. As was sitting unasked, interrupting, not paying attention...
Coolly casual she could do. Casual and coherent was proving more difficult. The Minister for Internal Affairs sighed, nodded and jotted something meaningless on a leather-bound smartpad in front of her. Affectation, all of it. She’d sooner have been using her Tosh, but a little pad was all tradition allowed her to bring to the vast walnut Council table. Still, at least hers was working. Two of the other pretty little machines had caught the virus overnight and broken up, which was what happened when Finance cut corners and allowed supplies to source their cases from steel rather than the pure silver that tradition demanded.
War or surrender? What could she say?
Lady Clare knew what she was meant to say. The e-mail left her in no doubt of that. Paris was to surrender on whatever terms the Reich offered. All of those little Aerospatiale cameras would be left in place, even the Ishies were to be untouched, free to eyecam history in the making. Nothing was to be done to stop the world from seeing the fall of Paris for what it was, a polite and stately diplomatic dance. Scrabbling blind panic would remain hidden.
Hunger ate at Lady Clare’s gut, heightened by the three scalding cups of black coffee she’d swallowed before being delivered to the Court of St Cloud. Her face was skull-like, hollow-eyed. It usually was, it was just that most of the time
Lady Clare couldn’t recognize the fact. Tapeworms and purging had once been the polite way of getting thin, but no longer. And it was a long time since anyone other than obsessives had actually needed to starve to achieve malnutrition — anyone rich, that was. Simple viral rewiring now speeded up bodily metabolism as efficiently as any old-fashioned drug, and for those nervous souls who didn’t like permanent solutions there was always an appropriate, easily prescribed enzyme.
Non-medical genetic manipulation was meant to be forbidden. But Lady Clare couldn’t remember how long it was since any of the Ministerial families had obeyed that particular law. If the Third Section had arrested every Minister whose pregnant wife had paid a quiet visit to one of FffC’s G&Stork clinics there’d be no government left. Even LizAlec...
Especially LizAlec. The woman glanced again at her own face, seeing it stare back from a huge Napoleon III looking-glass on the wall opposite. The gilt frame was oversized, vulgar and almost priceless, which made it fit perfectly with the rest of the vast Council chamber. The Bonapartes had always been big on ambition, but the same could never be said for their taste. Red and gold seemed to be the only two colours they knew. And what couldn’t be adorned with wreathed Ns — which wasn’t much — was covered instead with an endless row of Merovingian bees.
Of the seven people at the table only Count Lazlo Portea was actually ignoring her; the rest were getting in surreptitious glances when they thought Lady Clare wouldn’t notice. No one had asked her yet what was wrong, they didn’t dare, but the Prince Imperial would when his irritation finally got the better of his impeccable manners. As for being ignored by Lazlo, that wasn’t a surprise. It might be five years since the Potsdam Conference, but she still had him by the balls.
He’d thought himself so smart, taking her to his bed while the other junior Ministers sat in the mirrored splendour of the downstairs bar and whispered. But that simple act of sex had ruined his career, as Lady Clare’d intended it to. She would have been forced to promote the man eventually, anyway: then watched, half nervous as he clawed his way over the careers of his friends to the top of the shit heap.
But this way Lazlo was hers. Like it or not — and he loathed it — none of his colleagues distinguished between Lazlo’s climb of the ladder and his climb into her bed. In one simple move, Lady Clare had fucked, promoted and politically castrated him. It was small wonder the man hated her.
“Your Highness, gentlemen...” Lady Clare settled back into her ornate chair and keyed up the S3 data she’d been working on that morning. It was Saturday: the meeting was an emergency one. She should be keeping the Prince Imperial on message while guiding the others politely but firmly through the Cabinet’s limited options. Indicating, without making it too obvious, which one the Third Section felt was expedient. Instead she was politely, discreetly, simply panicking.
Surrender or not? They were waiting on her, as they always had, afraid to commit themselves without her guidance. Lady Clare looked round the table, discounting everyone except the Prince Imperial who sat resplendent at the head of the table in a black silk suit, his snow-white moustache and goatee carefully waxed. He was an old man now, but he’d been born as the Prince Imperial and that was how he would die. There was an Emperor, a true Napoleon, but he’d been on ice for a hundred years. At least, his headless cancer-ridden carcass had, wired into a Matsui cryonics tank, chilled and then flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen. His head was orbiting somewhere in a satellite. It wasn’t easy keeping a head alive indefinitely, not cheap either. Lady Clare had seen the bills.
Still, dialysis kept the blood glucose levels stable, nutrient IV solutions kept him fed, and pressurized/oxygenated blood kept his severed head alive. What passed for an immune system was boosted with selected lymphocytes. Of course, even without a body, the blood to his head still needed detoxifying, its isotonicity required maintaining and urea had to be removed regularly. The satellite had back-ups to its back-ups — and then there were back-ups to those. Downtime wasn’t an option for life support systems, certainly not for the Emperor’s.
Imperial France was a lifetime’s empire. That was the promise on which the Prince had been elected Emperor and President, and that was what was scripted into the constitution. “The Empire dies with the Emperor,” ran the last sentence of all. But it would never happen. Or rather, Lady Clare reminded herself, it hadn’t happened yet.
Surrender or not...
“Do you have an opinion?” It was Lazlo, icily polite, finally deciding to give Lady Clare some of his attention. The woman flushed, half rose in her chair before settling back in confusion. Despite the neatness of her dress and the perfection of her makeup, she knew that for once she wasn’t making a good impression. But then, who could, with 100,000 Cossack mercenaries camped around the city?
“Lazlo.” The Prince Imperial spoke only one word but it was reproof enough to make the Minister for Security sit back in his seat, his handsome face frozen into a sullen mask. It was weird, Clare thought, watching His Highness. Fifty years of ruling as a spoilt neurotic and at the first sign of real danger he came off opium, clean break. Just like that. Not one pipe in three weeks, if his surgeon’s daily report was to be believed.
“My opinion?” Lady Clare looked around the table, settling her gaze on Lazlo. Whatever the maxim said, there were times when you had to sweat the small stuff and as far as Lady Clare was concerned, that was what Lazlo was. “My opinion on what?”
“Do we surrender now?” Lazlo asked her coldly. “Or do we wait for another day, two days, a week...”