“Yes, sir! I most humbly beg your pardon, and beg leave to be excused to do as Your Majesty commands.” The butler virtually bowed and scraped his way off the telephone.
“What’s the implied ‘or else’?” Duke Michael, the Emperor’s brother, inquired drily. “You’d have him clapped in irons?”
“Hardly.” The Emperor snorted, showing as much amusement as his dignity permitted. “He’s over eighty; I suppose he’s entitled to stay in bed once in a while. But if he’s so ill he can’t even rise for his Emperor in time of war, I’d have to force him to retire. And then there’d be an uproar in the Admiralty. You can’t imagine the waves it would make if we started forcing admirals to retire.” He sniffed. “We might even have to think about giving them all pensions! That’d go down as well as suggesting to Father that he abdicate.”
Duke Michael coughed, delicately. “Perhaps somebody should have. After the second stroke—”
“Yes, yes.”
“I still think offering him the fleet is unreasonable.”
“If you think that is unreasonable, I don’t suppose you’d care to discuss the likely response of their naval lordships if I didn’t give him first refusal?” The priority telephone rang again before his brother had a chance to answer the pointed question; a liveried servant offered the ivory-and-platinum handset to His Majesty. The Duke picked up a second earpiece, to listen in on the call.
“Sire? My Lord Admiral Kurtz is ready to talk to you. He extends his deepest apologies, and—”
“Enough. Just put him on, there’s a good fellow.” Ivan tapped his fingers irritably on the arm of his chair, a Gothic wooden monstrosity only one step removed from an instrument of torture. “Ah, Admiral. Just the man! Capital, how splendid to talk to you. And how are we today?”
‘Today-ay?“ A reedy, quavering voice echoed uncertainly over the copper wires. ”Ah-hum, yes, today.
Indeed, yes. I’m very well, thank you, milady, I don’t suppose you’ve seen any chameleons?“
“No, Admiral, there are no chameleons in the palace,” the Emperor stated with firm, but resigned, persistence. “You know who you are speaking to?”
In the momentary silence he could almost hear the elderly admiral blinking in confusion. “Ah-hum. Your Majesty? Ah, Ivan, lad? Emperor already? How time flies!”
“Yes, Uncle. I’m phoning you because—” A thought struck the Emperor. “Are you up and about?”
“Yes, ahuhuhum. I’m, ah, in my bath chair. It’s my old legs, you know. They’re awfully fragile. Got to wrap them up in lots of blankets in case they shatter. They don’t blow legs the way they used to, when I was a lad. But I’m out of bed now.”
“Oh, good. You see, um—” The Emperor’s brain went into a wheel-spin as he considered and reconsidered the options. He’d heard, of course, about the Admiral’s indisposition, but he hadn’t actually encountered it directly until now. A strong case could be made, he supposed, for dismissing the Admiral; the man was patently ill. Charging him with this duty would be unfair, and more importantly, not in the best interests of the state.
But he was still the senior fighting admiral, war hero of the New Republic, defender of the empire, slaughterer of the infidels, conqueror of no less than three bucolic and rather backward colony worlds — and, not to put too much of a point on it, the Emperor’s uncle by way of his grandfather’s second mistress. Because of the long-standing tradition that admirals never retired, nobody had ever thought to make provisions for pensioning off old warhorses; they usually died long before it became an issue. To dismiss him was unthinkable, but to expect him to lead a naval expedition — Ivan struggled with his conscience, half hoping that the old man would turn it down. No dishonor would accrue — nobody expected an octogenarian in a bath chair to die for the fatherland — and meantime they’d find a hard-headed young whippersnapper to lead the fleet into battle.
Coming to a decision, the Emperor took a deep breath. “We have a problem. Something abominable has happened, and Rochard’s World is under siege. I’m going to send the fleet. Are you too ill to lead it?” He winked at his brother the Duke, hoping—
“War!” The old man’s bellow nearly deafened Ivan. “Victory to the everlastingly vigilant forces of righteousness waging unceasing struggle on enemies of the New Conservatives! Death to the proponents of change! A thousand tortures to the detractors of the Emperor! Where are the bastards? Let me at them!” The clattering in the background might have been the sound of a walking frame being cast aside.
Duke Michael grimaced unhappily at his brother. “Well I suppose that answers one question,” he mouthed. “I’m not going to say I told you so, but who are we going to send to push his wheelchair?” New Prague was only a thousand kilometers north of the equator (this planet being notoriously cold for a water-belt terraform) and the train pulled into the Klamovka station shortly after lunchtime. Martin disembarked and hailed a cab to the naval depot at the foot of the beanstalk, pointedly ignoring Rachel — or whatever her real name was. Let her make her own way: she was an unwelcome, potentially disastrous complication in his life right now.
The beanstalk loomed over the military depot like the ultimate flagpole; four tapered cones of diamondoid polymers stretching all the way to geosynchronous orbit and a bit beyond, a radical exception to the New Republic’s limitations on technology. Bronzed, bullet-nosed elevator carriages skimmed up and down the elevator cables, taking a whole night to make the journey. Here there was no fin-de-sidcle ambience: just rugged functionality, sleeping capsules manufactured to a template designed for Kobe’s ancient salarymen, and a stringent weight limit. (Gravity modification, although available, was another of the technologies that the New Republic shunned — at least, for non-military purposes.) Martin hurried aboard the first available pod and, to his relief, saw no sign of Rachel.
Upon arrival, he disembarked into the military sector of the space station, presented himself to the warrant officer’s checkpoint, and was ushered straight through a crude security scan that probably exceeded his annual allowed dose of X-rays in one go. There was one bad moment when a master sergeant asked him to demonstrate his PA, but the explanation — that it was a personal assist, that it stored all his working notes, and that he’d be unable to cope without it — was accepted. After which he cooled his heels for half an hour in a spartan guardroom painted institutional green.
Eventually a rating came to collect him. “You’d be the engine man?” said the flyer. “We been waiting for you.”
Martin sighed unhappily. “And I’ve been waiting, too.” He stood up. ‘Take me to your CO.“ The New Republic had paid Mikoyan-Guerevitch-Kvaerner back on Luna to design them a battlecruiser fit to bear the name of their Navy’s founder: one that looked the way a warship ought to look, not like a cubist’s vision of a rabies virus crossed with a soft drink can (as most real warships did). Style imposed strictures on functionality: despite which, it was still worthy of a degree of respect — you could be killed by its baroque missile batteries and phased-array lasers just as surely as by a more modern weapon.
Besides, it looked good, which had enabled MiG to make a killing selling knockoffs to gullible juntas everywhere, demonstrating the importance of being Ernst as the marketing department put it.
In Martin’s opinion, the Lord Vanek was cut from the same comic-opera fabric as the rest of the New Republic — a comic opera that was far less funny once it had you in its jaws. The ceremonials, flags and Imperial logos splashed across every available surface, the uniformed flunkies, and elaborate pyramid of military etiquette, all suggested to Martin that taking this job had not been a good idea: the gibbeted dissidents hanging from the eaves of the Basilisk had confirmed it. Right now, he’d happily repay his entire fee just to be allowed to go home — were it not for the call of duty.