He spoke, thought Alexander Radescu, as if the sharp exchange in the sunlight had not occurred. Deliu's interference was not to be allowed to affect the calm tenor of the tutorial the Chief Tribune had prepared to give his nephew.
Avoiding the real meat of the opening statement, Radescu replied, "I won a couple skirmishes against an unprepared enemy, Uncle. Scarcely a matter of breaking the Molts, or even the one theme primarily involved."
"There were sizable contingents from all across Oltenia," put in the eldest of the Tribunes, Constantin Wraslov, who even in Radescu's earliest recollection had looked too skeletal to be long for the world. His tone lacked the deliberate venom of Deliu's, but it had the querulousnes scommon to even the most neutral of Wraslov's pronouncements."We've seen the report on the examination of the corpses after the battle."
Radescu looked at the Tribune,surprised at the dispassion with which his mind pictured the old man as one of the victims being examined by the Intelligence Section: the body pulped by a sheet of rock giving way on top of it . . . flayed by microshrapnel from a dozen nearby bomblets . . . halved by a point-blank, chest-high burst from an armored car's gun . . . ."Yes,"the general said with the dynamic calm of a fine blade flexing under the pressure of a thrust, "all the themes had representatives here. That made it possible for Ferad to inflate what was really a minor occurrence into enough of an event to panic the other themes into making peace. Ferad himself knows better—as, of course, do I."
"The infants are their weak point,"said Tribune Deliu, adding with a grudging approval, "and you fingered that well enough, boy, I grant you." There was no affection in the look he gave Radescu, however; and when the gilt brim of the general's hat threw a band of light across Deliu's eyes, the Tribune's glare could have been that of a furious boar.
"Yes, you've shown us how to exterminate the autochthons," Wraslov agreed gleefully, rubbing his hands and looking around the big chamber with the enthusiasm of an archeologist who had just penetrated a tomb. "Before, we tried to clear areas so that they couldn't attack us, you know, because it seemed they could always escape."
From where he stood,Radescu could not see the aged Tribune's face.The Honor Guard had aligned itself as a short chord across the portion of the curving wall toward which Wraslov was turned. The worried looks that flashed across the bland expressions of the six red-clad officers were a suggestion of what those men thought they saw in the Tribune's eyes.
"Excellencies, we can't . . ." Radescu began, breaking off when he realized that he didn't know where to take the words from there. His body felt so dissociated from his mind that his knees started to tremble and he was not sure that he could continue to stand up.
He was not alone in feeling the tension in the chamber. Chief Tribune Antonescu, for all his outward calm, had an inner heat which might have been no more than a well-bred distaste for the scene which he saw developing.
In fact, the only men in the antechamber who did seem relaxed were the two Slammers, and theirs was the calm of soldiers carrying out a familiar task. Hawker and Bourne had their backs to the stone to one side of the entranceway, too close together for a Molt to attempt to teleport between them but still giving their gunhands adequate clearance. They scanned the room, their face shields transparent but already locked in place in case the lights went out and vision aids were required.
Hawker's hands were still. Profile Bourne rubbed the grip of his submachine gun, not with his fingers but with the palm of his right hand. The orange dragon caressed the plastic in a fashion that gave Radescu a thrill of erotic horror before he snatched his eyes away.
His uncle had not pressed when a sense of the futility of words had choked the young general's first attempt at argument. Antonescu still waited with a placid exterior and a core of disdain for the emotional diatribe which he expected to hear. Wraslov was lost in his contemplation of corpses, past and future; but Tribune Deliu was watching the general with a grin of pleasant anticipation.
He would not, thought Alexander Radescu, embarrass Uncle Grigor and give that stupid animal Deliu a moment of triumph. For some reason, that seemed more important than the fact that the plan he'd expected to weld together the races of Oltenia had just disintegrated like a sand castle in the surf. Perhaps it was because he had control over himself; and now, as he tumbled from his pinnacle of arrogant certainty, he realized that he had no control over anything else after all.
"The arguments against exterminating the Molts,"Radescu said in the tone of cool disinterest with which he would have enumerated to a friend the failings of an ex-lover,"the negative arguments that is—"He paused and raised an eyebrow in question."Since I presume the positive argument of Oltenia leading the galaxy through its combination of human and autochthonal talents has already been discounted? Yes?"
"We don't need to hear your arguments," rasped Deliu, "since we've already decided on the basis of common sense."
"Thought is a beneficial process for human beings, Excellence," said Radescu in a voice as clear and hard as diamond windchimes. "You should try it yourself on occasion."
One of the Honor Guards ten meters across the chamber gasped, but Chief Tribune Antonescu waved the underling to panicked silence without even bothering to look at the man. "Deliu," said the Chief Tribune, "I promised my nephew a discussion, and that he shall have. His merits to the State alone have earned him that."
Antonescu's careful terminology and the edge in his voice were extraordinarily blunt reminders of the difference in the current government between Tribunes and the Chief Tribune. He nodded toward the general. "Alexi," he prompted.
Which left the real situation exactly where Radescu had feared it was,the dream of Man/Molt partnership dissolved in a welter of blood, but there is a pleasure to small triumphs in the midst of disaster. Was this happening to Ferad among his fellows as well . . .
Aloud, Radescu continued, "If we could destroy every nursery chamber, and if every infant Molt were within such a chamber, neither of which statements is true—" he did not bother to emphasize his disclaimer, knowing that rhetorical tricks would lessen at least in his own mind the icy purity of what he was saying "—then it would still be two, more realistically, three decades, before the operation would by itself deplete the ranks of effective Molt warriors. Prepubescents, even adolescents with a range of a few kays per hop, have been met on the battlefield only in cases like this one where we have gone to them."
"Yes, yes,"said Tribune Wraslov, turning to nod at Radescu. The young general felt as if he stood at the shimmering interface between reality and expectation.On the side that was reality, the skeletal tribune agreed with what Radescu had said and gave his thin equivalent of a smile. But surely his assumption that Wraslov was being sarcastic must be correct? It was obvious that everything Radescu had said was a bitter attack on what the Tribunate seemed to have decided.
"And what conclusions do you draw from your analysis,Alexi?"asked Grigor Antonescu, very much the pleased uncle . . . though he beamed, like a moon, coolly.
"That at best, Uncle, we're talking about another generation of war," Radescu replied,walking toward the chintz-covered table because his legs worked normally again and he needed the opportunity to try them out. The whole conversation had the feel of something he might have overheard twenty years before—two aristocrats talking about a planned marriage of peripheral interest to both their households. It couldn't be a discussion which would determine the future of Oltenia for the foreseeable future!