He seated himself at his main desk while Arctus got through and spoke to the boy at the other end. A few seconds later his desk top steamed, then extruded parchment-like sheets bearing the helical crest of Diadem.
For several minutes Archier studied the sheets, his expression growing serious. Finally he raised his face and stared with glazed eyes into nothing.
“Arctus,” he said at last, “see if you can find Menshek for me, will you? Ask him to come here.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Arctus busied himself at his own desk, a low toylike affair at which he kneeled, expertly touching communicator pads with the soft tip of his trunk. While Archier waited the cat girl came in, still damp, her naked body extruding its pungent smell.
She drew herself a thick, creamy confection from the dispenser and lay curled on a tabletop, smiling archly at Archier and licking the stuff up with a pink tongue.
He ignored her, and when Menshek arrived, handed him the parchments silently.
Menshek was pure human and the oldest person aboard Archier’s flagship ICS Standard Bearer. At sixty years of age he was very likely the oldest person in Ten-Fleet, though the artificial face-ageing fashionable among the young women made his white hair and wrinkled skin less noticeable than they might otherwise have been. Most people of his age who were in official service held posts in Diadem.
Archier tended to look up to him as a man of larger experience. The news he had now made him feel he needed to consult such a man.
Menshek sighed as he laid aside the sheets. “Well, there it is. The thing we feared, that the Star Force fleets are largely in existence to prevent. A rebel force with a fleet of its own.”
“Yes, it does seem we haven’t been quite alert enough.”
“No, no, alertness isn’t it.” Menshek sounded weary. “The fleets just aren’t sufficient anymore. Once there were thirty-six, now there are only five, and they are all depleted and below strength—why, the very name of Ten-Fleet is a lie, as well you know. Some of the ships might have been in the original Ten—Fleet, but most of them are scavenged from defunct units.”
Archier nodded. He recognised that for a long time now the empire had maintained itself more by bluff than anything. The chief strategy of Star Force was to see to it that no worlds harbouring fond thoughts of secession got a chance to build star fleets of their own, and that could not be done effectively with only the five fleets that remained.
All the same, he wasn’t sure he liked the sound of Menshek’s defeatist tone. “Well,” he countered, “the information here doesn’t make it seem the Escorians have a main fleet—not a purpose-built one. It’s mostly converted civilian ships. They probably hope they’re a match for us, weakened as they are.”
“Let us hope they’re not right.”
“On the face of it, it’s rather brave of them—but what do you make of this item, Menshek?”
Archier pointed to the second paragraph of the data summary. Unlike the first paragraph, it ended with no codes for obtaining the full data in detail. It simply read: “Oracle predicts presence in Escoria of Weapon CAPABLE OF DESTROYING EMPIRE. Locate at all cost or convincingly demonstrate nonexistence.”
Menshek’s face became grave. “If that is in the Escorian fleet’s armoury, we had better look out.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever paid much attention to Oracle,” Archier said, with an attempt at lightness. “It seems a bit too close to superstition to me.”
“I’m afraid I don’t share your disbelief, and I’m not superstitious either.” Menshek shifted in his seat uneasily.
“There’s a story that a few years ago it predicted the total collapse of the Empire,” Archier continued. “But the Empire is still here… frankly I don’t want to believe such…
“It also forecast the Hisperian uprising at a time when our intelligence service had no inkling of what was afoot,” Menshek interrupted. “Remember, Oracle is only a data machine. All it does is sift data on a huge scale—all available data from every known source. But it does have mysterious properties. It correlates data according to rules of its own—or else according to no rules at all—and its conclusions are seemingly plucked out of thin air. But that’s because it has no organised data store, so it’s impossible to determine how any particular prediction was arrived at.”
“Exactly! It could be guessing—or simply repeating empty rumour!”
“High-order guessing is probably the best way to describe its working method,” Menshek admitted. “And sometimes it does simply repeat rumour. But I hope you aren’t thinking of neglecting that order from High Command.”
“There isn’t any High Command,” Archier said bitterly. “Didn’t you read paragraph three?”
“Yes, I read it,” Menshek replied, his voice quiet and matter-of-fact. “It’s hardly unexpected. We weren’t out in Condition Autonomy for nothing.”
“What do you think’s happening?”
The parchment had ended with the news that there would be no—further communication. High Command had closed down. The fleet admirals now had no one to issue them with either orders or information, and in effect were obliged to consider themselves imperial autarchs for all provinces outside Diadem.
The situation would continue until the Imperial Council itself despatched the official interdict standing down Condition Autonomy to some lesser status. Archier had wondered what would happened if that interdict never came. It was conceivable that the five fleets would eventually become the nuclei of new, rival empires.
Or four of them might. Archier promised himself that he, on the other hand, would take his fleet into Diadem and try to rescue it from whatever had beset it.
“There are several possibilities,” Menshek said. “Civil war? The overthrow of the Council, just as the Emperor Protector was overthrown? Personally I believe the explanation is several degrees more mundane. I imagine the High Command had been forced to close down through lack of staff.”
While Archier stared, Menshek went on: “What’s probably happened is that they’ve had to send their last remaining officers out to one or other of the fleets, because they just can’t find any other replacements… isn’t that where, all the Empire’s difficulties come from, after all? The numbers of pure humans willing to take on the work of preserving the Empire grows smaller all the time. That’s why, these days, we resort to using children.”
“You’re beginning to sound like an adult chauvinist.”
“If being an ‘adult chauvinist’ means believing children aren’t always as capable of shouldering responsibility as adults, then yes, I suppose I am.”
Menshek, Archier told himself with a frown, was certainly out of tune with the time. It was one of present society’s articles of faith that, having received an intensive education up to the age of seven, a young person was thereafter as entitled as any adult with regard to social position, sexuality, or freedom of action. It was slightly shocking to hear Menshek talk so.
“Recently a twelve-year-old girl was sent out as Admiral of Twenty-Three-Fleet,” Menshek added, in a voice of mild disapproval. “You’ve probably heard of it—it was an attempt to put together a sixth fleet from scavenged or cannibalised vessels, not really a fleet at all. The reason she was Admiral was that she was the only pure-blooded human in the outfit.”
“Yes, I know of it,” Archier said. “I heard she performed very well, for the time Twenty-Three-Fleet was in operation. It failed mainly through having insufficient resources.”
“I agree the appointment was a success in her case,” Menshek conceded. “But what about the eight-year-old boy who became Three-Fleet’s Fire Command Officer… just before they invested Costor.”