“You do know so much about it all,” he said.
“Thank you. In particular I think I know Madame d’Ortolan,” she told him. “I think I know how her mind works.”
“I can certainly vouch for how some of her other organs function.”
“She has self-belief raised almost to solipsistic levels. It’s her weakness. That and a kind of fanaticism for neatness.”
“Neatness? Neatness will bring her down?”
“It could be part of it. Having effective control of the Central Council will not be quite enough for her, I think. Even though as a whole it will entirely do her bidding it will annoy her that there are still people on it who disagree with her, just on principle. She will want everybody on it to agree with her. It’s just neater. And that self-belief, it makes her think that she can do no wrong just because she is who she is. For all her clear-headed cunning and guile and utterly ruthless rationality, there is a kernel of something like superstition in her that tells her any given stratagem, no matter how risky, will work in the end simply because she is destined to triumph; that’s just the way the world works, the way all worlds work. And that’s how we bring her down, Tem.”
“Do we?”
“We keep annoying her, keep opposing her, keep nudging her to riskier and riskier tactics, until she overreaches herself and falls.”
“Or keeps winning.”
She shook her head. “The longer you keep gambling everything the more certain you are to lose it.”
“So don’t gamble everything.”
“Rational. But if you’re absolutely convinced that it is your destiny to triumph, that your victory is inevitable, and gambling everything gets you there quicker than taking it in small steps, why shuffle to glory when you can get there in a few boldly heroic leaps?”
“What if you’re wrong?”
She smiled ruefully. “Then we’re fucked.” She took a deep breath and stared out across the pillowed skyscape of clouds towards the dawn. “But I’m not wrong.”
“Something deep inside tells you that, does it?”
She glanced sharply at him, then gave a small laugh. “Yes, quite. Point taken. But we all need to have the courage of our convictions, Tem, if we’re not to be just the playthings of the powerful; hordes of falling, clicking balls batted this way and that at their whim in some vast game. And you have yet to say whether you’ll help or not. You need to choose which side you’re on.”
“Mrs M, I’m still not entirely sure what the sides are.”
She looked down towards the layer of cloud two kilometres below. “You know,” she said, “people at the top of any organisation like to think that they are, metaphorically, on the summit of a mountain in perfect visibility. They’re wrong, of course; in fact there’s mist all the way down. Organisationally, you’re lucky if you can see clearly into even just the next level down. After that it’s pure murk, as a rule.”
She left a pause, so he said, “Really?”
“Of course, with the Concern it gets even more difficult to see what’s going on.” She turned to look at him. “There are levels most of us don’t even know exist. I was on the level just beneath the Central Council. If I’d kept my nose clean I’d probably be there now; certainly in a decade or so, assuming that one of the hold-outs sticks to their guns and dies rather than keeps going on for ever. You’re a level down for that, Tem, fast-tracked for success but, I’d guess – ” her eyes narrowed again and her head tipped “ – not knowing it. Would that be right?”
“I thought you had to do a lot of committee work and politicking back on Calbefraques. I enjoy working in the field too much. Also, it has been noticed amongst the lower orders that the turnover in the Central Council has slowed down a lot over the last fifty years or so.”
“All the same, you’re one of the potential chosen ones.”
“I’m flattered. Is that why you’re trying to recruit me?”
“Not directly. They must see something in you. I do too, though perhaps not exactly the same things. I see a potential in you that I don’t think they know is there. And I think you might choose the right side.”
“So do they, I suppose. But this brings us back to the issue of sides. You were about to explain just what they were, I think. I did ask you to.”
She moved closer to him, placed one snow-soft white mitten on his. “The Central Council has become obsessed with power before and beyond anything else. The means has become the end. If they are not opposed they will turn l’Expédience into something that exists only for its own aggrandisement and the pursuance of whatever secret purposes the individuals on it choose to dream up. I think that is unarguable. Plus I believe that – at the behest of Madame d’Ortolan – there is something else, some already hidden agenda they’re working to – the uniqueness of human intelligent life and the singular nature of Calbefraques itself may well point to the nature of that secret – but I never got close enough to the centre of power to find out.”
“What, and I am supposed to?”
“No. It’ll take too long for you to be elevated to the Council, if you ever are. It’ll be too late by then.”
“Too late?”
“Too late because soon Madame d’Ortolan will have the Council exactly as she wants it; full of people who think just as she does and who will do everything she wants them to do, and who will never die, because they will keep repotting themselves into younger bodies as their older ones approach senescence.”
“So what do you propose, Mrs Mulverhill?”
Her smile looked defensive. “Ultimately, that the Central Council either ceases to exist or is severely reined in and radically reconstituted. Certainly that it is subject to some sort of democratic oversight. They can even keep their serial immortality, as long as they resign in perpetuity from the Council itself. Long life for long service. An incentive to serve but not to entrench.”
“All the same, you’re asking a lot of them.”
“I know. I don’t see them giving up what they have at present without a fight.”
“And is the other side just you and your bandit gang?”
“Oh, there are plenty of people who feel the same way, including a few people on the Central Council itself.”
“Like who?”
That smile again. A little wary, this time. “First tell me if you’ve betrayed me, Tem,” she said softly. She lowered her head a fraction as she gazed up at him.
“Betrayed?” he said.
“We’ve talked before. I’m an outlaw. If you were playing by the book you ought to have reported our meetings.”
“I did,” he said. “Is that betrayal?”
“Not by itself. What else, though? What did they suggest you do?”
“Keep meeting you, keep talking to you.”
“Which you have done.”
“Which I have done.”
“And reporting back.”
“Which I have also done.”
“Fully?”
“Not quite fully.”
“And have you agreed to help catch me?”
“No.”
“But have you refused ever to help catch me?”
“No. They did ask. I told them that of course I’d do what was right.”
She smiled. “And do you yet know what is right?”
He took a long deep breath of the pure gas and the stunningly cold air. “I think I would find it very hard to help them catch you.”
She looked pleased and amused at once. “Is that gallantry, Tem?”
“Perhaps. I’m not entirely sure myself.”
“Sexual sentimentality, is what Madame d’Ortolan would call it.”