She hadn't liked brandy before she met Adrian-in fact, with her family history, she'd been at least mildly prejudiced against anything distilled.
Of course, before I met Adrian I didn't get Frapin Cuvee 1888 Rabelais, either.
A taste of dried fruits slid across her tongue, nuts, candied oranges, and a wash of cacao and flowers and soft spices; it made you think of hot tropical sunrises seen past the curve of a sail, with the sea breaking white beneath your bowsprit.
Etienne sighed. 'Eighteen eighty-eight was a marvelous year…but perhaps I recall it so because I was young, eh? And this…like all the greatest pleasures, it is fleeting, impermanent. Little of this remains; perhaps only a few bottles, and once they are gone it will exist only in memory. As one accumulates experience, more and more resides there.'
'I can see that you have reason for cultivating such an outlook,' Adrian said carefully.
'Perhaps we come to the meat of the matter with the digestif, eh?'
Ellen took a deep breath. Adrian went on, calm, his tone conversational.
'I have no interest in who is selected to fill the vacant seats on the Council,' he said. 'Save as it affects the plans for Operation Trimback.'
'You are acquainted with that?'
'Yes. Ellen received the details from Adrienne, and I have had Seeings.'
'Ah.' Seraphine lifted her brows. 'Strong ones? Apparently you remember my teaching.'
'Very high orders of probability, and tied to my sister. Our world-lines were deeply entangled at the time.'
'And which do you favor?' Etienne said. 'The plague, as your sister did, or this rather drastic use of nuclear weapons to shred the humans' electronic devices?'
'The EMP attack,' Ellen supplied.
The Shadowspawn master waved a hand. 'I have no interest in the terminology.'
'You should be interested in the effects,' Adrian said. 'Have you Seen?'
'Nothing immediate. That is a matter of subtlety rather than raw Power; dear Seraphine has always been more sensitive, doubtless you derive it from her. I have had glimpses of the far futures that might be. Quite pastoral and attractive, most of them. A few rather grisly-'
Christ, what would he consider grisly?
'-but those of much lower probability.'
'Great-grandfather and lord, I do not think you appreciate just how much would be destroyed if the structure of the technological world were removed at once. Runaway nuclear reactors-scores in France alone!-ruptured oil refineries…'
The older Shadowspawn began to laugh. Adrian merely raised a brow, but Ellen felt a surge of fury. It died as she realized that this wasn't, or wasn't merely, the usual schadenfreude and sadism. There was a genuine irony here.
'I laugh, my dear boy, because I did not grasp the implications. I was quite taken with a return to the medieval period, with us as the noblesse. After all, the Power can do a great many of the same things as the humans' technology. Until your sister carefully explained the problems to me.'
He shook his head. 'The al-Lanarkis are the primary advocates of the, ah, EMP. Trimback One. She demonstrated convincingly that they argued so because their primary territories would be least affected, and so all the other Shadowspawn would be weakened. They would probably have done it themselves, if I had not strongly hinted we would exterminate their clan down to the babes in arms if they did.'
'And the humor?'
'Well, Adrian, you did kill her. And here you are, repeating her so-convincing arguments to me!'
Seraphine sighed. 'I will rather miss Adrienne. She reminded me of myself at that age, so passionate and enthusiastic about her causes, yet so carefree and merry and natural.'
Yeah, she longed to unleash a tailored supersmallpox on the world so she could take it over and be worshiped as a goddess, and she had a deep, care-free, merry enjoyment of…actually doing things to people that would be squicky even if you just played them. Doing them to me, in particular. And I'm not puritanical about that sort of thing at all.
Etienne continued: 'But something must be done. The humans are breeding like cockroaches and threaten to destroy the Earth. And while I could…how did Adrienne put it…turn myself into a guinea pig, walk into a steel box, and have Arianespace launch me to the moon, there would be no food and little amusement there.'
Ellen surprised herself by chuckling. That was the sort of thing Adrienne would have said. It was easier to appreciate her sense of humor when you weren't having your head held underwater as foreplay or being chained up and flogged.
Though she was actually pretty good at the chaining and flogging. It was just the knowledge that she might decide to go on until I was dead or crippled. God, I'm glad she's dead. How many times have I thought or said that? Not enough, dammit! I expect to spend the next sixty years being glad she's dead.
Adrian continued earnestly: 'Yet you are the grand master. The human governments are under your control. Surely you could take other measures, slower and surer? Our great advantage is that we are not pressed for time.'
Seraphine laughed again. 'This is a game of intellectual musical chairs! Now you are taking my part, when we discussed this with Adrienne. I thought that the plague scenario was also somewhat risky. Things rarely go as smoothly as one plans, and we would be relying on human scientists doing work we did not understand ourselves.'
Her husband looked at her with a crooked smile. 'True. Since we are all Brezes, I suppose it to be expected that we find ourselves echoing one another's thoughts. Though in Adrian's case, I suspect his deplorable sentimentality about the cattle is involved.'
Adrian shrugged. 'True.'
Why did he admit that…? Oh, they're telepaths. I suppose true/false is easy to detect, even with screens.
'But that does not affect my argument. Why take the hideous risks, when slower and surer methods are available?'
Etienne shrugged again; it was worthy of Charles Dullin, and Ellen dropped her eyes to her brandy. The gesture was entirely natural, and it reminded her of how old this…manlike creature was.
And Adrian will not die when his body does either, and he could Carry my soul forever…Stop that! You don't have to think about that for decades yet! The world may end in the interim. In fact, it probably will end in the interim.
'It has been tried. The Chinese one-child policy, for example, which our good taotie allies implemented. But while we can make any particular government perform any particular action, we cannot force most of them to adopt many consistent policies over many years, which they are violently unwilling to do. Our puppets would be overthrown, and if we forced their successors to do the same then they would be overthrown…and meantime, our existence would become painfully obvious.'
Seraphine sighed. 'It is a paradox; we have all power, but only so long as we do not use it very often. It would be much more convenient if we were worshiped openly. Of course, that would also have certain dangers.'
'Our existence will become very obvious indeed, if either of the Trimback options is used,' Adrian said.
His ancestor nodded. 'Yes, but by then the humans would be much weaker. We would be in a position to use the crisis to take control more directly.'
Ellen swallowed. Adrian had shared his Seeings with her. They weren't exactly prophecies, the future was a spray of alternate possibilities and not one fixed path, but they did represent the trend of events, the balance of possibilities. Most of them showed a wrecked world; many a world under the open rule of the Council of Shadows. Those were like Hell come to earth, in ways more horrible because they were quiet.
'And besides,' the Shadowspawn archimage went on, 'Adrienne also convinced me that if the humans are allowed to play with their scientific tools and toys much longer, they will stumble across us anyway. Neglecting to keep an eye on that monkey curiosity of theirs let them develop nuclear weapons, to which we are so vulnerable.'
