The Trade of Queens

things. Made of wood and sailcloth.”

“Really?” Rudi perked up. “And Her Majesty wants to build something better? What for?”

“They’ve got a war on.” Riordan finally sat down in the chair opposite, and Rudi relaxed slightly. “The French are blockading them, there is a threat of bombardment from aerial tenders offshore. I told her to give the British something for their navy, one of those submarines—you’ve seen Das Boot? no?—but she says ships take too long. They understand not to expect too much of aircraft, so build something revolutionary.” He took a deep breath. “Give me an eagle’s view. What should I be asking?”

“Huh.” Rudi rubbed his chin. It was itching; he hadn’t had a chance to shave for three days, scurrying hither and yon trying to arrange bodies to haul across the ultralight parts he’d been buying. “What engines do they have? That’s going to limit us. And metallurgy. Electronics … I assume they’ve got vacuum tubes? It’ll have to be something from the nineteen-forties. A warbird. Two engines for range, if it’s going offshore, and it needs to be able to carry bombs or guns.” He paused. “You know a plane on its own isn’t going to do much? It needs tactical doctrine, pilot training, navigation tools and radar if they can build it, ideally an integrated air defense—”

Riordan waved an impatient hand. “Yes, that’s not the point. We need what Her Majesty calls a technology demonstrator.”

“Can they do aluminum engine blocks?” Rudi answered his own question: “Maybe not, but aluminum goes back to the nineteenth century—we can work on them. Hmm. Engines will be a bottleneck, but … P-38? No, it’s a pure fighter. Hard to fly, too. If they’re still doing wood—” He stopped.

“Wood?” Riordan frowned.

“We’d need to work out how to produce the engines, and we’d need modern epoxy glues instead of the shit they had back then, but. But.” Rudi shook his head. “I think I know what you want,” he said.

“Do you?”

“The de Havilland Mosquito. The British built tons of them during the war, kept them flying until the nineteen sixties—it was originally a fast two-seat bomber, but they hung guns on it and used it as a fighter too. Made out of plywood, with two Merlin engines—they were a nineteen-thirties design, so the metallurgy might be up to it. Long range, fast; if they’re still using biplanes it’ll run rings around anything they’ve seen. If the metallurgy is better and quality control is up to it, I’d go for the P-51D, the Mustang. Faster, single-engined, similar range, more maneuverable. But for a first cut, I’d go for something made of wood with two engines. Safer that way.”

Riordan nodded slowly. “Could you build one?”

“Could.” Rudi carefully placed his half-full mug on the map table. He tried not to exhale Pepsi. “Build one?”

“For the British.” Riordan wasn’t smiling. “With unlimited resources, but a knife over your head.”

“Urk.” Rudi thought for a while. “Maybe. But I’d hedge my bets.”

“How?”

“I’d start by talking to their existing aircraft designers. And bring the biggest damn library of metallurgy, electronics, materials, and aerodynamics textbooks I can find. The designs for those nineteen-forties warbirds—you can buy them on eBay for a couple of hundred dollars—CD-ROMs with just about everything on them, technical manuals, patents, blueprints, everything. But you’ll probably take longer to build an exact replica of one from the blueprints than it would take a clued-up manufacturer on a war footing to invent a new one and build it from scratch. Much better to grab all the textbooks and histories, copies of Jane’s Aircraft, manuals, ephemera—everything—and drop them in front of a team who’re already used to working together. Hell, give them a history of air warfare and blueprints of the aircraft and they’ll have a field day.”

“Huh.” Riordan’s frown deepened. “That may not be possible.”

“Oh.” Rudi deflated slightly. “That would make it a lot harder. If we can only use Clan members, it’s nearly impossible. There aren’t even a dozen of us who know an aileron from a slotted flap. But we could do the liaison thing, act as librarians, figure out what a design team needs to know and get it for them. Hell. We could go recruiting, you know? Look for aerospace engineers in trouble with the law, offer them a bolt-hole and a salary and a blind eye if they’ll work for us.”

“Not practical. That last idea, I mean. But the liaison idea, hmm. Can you get me a list of names?”

“Certainly, sir. When do you need it by?” But what about the ultralights? he wondered.

“You have two hours. Here’s a pad and a pen; Comms and Crypto are downstairs on the left if you need to ask any questions. You have my seal.” Riordan tossed a heavily embossed metal ring on the table in front of Rudi. Rudi flinched, as if from a poisonous mushroom. “I’ll be back at five and I need to send the answer to Her Majesty by six. Your task is to identify those of our people who you will need in order to help the British develop their aerospace sector. Oh, and remember to include runway construction, fuel and repair equipment and facilities, munitions, bombsights, gunsights, training, and anything else I’ve forgotten. That’s a higher priority than your ultralight squadron, I’m afraid, but it’s a much bigger job. The Pepsi’s all yours.”

*   *   *

Late afternoon of a golden summer day. On a low ridge overlooking a gently sloping vale, a party of riders— exclusively male, of gentle breeding, discreetly armed but not under arms—paused for refreshment. To the peasants bent sweating over sickle and sheaf, they would be little more than dots on the horizon, as distant as the soaring eagle high above, and of as little immediate consequence.

“I fear this isn’t a promising site,” said one of the onlookers, a hatchet-faced man in early middle age. “Insufficient cover—see the brook yonder? And the path over to the house, around that outcrop?—we’d stick out like pilliwinked fingers.”

“Bad location for helicopters, though,” said a younger man. “See, the slope of the field: makes it hard for them to land. And for road access, I think we can add some suitable obstacles. If the major is right and they can bring vehicles across, they won’t have an easy time of it.”

Earl Bentbranch hung back, at the rear of the party. He glanced at his neighbor, Stefan ven Arnesen. Ven Arnesen twined his fingers deep in his salt-and-pepper beard, a distant look on his face. He noticed Bentbranch watching and nodded slightly.

“Do you credit it?” Bentbranch murmured.

Ven Arnesen thought for a moment. “No,” he said softly, “no, I don’t.” He looked at the harvesters toiling in the strip fields below. It didn’t look like the end of the world as he knew it. “I can’t.”

“They may not come for a generation. If ever. To throw everything away out of panic…”

Ven Arnesen spared his neighbor a long, appraising look. “They’ll come. Look, the harvest comes. And with it the poppies. Their war dead—their families used to wear poppies to remember them, did you know that?”

“You had your tenants plant dream poppies in the divisions.”

“Yes. If the bastards come for us, it’s the least I can do. Give it away”—he looked out across his lands, as far as the eye could see—“for free.” He coughed quietly. “I’m too old to uproot myself and move on, my friend. Let the youngsters take to the road, walk the vale of tears as indigent tinkers just like our great-great-grandfathers’ grandsires once more. These are my lands and my people and I’ll not be moving. All this talk of business models and refugees can’t accommodate what runs in my veins.”

“So you’ll resist?”

Ven Arnesen raised an eyebrow. “Of course. And you haven’t made your mind up yet.”

“I’m … wavering. I went to school over there, do you remember? I speak Anglische, I could up sticks and go to this new world they’re talking of, I’d be no more or less of a stranger there than I was for seven years in Baltimore. But I could dig my own midden, too, or run to Sky Father’s priests out of mindless panic. I could do any number of stupid or distasteful things, were I so inclined, but I don’t generally do such things without good reason. I’d need a very good reason to abandon home and hearth and accept poverty and exile for life.”

“The size of the reason becomes greater the older one gets,” ven Arnesen agreed. “But I’m not convinced by this nonsense about resisting the American army, either. I’ve seen their films. I’ve spent a little time there. Overt resistance will be difficult. Whatever Ostlake and his cronies think.”

“I don’t think they believe anything else, to tell you the truth. If—when—they come, the Americans will