attempt as our pretext to remove some of the more troublesome 'moderates' just in case, didn't we, Oscar? 'In the process, she taught the other potential radicals what happens to people who try to overthrow the Committee. And she made it quite clear in the public mind that the military supports us.' He smiled thinly. 'Even if she's actually trying to build her own power base, the Mob doesn't know that, so it has to assume that if we tell her to go out and kill another million or so of them, she will. Not only that, but the moderate elements of Nouveau Paris' population have had a lesson in what a real insurrection costs everyone in the vicinity, even the innocent bystanders. They don't want to see another one, and the radicals sure as hell don't want 'Admiral Cluster Bomb' dropping by to pay them another visit. So if we're going to introduce a policy which risks public repercussions, this is the best possible time for us to do it.'
'I understand the reasoning, and I don't question the need to do something' Saint-Just said. 'The timing does worry me, but that would probably be true whenever we decided to implement reforms. I guess part of it is the notion of deflating the currency and cutting the BLS simultaneously.'
'Better to put all the medicine down them in one nasty-tasting dose than to string it out,' Pierre disagreed. 'Inflation was bad enough under the old regime; it's gotten even worse in the last few years, and it's hurting what foreign trade we've been able to maintain in Silesia and with the Sollies. As I see it, we have two options: we can go whole hog and completely nationalize the economy on the old prespace totalitarian model, or we can begin gradually phasing a true free market back in, but this half-assed socialism-by-regulation is killing us.'
'No argument there,' Saint-Just agreed when he paused.
'Well, I think we've pretty much demonstrated that the bureaucrats are almost as bad at running the economy under us as they were under the Legislaturalists,' Pierre pointed out. 'Given their dismal track record, I'm not particularly enamored of the idea of giving them still more control. Which only leaves the free market route, and for that to work we've got to have a stable currency—with at least a passing relationship to its real purchasing power—and a work force motivated to get out there and actually work. Most of the out-planets are in better shape for that than Haven is—they never had the percentage of Dolists we had here to begin with—and even the Nouveau Paris Mob has been reacquiring the habit of work since the war started. If we deflate the currency and reduce the BLS, we'll drag more of them into the non-military labor force, as well. And, as I say, this is probably the best time to make the attempt. I know it's risky. I simply don't see how we can avoid this particular risk.'
'All right.' Saint-Just sighed. 'You're right. It's just that knowing how much of it is going to land on my plate if it goes sour makes me... anxious. We're playing with several different kinds of fire here, Rob. I only hope I've got enough firemen to deal with things if they get out of hand.'
'I realize how much I'm dumping on you,' Pierre acknowledged, 'and I wish I saw a way to avoid it. Unfortunately, I don't. But the good news is that my analysts' projections suggest that if we get through the next twelve to eighteen T-months more or less intact, we'll actually have turned the corner on the reforms. So if McQueen can just generate some good news on the military front, on the one hand, while the threat of turning her pinnaces loose on the Mob again helps scare the remaining radicals into good behavior and you keep an eye on everyone else, we may actually pull this off.'
'And if we don't?' Saint-Just asked very quietly.
'If we don't, then we'll lose the war in the end, anyway,' Pierre said just as quietly, his eyes suddenly distant, as if he looked at something Saint-Just couldn't see, 'and that will probably be the end of you, me, and the Committee. But you know, Oscar, that might not be such a tragedy. And it certainly wouldn't be undeserved, now would it? Because if we can't manage reform that's even this basic, then we'll have failed ourselves and the Republic. Everything we've done—and all the people we've killed—since the Coup will have been for nothing. And if it was all for nothing, Oscar, then we'll deserve whatever happens to us.'
Saint-Just stared at the Chairman while an icy splash of shock went through him. He'd seen Pierre grow more and more brooding as the war dragged on, but this was the first time he'd ever heard him say something like that. Yet the shock wasn't as great as it should have been, he realized. Perhaps a part of him had seen this coming all along. And it wasn't as if he had a lot of choice, even if he hadn't seen it. For better or for worse, he had given his loyalty to Rob Pierre. Not the institutional loyalty he had sworn to the Legislaturalists and then betrayed, but his personal fealty. Pierre was his chieftain, because only Pierre had possessed the vision and the guts to try to save the Republic.
It was time to remember that, Saint-Just told himself. Time to remember how mad most people would have thought Pierre before the Coup, how impossible it had seemed that they could come this far. If anyone in the galaxy could pull the rest of it off, then Rob Pierre was that man. And if he couldn't...
Oscar Saint-Just decided not to think about that, and nodded to the man behind the desk.
'If it's all the same to you, Rob, I'll just try to keep anything like that from happening,' he said dryly.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
'Signal from
'Thank you, Harrison.' Citizen Vice Admiral Lester Tourville glanced at Everard Honeker, then reached inside his tunic to pull a cigar from his breast pocket. The wrapper crackled as he stripped it away, and he looked back at Frasier. 'Pass the word to Citizen Captain Hewitt that Citizen Commissioner Honeker and I will be leaving the ship, please. Then inform my coxswain that I'll need my pinnace.'
'Aye, Citizen Admiral.' Frasier began speaking into his hush mike, and Tourville moved his eyes to the chief of the watch.
'Citizen Chief Hunley, please be good enough to pass the word for Citizen Captain Bogdanovich and Citizen Commander Foraker to join Citizen Commissioner Honeker and myself in Boat Bay Two at their earliest possible convenience.'
'Aye, Citizen Admiral.'
Tourville nodded dismissal to the petty officer, then took a moment to insert the cigar into his mouth, light it, and be certain it was drawing properly. He removed it to blow a perfect smoke ring at a ventilator air return, gave his fierce mustache a rub, and glanced back at Honeker.
'Are you ready, Citizen Commissioner?' he asked politely.
'I suppose so,' Honeker replied, and the two of them walked towards PNS
Tourville allowed Honeker to precede him into the lift, then punched the destination code and stood back against one bulkhead, drumming thoughtfully on his thigh with the fingers of his right hand.
'I really wish you'd waited to light that thing until I was somewhere else,' Honeker remarked after a moment, and Tourville grinned. The people's commissioner had been on his case about the cigars from the moment he first came aboard Tourville's last flagship. It had become something of a joke between them, a sort of game they played, but only when no one was watching. It would hardly have done to let the rest of the galaxy suspect that an admiral and a commissioner had actually become friends of a sort, after all. And especially not at any point in the last nine T-months or so.
'I thought I'd just enjoy it on the way to the pinnace,' Tourville told him cheerfully. In fact, he suspected Honeker had realized he rather regretted adopting the damned things as a part of his image. Modern medicine might have virtually stamped out the various ills to which tobacco had once contributed, but it hadn't made nicotine any less addictive, and the ash flecks on his uniform were more than mildly annoying.
'I'm sure,' Honeker snorted, and Tourville's grin softened with an edge of genuine affection he would have been very careful not to let anyone else see. Particularly not now. People who'd survived the head-on collision of two air cars didn't light matches to discover whether or not their hydrogen tanks were leaking.
He snorted to himself at the thought. Actually, checking for hydrogen leaks with a match would probably have been considerably safer than what he'd actually done, and he still couldn't quite believe he'd tried it—much less survived the attempt! Defying a member of the Committee of Public Safety for any reason was unlikely to leave a man breathing. Unless, of course, the Committee member in question suffered a fatal accident before she could
