overruled him, and now, like you say, she plans to co-opt my position on the negotiations.'
'Is there anything we can do about it?' Jason asked.
'Not that I can think of right off the top of my head.' Arnold's voice was sour. 'I'm beginning to wonder if maybe she didn't deliberately let me entirely commit myself on the issue. Maybe she was just giving me enough rope to be sure I hung myself with every insider in Nouveau Paris. Everyone we've talked to knows exactly where I stand, and now that she's going to very publicly give me what I wanted all along, it cuts the legs right out from under any opposition to her I could mount.'
He tipped his chair even further back and gazed up at the ceiling, eyes slightly unfocused in thought, and Jason watched him silently. He knew better than to interrupt his brother when he was thinking that hard, so he found himself a chair and sat down to wait it out.
It took a while, but finally Arnold's eyes dropped back into focus, and he smiled at Jason. It was unkind, but true, that Jason wasn't exactly the sharpest stylus in the box. He was loyal, energetic, and enthusiastic, but on his best day, no one had ever accused him of having an excess of intellect. There were times when he let his enthusiasm get the better of him, and he was entirely capable of putting his foot squarely into his mouth. And, to be honest, he had a way of asking irritating questions—the sort which either had no answer at all, or whose answer was so blatantly obvious any moron ought to know what it was without asking. But at the same time, there was something about him, something about those selfsame irritating questions, which had a way of striking sparks in Arnold's own thinking. It was as if the need to figure out how to explain things to his brother caused his own thoughts to gel magically.
Jason sat up straighter as Arnold smiled at him. He knew that expression, and his flagging spirits perked up instantly.
'I think, Jase, that I've been coming at this the wrong way ever since Theisman opened his mouth,' Arnold said thoughtfully. 'I've been thinking about the way Pritchart is about to try to take over my own position and squeeze me out. But when you come right down to it, she can't. Not as long as I'm Secretary of State. She can try to take credit for any success our negotiations might achieve, and she can try to convince the public that she's the one who decided to take a firmer position with the Manties. But in the end, I'm the one who's going to be carrying out those negotiations.'
'So she's going to have to share at least some of the credit for any successes with you,' Jason said, nodding slowly.
'Well, yes, she is,' Arnold agreed. 'But that isn't really what I was thinking about.' Jason looked confused, and Arnold grinned. 'What I was thinking about,' he explained, 'was that any communication with the Manties is going to pass through my office. Which means that what I really need to be concentrating on is the opportunity that offers to put my own little imprint on things.'
Jason still looked less than totally enlightened, and Arnold decided not to be any more specific. Not yet. In fact, he almost wished he hadn't said as much as he already had, given Jason's propensity for occasionally blurting out things at inconvenient moments.
Fortunately, Jason was accustomed to leaving the heavy intellectual lifting to him. It wasn't really necessary to explain things at this point. Indeed, it might be just as well not to explain them at all. Jason was very good at carrying out instructions, as long as those instructions were specific and uncomplicated, so perhaps it would be wisest not to burden him with more than he absolutely needed to know.
Jason was also accustomed to the way Arnold wandered off into his own thoughts, and he was perfectly content to sit and wait in companionable silence for however long it took for Arnold to complete the process and remember his presence. Which was just as well, since Arnold was very busy thinking indeed just now.
Yes, indeed. He'd been overlooking his greatest single advantage all along. Or, no, not 'overlooking' it precisely. He just hadn't realized how big an advantage it truly was if he handled it properly. But now that it had occurred to him, he could see all sorts of possibilities. The public might be gulled into believing any new, assertive negotiating stance was Eloise Pritchart's idea, not Arnold Giancola's. But whatever the public might be prepared to think, Arnold knew that, in the end, and despite any confidence she might project through her much anticipated speech, Pritchart lacked the intestinal fortitude to go to the mat with the Manties if that was what success required. If it came down to going to eyeball-to-eyeball with the real possibility of a resumption of hostilities, Pritchart—and Theisman—would blink and let the damned Manties walk all over them all over again.
But Arnold had spent too much time dealing directly with the Manticoran negotiators and corresponding personally with Elaine Descroix. He knew that if the Republic only had the guts to really turn the screws on them, it was the Manties who would blink. Baron High Ridge, Lady Descroix, and Countess New Kiev between them had the moral fortitude of a flea and the spine of an amoeba. It might have been different when Cromarty was Prime Minister, but that had been then, and this was now, and the present Manticoran government was composed of pigmies.
So the trick was going to be stage managing things properly. He had to create the right atmosphere, the right confluence of events. A situation in which anyone who didn't know the Manties as well as he did would believe the resumption of hostilities
Oh, yes. He smiled deep inside at the alluring prospect. It would be tricky, of course. He'd have to find a way to lure her into provoking the proper response from the Manties, but that shouldn't be too difficult, given the arrogance which was so much a part of High Ridge and Descroix. Of course, he'd need to find someone reliable he could assign as his direct contact with the Manties, especially since he might have to do a little . . . creative editing here and there. Whoever passed on those communiques would have to be in the loop and prepared to support the process, but he rather thought he had the perfect candidate for that job.
Of course, if it did become necessary to do any editing he'd have to be careful to see to it that that busybody Usher didn't find out what he was up to. After all, if the President wanted to get picky about it, what he was thinking about might technically be illegal. He'd have to check on that. Maybe Jeff Tullingham could advise him if he was careful to keep his inquiry sufficiently hypothetical? But illegal or not, it would certainly be embarrassing —possibly terminally so—if anyone ever figured out just how he'd shaped the international situation. But in the end, he would emerge as the iron-willed, insightful statesman who'd seen what was needed and done it despite the interfering instructions of the nonentity who happened to hold the presidency.
Of course, part of the trick would be to copper his bets by making
Now then, he thought. The first thing to do is to invite to the Andermani ambassador to lunch. . . .
Chapter Thirty Two
'…The excitement we all feel at this historic moment. The honor of speaking for the entire Star Kingdom, of somehow finding the words to express the pride Her Majesty's subjects all feel in our incomparable scientific community on an occasion such as this, does not come often to any political leader, and I approach it with mingled pride and anxiety. Pride that it has fallen to me to attempt to speak aloud what all of us feel at this moment, and anxiety for how inadequate I know any words of mine must be. Yet I take courage from the reflection that, in the end, anything I may say will be only the first words spoken. They will be far from the last, and as the citizens of the Star Kingdom add their own, far more worthy thanks to my own, I know that . . .'
'My God,' T.J. Wix muttered out of the corner of his mouth. 'Is he
Jordin Kare and Michel Reynaud, seated to either side of him, managed not to glare repressively at him. They also managed not to grin in appreciative agreement with his plaintive tone . . . which was considerably more difficult. They sat with him on the raised stage of the press room, behind the lectern and the tall, narrow, stoop- shouldered form of the Prime Minister of Manticore, listening to his apparently interminable speech, and not one of them would have accepted the invitation to this prestigious moment if he'd had any choice in the matter.
