son-of-a-bitch has said in the last two T-years!'
'I know you haven't. But you're the Secretary of War; I'm the President. I can't afford to indulge myself by rejecting the position of any Cabinet secretary out of hand just because I don't like—or trust—the person advocating it.'
'No, I don't suppose you can,' he said just a bit contritely, acknowledging the implicit rebuke.
'Sorry.' She grimaced. 'I didn't mean to take it out on you. But now Arnold is telling me that he thinks it would be . . . inadvisable to be any more 'adversarial' then we already have in our negotiations with the Manties.'
'
'More or less. I don't know whether he's serious, or whether he's trying to talk me out of it because of the shift in my favor in the opinion polls. The problem is, that much as I'd like to, I don't think I can just dismiss his official concerns out of hand.'
'Because you think he wants to make them part of the record in case you do dismiss them and it blows up in your face?'
'I'm sure that's part of it. But let's face it, Tom. Neither one of us may like him very much, but that doesn't make him an idiot. Basically, he's arguing that if we want to keep the pressure on the Manties, we have to be a bit more explicit about the steel fist inside our silk glove.'
'If you're about to say he still wants to announce the existence of the CLACs,' Theisman broke in, 'I'm still firmly opposed. Shannon's people have managed to get nine more of them into commission, with complete LAC complements. The longer she has to get still more of them commissioned—and to work up the ones she has— before the Manties know they even exist, the better.'
'I understand your position, Tom,' she said patiently. 'And I told him I wasn't going to override you. But that doesn't mean I can completely ignore what he was saying. I've done just about everything short of hitting Descroix over the head with a club, and she still doesn't seem to realize we're serious. It's going to take something fairly drastic to get through to her, I think. The sort of language diplomats don't usually use with one another.'
'Is that really wise?' he asked.
'I don't know whether it is or not,' she said snappishly. 'I only know that if I'm going to continue to pursue any sort of diplomatic resolution with people so damned stupid they don't even recognize the kind of danger they're walking straight into—and taking the rest of us into with them, whether we want to go or not—then I need a big enough hammer to get their frigging attention!'
Theisman managed not to wince visibly, but it wasn't easy. Pritchart's growing exasperation with both Giancola and the Star Kingdom had worried him for months. Which, he admitted, had been just a little hypocritical of him when he'd been even more exasperated with both of them than she'd been. But as she'd just pointed out, she was the President. He wasn't. In the end, her anger was far more dangerous than his.
'If we're not going to announce the CLACs,' he said carefully, 'then just what sort of hammer did you have in mind?'
'I'm going to tell them it's time to fish or cut bait,' she said flatly. 'I want at least some concession, some forward movement, out of them. And if I don't get it, then I intend to recall our negotiators from the so-called peace talks for 'consultations' here in Nouveau Paris. And I'll keep them here for months, if I have to.'
'That sounds just a little drastic,' he observed. 'I'm not saying it's unjustified, or even that it might not be a good idea, in the long run. But if you do it, especially in the wake of how recently we've admitted Bolthole exists, it's really going to ratchet up the pressure. Maybe further than anyone wants it ratcheted.'
'I'm fully aware of that possibility,' Pritchart assured him. 'I don't think the situation is likely to get out of hand—not quickly, anyway. There's too much inertia on the other side. But it's possible I'm wrong about that. Which is the real reason I commed you.'
She held his eyes for perhaps three heartbeats, then asked the question.
'How are your war plans coming?'
'I was afraid you were going to ask that.' He sighed.
'I wouldn't if I had a choice.'
'I know. I know.' He drew a deep breath. 'Actually,' he admitted, 'they're coming along better—if that isn't an obscene word to use, under the circumstances—than I'd anticipated.'
'Oh?'
'The more we've looked at it, the more evident it's become that Case Red is our best option. I don't like that, in some ways, because of the mindset it engenders in my planners. And in myself, if I'm going to be honest.' He frowned. 'I'm happier thinking in offensive terms, of making an enemy respond to my actions, and I worry sometimes that it predisposes me towards the most aggressive solution to a problem.'
'I don't think anyone who knows you is ever going to confuse you with a bloodthirsty maniac, Tom,' Pritchart told him.
'As long as I don't do it myself,' he replied wryly. She snorted, and he shrugged.
'With that said, though, I really believe our best chance would be an early, powerful offensive. It would give us our best opportunity to recover the occupied systems and to neutralize their ability to do anything about it, at least in the short term. Hopefully, that would provide a breather, during which diplomacy might actually accomplish something. And if that doesn't happen, at least we'd be as advantageously placed as possible if we're forced to fight it out to the end after all.'
'How close are we to being ready to do that if we have to?'
He regarded her expressionlessly for several seconds.
'That depends,' he said finally. 'In the narrow technical sense, we could launch the operation tomorrow. And assuming our assumptions are valid and that the Manties didn't do anything drastic to change the operational parameters before we actually kicked off, I'd say we'd have at least a seventy or eighty percent chance of pulling it off.'
'That good?' Pritchart sounded surprised, and he frowned.
'Let me point out that that's just another way of saying I estimate that even if all our assumptions are sound, there's still a twenty or thirty percent chance of getting our asses kicked.'
'Hardly the resounding confidence of a committed militarist,' the President observed with an almost- chuckle.
'If you wanted a committed militarist, you should have fired me,' Theisman told her. 'In my considered opinion anybody who actually wants to go to war is a lunatic, and that's especially true when we've just managed to somehow stave off complete military defeat as recently as four or five T-years ago. Eloise, I have to encourage aggressive thinking in my planners if I'm going to have any realistic prospect of winning a war with the Manties and their allies. But the truth is that even if we win, our problems won't be over unless we're willing to try to conquer the Star Kingdom outright. And even if we hurt them as badly in the opening stages as I think we could, any actual conquest is going to be bloody, expensive, and very, very ugly . . . while any sort of occupation on the old Legislaturalist model would be a whole lot uglier than that. Not to mention completely unworkable in the long run. I really cannot over emphasize my opposition to resuming active military operations if there's any possible alternative.'
'I appreciate that, Tom,' she told him quietly, impressed by his obvious sincerity. 'And the fact that I know you feel that way is the exact reason—one of many—I would never dream of replacing you with someone else.'
'It's my job to advise you on all the reasons not to go to war as well as to figure out how to fight the damned thing if it happens anyway,' he replied. 'And while I'm thinking about reasons not to do it, don't overlook the potential cost to our relations with other star nations.'
'I haven't overlooked it,' she assured him. 'We've gone a long way towards recovering from the damage the Parnell Hearings did to our public image in the Solarian League. Their newsies have given full play to our domestic reforms, and I've exchanged several very friendly notes with the League's President. For that matter, we've been making ground steadily with our closer neighbors. They're no more blind to which side has been dragging its feet in our talks with the Star Kingdom than we are, and the fact that we've been willing to go on talking—especially since it's become common knowledge that we have the military potential to pursue other options if we chose to—has worked very strongly in our favor. I don't have any desire to throw all of that away. But we have
