word of the press releases on Bolthole to reach Manticore. We'll time the diplomatic note announcing our new, firmer position to arrive a few days after it gets there, and we'll be careful to couch it in nonconfrontational terms.'
'You're going to demand that they stop wasting our time in a 'nonconfrontational' way?' Theisman cocked a quizzical eyebrow, and she snorted.
'I didn't say they were going to like hearing about it. But we can be firm and make our point without sounding like some bunch of reckless lunatics who're just itching to try out their new military toys!'
'As the person whose toybox those toys are in, I can certainly approve of that,' Theisman agreed fervently. Then he scratched his chin and frowned thoughtfully. 'Still, I'd feel happier if Giancola weren't the Secretary of State. There's too much opportunity for him to put his own twist on anything we say to the Manties to make me happy.'
'The same thought had occurred to me,' Pritchart confessed. 'Unfortunately, if we can't fire him and we can't indict him, then we're stuck with him. There are times I wish our system was a bit more like the Manties. Mind you, I think the stability of ours has its own major advantages—such as avoiding sudden, unanticipated shifts in government policy like what happened to them when Cromarty died. But since our cabinet officers require Congressional confirmation for specific posts, we can't just shuffle portfolios whenever it's convenient like they can. And as long as he's Secretary of State, we can't cut him out of the diplomatic channel.
'But by the same token, he already knows he's scarcely on my Christmas card list, however cordial our relationships have to appear in public. So I'm not going to lose any sleep over the possibility of hurting his tender feelings when I insist on reviewing any notes we send the Manties before they're dispatched.' She snorted again, and this time there was an edge of true humor in her fleeting smile. 'Who knows? Maybe he'll get offended enough to do us all a favor and resign!'
'Don't hold your breath waiting for that,' Theisman advised. 'Anoxia is a fairly miserable way to go.'
'A woman can always hope,' she shot back.
'I suppose.' he thought for a few more moments. 'So how exactly do you want to handle the initial disclosure about Bolthole? Should it come out of your office, or out of mine?'
'Yours,' Pritchart said promptly. 'I'm sure I'll be asked all sorts of questions about it at my next press conference, but the initial announcement should be a Navy affair.'
'And if someone asks me how it happens that Bolthole never appeared in any of our official budgets?'
'As a matter of fact, I'm sort of hoping someone will ask you exactly that,' Pritchart admitted. 'If they do, I want you to point out to whoever asks that in the absence of a formal treaty with the Star Kingdom of Manticore, the Republic is still in a state of war. And that publicizing the naval budget would clearly be of enormous help to any potential adversary. Don't go out of your way to link Manticore and 'any potential adversary,' but don't back away from it if someone else suggests the linkage. It won't hurt to jar the Manties' thinking a little before we start sending them any formal diplomatic notes. And getting that argument out early should help to undercut anyone— like our own esteemed Secretary of State and his political allies—if they try to argue that we've been overly timid. I doubt that anyone's completely forgotten what the Manty Navy was in the process of doing to us a few years back, but it won't hurt to remind them of it.'
'I see what you've got in mind. And if we have to walk up to a sleeping attack dog and kick it on the nose, we might as well do it in the most effective way we can.' He shook his head. 'You know, when Dennis and I decided Saint-Just had to go, I never expected that a republican government, freely and openly elected by its citizens, would have to go to such lengths to protect itself against one of its own cabinet secretaries.'
'And that's why you prefer the military to politics,' Pritchart told him half-sadly. 'Not that I blame you, sometimes. But a lot of it's timing, Tom. Give us another fifteen or twenty T-years for the Republic to get its feet back under it and the electorate to get truly accustomed to the idea of the rule of law, and we wouldn't have to spend so much time worrying about one overly ambitious, unscrupulous politico. I could just insist on his resignation and feel confident that the Constitution could weather any repercussions. Unfortunately, we're not that far along yet.'
'I know. And I'm looking forward to the time when we will be . . . assuming that Giancola's lunacy doesn't get us back into a shooting war with the Manties again first.'
'I think that's a worst-case scenario,' Pritchart said seriously. 'High Ridge is even more unscrupulous and ambitious than Arnold, if Wilhelm and his analysts are reading him correctly. But he's also basically a coward. I don't discount the possibility that backing him into a corner might provoke him into doing something rash, but there's no way that he wants to go back to war with us, either. Especially not if it looks to him like Bolthole might genuinely have evened the odds. So as long as we're very, very careful not to crowd him too hard, he's not going to pull the trigger on a war with us. And I certainly don't have any intention of starting one!'
'I'd feel a lot better if I didn't know how many wars had started when neither side really wanted them to,' Theisman said dryly.
'Granted. But I can't allow worrying about the possibility to paralyze us, either. It's an imperfect universe, Tom, and all we can do is the best we can.'
'I wish I could disagree. But I can't. So I suppose I should get back over to my own office. If we're going to announce the existence of Shannon's little project, then I'd better sit down with Arnaud Marquette and light a fire under my planning staff. Whatever we may want or expect, it's my job to have a war plan ready if the wheels come off anyway.'
Chapter Twenty Five
'…So as soon as the necessary probe data are in hand, we'll be sending a fully equipped survey ship through,' Michel Reynaud told the reporter.
'And how long will it take you to amass the information you need, Admiral?' the woman followed up quickly, before anyone else in the crowded auditorium could take the floor away from her.
'That's an imponderable, of course,' Reynaud told her patiently. 'As all of you are no doubt aware, there simply aren't that many junctions, even today, which means our comparative information base is limited. We can describe the observed properties of the phenomenon mathematically, but our grasp of the underlying theory lags behind our ability to model. All I can tell you for certain is that we know what data it is that we need, but until we actually insert the first probes, we don't have any idea how long it's going to take us to acquire it.'
'But—' the reporter began stubbornly, and Reynaud gritted his teeth behind a pleasant smile. He could feel Sir Clarence Oglesby standing beside him, and that didn't help his mood at all. He didn't much like Oglesby at the best of times, and the Government spokesman's blandly optimistic comments about the vast possibilities the new terminus created were largely to blame for the press pool's demands that Reynaud somehow provide them with an exact timetable for the cornucopia's arrival.
I've never been at my best dealing with situations like this, he thought. And if I told this airhead what I really think of her obvious inability to understand simple English . . .
'If I may, Admiral?' Jordin Kare, on his very best behavior here in the public eye, asked diffidently, and Reynaud managed to conceal his relief somehow and nodded.
'As Admiral Reynaud just suggested,' the astrophysicist told the reporter in his best, authoritative professorial mode, 'each wormhole junction with which we're familiar has been a distinct and unique case. Our own Junction isn't quite like any of the others which have been explored, and none of the others are identical to one another, either. I've spent the better part of my adult life studying this particular field, and while I can speak with authority about the known junctions, that doesn't apply to new ones. Or even to previously unexplored termini of known ones. We're largely in the position of, say, the last century or so Ante Diaspora where gravity was concerned. They could describe, model, and predict it in considerable detail, but no one had a clue how to generate and manipulate it the way we can today. All of which means that while we've made certain working assumptions about this terminus based on the Junction's other termini and what we know about other junctions, they remain just that: assumptions. Until we can positively confirm their accuracy, the notion of sending a manned vessel through is out of the question.'
He smiled with easy authority, wrapped in the mantle of his academic credentials, and the reporter nodded
