with profound respect, as if he hadn't just told her exactly what Reynaud had already said. The RMAIA director was grateful for Kare's intervention, but that didn't prevent him from thinking slightly homicidal thoughts about the reporter as she finally sat down.
The rest of the newsies instantly stabbed at their attention buttons, and Reynaud nodded to a slightly built, dark-haired man as a holographically projected green light appeared above him to indicate he'd won the competition.
'Ambrose Howell, Admiral,' the reporter identified himself. '
'Yes, Mr. Howell?'
'We've heard a great deal about the potential value of this discovery, and you and Dr. Kare have both cogently explained the difficulties and scale of the discovery and exploration process. I have two questions, if I may. First, since we've known for centuries that the math models of the Junction suggested there were additional termini, why has it taken us this long to look in the right place for this one? And, second, why did we go looking for it at this particular moment?'
'Both of those are excellent questions,' Oglesby replied, cutting in in his deep, resonant baritone before Reynaud could respond, 'and, if I may, I'll answer the second one first.'
He bestowed a self-deprecating smile on the RMAIA director, apparently totally oblivious to Reynaud's blistering anger at his uninvited intervention.
'Obviously,' he went on, transferring his modest smile to Howell, 'as a layman and a total ignoramus where hyper-physics are concerned, I'm not in any position to reply to your first question. The timing, however, was the result of equal parts serendipitous circumstance and foresight. Although the thorny issues which have prevented the negotiation of a final peace treaty remain, the determination by both parties to the recent war that even an uneasy truce is superior to active bloodshed provided a window of opportunity in which it was possible for the Government to consider other substantive issues. No one could reasonably blame previous governments for their preoccupation with matters of interstellar security and naval budgets. And, of course, until we do have a formal peace treaty, the present Government is also under a powerful obligation to secure the Star Kingdom's security as its first priority. But the present political realities mean we've been able to step back from the abyss of active warfare and turn our thoughts to something besides better ways to kill our fellow human beings.
'The present Government, aware of the absolute necessity of maintaining the momentum towards peace domestically, as well as internationally, sought an entire array of initiatives to, as the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer put it, 'build the peace.' Some were designed to ease the transition of military personnel back into the civilian economy, while others were intended to repair the ravages individuals and certain sectors of the economy—as in Basilisk, for example—had suffered during the fighting. And the creation of the Royal Manticoran Astrophysics Investigation Agency, with Admiral Reynaud as its head, was another. The Government saw this as an ideal opportunity to make a fundamental investment in the Star Kingdom's future. And, to be perfectly honest, the Government also saw the RMAIA and its audacious search as precisely the sort of peaceful challenge which would bring out the very best in a citizenry weary of the sacrifice and violence of a decade-long war. I'm very pleased, as, I'm sure, is every other individual associated with the Government in general, and the RMAIA in particular, that success has attended the effort with such unanticipated promptness.'
Oglesby beamed at Howell and the HD cameras, and Reynaud reminded himself that it would never do to strangle the pompous, fatuous opportunist in front of so many witnesses. And at least he wasn't as poisonous a personality as Makris. For a moment, the admiral considered the alternative of asking Oglesby to brief the newsies about the . . . ambiguities Reynaud's own staffers had discovered in the Agency budget statements Makris had approved. But, no, that would never do, either. And so he simply waited until Oglesby had stepped back from the podium, and then looked directly at Howell, ignoring the Prime Minister's press secretary entirely.
'Since Sir Clarence has done such an . . . admirable job of answering your second question, Mr. Howell,' he said, 'I'll confine my own response to the first one. The simplest answer is that there was a flaw in the most widely accepted models of our Junction—one which Dr. Kare and his team at Valasakis University first identified only about six T-years ago. To be perfectly honest, it was his work there which led to his selection to head this project.
'The discrepancy they identified wasn't really a fundamental error, but it was sufficient to throw all of our predictions as to the probable loci of additional termini off to a significant degree. The Manticoran Wormhole Junction is a spherical region of space approximately one light-second in diameter. That gives it a volume of approximately fourteen quadrillion cubic kilometers, and any given terminus within the Junction is vastly smaller than that, a sphere no more than three thousand kilometers across. Which means that a terminus represents less than seven hundred millionths of a percent of the total volume of the Junction. So even a very small error in our initial models' predictions had an enormous impact. In addition, this terminus's 'signature' was extremely faint, compared to those of the termini we already knew about. Our theoretical studies had always suggested that would be the case, but that faintness meant we required further advances in the sensitivity of our instruments and their computer support before we could realistically hope to detect it.'
The admiral shrugged.
'Compared to the difficulties associated with the hunt for this terminus, the proverbial needle in a haystack would have been no challenge at all. Indeed, honesty compels me to admit that even with the strong support RMAIA has received, it was as much old-fashioned luck as anything else which allowed us to detect the terminus this quickly.
'I trust that answers your questions, Mr. Howell?'
The reporter nodded and sat down, and Reynaud moved on to the next holographic halo.
'Well, I thought Clarence did rather well,' Baron High Ridge remarked as he held up his cup. He'd brought his own butler to the Prime Minister's official residence with him, and now that well-trained servant responded instantly with his coffeepot to the silent, peremptory command. High Ridge sipped the fragrant brew appreciatively. He did not, of course, thank the man or even acknowledge his existence.
'I suppose,' Elaine Descroix conceded across the remnants of her own breakfast. She drank a little coffee, patted her lips with an old-fashioned linen napkin, and then grimaced ever so slightly.
'Clarence certainly did his best to see to it that credit went where credit was due,' she told High Ridge.' And I particularly liked the way he kept managing to slip our 'building the peace' slogan into his replies. But that Kare, and especially Reynaud—!' She shook her head. 'What a deadly dull pair!'
'One can hardly expect acute political awareness out of career bureaucrats and scientists, Elaine,' High Ridge chided gently.
'No,' she agreed. 'But I was watching Reynaud, in particular. He didn't care one bit for the way Clarence kept 'stealing his thunder,' and it showed. Are we going to have problems with him down the road?'
'What sort of problems?' High Ridge frowned.
'Oh, come now, Michael! He's the RMAIA's director, and however much I may dislike him, he obviously has a brain. I'm quite certain he can do simple math, and not even Melina can change the fact that he has access to his own books.'
High Ridge set down his cup, and glanced over his shoulder at the butler. Descroix had a disturbing tendency to ignore the ears of servants. The Prime Minister was particularly aware of it because it was something he had to constantly watch in himself, but he'd seen too many examples of what ungrateful and resentful servants could do to their employers when those employers were careless about what they said in front of them. It wasn't a lesson he intended to forget, and although his butler had been in his employ for almost thirty T-years, there was no point in taking chances.
'That will be all, Howard,' he told the man. 'Just leave us the coffeepot. I'll buzz when we're done.'
'Of course, My Lord,' Howard murmured, and disappeared with discreet promptness.
'Now then, Elaine,' High Ridge said, gazing at her intently, 'what, specifically, are you suggesting?'
'I'm suggesting that he has access to his own books. I admit that Melina has done a better job than I'd expected in managing the fiscal details, but in the end, she can't simply refuse to let the man who's technically her superior look at his own agency's accounts. And Reynaud may be an admiral, but he came up through Astro Control, Michael. He's had plenty of bureaucratic experience of his own. He may not be an accountant, but I'm not at all sure that he wouldn't be able to see through Melina's little ... subterfuges. And given that he so obviously disapproves of Clarence, and so, by extension, of us, he also has the potential to see himself as a knight on a white horse. It's just
