Benjamin Sheldon, Nigel’s first grandson and the Dynasty’s comptroller, was the last to arrive. Nigel always suspected the man was slightly autistic. His devotion to detail was excruciating, and his marriages never lasted long. He didn’t quite seem to live totally in this universe. Finance was his life; he’d taken over running CST’s accounts division on his twenty-eighth birthday, and regarded his periods in rejuvenation as a major inconvenience. His memory augmentation arrays were among the most comprehensive ever wet-wired into a human; the inserts had actually increased his skull size by ten percent. As he hadn’t remodeled his body, other than his neck, to maintain proportion, his appearance inevitably drew stares.
Daniel Alster took a chair slightly behind the three couches that the seniors settled in as the e-shield came on, sealing the office.
“Any new problems?” Nigel asked.
“We’re just busy containing the old ones, thanks,” Campbell said.
“In a steady state model extrapolated from our current position, we will have regained everything we lost in eleven years,” Benjamin said. “The growth vectors are positive once resettlement of the displaced is completed.”
“It won’t be steady state,” Nelson said. “The Primes will attack again to annex more of our worlds. The cost of resisting them will be phenomenal.”
“And that’s if we succeed,” Nigel muttered.
The other seniors regarded him in mild surprise, the priest who swore in church.
“It’s the one option I’ve taken seriously since we began this whole debacle,” Nigel said. “That’s why I began the lifeboat project.”
“Have you drawn up the parameters for use?” Jessica asked.
“I think we’ll recognize the moment when it arrives. Now our advanced weapons development is finally producing results, I’m hopeful the Primes can be defeated one way or another.”
“Didn’t the War Cabinet approve genocide?” Perdita asked. “Public opinion is certainly in favor right now.”
“We agreed in principle that such an action was a last resort.”
“Typical politicians.” Nelson grunted.
Jessica smiled sweetly. “Why thank you.”
“A death toll near forty million, and it’s an option? Hardly our finest hour, I feel.”
“There’s a moral dimension in that decision, obviously,” Nigel said. “But there’s also the possibility that the Seattle quantumbusters might not be sufficient for the job. For all they’re insanely antagonistic, the Primes are not stupid. They will have established themselves in other star systems by now. Total genocide will be difficult to achieve and verify.”
“You mean we’ll have to make our weapon available to the navy?” Nelson asked.
“I’m not in favor of that,” Nigel told him. “That really is a weapon I don’t want anyone else to know about, let alone possess. The damn thing even frightens me.”
“That’s a reasonable reaction,” Jessica said glumly. “I don’t like the fact it exists, but as it does I don’t want it in anyone else’s control.”
“Quantumbusters are horrendous enough,” Nelson said. “There’s only a question of scale involved with this situation. Having the Dynasty’s finger on the trigger is purely a psychological crutch. A doomsday weapon is a doomsday weapon, whether it destroys a planet or an entire star system is worrying about how many angels can dance on a pinhead.”
“Our weapon can destroy more than one star system,” Nigel said regretfully.
“If it can be built, it will be built,” Campbell said. “If not by us, then by someone else, and I include the Primes in that statement. It’s not as if we have to worry about the other Dynasties using it. We don’t have that kind of conflict anymore.”
“Not at the moment,” Jessica said. “But let’s face it, there are still enough megalomaniac politicians about, and I don’t just mean on the Isolated worlds. We have to be very careful about revealing the potential of what we have to the rest of the Commonwealth.”
“I don’t suppose the SI will be too pleased about this particular accomplishment, either,” Nelson said.
Nigel grinned. He didn’t really trust the SI, although he didn’t regard it as malevolent. Nelson’s suspicions verged on paranoia—like those of any good security operative. “It doesn’t know yet,” Nigel said. “And it might well be thankful to us if the Primes are as successful on their next incursion as they were with the Lost23.”
“So would you use it against them here?” Campbell asked. “Or is it exclusively to defend ourselves if we have to flee?”
“I will not abandon the Commonwealth without a fight,” Nigel said. “That would be inhuman. The human race has flaws in abundance, but we don’t deserve to die for them.”
“My species, right or wrong,” Jessica said.
Perdita gave her a vexed look. “We’re right. And we’re not alone thinking that. The barrier builders obviously thought the same way about the Primes.”
“Unfortunately they had a great deal more technological resources than us,” Campbell said. “It gave them much wider range of options. As far as I can see, we only have one. Nigel, are you really going to wait until they invade again before you believe we’re justified in using our weapon against them?”
“I’m not nerving myself up,” Nigel said, piqued. “For a start, we’re still only at the design stage. Secondly, the navy will find Hell’s Gateway. If that can be wiped out with Douvoir missiles, or more likely Seattle Project quantumbusters, the whole problem will be put back, by years, most likely. That may well open up our options. We might even find the barrier builders, and persuade them to reestablish it.”
“You don’t believe that?” Jessica asked.
“No,” Nigel said dryly. “We created this problem, we have to solve it.”
As the meeting closed, Nigel asked Perdita and Nelson to stay behind. He sipped at a hot chocolate that a maidbot delivered to the study. There was just the right amount of whipped cream on top, complemented by a half-melted marshmallow. The taste was perfection. It had been prepared by his chef; he never did like bots cooking food.
“Couple of things,” he told them. “Perdita, what’s the general opinion of myself and the Dynasty? Are we being blamed? After all, we were the main supporters for the Second Chance mission.”
“Nothing too heavy in the media,” she said. “A few minor anchors and commentators have taken some cheap shots, but right now everyone’s too mad at the navy for not putting up a better fight. The way you personally dealt with the wormholes above Wessex was a huge positive factor. Your personal rating is quite high. You’ve got a lot more respect than Doi at the moment, although Kantil is being pretty astute in keeping antagonism directed at the navy.”
“Small mercies,” Nigel said as he chewed on the marshmallow. His neural programs were reviewing and refining data from the Dynasty arrays, pulling everything he could find on Ozzie. “You did a good job suppressing the Randtown story,” he told Perdita eventually. “Ozzie would be seriously pissed off if that became public knowledge.” For all his supposedly cuddly Bohemian personality, Ozzie could be very touchy about aspects of his private life.
“The other Dynasties were cooperative enough with the news shows,” she said modestly. “And the SI helped with a dataeater worm for the messages that did slip into the unisphere.”
“So I see. That’s interesting. I know Ozzie likes to think they have a special relationship, but there’s more to it, in this case, I think.” He looked at Nelson.
“You don’t seem to have much on Mellanie Rescorai.”
“What we have is a reasonable rundown,” Perdita said. “She was a corporate director’s squeeze until he got caught up in a rather sensational bodyloss case. After that, she starred in some soft-porn TSI drama, then moved into reporting. Alessandra Baron snapped her up, now they’ve fallen out; gossip in the industry says Alessandra was whoring her around to political contacts as a reward for information. Er…” She cleared her throat, amused. “You might want to ask Campbell if that’s true. Anyway…Mellanie finally refused, and they parted on very bad terms—also the talk of the industry. Michelangelo took her on straightaway. Standard media career.”
“Not the timescale,” Nigel said. A picture of Mellanie slipped into his virtual vision, some publicity shot for a TSI called Murderous Seduction; she was dressed in lacy gold lingerie that showed off a terrific body. He paused midsip. Her chin was rather prominent and her nose squat; but that didn’t stop her image from giving him the devil’s own smile. Just for a moment he really wanted to access that TSI. “Your file says her boyfriend is Dudley Bose. Is that right?”
“I think he was the last person Baron sent her to sleep with,” Perdita said.
“They’ve been together ever since.”
Nigel frowned. He didn’t even have to access any files to remember the disastrous welcome-home ceremony the navy had set up for Bose and Verbeke. Bose hadn’t been the most impressive of people in either of his incarnations, before or after the Second Chance flight. “Strange choice, for her and him.”
“Maybe he made her see the error of her ways?” Perdita suggested. “They’ll settle down and have ten kids together.”
“So she went and signed up with Michelangelo?” Nigel grunted. “No. There’s something wrong with all of this. We don’t have a record of her even meeting Ozzie, so there’s no reason why she should have access to the asteroid. None of his other exes do. And judging by the reports from Randtown she took on the Primes single- handed. That makes me very suspicious.” He gave Nelson a sharp stare. “Is she another one?”
“Looks like it.”
“Another what?” Perdita asked.
“An observer for the SI,” Nelson said. “Or spy, depending what you think about it. We know it isn’t quite as passive as it always claims. It has several people like Mellanie prying into areas of human activity it would otherwise be excluded from.”
“I had no idea. What does it want?”
“We don’t know,” Nigel said. “But that’s why I keep Cressat out of the unisphere; it gives us a proper refuge. And now we’ve seen what it did with Ozzie’s wormhole I finally feel justified.”
“It wasn’t a malign act,” Nelson said. “It actually saved Mellanie and the other humans in Randtown.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t worry unduly about it. However, it remains an enigma, and given our current war situation that means we cannot fully trust it.”
“So what do you want to do about Mellanie?” Nelson asked.
Nigel canceled her image before he gave an inappropriate reply—but she would be a wonderful addition to his harem. “Discreet observation. And put a good team on it. The SI will be watching out for her.”
“We’ll have her covered in an hour.”
“Good. There’s something else, which I really hate doing. I cannot believe Ozzie wouldn’t get back in touch after the Prime attack. Find out where he is, Nelson. I
