The Hydrogen Sonata

“Of course I can do it, Septame.” Chekwri smiled. “I have a whole regimental intelligence service that’s developed a fine line in rumour-mongering and story-placing over the last few years, and the ear of every media player you’ve courted so assiduously over the decades; they will ask the questions we’ve suggested, they will listen, and they will repeat what we tell them. The issue is whether people believe it. I might even have to seem to oppose you, a little, by speaking up for the fleets — given that I am in charge of the Combined Regimental Fleet Command, after all. They’ll expect me to support them, and I’ll have to.”

“Do whatever it takes,” he told her.

“Depend upon it, Septame.” The marshal looked at Banstegeyn’s time-to, turning her head over to one side to read the upside-down figures and hands on the piece of jewellery adorning his chest. “Our five minutes are almost up,” she observed. “Excuse me.” She turned, took a step.

“I did what had to be done,” he said. “You believe that, don’t you?”

He hadn’t really meant to say this. Not to her, not to anybody. He was surprising himself here. That wasn’t good.

Chekwri turned, looked at him.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe, Septame,” she told him coolly. “All that matters is what you tell me to do.”

He shook his head, gave a half-laugh. “Do you lose any sleep at all over any of this, Chekwri?”

The marshal raised her eyebrows. “I sleep like the drugged, every night, Septame. I’m just a humble military officer obeying orders. Nobody’s ordered me to worry. Or to lose sleep.”

A bitterness seemed to fill his mouth. “It had to be done,” he told her.

“Of course, Septame.” Chekwri shrugged. “I never liked her anyway. Pleasant enough, but… too weak for the position she held. Too… accommodating.” Her eyebrows flexed again. “Still, eh? She died in the arms of somebody who really loved her. They both did. That’s something. In the circumstances, it’s almost kind.” She nodded to one side. “I think I can hear the physician general knocking. We’d best go.”

“There was one more thing, Septame,” Locuil said, as they sat in the back of the aircraft hopping them from the diplomatic quarter to the parliament for the press conference. Chekwri had taken her own flier back to the Home System regimental ground HQ.

“What?” Banstegeyn asked.

“Excuse me,” the physician general said, and reached forward to click a switch. The night-dark privacy screen rose silently between them and their respective senior staff members, sitting across from them.

Locuil leaned over, and, very quietly, into Banstegeyn’s ear, as the flier levelled out, said, “Ms Orpe was pregnant.”

“What?” Banstegeyn said.

“Only by about forty days; it would not have shown even at the time of the Subliming.”

“Are you—?”

“Entirely sure. No question of doubt.”

“But… Would she have…? She must have known…”

“She certainly would have known. And she was no primitivist in her elective physiology. She had all the standard medically advised augmentations and amendments. The pregnancy must have been deliberate, Septame. It must have been willed.”

Banstegeyn stared forward at the dark material covering the privacy panel, then looked away, to the side, out of the dull outward-mirrored windows of the aircraft. He watched the city sliding past. They crossed the river. The lowest tier of the parliament gardens rose walled above the troubled surface of the waves. The first few buildings and pavilions would appear in a moment. What had she been thinking of? What did she think she’d been doing? Had she gone completely mad?

“Why would she—?” he said, then — suddenly realising — stared at the physician general. “Has it — the embryo — has it… do you know who…?” He was babbling. This was not him. He pulled himself together. “Has it been… analysed?”

“The products of conception have been removed,” Locuil said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Privately, as it were. So that these do not presently form part of the judicial or evidential material held by the security forces. And they have not been analysed. Of course, they would need to be, for the identity of the—”

“It might be best if it was… that is, if it… it might be for the best for all concerned if it was… if all that disappeared.”

The physician general sat back, nodded. “I’ll see what I can do, Septame.”

He thumbed the privacy screen down again.

Banstegeyn felt his stomach lurch. The aircraft began its steep descent.

xGSV Contents May Differ

oLOU Caconym

oGCU Displacement Activity

oGSV Empiricist

oGSV Just The Washing Instruction Chip In Life’s Rich Tapestry

oUe Mistake Not…

oMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In

oMSV Pressure Drop

oLSV You Call This Clean?

The avatar of the Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In reports that the president of Gzilt, Sefoy Geljemyn, is dead and may have been assassinated.

?

xLOU Caconym

Just looking at the feeds and the official in-system signal streams available, it looks pretty damn certain she was assassinated. One might have expected that our colleague the Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In would know and be able to confirm this by its own direct channels, rather than still be speculating like some out-of-the-loop news concern consisting of a couple of dodgy float-cams and a single reporter hopping round their apartment trying to get their pants on and brush their teeth at the same time, while staring goggle-eyed at the breaking news screens of the big boys.

?

xMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In

In a matter of such consequence, I thought it best to take a cautious approach and wait until the exact nature of the president’s death had been officially announced by the rightful authorities. The Caconym is welcome to take over my role here, if and when it ever arrives in Gzilt. That will, as I understand it, be some considerable time after the Subliming has taken place, though, doubtless, regardless of how that goes, the Caconym will take the opportunity to lecture any Gzilt remaining behind on how they got their whole Subliming strategy wrong anyway.

?

xGSV Contents May Differ

I’m sure this comes as a shock to all of us and we are bound to react to the news in different ways, including blaming ourselves; however, once that is out of the way — and the sooner the better, I’d suggest — the question is going to remain: what can we do now?

?

xLOU Caconym

Might I suggest the Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In takes a rather more robust and less respectful attitude to the Gzilt establishment? Treating the Gzilt as slightly eccentric but much-loved relations, worthy of being indulged as we might indulge other elements of ourselves, might be all very well when they are behaving as we might behave; however, when they start wasting Z-R ships, major command and control elements of their own military and their head of state, such indulgence starts to look, at best, like blindness born of self-deception.

?

xMSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In