The Chosen

Research Bureau.

'They used dirigibles, you'll note,' McWriter said, turning to John. 'What's the range and speed? How reliable is it?'

'Eighty miles an hour, sir,' John said with soft politeness. 'Range is about an hour, so far. Engine time to failure is about three hours, give or take.'

The general's face went even more purple. 'Then what bloody f. . bloody use is it?' he said, nodding abruptly to the admiral and walking away calling for his aide-de-camp.

'What use is a baby?' John said.

'You're sure it can be improved?' the elder Farr said.

'As sure as if I had a vision from God'-or Center-'about it,' John said. 'Within a decade, they're going to be flying ten times as far and three times as fast, I'll stake everything I own on it.'

'I hope so,' Farr said. 'Because we are going to need it, very badly. The navy most of all.'

'You think so, Admiral?' another man said. Farr started slightly; he hadn't seen the civilian in the brown tailcoat come up.

'Senator Beemody,' he said cautiously.

The politician-financier nodded affably. 'Admiral. Good to see you again.' He held out a hand. 'No hard feelings, eh?'

Farr returned the gesture. 'Not on my side, sir.'

'Well, you're not the one who lost half a million,' Beemody said genially. He was a slight dapper man, his mustache trimmed to a black thread over his upper lip. 'On the other hand, Jesus Christ with an order from the President couldn't have saved those warehouses, from my skipper's reports. . and you're quite the golden boy these days, after facing down that Chosen bitch at Salini. We can offer her a better one than her colleagues appear to have found at Corona,'' he quoted with relish. The senator's grin was disarming. 'What with one thing and another, grudges would be pretty futile. And I have no time for unproductive gestures, Admiral. You think we'll need these?'

'Damned right we will. Knowing your enemy's location is half the battle in naval warfare. Knowing where he is while he doesn't know where you are is the other half. We've relied on fast cruisers and torpedo-boat destroyers to scout and screen for us, but the Chosen dirigibles are four times faster than the fastest hulls afloat. Plus they can scout from several thousand feet. We need an equivalent and we need it very badly, or we'll be defeated at sea in the event of war.'

'Which some think is inevitable,' Beemody said thoughtfully. 'I'm not entirely sure-but the news out of the Empire certainly seems to support the hypothesis. Admiral. John.'

'People can surprise you,' Farr said reflectively as the senator moved through the crowd, shaking hands and dropping smiles.

'Beemody knows when to jump on a bandwagon,' John said. 'And he's big in steel mills, heavy engineering-a naval buildup will be like a license to print money, to him. And he's no fool; I've done enough business with him to know that.'

'Darling,' Pia's voice broke in. She hugged his arm; the nursemaid was behind her with the child. 'Father.' Her eyes went up to the aircraft that was circling downward above them. 'I would love to do that someday.'

John put an arm around her shoulders. 'Maybe in a few years,' he said. 'Here comes Jeffrey.'

The plane ghosted down, seemed to float for an instant, then touched with a lurching sway. The Wong brothers ran out to grip the wingtips and keep its head into the wind; other workers brought cords and tarpaulins to stake it down. Jeffrey Farr swung down from the controls, pulling off his helmet and waving to the cheers of the crowd. He vaulted the fence easily with one hand on a post, then walked towards his father and stepbrother. One arm was around the waist of a pretty dark girl who clung and looked up at him, laughing.

'I see you've already found a way to profit from the glamour of flight, Jeff,' John said, bending over her hand.

'Too late,' Jeffrey replied. 'Meant to tell you, you're going to be best man.'

John looked up quickly, to find Pia laughing at him. 'Some things even the wife of your bosom doesn't tell you,' he said resignedly.

And I told Center not to tell you, either, Raj said. There was a smile in the disembodied voice.

'Well, I haven't told Mother yet, either,' Jeffrey said. 'There are limits to even my courage.'

'I'm sure your mother will be delighted,' the elder Farr said, bending over Lola's hand in his turn. 'But not surprised, after the last year. The Empire has conquered both her sons, it seems.'

Pia's face went rigid for an instant, and then she forced gaiety back to it. 'A fall wedding, perhaps?'

Jeffrey nodded. 'And John won't escape mine-although I should bar him from the church, the way he got hitched without me there, the inconsiderate bastard.'

John chuckled. 'I'm sure you could see it as vividly as if you'd really been there,' he said dryly. 'How does she fly?'

'Too businesslike, that's your problem.' Jeffrey shrugged. 'Sweet, for a machine that underpowered. Very maneuverable, now that the movement of the flaps is extended. The canard keeps the stalling speed low, but I think it'll have to go when you move to an enclosed cockpit; the eddy currents around it close to the ground are tricky. Apart from that, she needs a better engine and something to cut the wind.'

'And you must make a speech about it,' Pia said, putting her hand through John's elbow.

'Damn,' he muttered, looking at the assembly.

About fifty people. Important people, high-ranking military officers, industrialists, reporters for the major papers and wire services, politicians on the military committees.

'It is part of your job,' Pia said relentlessly.

John sighed and straightened his lapels. Nobody had ever said the job would be agreeable.

* * *

'So much for reports that it could not be done,' Karl Hosten said, looking down at the summaries.

Gerta Hosten closed her own file folder with a snap. 'Well, sir, it was scarcely a secret that powered heavier- than-air flight was possible. We are here, and not on ancient Terra, after all.'

'But our ancestors did not arrive in winged vehicles with propellers,' the Chosen general said with a sigh.

Gerta looked up with concern. There was more white than gray in her foster-father's face now, and his face looked tired even at ten in the morning. Duty is duty, she reminded herself. Not all the work of conquest was done out on the battlefield.

She was back in Corpenik for a while herself. There wasn't much in the way of fighting left in the Empire- former Empire, now the New Territories-for one thing, and for another she was pregnant again, enough months along to rate desk duty for a while. The whitewashed office in the General Staff HQ building was on the third floor; she could see out over the courtyard wall from here, to a vast construction site where gangs of slave labor from the New Territories dug at the red volcanic earth of the central plateau, filling the warm damp air with the scent of mud. Some office building, she supposed; bureaucrats were a growth industry these days. The Land's government had always been tightly centralized and omnicompetent, and there was a lot more for it to do. Or it might be factories. A lot of those were going up, too.

She looked down at the folder. 'According to John's report, the Santies are going to push these heavier- than-air craft mainly because their experiments with dirigibles have been such a disaster.'

General Hosten nodded and pushed a finger at a photograph. It was a grainy newspaper print, showing the ghost outline of a wrecked and burned airship strewn across a bare grassy hillside with mountains in the distance.

'I am not surprised. Success or failure in airship design is mostly a matter of details, and an infinite capacity for taking pains is our great strength.'

Whereas our great weakness is obsession with details at the expense of the larger picture, Gerta thought, silently. There were things you didn't say to a General Staff panjandrum, even if he was your father.