The Chosen

stroking the silky black hair that spilled across the dark blue of his uniform coat. Pia glanced up, with a welcoming smile that held a bit of a frown.

'Even on your son's birthday, you cannot keep from business?' she said.

'Only a little bit of business, darling,' he said, settling back against the padded leather of the seat; it sighed for him. 'Quietly, or you'll wake him.'

Maurice Farr chuckled. 'After the amount of cake this young man put away, not to mention the lemonade, the spun candy, the pony rides, the carousel, and the Ferris wheel, a guncotton charge couldn't wake him-you should know that by now.'

'He does; he's just using that as an excuse.' Pia's hand took John's and squeezed away the sting of the words. 'This one, you wave the word 'duty' in front of him, and he reacts like a fish leaping for a worm.'

'And the hook's barbed,' John said ruefully, nodding to Smith through the window that joined the passenger compartment and the driver's position up ahead. The car moved forward with a hiss of vented steam.

'Your lady's been running an interesting notion past me,' Admiral Farr said.

'This Ladies'-'

'Women's,' Pia corrected.

'Women's Auxiliary?' John finished.

'Yes. If we get into an all-out war with the Land, we could use it. Though I'm not sure how the public would react; there was a lot of bad feeling during the agitation over the franchise, a decade or so ago. People claiming it was the first step to Chosen corruption and so forth.'

'I don't think that'll be much of a problem,' John said thoughtfully. Center provided the probable breakdown of public sentiment in various combinations of circumstance. 'After all, Pia's idea is to have women take jobs that release men to fight. There are already plenty of women in the nursing corps-have been since the last war with the Union, you know, whatshername with the lantern and all that.'

'And if the big war happens, we'll need every fighting man we can get,' the admiral said thoughtfully. 'We'll not win that one without a damned big army, and the fleet'll have to expand, too. We won't be able to spare men for typing and filing and whatnot.'

'And factory work,' Pia said. 'First, we must have a committee-women of consequence, to be respectable, but also of. . energy.'

'If it's energy you want, what about your sisters-in-law?' Maurice said. 'If it's one thing my daughters have, it's energy. . oh.'

Pia nodded. 'Them I talk to first,' she said. 'They are young, but there is time.'

'It'll be a while,' John said. Pia nodded; his foster-father looked at him a little strangely, struck by the certainty of the tone. 'But it's not too early to get started laying the groundwork.'

'Son, for a man of thirty, sometimes you sound pretty damned old,' Maurice said. He touched his graying temples. 'Maybe I'd better retire, and leave the field to you younger bucks.'

'I don't think you can be spared, Father,' John said. 'And. . it isn't all that long until the balloon goes up.'

'Is it indeed?' Maurice Farr said.

'The situation in the Union's getting pretty tense,' John said. 'The People's Front may win the next election there.'

'The Chosen certainly won't like that,' Maurice said. 'I'm not too certain I do either. The Union's not going to solve its problems by an attack on property. . although the way the wealthy act there is a standing invitation to that sort of thing.'

John nodded. 'The Chosen have a lot of influence in certain circles there,' he said. 'And I don't think those circles are going to lie down and die just because they lose an election. It'll take a couple of years for things to boil over, but the Land is certainly heating up the pot.'

Maurice Farr blinked slowly, his face slowly losing the shape of a grandfather's and becoming an admiral's. 'They can't get supplies into the Union except by sea,' he said thoughtfully.

John shook his head. 'We can't fight them over aiding one faction in the Union,' he said. 'Western provinces wouldn't go for it.'

'All that good soil softens the brain, I think,' Farr said.

'Amazing what being a couple of hundred miles from the action will do. And they've always resisted the easterners' attempts to get the Republic as a whole involved in Union affairs; it'll take a while for them to realize this is different.'

Pia looked up at him. 'This is why you must travel to the Union, my love?' she said.

John sighed unhappily. 'Jeffrey and I will be in and out of there for years now,' he said. 'Until the crisis comes. But don't worry, it shouldn't be particularly risky. We're only advising and playing politics, after all.'

* * *

Jeffrey Farr had never liked the Union del Est very much. For one thing, the waiters, innkeepers, clerks, and such made it a point of pride to be surly, and he'd never liked seeing a job done badly. For another, the women didn't wash or change their underclothes often enough to suit him; he supposed that that was an academic point now that he was a married man with a nine-year-old daughter and another child on the way, but the memory rankled. . and she looked so good, before and after she took off her drawers. But phew!

The men didn't wash much, either, but that was less personal.

Still, the coastal city of Borreaux looked well enough; the terrain was less mountainous than most of the southern shore of the Gut, a long narrow plain flanking a river between low mountains. The plain was covered with vineyards, mostly; the foothills of the mountains were gray-green with olives, and the upper slopes still heavily forested with oak and silver fir despite centuries of cutting for buildings and ship timber and barrels. The town itself sprawled along the river in a tangle of docks and basins, backed by broad, straight streets lined with trees and handsome three-story blocks of buildings in a uniform cream limestone. The slums weren't quite as bad as in most Union cities and were kept decently out of sight. The rooftop terrace of this restaurant was quite pleasant-sun shining through the striped awnings, servers in white aprons bearing food and drink on trays. . . and just to spoil it, three Chosen officers in gray were at a table nearby, two men and a woman, and two local ladies. The Land aristocrats were plowing their way through a five-course meal, and punishing a couple of bottles of the local wine fairly hard. Or rather, the two men were, and laughing occasionally with their local companions, who were either extremely high-priced talent or the minor gentlewomen they appeared to be. The Chosen woman was sipping at a single glass of the wine and looking around. Medium-height, dark hair and eyes. .

Christ, it's Gerta! Jeffrey thought, with a jolt of alarm that turned the hunger in his stomach to sour churning. Why didn't you tell me?

Would have, lad, if it'd been an emergency. Don't want you to lose your alertness, though. We can't always notice things for you.

He tried to keep a poker face, but Gerta must have seen some change. She raised the wineglass slightly, and an eyebrow with it. The mannerism reminded him of John a little-but then, they'd been raised together. It startled him sometimes to remember that John had been born among the Chosen. If it wasn't for that clubfoot. .

observe:

A man's looks were more than muscle and bone; the personality within shaped them, everything from the set of his mouth to the way he walked. It took a moment for Jeffrey to realize that the tall man in the uniform of a Land general was John. The face was the same, but full of a quiet, grim deadliness. The city behind him was familiar, too: Borreaux, but in ruins. A dirigible floated overhead, and columns of Land troops were marching up from the docks.

John hosten is in the upper 0.3 % of the human ability curve, Center said. in the absence of his disability, and assuming no intervention on our part, the probability of his achieving general rank by this date in his timeline is 87 %, ±4. probability of becoming chief of general staff, 73 %, ±6. probability of becoming head of chosen council of state, 61 %, ±8. probability of chosen conquest of visager increases by 17 % ±5 in that eventuality.

Jeffrey gave a slight internal shudder. With no clubfoot-and no Center-he and John would probably have spent their lives fighting each other.

correct. probability-

Shut up, Raj and Jeffrey thought simultaneously.