works, and I know the weak spot, and I know how to fix it. I’ve just told you how. Either you’ll do it or you won’t. Now make your decisions and don’t bother me again unless you’ve made the right one.”
Mazer turned back to the desk and selected save and send.
When he was sure the message was sent, he returned to his sleeping space and let himself think again about Kim and Pai and Pahu, about his grandchildren, about his wife’s new husband and what children they might have. What he did not let himself think about was the possibility of returning to Earth to meet these babies as adults and try to find a place among them as if he were still alive, as if there were anyone left on Earth for him to know and love.
The answer did not come for a full twelve hours. Mazer imagined with amusement the struggles that must be going on. People fighting for their jobs. Filing reports proving that Mazer was insane and therefore should not be listened to. Struggling to neutralize Graff—or suck up to him, or get themselves assigned as his immediate supervisor. Trying to figure out a way to fool Mazer into thinking they had complied without actually having to do it.
The answer, when it came, was from Graff. It was a visual. Mazer was pleased to see that while Graff was, in fact, young, he wore the uniform in a slovenly way that suggested that looking like an officer wasn’t a particularly high priority for him.
He wore a captain’s insignia and a serious expression that was only a split second away from a smile.
“Once again, Admiral Rackham, with only one weapon in your arsenal, you knew right where to aim it.”
“I had two missiles the first time,” said Mazer.
“Do you wish me to record—” began the computer.
“Shut up and continue the message,” growled Mazer.
“You should know that your former wife, Kim Arnsbrach Rackham Summers—and yes, she does keep your name as part of her legal name—was instrumental in making this happen. Because whenever somebody came up with a plan for how to fool you and me into thinking they were in compliance with your orders, I would bring her to the meeting. Whenever they said, ‘We’ll get Admiral Rackham to believe’ some lie or other, she would laugh. And the discussion would pretty much end there.
“I can’t tell you how long it will last, but at this point, the IF seems to be ready to comply fully. You should know that has involved about two hundred early retirements and nearly a thousand reassignments, including forty officers of flag rank. You still know how to blow things up.
“There are things I already know about selection and training, and over the next few years we’ll talk constantly. But I can’t wait to take actions until you and I have conferred on everything, simply because there’s no time to waste and time dilation adds weeks to all our conversations.
“However, if I do something wrong, tell me and I’ll change it. I’ll never tell you that we’ve already done this or that as if that were a reason
“The thing that puzzles me, though, is how you decided to trust me. My communications to you were full of lies or I couldn’t have written to you at all. I didn’t know you and had no clue how to tell you the truth in a way that would get past the committees that had to approve everything. The worst thing is that in fact I’m very good at the bureaucratic game or I couldn’t have got to the position to communicate directly with you in the first place.
“So let me tell you—now that no one will be censoring my messages—that yes, I think the highest priority is finding the right replacement for you as battle commander of the International Fleet. But once we’ve done that— and I know that’s a big if—I have plans of my own.
“Because winning this particular war against this particular enemy is important, of course. But I want to win all future wars the only way we can—by getting the human race off this one planet and out of this one star system. The Formics already figured it out—you have to disperse. You have to spread out until you’re unkillable.
“I hope they turn out to have failed. I hope we can destroy them so thoroughly they can’t challenge us for a thousand years.
“But by the end of that thousand years, when another Bugger fleet comes back for vengeance, I want them to discover that humans have spread to a thousand worlds and there is no hope of finding us all.
“I guess I’m just a big-picture guy, Admiral Rackham. But whatever my long-range goals are, this much is certain: If we don’t have the right commander and win this war, it won’t matter what other plans anybody has.
“And
“Sir, I will not address this topic again. But I have come to know your family in the past few weeks. I know now something of what you gave up in order to be in the position you’re in now. And I promise you, sir, that I will do everything in my power to make your sacrifices and theirs worth the cost.”
Graff saluted, and then disappeared from the holospace.
And even though he could not be seen by anybody, Mazer Rackham saluted him back.
CARTHAGO DELENDA EST GENEVIEVE VALENTINE
Wren Hex-Yemenni woke early. They had to teach her everything from scratch, and there wasn’t time for her to learn anything new before she hit fifty and had to be expired.
“Watch it,” the other techs told me when I was starting out. “You don’t want a Hex on your hands.”
By then we were monitoring Wren Hepta-Yemenni. She fell into bed with Dorado ambassador 214, though I don’t know what he did to deserve it and she didn’t even seem sad when he expired. When they torched him she went over with the rest of the delegates, and they bowed or closed their eyes or pressed their tentacles to the floors of their glass cases, and afterwards they toasted him with champagne or liquid nitrogen.
Before we expired Hepta, later that year, she smiled at me. “Make sure Octa’s not ugly, okay? Just in case—for 215.”
Wren Octa-Yemenni hates him, so it’s not like it matters.
It’s worse early on. Octa and Dorado 215 stop short of declaring war—no warring country is allowed to meet the being from Carthage when it arrives, those are the rules—but it comes close. Every time she goes over to the Dorado ship she comes back madder. Once she got him halfway into an airlock before security arrived.
We reported it as a chem malfunction; I took the blame for improper embryonic processes (a lie—they were perfect), and the Dorado accepted the apology, no questions. Dorado 208 killed himself, way back; they know how mistakes can happen.
Octa spends nights in the tech room, scanning through footage of Hepta-Yemmeni and Dorado 214 like she’s looking for something, like she’s trying to remember what Hepta felt.
I don’t know why she tries. She can’t; none of them can. They don’t hold on to anything. That’s the whole point.
The astronomers at the Institute named the planet Carthage when they discovered it floating in the Oort cloud
