The Man-Kzin Wars 05

CHAPTER THREE

Minister the Honorable Ulf Reichstein-Markham regarded the Terran with suspicion. The office of the Minister for War of the Provisional Government was as austere as the man himself, a stark stone rectangle on the top floor of the Ritterhaus. Its only luxuries were size and the sweeping view of the Founder’s Memorial and Hans-Jorge Square; for the rest it held a severely practical desk and retrieval system, a cot for occasional sleep, and a few knickknacks. The dried ear of a kzin warrior, a picture of Markham’s mother-who had the same bleakly handsome, hatchet-faced Herrenmann looks with a steel-trap jaw-and a model of the Nietzsche, Markham’s ship during most of his years as a leader of Resistance guerrillas in the Serpent Swarm, the asteroid belt around Alpha Centauri. Markham himself was a young man, only a little over thirty-five; blond asymmetric beard and wiry close-cropped hair tall lean body held ramrod-tight in his plain gray uniform.

“Why, exactly, do you wish to block further renovation of the Munchen Scholarium?” he said, in his pedantic Wunderlander-flavored English. It held less of that guttural undertone than it had a year ago.

General Buford Early, UN Space Navy, lounged back in the chair and drew on his cheroot. He looked to be in late middle age, perhaps eighty or ninety, a thick-bodied black man with massive shoulders and arms and a rumpled blue undress uniform. The look was a finely crafted artifact.

“Duplication of effort,” he said. “Earth and We Made It are producing technological innovations as quickly as interstellar industry can assimilate them-faster than the industries of Wunderland and the Serpent Swarm can assimilate them. Much cheaper to send data and high-end equipment directly here, now that we have the hyperdrive, and hyperwave communications. You’re our forward base for the push into kzinti space; the war’s going to last another couple of years at least, possibly a decade, depending on how many systems we have to take before the kzin cry uncle.”

Markham’s brow furrowed for a moment, then caught the meaning behind the unfamiliar idiom.

“The assault on Hssin went well,” he pointed out.

That was the nearest kzin-held system, a dim red dwarf with a nonterrestrial planet; the assault that took the Alpha Centauri system had been mounted from there. UN superluminal warships and transports had ferried Wunderlander troops in for the attack. Early could read Markham’s momentary, slightly dreamy expression well. Schadenfreude, sadistic delight in another’s misfortune. Hammerblows from space, utterly unexpected, wrecking the ground defenses and what small warships were deployed at Hssin. Then the landing craft floating down on gravity polarizer drive, hunting through the shattered habitats and cracking them one by one. Hssin had unbreathable air, and it had been constructed as a maintenance base more than a fortress.

“True,” Early nodded. “And that’s just what Wunderlanders should concentrate their efforts on-direct military efforts. Times have changed; it doesn’t take decades to travel between Sol and Alpha Centauri any more. With the Outsider’s Gift”-the hyperdrive had been sold to the human colonists of We Made It by aliens so alien they made kzinti look familiar-“star systems don’t have to be so self-sufficient anymore.”

Markham’s frown deepened. “Wunderland is an independent state and not signatory to the United Nations treaties,” he pointed out acerbically.

Early made a soothing gesture, spreading his hands. The fingers moved in a rhythmic pattern. Markham’s eyes followed them, the pupils growing wider until they almost swallowed the last gray rim of the iris.

“You really don’t care much about the Scholarium, do you?” the Terran said soothingly.

Markham nodded, his head moving slowly up and down as if pulled on a string.

“True. It vas of no use to us during the occupation, und now makes endless trouble about necessary measures.” His accent had grown a little thicker.

“There are so many other calls on resources. And it really is politically troublesome.”

Another nod. “Pressing for early elections. Schweinerie! What does nose-counting matter? Ve soldiers haf the understanding of Vunderland’s problems. The riots against the Landholders must be put down! Too many of my colleagues prejudices against their social superiors haff.”

“The alliance with the UN is important. We have to stand by our allies while the war is on, after all.”

This time Markham seemed to frown slightly, his head jerking as if it tried to escape some confinement. Early moved his fingers again and again in the rhythmic dance, until the Wunderlander’s face grew calm once more.

“True. For ze present.”

“So you’ll deny their application for additional funds.”

“Ja.” Early snapped his fingers, and Markham started. “And if you have no further matters to discuss, Herr General?” he said, impatiently keying the system on his desk.

“Thank you for your time, sir,” Early replied, standing and saluting.

“You got what you wanted?” the man who called himself Shigehero Hirose said, as they walked out the guarded front entrance of the Ritterhaus.

The mosaic murals were under repair, their marble and iridescent glass tesserae still ripped and stained by the close-quarter fighting that had retaken the building. It would have been safer to use heavy weapons from a distance, but the Wunderlanders had been willing to pay in blood to keep the structure intact. Here the Founders had landed; here the Nineteen Families had taken the Oath. Early shook his head slightly at that; too much love of tradition and custom, even now; too much sense of connection to the past. The ARM would have to deal with that. That sort of thinking made people uncomfortably independent. Isolated anomic individuals were much easier to deal with, and also more likely to accept suitably slanted versions of past, present, and future.

There was still a slight scent of scorch in the lobby’s air, and an even fainter one of old blood. The volunteer repair crews were cleaning each section by hand with vibrosweeps and soft brushes before they began adding new material.

“Most of what we wanted,” Early said, with deliberate emphasis.

Hiroge was the oyabun of his clan, and a man of some weight on this planet. The organization had grown during the lawless occupation years, and they were putting their accumulated wealth and power into shrewd investments now. Nevertheless, he bowed his head slightly as he answered:

“We, of course. Still, did not your psychists plant sufficient key commands last year?”

“We had to be careful. Markham was unstable, of course”-no wonder, after the resurrected thrint had used him as an organic waldo mechanism for weeks on end-“and besides, he’d be no use if we altered his psyche too much. We were counting on his subconscious craving for an authority figure, but evidently that’s not as vulnerable as we thought. And he’s getting more and more steamed about the political situation here, the anti-aristocratic reaction. Ironic.”

“Which in turn is favorable to us,” Hirose said.

“Oh, in the long run, yes. Nothing more susceptible to secret manipulation than democracy.”

He sighed; in many ways, the Long Peace back on Earth had been more restful. A successful end to the long clandestine struggle, with an official agency, the ARM, openly allowed to close down disrupting technology. There had been fierce struggles within the Brotherhood over releasing the hoarded knowledge, any of it, even in the face of the kzin invasion. Necessary, of course; but the hyperdrive was another complicating factor. Now the other colonized systems were no longer merely dumping-grounds for malcontents, safely insulated by unimaginable distance. They were only a hyperwave call away, and each one was a potentially destabilizing factor.

He sighed. Perhaps the struggle was futile… Never

“There is another factor I’d like you to check into,” he went on. “Montferrat and his friends, and Matthieson. They know entirely too much.”

“An isolated group,” Hirose said dismissively. “Matthieson is disintegrating, and alienated from the others.”

“Perhaps; but knowledge is always dangerous. Why else do we spend most of our time suppressing it? And”-he paused-“there’s a… synchronicity to that crew. They’re the sort of people things happen around; threatening things.”

“As you wish, Elder Brother,” Hirose said.

“Indeed.”