Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 35 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

2

Some people simply couldn’t be arsed – especially those who looked down on politicians and politics with the same contempt as they would regard a smear of animal dung on their boot sole. But still, many more did care, turning out to vote, making the effort. Outside some polling stations where Democratic Unity had put forward a full field of candidates for borough council seats, the sheriffs were unaccountably missing. In their stead, Citizens’ Dawn toughs watched over the free private vote, making sure the cross went in the right place. Wherever that happened, the knowledge slipped through Bethaneve’s communication network and local Democratic Unity activists arrived, demanding privacy and freedom from intimidation. Fights broke out, but they were sporadic, with the sheriffs finally turning up only to cart both sides off to the local station where they sat out the rest of the day cooling off in the drunk tank.

Then there were cases of people being told they weren’t on the borough voting registry. There was nothing Bethaneve could do about that. But Tovakar, Andricea and Yannrith each had their own missions, running cells to intercept postal ballots that had been in storage for the last month. Citizens’ Dawn had been adding to the envelopes with their own false voters – dead or nonexistent. Those sacks were discreetly swapped with alternatives full of the same fantasy people, but now voting for Democratic Unity.

Some borough voting forms were in short supply.

Officials never turned up to open voting stations.

Four Democratic Unity candidates were arrested on charges ranging from tax evasion to assault, making their candidacies invalid.

It was another unremarkable election day on Bienvenido.

Despite everything the establishment threw at them, Democratic Unity’s vote held solid in their strongholds of the more deprived boroughs. Slvasta, who arrived at Langley’s council hall at five o’clock in the afternoon for the count, was ’pathed reports from party officials right across the city. Turn-out had been good. Interference was about what they expected. By eight o’clock, results were starting to come in. With a third of the thirty-three borough councils in the city up for election, five of them were shaping up to be Democratic Unity boroughs, with another three predicted to have no one party with an overall majority, and Citizens’ Dawn claiming the remaining three (the richest boroughs). For them it was a disaster.

Five National Council seats in or around the capital were also being contested, along with a hundred more across the continent. In Langley, it was obvious from the moment the first sealed voting sacks were opened who was going to win. Tuksbury hadn’t even been seen in public since the day Hilltop Eye published his tax records. Thanks to quiet surveillance by cell members, Slvasta knew he was holed up at his family estate just outside Varlan.

By eleven o’clock Slvasta had been confirmed as the new National Council representative for Langley. He gave a short thank-you speech (written by Coulan and Bethaneve) to his delighted supporters. By midnight the results for the Varlan boroughs were verified. Democratic Unity had won five outright, one more was theirs thanks to a coalition agreement with three independent councillors, Citizens’ Dawn had four, and one was left without a majority party.

‘Seven councils, counting Nalani,’ Slvasta said as he walked home with Bethaneve, Javier and Coulan. ‘That’s amazing. Really, it is.’ The dark streets had a lot of pedestrians and cabs for the time of night, all of them going home after the count. High overhead, Andricea’s mod-bird kept level with them, its superb eyesight vigilant for trouble. Yannrith himself was barely a hundred metres away, and carrying two pistols. There were other party members close by, ready to rush in at a single ’pathed alert.

Javier had insisted on the precautions.

‘You’ll have to resign from Nalani tomorrow morning,’ Coulan said. ‘You can’t sit on two councils.’

‘You’re the only Democratic Unity candidate to get a National Council seat,’ Javier said; he sounded regretful.

‘Bapek gave them a good run for their money in Denbridge,’ Bethaneve said. ‘Thirty-two per cent.’

‘Denbridge is over the river,’ Javier said. ‘Large middle– and working-class population. Shame we couldn’t win it.’

‘We didn’t win Langley,’ Slvasta said. ‘We were given it, remember?’

‘Yeah, and are they ever going to regret that,’ Bethaneve said happily. ‘They think that’s a bribe to keep us in line. Well, even if they survi—’

A wide corona of bright orange light flared across the southern skyline, silhouetting the rooftops and chimney stacks. They saw the flickering haze of a fireball ascending at the centre of it, wreathed in churning black smoke. Seconds later, the sound of the explosion rolled across them.

‘Uracus!’ Javier snapped. ‘What was that?’

‘It’s down near the quayside, I think,’ Coulan said. ‘Eastwards, too. There are some companies around there that deal in yalseed oil. Big barrels.’

‘Crud,’ Slvasta grunted. ‘Did we order that?’

‘No,’ Bethaneve said. ‘And I don’t like the timing.’

*

It took two days to get the warehouse fires under control, and the city authorities were lucky it rained on the second night. Smoke hung over Varlan for another day as the ruined buildings three streets above the quayside smouldered. Exploding barrels had thrown flaming yalseed oil a long distance, and the volunteer fire crews were scared to venture too close for fear of more barrels detonating.

Eventually, when all that was left was a circular area of blackened walls and piles of rubble, hospital staff and fire officers started to pick their way through the tangled debris, ex-sight probing the stone and charred wood and smashed slates, hunting for bodies.

Twenty-three business premises were destroyed. Fortunately, given it was a commercial district, and late at night, fatalities were minimal. Only eight people were known to have died. But it was another blow against the city’s economy, with insurance companies hit hard. Everyone’s premiums would be going up.

*

Kysandra was deep into the farm’s accounts when Russell rode into the compound. His arrival gave her an excuse for her u-shadow to fold the spreadcube files away and free up her exovision. When they’d started planning the revolution, she’d been so enthusiastic and excited, never thinking she’d spend hours – days, weeks – having to manage the basic finances of the enterprise. But as she’d swiftly learned, shoving a government aside wasn’t cheap.

‘Our insurrection doesn’t even have to work,’ Nigel had said. ‘Not permanently. We just need time to get in and out of the palace. All we really need for that is anarchy.’

‘It should work,’ she objected. ‘Otherwise we’ve let down so many people.’

‘You can’t afford to think like that. The radicals who make up the movement are just another set of tools to help us complete the job. Nothing more.’

‘But . . . they have to believe that their lives will change for the better to commit to the cause. You’re asking them to risk everything they have.’

‘And that risk will be repaid a thousand-fold. Not by replacing one set of useless, corrupt leaders with another, but by liberating them from the Void. You have to learn to see the big picture, Kysandra. No more small-town thinking, okay?’

‘Okay.’ But it was difficult. People, real people, were going to get hurt. She just had to keep telling herself it was all worthwhile, because: this was destiny they were working to achieve.

Russell jumped off his horse as his teekay fastened the reins to the paddock fencing. ‘Slvasta won the Langley election,’ his ’path shout informed the compound. ‘Democratic Unity is now a legitimate opposition party.’ He waved a couple of Varlan’s gazettes above his head. ‘It’s official.’

Kysandra hurried out of the house and met him on the veranda. ‘Let me see,’ she said, and took one of the gazettes. It was a large edition, printed yesterday, she noticed – fast delivery to Adeone. She kept her shell hard so she didn’t reveal the swirl of disappointment that came from reading the results. Only Slvasta got elected to the National Council? We put candidates up in five constituencies. And just six new boroughs with Democratic Unity in the majority? In her heart she’d been hoping for so much more. Some public validation from the people they were about to set free.

‘I’ll go and show Nigel,’ she said with a cheery smile. ‘You go in and ask Victorea for some lunch; she’ll make you up some sandwiches.’

Russell touched the brim of his hat respectfully. ‘Thank you.’

Kysandra set off across the compound. It was barely recognizable now. So much had changed, so many buildings added. There were over thirty barns and storehouses, some of them vast, with iron I-beams supporting the wide span of their roofs. Eight of them were used purely for the farm, housing the mod-apes, horses and dwarfs needed to tend the crops and herds of terrestrial beasts that now covered almost the whole valley. The two timber mills were as busy as always. And the bulky steam engines thrummed away at the side of the engineering shops. Labourers and the dominated used two long barns as dormitories, dividing them up into snug but comfortable private rooms, with communal washrooms at one end. The three that housed the weapons factories were quiet now, their machines idle. Enough guns and ammunition had been manufactured and sent to the various radical groups they’d established, with the majority delivered to the capital. The mod-dwarfs that had worked on the production lines were now sitting in their stalls, doing nothing but eating and sleeping.

But it was the launch project she admired the most. Four long sheds lined with racks of ge-spider cages, spinning out vast quantities of drosilk. Nigel had introduced that particular variant to Bienvenido, of course; but not directly. Marek had travelled halfway up the Aflar peninsula to Gretz before teaching the adaption to a small family-run neut stable. That way it wouldn’t be yet another innovation emerging from Blair Farm. After some experimentation, Nigel had found that to produce the best drosilk, ge-spiders should eat leaves from the deassu bush. If everyone else was breeding ge-spiders and producing drosilk for the clothing industry, there would be nothing odd about Blair Farm buying deassu leaves in considerable bulk.

After the ge-spider sheds was the booster bunker, which had been dug deep into the soil. Here the drosilk was wound carefully and precisely onto a long iron cylinder (precision milled, which had taken months) and sprayed with resin before being cured in a huge kiln. There were nineteen layers in all, each of which needed to be flawless. Only when sensors linked to the Skylady had confirmed that the last layer was unspoiled did the cylinder get taken out of the tube. Despite their very best monitoring and quality control, they only managed to get one perfect cylinder for every three attempts. Finished cylinders were wheeled into the second half of the booster bunker, behind thick iron and concrete wedge-shaped doors so heavy that they needed a set of train wheels to roll across the chamber on their own tracks.

That was where the process was finished, filling the cylinders with propellant, turning them into giant solid rocket motors. She could still remember the first test firing, with the booster standing vertical, its exhaust nozzle pointing up into the sky. Even standing a kilometre away, the roar of sound was like a solid force as it punched across her. The fire plume was incandescent, searing purple after-images across her retinas for minutes, while the smoke jet soared ever higher into the clear sky, reaching for the clouds above. It was as if the universe had somehow cracked open, allowing a gale of elemental forces to howl through the gap.

Afterwards, staring in astonishment at the still-smouldering booster casing while her overloaded senses began to calm, she said simply: ‘You cannot sit on top of that. You just can’t.’

‘They’re perfectly safe,’ Nigel said contentedly. ‘People flew into space on chemical rockets for decades before Ozzie and I put a stop to it.’

‘No! Just . . . no!’

But of course there was no choice. So the production of the solid rocket boosters went ahead, despite her fears. Nigel had chosen an ammonium nitrate-based fuel, which was one of the easiest to make – especially given the production method they had discovered. Again it was all about keeping a low profile; he didn’t want to add chemical refineries to the farm compound as well as everything else. Fortunately, the Fallers had given them an unexpected alternative in their slave species.

Kysandra walked past the booster bunker and along the rows of mod-pig silos. Out of the whole project, these animals were her biggest headache. They had to be fed a very specific diet of substances which their weird secondary digestive tract broke down and rearranged into faeces pellets that were the fuel used by the boosters. She had to track down suppliers right across the continent, seeking out merchants who dealt in powdered aluminium, hydrochloric acid, sodium, liquid rubber and a dozen types of nitrate-based fertilizers. Then she had to arrange to have them shipped to Blair Farm, but not in quantities that would arouse interest. She and Valeri set up dozens of small businesses in towns along the continent’s main train lines, where labels could be swapped and the compounds forwarded in different containers. Then, when they did get here, they had to be mixed in just the right proportions before being fed to the mod-pigs.

The testing shed was two hundred metres past the silos, perched on the riverbank. She plodded over to it, through the shadow cast by the big iron crane of the launch framework. The squat gantries that would support the Skylady and her booster rocket assembly when they were ready to send her soaring back into space had been completed several weeks ago. Five red-painted iron scaffold pillars curved upwards in shallow arcs over a big circular pool filled with river water, to merge into a bracelet-shaped cradle where the crane would hoist the starship. Right now, it was a strange empty construction, as if it had outlasted a building it had once contained.

There were filter masks hanging up under the testing shed porch. Apparently exposure to perchlorates could cause thyroid problems in humans. Kysandra put one on before going in. The interior was simple enough, with a broad bench running along one side, filled with the kind of glassware that told anyone they were in a chemical lab. Nigel and Fergus were standing over a jar of greenish fluid, where a couple of thumb-sized fuel pellets were fizzing like bad beer.

‘Slvasta won,’ she announced.

‘Yes,’ Nigel’s voice was muffled by the mask. ‘We sensed Russell. Most of the county did.’

‘That means it’s going to happen!’

‘Yes.’ He still hadn’t looked up from the sensor module that was scanning the jar and its dissolving pig faeces. ‘That’s up to standard,’ he said to Fergus. ‘Load the booster.’

‘Slowly and carefully,’ Fergus retorted.

Nigel abandoned the bench and put his arm round Kysandra, walking with her out of the test shed. ‘Sorry,’ he said when he’d taken the mask off. ‘Some things just have to be done correctly. I’d hate to wind up sitting on top of a bad batch.’

She nodded earnestly. ‘I understand.’

‘Those pigs are pretty unpredictable.’

‘We get the feed mix right every time.’

‘I know, but I doubt the Fallers ever had this in mind when they designed the neuts.’

It had been the final revelation they’d extracted from the Proval-Faller’s memory. Neuts were their perfect domestic slave race, biological machines created for one reason – to serve the Fallers. Capable of being moulded into dozens of sub-species, from animals that could perform most kinds of physical labour to immobile organ clumps whose enzymes turned them into simple chemical refineries, neuts eliminated the need for an overly mechanized civilization. You just had to know how to format the embryo. That was the second part of the puzzle.

When they assumed human form, the Fallers had thick bundles of additional nerves stretching down their arms to a small wart-like protuberance on the back of the wrist. It allowed a direct synaptic interface to a corresponding patch of nerve receptors at the back of a neut’s head. All mods had an identical patch, through which instructions could be channelled. It was a discovery which had delighted Nigel. ‘So that’s how they operated outside the Void,’ he’d muttered as the Skylady displayed the information through their exovision. ‘Paula will be happy about that.’

It had taken the Skylady a while to work out the sequence, but eventually they got the mod-pig embryo correct. So the fat creatures lay in their stalls, with stumpy legs that were little more than wedges to keep them upright, and a body containing bio-reactor organs that could crap out pure rocket fuel. They didn’t live long; the toxicity of the compounds they ate saw to that. But they had enough of them in the silos, and with regular births to replace the dead, the supply of pellets matched production of the booster casings. There was only one booster left to fill now, and they’d have a cluster that could send Skylady racing over ninety kilometres high. But it would be a ballistic trajectory; her speed would fall far short of orbital velocity. Achieving that still depended on the starship’s degraded ingrav drive providing the final impetus. Nigel swore the figures checked out, and he’d make it to the Forest.

‘Will the last booster be finished in time?’ she asked as they made their way back to the farmhouse.

‘It takes ten days to load the propellant and catalyse the final binding, so yes. Phase one isn’t scheduled for another month. That’ll give us plenty of time for the final stack assembly.’

She turned to look back at the launch framework. ‘What if the weapons are no good?’

‘Come on, Coulan has had drones in there examining them for eighteen months. Their integrity hasn’t been compromised. They’re simply powered down.’

‘They’re three thousand years old, Nigel.’

‘Irrelevant. Their warheads are solid state. All the ancillary components are fragile, granted. We’ll have to refurbish and replace quite a bit, but they’ll function just fine. Stop worrying. You’ll make me jittery, and that’s no good at all.’

His arm went round her shoulder, holding her close. She’d noticed him becoming gradually more tactile over the last year or so.

‘Sorry,’ she said, pouring out insincerity.

‘Yeah, right.’

‘But I do have a question.’

‘What?’

‘I was going through the accounts. Who’s James Hilton? We’ve been paying him an awful lot of money recently.’

‘Ah. Actually, James Hilton was a novelist back on Earth, pre-Commonwealth era.’

‘So why are we paying him a small fortune?’

‘He’s only really known for one book, Lost Horizon; it featured an imaginary valley called Shangri-La, which was sheltered from the rest of the world. I thought that an appropriate name.’

‘For what?’

‘A refuge, in case anything goes wrong.’

‘What can go wrong?’

‘Ah, now there you are. That’s exactly why I was keeping it quiet. If you start having doubts, you always panic.’

‘I do not!’

‘Then why are you worried?’

‘I’m not worried. I’m curious, that’s all.’

‘So now you know. If anything happens, there’s a place where you, me and the ANAdroids can go and regroup.’

‘Right. Thank you. Where?’

‘Port Chana.’

‘Ah! I thought Marek spent a lot of time there just to buy hydrochloric acid.’

‘Clever girl.’

‘Don’t be so patronizing.’

‘You get aggressive when you’re worried.’

‘I’m not worried. I’m concerned you think something can go wrong.’

‘I don’t.’

‘But—’

‘But, I’ve enough experience with life to know that you should always take precautions for other people screwing up. Look, if everything goes right, in a couple of months from now the Void will be gone, and you, me and everyone else on Bienvenido and Querencia will be on board a Raiel ship heading for the Commonwealth. But if not – if something does come along to screw things up – well there are consequences for the things we’ve done. Consequences I’d rather not face. So this is an emergency fallback. Surely that’s sensible, isn’t it?’

Kysandra clenched her jaw. ‘Yes.’

‘See. What do I know?’

‘Every crudding thing.’

*

The weak state of Varlan’s economy was of no concern to the Westergate Club. Established for over fifteen hundred years, and rebuilt four times on the same spot, it epitomized how the city’s ruling class sailed on serenely through the misfortunes of others, observing their travails the way one might view the antics of a zoo animal. Slvasta arrived at the richly decorated front door a week after the election, wearing the grey suit he’d bought for public speaking during the campaign. Shame he hadn’t had the time to get it cleaned. The doorman in his immaculate black tailcoat smiled obsequiously and ushered him in. ‘Welcome back, Captain Slvasta, and my personal congratulations on your election.’

‘Thank you.’

The receptionist behind the desk gave him a very spry smile, backed up by a sultry private ’path – a wordless pulse but full of invitation. Slvasta hoped he didn’t blush too obviously as the footman led him away. As always the huge marbled interior seemed to absorb sound. He was halfway up the sweeping staircase when he saw a young woman coming down towards him. She wore a bright red dress, a colour which emphasized her long strawberry blonde hair; its bodice was tighter than was the fashion among society ladies, and the skirt had a rather daring split all the way up one side, allowing a glimpse of long and very shapely legs. Her face was familiar, which made him struggle to recall—

‘Slvasta!’ she smiled and embraced him before he had time to react. ‘Oh no,’ she said theatrically, and waved a hand in front of her face. ‘You’ve forgotten me already. And we had such a good time together.’ A private ’path gifted him the inside of a boudoir that kicked off all sorts of enjoyable memories in Slvasta’s skull. How he’d spent a long afternoon with her on that big soft bed. How it wasn’t just Bethaneve who knew how to have uninhibited fun. How they’d laughed . . .

‘Lanicia,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been a while.’ Though how he could forget that beguiling face even for a moment was a complete mystery.

‘It certainly has! I spent simply months pining after you, you mean thing. Fancy abandoning a girl after an afternoon like that!’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’m teasing, silly thing. It’s really good to see you. And you’re a National Councillor now! That’s just brilliant. I bet old conservative men choked on their breakfasts all over town the day after the election. Daddy certainly did. Have you been introduced to the Captain yet?’

‘Ah, uh, no, not yet. The Council’s opening ceremony was postponed because of the explosion.’

‘Oh, Giu, yes, that was so terrible. So! How are you? Married yet?’

‘Uh, no.’

‘Me neither.’ The smile she gave him was downright wicked. ‘I’ve still got my day villa for privacy. I’d enjoy being your mistress.’

All Slvasta could do was stand there with his mouth open. His gaze flicked to the footman, who had suddenly found something immensely interesting to stare at on the landing above. He really had forgotten how society girls behaved, their freedoms and delight in mischief.

Lanicia laughed gleefully at his expression, the confused emotions leaking through his suddenly shaky shell. ‘I’ll leave that offer open for you to consider,’ she said and started walking down the stairs. There was one final saucy wink goodbye.

Slvasta finally managed to close his mouth. He wanted to carry on watching her walk down the stairs, he wanted to go after her, he wanted to have a day, one day, away from stress and fear and anger, to be carefree just as he had been that long ago afternoon when the Skylords had visited. Lazy evenings in her day villa would never be spent full of intense discussions and momentous decisions and ideological analysis. There would be no plotting how to kill people and bring down governments and change the world. There wouldn’t be responsibility.

He closed his eyes and took a breath, allowing his heart to calm.

The footman was waiting patiently. ‘Lead on,’ Slvasta told him. The temptation was hard to fight. It wasn’t just old flings like Lanicia who were coming on strong these days. There had been interest from women ever since he was publicly elected Democratic Unity’s leader – interest which had steadily increased from the moment his candidacy for Langley was announced. Since the election, the offers had been quite brazen. It made him nervous about venturing outside Number Sixteen Jaysfield Terrace with Bethaneve. He could laugh off the attention, while enjoying the flattery. She, he knew, did not have the same liberal view of the phenomenon.

Colonel Gelasis waited for him in the Nevada suite, with all its sombre wood panelling setting the tone to match the colonel’s thoughts. This time there was no effusive greeting as he rose from behind the big glossy table. Instead there was a curt: ‘Councillor,’ and a quick squeeze of the hand.

‘Colonel.’

Gelasis waved the footman away, then straightened his uniform before sitting again. ‘I believed we had a gentlemen’s understanding?’

‘Did we?’ Slvasta said, wishing he didn’t feel quite so intimidated.

‘A quid pro quo was certainly implied. That’s why you’re now the Councillor for Langley. You got what you want, did you think that was free?’

‘No.’

‘Then would you mind explaining to me why in Uracus’s name you blew up the yalseed oil company’s depot? The city was crudding lucky that fire didn’t spread any further. As it is, the financial damage it will inflict on decent people is quite bad enough. And that’s on top of everything else the city is suffering right now because of the anti-mod movement.’

The outright accusation made Slvasta stiffen, only partly in anger. ‘I didn’t blow up anything.’

‘Of course not, not personally, you’re not an idiot, but can we say the same thing about your colleagues, eh? What would Tovakar tell us under interrogation I wonder? Or Andricea? How long would it take for her to crack if the Captain’s police were to bring her in? Apparently the process is a lot worse for women, especially when they’re young and good looking. I believe the First Officer takes a personal interest.’

Now Slvasta was deeply worried. If the colonel was using plain talk, this was no simple horse-trading arrangement any more. This was something a lot more serious. ‘Actually, they’d say the same thing. I don’t know who blew up the oil depot. Frankly, it’s the last thing I need right now.’ Which was true enough. It had taken Bethaneve two days of sifting through the scraps of information which percolated up through the network of cells to discover who might have sabotaged the oil company, then a follow-up visit from Javier and Yannrith had confirmed it. Three members from a cell on level twenty-eight had grown frustrated by the lack of action and decided to take things into their own hands, striking a definitive blow for the movement, hurting the establishment. Yannrith had to pull Javier off one of them; the man was now in hospital with broken bones and heavy blood loss. Such a show of capability and determination could have given the game away. If the Captain’s police had caught them, the interrogation would have lasted until they were either dead or confessed everything. As it was, Trevene’s interest in the cells and suspected radicals had risen to dangerous levels. His agents were pressing informants hard. Three more cell members had disappeared in the last twenty-four hours. Bethaneve was busy warning their contacts.

‘The deal was: you get Langley and in return peace is restored to our streets,’ Gelasis said. ‘No more acts of sabotage, no more Shanty mobs looting and wrecking, no more union bullying of hard-pressed businesses. Life becomes civilized once more, with you acting as a conduit for legitimate concerns and complaints.’

‘That is my wish, too,’ Slvasta shot back. ‘Come on, I’ve invested everything in getting this seat. I’m not going to blow it now.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. From now on if your lowlife supporters have problems with the world, they take those problems to you. Even with drosilk sales bringing fresh cash in, the economy needs a time of stability to get back to what it was before Democratic Unity’s paranoid campaign against mods. You do know the capital is the only place that particular idiocy took hold? Rather like your voter base.’

‘People will realize—’

‘No, Slvasta. They will not realize. Because nobody is going to stir up that prejudice any more. I’m sorry about your arm. Really, I am. But you need to get over it. Your private obsession is damaging Bienvenido. Is that what you want?’

‘We have to eliminate our dependency on—’

‘You haven’t been sworn in to the National Council yet. Think carefully what you say, and remember the oath you will be taking before the Captain. Specifically, the part about protecting this world from all forms of harm.’

Slvasta glared at the colonel, trying to control his temper. He had the distinct feeling Gelasis was deliberately baiting him. This was another test to see if they were going to allow him his seat. Democratic votes were an irrelevance to those who held the true strings of power. ‘I’m going to bring it before the National Council.’

Gelasis nodded in satisfaction. ‘You do that. And at the same time you keep your hotheads quiet. That’s also your obligation, understand?’

‘Nobody is going to be blowing anything up on my watch.’ And, Uracus, it feels good looking you in the eye and being just as deceitful as you.

‘Glad to hear it. You can have a great life, Slvasta; the rewards for people in your position are enormous. I wouldn’t want you to sell yourself short.’

‘I won’t.’

‘So what’s going to happen about your engagement? Clever electioneering move that, by the way. She looked jolly pretty on your arm out there on the campaign trail. Won quite a few bachelor votes for you, I imagine.’