“Ouch.” Miriam frowned. The King-in-Exile in St. Petersburg, capital of the French continental empire, was slow on the uptake when it came to matters mechanical; with the arrogance of hereditary aristocrats, they had paid far more attention to the Commonwealth’s navies and armies than to their ministry of washing machines and higher education. But it seemed that he—or one of his advisors—had finally realized where the Commonwealth’s economic and technological progress was coming from and decided to do something about it at source. “Do I have anything to worry about?”
“I’m doubling your bodyguard and putting them on twenty-four/seven alert, my lady. And notifying your husband’s department. Other than that, nothing immediate. Once we get confirmation, Brilliana and I will come back to you with some concrete proposals to teach them the un-wisdom of playing games with us.”
“All right. Other matters…”
“Yes.” Olga straightened painfully, levering herself up against the back of her wheelchair. “Do you want the weekly update on operations in the United States first, or—”
There was a push-button phone to one side of Miriam’s desk, equipped with a bulky transistorized scrambler unit. Right at that moment it began to buzz angrily. “Hold on?” She glanced at Olga, then back at the phone: “You can stay.”
“Certainly. Who is it?”
“External, long-distance, encrypted.” She frowned. “Wait—” Her direct secure line wasn’t public, but government phone directories were quite extensive. She picked up the receiver. “Miriam speaking.”
“Miriam?” The voice was familiar, and welcome. “I have a sitrep.”
“Huw!” It was Brilliana’s husband, the Explorer-General, head of the department’s exploration force based in South America—and of various other exotic assets, which were also based as close as possible to the equator for reasons of orbital dynamics. Her chest suddenly felt hollow. “What’s happening at your end?” Across the desk from her, Olga leaned forward eagerly.
“I thought you might want to know before it makes the evening news—Rudi just called. Test five was a complete success.” His voice was shaky, as if he was finding it hard to control himself. “Dawn One is in the correct orbit, and we’re receiving telemetry from the payload!”
“What?” She realized she was clutching the phone as if it were trying to escape. “It worked?”
“One hundred percent!” Now he sounded triumphant: “We finally made it!”
“Oh my. Oh my.” The butterflies made it hard to breathe. “Who else have you notified?”
“You’re the first. Rudi’s calling the First Man’s office, and I believe Director Kemp is on the phone to the Communication Ministry—”
She could barely believe it. The long series of launchpad fires and explosions seconds after liftoff had been a never-ending embarrassment, even though they’d only been trying to place satellites in orbit for a couple of years—and were barely twenty years on from fabric-skinned biplanes. “I think I can scare up a news crew this evening. Do you have a prepared statement you can wire me?”
“I don’t, but Rudi does! I’ll get the propaganda office to e-mail it over immediately.”
Huw cut the call short: intercontinental trunk calls were still hugely expensive. “Well!” Miriam looked at Olga.
“Was that what I think it was?” Olga gripped her armrests.
“Yup.” She took a deep breath. “They did it. Dawn One is in low Earth orbit and talking.” Dawn One wasn’t just this world’s first satellite. They’d gone for broke: the four-ton behemoth was actually the prototype for what would, one day soon, be a manned vehicle. (And then there was the other, more radical space program: but that hadn’t launched anything yet…)
“Sorry, Olga, I’m going to have to cut this short.” She picked up the phone again. “Hi, Galen? Can you round up a news crew? They’re going to want to interview me just as soon as they hear what’s just happened…”
Yes, the USA is coming. Let them come: we’ll be ready.
NEW LONDON, MANHATTAN ISLAND, TIME LINE THREE, SPRING 2020
Two years later, Miriam was thinking back to that momentous phone call as her limousine—one of the clean, efficient diesel cars that were replacing the steam vehicles of yesteryear—pulled up in front of her current New London residence. As a senior Party member, she merited a grand brownstone town house on Manhattan Island, within a mile’s radius of the First Man’s mansion. The mansion itself was the Manhattan Palace: it squatted at the southern end of the fortified inner city of New London, near the southern end of the island. The city had been renamed multiple times, most recently in 1759 when the British Crown moved to the Americas in the wake of the French invasion of England. Miriam’s brownstone was sited midway along a curving avenue, almost exactly where Washington Square Park was located in that other Manhattan.
“We’re here, ma’am,” the ministerial chauffeur said redundantly as she yawned and gathered her papers, shoving them into her briefcase. It was half past eleven at night: it had been a long day. “Jack’s getting the door.”
“No need to wake everyone up for me.” The door opened and she slid out, stretching. She’d caught the newly electrified express train down from a plenary session in Boston that afternoon. The trip had taken just two hours, but the evening reception and the rides to and from the stations had eaten the night. The air was warm and damp, the faint sweet-sick open sewer stink from the Hudson River fighting with the honeysuckle bushes lining the front of the terrace of state houses. “That’s all for now. Just make sure someone’s here to collect me at eight tomorrow before you go off shift.”
She climbed the front steps slowly and the door opened for her. Jenny the housekeeper had stayed awake. “Ma’am? He’s still up—in the lounge.” Jenny seemed uncharacteristically anxious.
“Thank you.” Miriam nodded. “How is he?”
“Much the same.” Jenny closed the front door and threw the bolt. “Will you be wanting anything?”
“A mug of chocalatl, if you don’t mind. Unsweetened.” Miriam paused outside the lounge doorway as Jenny took her coat, and heard an outbreak of coughing from behind the closed door. “Damn.”
“Are you all right?” she asked as she entered the room.
“I’m”—more coughing—“fine.” Her husband, Erasmus, was sitting in a wingback armchair, putting his handkerchief away. “There’s no blood, if that’s what you were wondering.”
“I was.” She sat down carefully in the armchair opposite him. “It still worries me. And if you don’t promise you’ll see the doctors about it this week, I’ll keep nagging you.”
“It’s not the phthisis.” Tuberculosis, she translated mentally. He briefly closed his eyes, and for a moment looked a decade older than his fifty-five years. “It’s just a winter cough—the humidity disagrees with me. I know the white death well. If it was coming back—”
There were two piles of document folders on the occasional table: one tall, one smaller. She picked the top item off the taller pile. “Progress Report, State Committee on Metropolitan Optical Fiber Cable Infrastructure, March, Year 17,” she said lightly. Year 17 of the Revolution, or 2020 AD, in the old style. “Just think how they’ll manage without you if you die of tuberculosis through self-neglect—thanks to staying up after midnight reading reports!”