He glanced sidelong at the briefcase by her chair: “I’ll give up when you give up, dear.”
A dizzying sense of drifting perspective seized her. “I’ll give up when the Americans—when the United States—when we’re safe—”
“In other words, never.” He spared her a sad smile. “You can’t lie to me: I’ve known you too long.”
Another dizzying look down from the pinnacle of the present into the yawning canyon of the past. “I can’t believe it’s been eighteen years already.”
“But you only said ‘yes’ to me fourteen years ago.” His tone was light, as if he was trying to make a weak joke of it, but the years weighed heavily on them both.
“I was still gun-shy. You would be too, if your previous marriage was anything like my two.” Her fingers tightened on his hand. “Tell me what your schedule is for the rest of the week and I’ll tell you what to drop so you can make room for a doctor’s appointment. Please?”
“You’re going to blackmail me now, aren’t you?”
“Yes. I want you to get your lungs checked out. Erasmus, I make a terrible widow.”
“On one condition, then: I think you’ve been working too hard. If I get my lungs fluoroscoped, will you agree to take a nice quiet vacation with me, my dear?”
The door opened. It was Jenny, bearing a tea tray with two steaming mugs, which she deposited on the table before tactfully leaving them to it. Miriam picked up one of the mugs of chocalatl. “Have you taken your pills?”
“What? The—yes, I have.” Erasmus picked up his mug and blew on it thoughtfully. “Thank you—and I will see the doctor. After the cabinet meeting tomorrow morning. I expect in the afternoon I’m going to be drawing up policy guidelines for how we spin our latest satellite launch. Such is the lot of the Commissioner for State Communications. I should have been more careful what I wished for.”
“Space: the final frontier,” Miriam suggested. “Rockets are exciting, Erasmus. And for propaganda purposes, rockets that don’t kill people are even better than ones that do.”
“Our adversaries are still terrified, though. Wouldn’t you be, in their position?”
“Yes.” She put her mug down and rested her chin on her right fist. “The technology gap is widening all the time—we’re at least ten years ahead of them, more in some areas. They’ve barely begun to develop battlefield rockets beyond the gunpowder stage. They’re testing a turboprop bomber; they’ve got atom bombs. But we’ve got nuclear submarines and sea-launched intercontinental missiles. They can’t even shoot down our reconnaissance planes, let alone our spy satellites.”
“Yes.” Erasmus rubbed his forehead. “So I’m going to push the rockets-for-peace message as hard as I can. Otherwise we risk terrifying the French into starting a preemptive war—especially if they listen to our idiot exiles. Letting the former emperor and his family sail off into the sunset was, I fear, a long-term misjudgment on Adam and the Radical Party’s account. It will come back to haunt us.”
“I’m not so sure,” Miriam countered. “What were the alternatives? Give him a trial and execute him? It would have created a martyr—”
“Another Charles the First, yes.”
“No, it would have been worse. Charles the First was a nasty piece of work: the Rump Parliament only put him on trial and chopped his head off after the third civil war he started. He deserved what he got! But John Frederick isn’t in the same league, and we want to reduce the level of violence in politics, not inflame it. Convince our public that it’s possible to transfer power peacefully. I’ve seen your polling: half of them still don’t understand the idea of a loyal opposition, even after fifteen years of explaining till we’re blue in the face. Executing the King would have set us up for a counterrevolution. His son turns out to be an asshole who sends assassins our way, and he still wants a Monarchist uprising to put his family back on the throne over here. But he isn’t covering himself in glory at the Dauphin’s court, is he? If we hold our shit together for another ten years of building microprocessor factories and jet airliners, everyone’s going to see him for the irrelevant throwback he is. As long as we manage to avoid starting a fourth world war.”
“Yes, but in the meantime, he’s inflaming passions at the French court, Miriam. A king-in-exile is a romantic cause, and he can promise the more entrepreneurial grand dukes a continental ransom. Especially if he auctions off that pretty young daughter of his to someone with ambitions. Meanwhile, they’re terrified of us. We represent the peasants on the march—every noble’s worst nightmare. Worse: they know we’re not just a mob of pitchfork-wielding yokels. They’ve read Adam’s books. They’ve read mine. They understand that this is an existential conflict between those who adhere to the monarchical system and those who honor the new social contract: equality before the law, liberty within the law, nobody above the law. They won’t give up their privileges without a struggle, and they know it’s a fight they’re losing. Our satellites”—he pointed through the window, indicating the southern horizon—“are signs and portents in the heavens. It tells them who owns the skies. They can’t ignore that. It’s decades beyond anything they can do—” He paused. “How much stolen US technology went into the space program?”
“None. We were very careful about that.”
“What?” The light was just bright enough for her to see his pupils dilate.
“Oh, we bought textbooks. Lots of textbooks. And it soaked up almost a quarter of our Skills Transfer Program for five years.”
The STP recruited unemployed graduate researchers and teachers from time line two—their reach, in combination with ex-Clan world-walkers and the nuclear submarines of the Commonwealth Navy, was global—and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. “We hired rocket scientists by the double-handful, mostly from Russia and Europe. And Rudi made sure Space Force ate their own dog food: we didn’t let them copy anything directly. We’ve got a launcher that looks like an R-7—the missile that evolved into the Russian Soyuz system—and runs on the same fuel, liquid oxygen, and kerosene. But it’s entirely homegrown. We may have lost the first four launch attempts, but compared with the early days of the United States or Soviet space programs, Rudi’s made amazing progress.”
“Well, that’s as may be,” Erasmus grumped, “but I have to use it to enthuse our people without frightening the French into attacking us. And they’re going to panic all over again when we tell them we’re going to put an astronaut up there next month.” They pondered the implications. “Tomorrow evening it’s the Guild of News Editors annual ball, where I shall be expected to speak—and, oh, the invitation should be in your diary as well, because wives are invited—”