M. Diana Philomel beamed approval. M. Hermund Philomel glowered.
A shout went up. There they are!
The crowd murmured, gasped, and hushed. Glow-globes and garden lights dimmed and went off. Thousands of guests raised their eyes to the heavens. I erased the drawing and tucked the light pen back in Hermunds tunic.
Its the armada, said a distinguished-looking older man in FORCE dress black. He lifted his drink to point something out to his young female companion. Theyve just opened the portal. The scouts will come through first, then the torchship escorts.
The FORCE military farcaster portal was not visible from our vantage point; even in space, I imagine it would look like nothing more than a rectangular aberration in the starfield. But the fusion tails of the scoutships were certainly visiblefirst as a score of fireflies or radiant gossamers, then as blazing comets as they ignited their main drives and swept out through Tau Ceti Systems cislunar traffic region. Another cumulative gasp went up as the torchships farcast into existence, their firetails a hundred times longer than the scouts. TCs night sky was scarred from zenith to horizon with gold-red streaks.
Somewhere the applause began, and within seconds the fields and lawns and formal gardens of Government Houses Deer Park were filled with riotous applause and raucous cheering as the well-dressed crowd of billionaires and government officials and members of noble houses from a hundred worlds forgot everything except a jingoism and war lust awakened now after more than a century and a half of dormancy.
I did not applaud. Ignored by those around me, I finished my toastnot to Lady Philomel now, but to the enduring stupidity of my raceand downed the last of the champagne. It was flat.
Above, the more important ships of the flotilla had translated in-system. I knew from the briefest touch of the datasphereits surface now agitated with surges of information until it resembled a storm-tossed seathat the main line of the FORCE:space armada consisted of more than a hundred capital spinships: matte-black attack carriers, looking like thrown
spears, with their launch-arms lashed down; Three-C command ships, as beautiful and awkward as meteors made of black crystal; bulbous destroyers resembling the overgrown torchships they were; perimeter defense pickets, more energy than matter, their massive containment shields now set to total reflectionbrilliant mirrors reflecting Tau Ceti and the hundreds of flame trails around them; fast cruisers, moving like sharks among the slower schools of ships; lumbering troop transports carrying thousands of FORCE:Marines in their zero-g holds; and scores of support shipsfrigates; fast attack fighters; torpedo ALRs; fatline relay pickets; and the farcaster JumpShips themselves, massive dodecahedrons with their fairyland arrays of antennae and probes.
All around the fleet, kept at a safe distance by traffic control, flitted the yachts and sunjammers and private in-system ships, their sails catching sunlight and reflecting the glory of the armada.
The guests on the Government House grounds cheered and applauded.
The gentleman in FORCE black was weeping silently.
Nearby, concealed cameras and wideband imagers carried the moment to every world in the Web andvia fatlineto scores of worlds which were not.
I shook my head and remained seated.
M. Severn? A security guard stood over me.
Yes?
She nodded toward the executive mansion. CEO Gladstone will see you now.
Two
Gladstone had been compared to the classical figure of Abraham Lincoln so many times that when I was finally ushered into her presence that night of the armada party, I was half surprised not to find her in a black frock coat and stovepipe hat. The CEO of the Senate and leader of a government serving a hundred and thirty billion people was wearing a gray suit of soft wool, trousers and tunic top ornamented only by the slightest hint of red cord piping at seems and cuffs. I did not think she looked like Abraham Lincoln nor like Alvarez-Temp, the second most common hero of antiquity cited as her Doppelganger by the press.
I thought that she looked like an old lady.
Meina Gladstone was tall and thin, but her countenance was more aquiline than Lincolnesque, with her blunt beak of a nose; sharp cheekbones; the wide, expressive mouth with thin lips; and gray hair rising in a roughly cropped wave, which did indeed resemble feathers. But to my mind, the most memorable aspect of Meina Gladstones appearance was her eyes: large, brown, and infinitely sad.
We were not alone. I had been led into a long, softly lighted room lined with wooden shelves holding many hundreds of printed books. A long holoframe simulating a window gave a view of the gardens. A meeting was in the process of breaking up, and a dozen men and women stood or sat in a rough half-circle that held Gladstones desk at its cusp.
The CEO leaned back casually on her desk, resting her weight on the front of it, her arms folded. She looked up as I entered.