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Chapter Ten Find a wall/Sit on it...

Lady Clare casually nicked at the purple lapel of her velvet jacket, even though she knew it was spotless. She had to do something with her trembling hands and smoking in the Imperial presence was forbidden. As was sitting unasked, interrupting, not paying attention...

Coolly casual she could do. Casual and coherent was proving more difficult. The Minister for Internal Affairs sighed, nodded and jotted something meaningless on a leather-bound smartpad in front of her. Affectation, all of it. She’d sooner have been using her Tosh, but a little pad was all tradition allowed her to bring to the vast walnut Council table. Still, at least hers was working. Two of the other pretty little machines had caught the virus overnight and broken up, which was what happened when Finance cut corners and allowed supplies to source their cases from steel rather than the pure silver that tradition demanded.

War or surrender? What could she say?

Lady Clare knew what she was meant to say. The e-mail left her in no doubt of that. Paris was to surrender on whatever terms the Reich offered. All of those little Aerospatiale cameras would be left in place, even the Ishies were to be untouched, free to eyecam history in the making. Nothing was to be done to stop the world from seeing the fall of Paris for what it was, a polite and stately diplomatic dance. Scrabbling blind panic would remain hidden.

Hunger ate at Lady Clare’s gut, heightened by the three scalding cups of black coffee she’d swallowed before being delivered to the Court of St Cloud. Her face was skull-like, hollow-eyed. It usually was, it was just that most of the time

Lady Clare couldn’t recognize the fact. Tapeworms and purging had once been the polite way of getting thin, but no longer. And it was a long time since anyone other than obsessives had actually needed to starve to achieve malnutrition — anyone rich, that was. Simple viral rewiring now speeded up bodily metabolism as efficiently as any old-fashioned drug, and for those nervous souls who didn’t like permanent solutions there was always an appropriate, easily prescribed enzyme.

Non-medical genetic manipulation was meant to be forbidden. But Lady Clare couldn’t remember how long it was since any of the Ministerial families had obeyed that particular law. If the Third Section had arrested every Minister whose pregnant wife had paid a quiet visit to one of FffC’s G&Stork clinics there’d be no government left. Even LizAlec...

Especially LizAlec. The woman glanced again at her own face, seeing it stare back from a huge Napoleon III looking-glass on the wall opposite. The gilt frame was oversized, vulgar and almost priceless, which made it fit perfectly with the rest of the vast Council chamber. The Bonapartes had always been big on ambition, but the same could never be said for their taste. Red and gold seemed to be the only two colours they knew. And what couldn’t be adorned with wreathed Ns — which wasn’t much — was covered instead with an endless row of Merovingian bees.

Of the seven people at the table only Count Lazlo Portea was actually ignoring her; the rest were getting in surreptitious glances when they thought Lady Clare wouldn’t notice. No one had asked her yet what was wrong, they didn’t dare, but the Prince Imperial would when his irritation finally got the better of his impeccable manners. As for being ignored by Lazlo, that wasn’t a surprise. It might be five years since the Potsdam Conference, but she still had him by the balls.

He’d thought himself so smart, taking her to his bed while the other junior Ministers sat in the mirrored splendour of the downstairs bar and whispered. But that simple act of sex had ruined his career, as Lady Clare’d intended it to. She would have been forced to promote the man eventually, anyway: then watched, half nervous as he clawed his way over the careers of his friends to the top of the shit heap.

But this way Lazlo was hers. Like it or not — and he loathed it — none of his colleagues distinguished between Lazlo’s climb of the ladder and his climb into her bed. In one simple move, Lady Clare had fucked, promoted and politically castrated him. It was small wonder the man hated her.

“Your Highness, gentlemen...” Lady Clare settled back into her ornate chair and keyed up the S3 data she’d been working on that morning. It was Saturday: the meeting was an emergency one. She should be keeping the Prince Imperial on message while guiding the others politely but firmly through the Cabinet’s limited options. Indicating, without making it too obvious, which one the Third Section felt was expedient. Instead she was politely, discreetly, simply panicking.

Surrender or not? They were waiting on her, as they always had, afraid to commit themselves without her guidance. Lady Clare looked round the table, discounting everyone except the Prince Imperial who sat resplendent at the head of the table in a black silk suit, his snow-white moustache and goatee carefully waxed. He was an old man now, but he’d been born as the Prince Imperial and that was how he would die. There was an Emperor, a true Napoleon, but he’d been on ice for a hundred years. At least, his headless cancer-ridden carcass had, wired into a Matsui cryonics tank, chilled and then flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen. His head was orbiting somewhere in a satellite. It wasn’t easy keeping a head alive indefinitely, not cheap either. Lady Clare had seen the bills.

Still, dialysis kept the blood glucose levels stable, nutrient IV solutions kept him fed, and pressurized/oxygenated blood kept his severed head alive. What passed for an immune system was boosted with selected lymphocytes. Of course, even without a body, the blood to his head still needed detoxifying, its isotonicity required maintaining and urea had to be removed regularly. The satellite had back-ups to its back-ups — and then there were back-ups to those. Downtime wasn’t an option for life support systems, certainly not for the Emperor’s.

Imperial France was a lifetime’s empire. That was the promise on which the Prince had been elected Emperor and President, and that was what was scripted into the constitution. “The Empire dies with the Emperor,” ran the last sentence of all. But it would never happen. Or rather, Lady Clare reminded herself, it hadn’t happened yet.

Surrender or not...

“Do you have an opinion?” It was Lazlo, icily polite, finally deciding to give Lady Clare some of his attention. The woman flushed, half rose in her chair before settling back in confusion. Despite the neatness of her dress and the perfection of her makeup, she knew that for once she wasn’t making a good impression. But then, who could, with 100,000 Cossack mercenaries camped around the city?

“Lazlo.” The Prince Imperial spoke only one word but it was reproof enough to make the Minister for Security sit back in his seat, his handsome face frozen into a sullen mask. It was weird, Clare thought, watching His Highness. Fifty years of ruling as a spoilt neurotic and at the first sign of real danger he came off opium, clean break. Just like that. Not one pipe in three weeks, if his surgeon’s daily report was to be believed.

“My opinion?” Lady Clare looked around the table, settling her gaze on Lazlo. Whatever the maxim said, there were times when you had to sweat the small stuff and as far as Lady Clare was concerned, that was what Lazlo was. “My opinion on what?”

“Do we surrender now?” Lazlo asked her coldly. “Or do we wait for another day, two days, a week...”

“Or should we fight?” Field Marshal Lena interrupted loudly and pushed his still-full coffee cup away from him in disgust, slopping dark liquid onto the table’s Maltese lace tablecloth. At seventy the man still only had two states, alcohol-induced sleep and full-on, testosterone-fuelled aggression. Lady Clare liked him and so did the Prince Imperial: it was how he survived despite not having been sober for over ten years.

“We can’t win.” Lady Clare said firmly. That wasn’t her opinion, it was a fact. The army was split down the middle, whatever the field marshal might say. Generals Regis and Dershowitz were arguing among themselves, with Dershowitz having already made tentative overtures to the Reich. And if Field Marshal Lena didn’t know that then he should have done. S3 had grabs of Dershowitz’s communications. Military crypt was strong, but there was no PGP in use for which the Third Section didn’t have a breaker.

“We can’t win...” The Prince Imperial repeated Lady Clare’s words back at her, his smoke-grey eyes watching her face. “But we could fight?”

Yeah, Lady Clare thought tiredly, if you want a massacre. She looked at the old man and wondered if he knew how few soldiers would be willing to die if that was the order he issued. All government worked on the basis that the army was both loyal and stupid, but Lady Clare wasn’t sure they were that stupid.

Though the Old Guard would die to a man if ordered. Intensive psychometric testing was in place to guarantee that. And the really bizarre thing was that the man they’d die for was truly nondescript. If he hadn’t been a Bonaparte, no one would have glanced at him twice. As it was, his face was on every bank draft issued by the Banque Impériale de Paris.

And why should he be concerned? Even the Reich wouldn’t dare kill the Prince Imperial if he surrendered. He was an old man, revered, all but defeated: not that he’d been that threatening to start with, except as a figurehead. The Reich could afford to offer him safe passage to Zurich. And the Swiss would have him, Lady Clare had no doubt about that, not with the amount of gold his family had salted away in the vaults of Hong Kong Suisse. It was locked in unbreakable trusts, of course. Otherwise Lady Clare would have suggested moving it somewhere safer, like off-planet.

Outside it was still raining, water slicking the dark streets and undermining already corroded concrete, making the sidewalks even more unsafe. She could see the rain as it beat hard against the window, but she couldn’t hear it. Triple-glazed, micromesh-laminated polymer, it was designed to keep out more than the sound of a storm.

“My dear?” It was the Prince Imperial this time, his voice polite but insistent. The old man wasn’t going to let her sit this one out: she had to commit.

What she wanted to say was Surrender now, please. But she couldn’t get those words out, no matter how much half of her wanted to. So instead Lady Clare took a deep breath and did what she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do: tell the truth, or as much of it as she could manage. “At the moment surrender isn’t our best option. But, even so, fighting might not be wise.”

“Wise?” The elderly man seemed puzzled. “Why not?”

“Keep the army as your last resort,” suggested Lady Clare and shut her mouth, sitting back in her chair. With luck she could leave it at that.

Luck wasn’t with her.

“Because we should save them?”

“No.” Lady Clare said brusquely, meeting the Prince Imperial’s gaze. “Because they can’t be trusted.”

The crash of the field marshal’s chair tipping backwards was shock enough to still the whole Council Room but — on his feet or not — the field marshal still didn’t get a chance to speak. Count Lazlo was in there first, telling them all his version of what it was Lady Clare was trying to say.

“No alternative but eventual surrender then...” Fussy, snide, mocking — Lady Clare loathed his voice on instinct, but not as much, Lady Clare suspected, as Lazlo loathed everything about her. Lazlo smiled at Lady Clare, his green eyes watchful but cold. “At least, I think that’s what the Minister for Internal Affairs and National Security is trying to say...” He stressed the second part of her title, as if it were her personal fault that Paris was surrounded, its ferroconcrete buildings being eaten away from within.

“No,” Lady Clare said. “That isn’t what I mean at all...”

She saw surprise reach Lazlo’s eyes, noted too that the young Minister for Finance was suddenly watching her, but what Lady Clare really noticed was hope sparking in the eyes of the Prince Imperial, then just as suddenly dying.

“I won’t sacrifice this city.” His voice was calm, undramatic. But for once his habitual politeness was cut with steel.

“I’m not suggesting that,” Clare said shortly. “The battle computers are down. We have fewer than fifty functioning APVs, almost no working aircraft and hardly any cannon, the virus has seen to that. At best we have fifteen hundred officer-issue Colt ceramics. Hardly enough to fight a war. But then what about the Black Hundreds?” She turned to Lena. “Are their hovers still functioning? What is the state of their guns? And what of...”

“So you vote against surrender?” Lazlo interrupted.

“Wait until I’ve finished talking,” Lady Clare said sharply and then turned her attention to the field marshal who was sheepishly retaking his seat, trying not to catch her eye. They were all men but her. That was the way the Third Empire worked. She hadn’t liked it when she started out, and she didn’t like it now. What she liked even less was that she’d managed to change so little in her forty years of serving the Imperial Government.

She was back in control, at least in control of them if not of herself. They were waiting for her now. Her words would carry dangerous weight as they always had done: and until now she’d always liked that feeling. Liked the slight fear that flickered across people’s eyes when she appeared.

But this was payback and none of them even knew what she was going through. Paris or LizAlec was a choice Lady Clare couldn’t easily make. Not just because the child still thought Lady Clare was her mother, but because it was Lady Clare who gave LizAlec life. Lady Clare had overruled the refusal of the Sorbonne’s Ecole de Médecin to release Alex Gibson’s frozen sperm. That was sixteen years ago. Three weeks later, having ordered a Web-wide search for details of Razz’s clone-insurance policy, she’d had an entire Razz clone quietly lifted from the cryonic vaults of FirstVirtual.

It wasn’t the meat Lady Clare wanted, that vat-kept heap of barely living flesh, it was the clone’s ovaries. The director at Marne had mixed sperm and ova himself, implanting the resulting cytoplast into Lady Clare in her own bedroom at the Hotel Sabatini. Nine months later Elizabeth Alexandra was born — no surrogates, no synthetic wombs, no fast-forwarding the period of gestation.

The child Alex and Razz would never have, because one was psychotic and dead and the other was alive and a god, but still insane for all that. Both had been her lovers in their time: not for long, admittedly, and she’d never meant to either of them what they meant to each other. But all the same, she’d had their child. Alone, at night, in that vast bed.

LizAlec or Paris? How could she vote to surrender the capital of the Empire? How could she not vote...? Lady Clare put her head in her hands, pushing knuckles into dark-ringed eye sockets until fractal stars exploded behind her eyes. No tears, not here. Not in front of these people.

Let the Prince Imperial decide.

“I abstain,” Lady Clare said flatly. Ignoring Lena, Count Lazlo and the youthful but fat Minister of Finance, she met the Prince Imperial’s sad eyes. Saw the tired old man bow under the weight of another responsibility. Saw the hurt in his face and knew she could never tell him why.

Kidnappers killed their victims in seventy-three per cent of cases: Lady Clare had looked up the figures. The cold probability was that she couldn’t save LizAlec whichever way she voted, that there was a twenty-nine per cent likelihood that she was already dead, but that wasn’t the point. At least, Lady Clare told herself it wasn’t.