The Lotus Eaters

Anno Domini 2524 UEPF Spirit of Peace, Earth orbit

Despite her new and exalted caste and rank, Class One and Marchioness, vice Lucretia Arbeit, of Amnesty, Wallenstein wore no fashionable diadem. And when she saw her senior staff and shuttle deck crew in full proskynesis on the deck—

She didn't have to feign fury. Marguerite was furious. "Get up! Get up, dammit! I'm no stinking, head in the clouds idiot. I don't need to be fooled into an unreal sense of my own importance. I'm not so deep down convinced that I'm a walking turd that I need this kind of reassurance that I'm not. On your feet!"

Sheepishly, hesitatingly, the staff and deck crew stood. First to stand was Khan, the male, Chief of Intelligence. At Wallenstein's command he first raised his face from the cold metal deck and stole a glance to see if she seemed serious. It seemed she did. Khan pushed his upper torso off the deck and rocked back. After tapping his wife, Khan from Sociology, he grasped her arm in one hand and pulled her up along with himself.

Around them, others likewise arose from their postures of submission and humiliation. There was a clear correlation between caste and speed with which the crew obeyed the new High Admiral's command. Indeed, it wasn't until Wallenstein walked down the shuttle's ramp and stormed across the deck to where the mostly Class Three, Four and Five deck crew lay, and said, "Yes, that means everybody," that those lessers began to get to their feet.

"Staff meeting in half an hour," Wallenstein announced, turning and walking off toward the hatch that led from the shuttle deck.

* * *

There have always been classes and castes, thought Marguerite, alone in the Admiral's quarters. There will always be classes and castes. And those who cry out against the injustice of it all only want to displace those at the top and put themselves there. At least, that's the way to read it from the results they get. And can't people be presumed to really desire what they actually achieve? At least when they do so well by it?

She quickly skinned out of the dress uniform, all black and silver, she'd worn for the trip up from Earth, replacing it with a more comfortable shipboard undress uniform. This was still the black of space, but of a softer material and a more yielding cut. And, best of all, it lacked the stiff high collar that some fashion maven had inflicted on the Peace Fleet centuries before. She didn't bother to hang the dress uniform up, tossing it instead over the desk across which the former High Admiral had so often used her body. Housekeeping wasn't her job.

All right then, she thought, running a finger up a seam to seal the garment to her hips, so it's unavoidable. Is this such a bad thing? Isn't it most important that the Earth be well governed? Isn't displacing a class gone rotten and replacing it with a better one the only way to achieve that?

She stopped dressing for a moment to apply her new rank insignia, silver crossed batons surrounded by a wreath, to her old uniform. Eventually, so she supposed, she'd pick an aide de camp or two to handle things like that for her.

"Odd, really," she said aloud, as she finished affixing the rank to her collar herself. "I thought it would feel better to do this. Somehow, it doesn't feel like anything. Then, too, I didn't feel as much as I expected to when the Secretary General publically elevated me to Class One and enfeoffed me with Amnesty."

Wallenstein laughed at herself and her circumstance, then said, "Sic transit gloria mundi." Thus flees the glory of the world.

On the other hand, she thought, tugging on her tunic, the tithes that go with Amnesty will also help with the fleet. I do so hope Mr. Brown can get a good price on Cygnus House, too. I couldn't continue to own it anyway, not after I saw and smelled that sick, twisted bitch's dungeon.

Boots went on last, calf length and supple black leather to match the undress uniform. With those, Wallenstein stood and walked to the mirror on one wall of the Admiral's quarters.

"Best I can do," she sighed, though she was, in fact, still the attractive woman she'd been since becoming a woman. "And now, to meet my public."

* * *

"Gentlebeings, the High Admiral," the Adjutant announced as the oval hatchway to the ship's conference room sphinctered open and Wallenstein walked in. The hatch closed behind her as soon as it sensed she was past. Each officer present pushed their chairs back from the massive Terra Novan silverwood conference table and stood immediately to attention. With a nod, Wallenstein walked between the staff's chairs and the room's iridescent ironwood-paneled walls.

Even before taking her own seat, she ordered, "Seats."

Just as they had when ordered out from proskynesis, the crew hesitated.

Wallenstein glared. "I said, 'seats,' dammit. I don't have time . . . we don't have time, for meaningless formalities. Sit!"

Marguerite didn't wait to see if the staff obeyed. Rather, she swung her chair almost one hundred and eighty degrees to face the large Kurosawa viewscreen on one wall of the conference room. Not far from that was the hatch leading to the Admiral's Bridge, a feature so far little used.

"Computer," she said. "View of the boneyard." Instantly the screen went from blank to filled with rank upon rank of ghost ships, their lightsails furled, the dark side of the moon visible on one corner of the screen.

"We're going there," Wallenstein announced. "We're going to get several of those running. Six, I think, right now, enough for a resupply every four to six months, indefinitely. They are going to become our lifeline to Earth. Don't bother asking where the credit is coming from; suffice to say that His Excellency, the SecGen, has approved a considerable increase to the fleet's budget and a major reallocation of industrial and personnel resources to our support."

"This ship," she continued, before anyone could even register surprise, "is going to be skimmed for cadre to command those transports. The rest of the crews will be coming from the academy and from weeding out some likely prospects from Fleet Base, both on Earth and on Luna. Those, and eventually the crews that were beached on Atlantis Base because we cannibalized their ships. The new commanders will have to train their crews themselves and with a minimum cadre.

"Job One, however, will be restoring the ships we need to full functionality. That should help with the training. Hopefully, we'll be able to restore one or two, then head back to Terra Nova, ourselves, leaving stay-behinds to finish the restoration on the rest.

"Our first target for restoration will be the Jean Monnet. It's almost the newest ship out there. It was the last mothballed. And its maintenance records indicate that it is likely in the best shape of the lot.

"Oh, one more thing. I have no intention of burning up in a defective shuttle. We're going to be taking every shuttle we can cram aboard the Peace, plus every shuttle we can cram aboard the first few of our restored ships, plus all the parts we can loot."