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Chapter Twelve

"Good evening, Madam Governor."

"Good evening, Madam President." Dame Estelle Matsuko, Baroness Medusa, and Provisional Crown Governor of the Talbott Cluster in the name of Queen Elizabeth III, bowed slightly, and Samiha Lababibi, President of the Spindle System, returned it. The two women were both dark complexioned and slender, although Lababibi had a more wiry, muscular build, courtesy of a lifetime passion for yachting and skin diving. At a hundred and sixty-five centimeters, she was also seven and a half centimeters taller than Dame Estelle. But both had black hair and brown eyes, although Dame Estelle's had a pronounced epicanthic fold. She was also several decades older than Lababibi, even if her second-generation prolong made her look younger, and she'd resigned the office of Home Secretary to accept her present assignment.

"I'm glad you were able to attend," the system president continued. "I was afraid you wouldn't have returned from Rembrandt in time."

"The timing was a bit closer than I'd anticipated," Medusa agreed. "I was in the middle of discussions with the Trade Union's executive council when the report of that business on Montana came in."

"Oh, that ." Lababibi rolled her eyes with a grimace of disgust. "Little boys playing sophomoric tricks," she said.

"Little boys with pulse rifles, Madam President," Medusa replied. Lababibi looked at her, and the Provisional Governor smiled with very little humor. "We were lucky this time. Lucky this Mr. Westman was prepared to make his point without actually shooting anyone."

"Madam Governor," Lababibi said, "Stephen Westman-all those Montanans, even the women!-have far too much testosterone in their systems. They still believe all that First Landing frontiersman nonsense. Or claim they do, anyway. But I assure you, the vote there was almost as one-sided as here on Flax. Lunatics like Westman are only a tiny minority, even on Montana, and there's no way-"

"President Lababibi," Medusa interrupted pleasantly, "this is a social gathering. I really shouldn't have let myself sidetrack you into discussing Mr. Westman at all. I do think you may be… underestimating the potential seriousness of the situation, but please, don't distress yourself over it tonight. We'll have sufficient time to discuss it officially later."

"Of course." Lababibi smiled.

"Thank you." Medusa turned to scan the crowded ballroom of the Spindle System President's State Mansion. They actually called it that, she reflected, without any of the shorter, less pretentious titles which would have been used most places. Nor had they spared any expense on its interior decor. The outer wall was composed entirely of French doors, giving onto the immaculately groomed Presidential Gardens with their deliberately archaic gas-jet torches flaming in the cool spring night. The opposite wall consisted solely of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, which gave the already large room a sense of glassy vastness, and the end walls and ceiling were decorated with heroic bas relief frescoes, glittering with touches of gold leaf. The long line of tables set up beside the live orchestra was covered in snowy white linen and littered with expensive tableware and hand-blown glassware, and massive chandeliers, like cascades of crystal tears, hung from the vaulted ceiling.

In many ways it was all horridly overdone, and yet it worked. It blended together beautifully, a perfect frame for the richly dressed guests, in the formal styles of a dozen different planets. Yet even as Medusa admitted that to herself, it still bothered her a bit to see such a magnificently decorated room in the mansion of the chief executive of a star system as poor as Spindle was.

But, then, all these systems are crushingly poor, she thought. Devastated economies in the midst of everything they need to be prosperous… except for that first boost up. All except Rembrandt and its trading partners, perhaps. But even the Trade Union's members are poverty stricken compared to Manticore, Sphinx, or Gryphon.

She'd known that, intellectually, before she ever arrived here. But knowing and understanding were very different. And one thing that bothered her deeply was the vast gulf between the haves and have-nots in Talbott. Even the wealthiest Talbotter was scarcely even well-off compared to someone like Klaus Hauptman or Duchess Harrington. But on many of these worlds there was no middle class. Or, rather, what middle class they had was only a thin layer, without the numbers or strength to fuel the growth of a self-sustaining economy. And that was less because of the huge size of the lower classes than because of the vast over-concentration of wealth and property in the hands of a tiny, closed wealthy class. In terms of real buying power, and the ability to command the necessities of life, the gap between someone like Samiha Lababibi and someone from Thimble's slums was literally astronomical. And although the Lababibi family fortune might have constituted little more than pocket change for Klaus Hauptman, it, along with those of a handful of other families, represented a tremendous portion of the total available wealth of the Spindle System… and starved the economy as a whole of desperately needed investment capital.

And as for economic power, so for politics. Samiha Lababibi looked perfectly at home in this sumptuous ballroom because she was. Because hers was one of three or four families who passed the presidential mansion back and forth at election time, like some private possession. Medusa came from a star nation with an overt, official aristocracy; Lababibi came from a "democracy" in which the ranks of the governing class were far more closed and restricted than anything the Star Kingdom of Manticore had ever dreamed of.

Yet the Lababibis weren't pure parasites. Samiha was actually a flaming liberal, by Spindle standards. She was genuinely committed to her own understanding of the good of all of her star system's citizens, although Medusa suspected she spent more time emoting over the poor then she did actually thinking about them.

Hard for it to be any other way, really. She doesn't actually know them at all. They might as well be living on another planet for all that her path is ever going to cross theirs. And just how much does that differ from a Liberal back home? Or-Medusa grinned-from the "Old Liberals." Montaigne's certainly spent enough time with the have-nots, and her version of the party's something else entirely.

"I see Mr. Van Dort and Mr. Alquezar are here," she said aloud. "I haven't seen Ms. Tonkovic or Mr. Krietzmann yet, though."

"Henri is here somewhere," Lababibi replied. "Aleksandra screened me to apologize. She plans to attend, but some last-minute matter came up, and she's going to be a little late."

"I see," Medusa murmured. Translated: she'll be here when she's good and ready, thus making it clear that she has no intention of becoming one more hanger-on of the Provisional Governor.

She was about to say something more, when her eye caught sight of a cluster of black and gold uniforms.

"Excuse me, Madam President," she said, giving Lababibi a gracious smile, "but I just noticed the arrival of Admiral Khumalo and his officers. As Her Majesty's senior civilian representative here in Talbott, I really must go and pay my respects. If you'll forgive me?"

"Of course, Madam Governor." Lababibi, and Medusa went sweeping off across the ballroom floor.



* * * | The Shadow of Saganami | * * *