And even many Manticorans not blinkered by ideology or the calculus of electoral advantage would be dismayed by the thought of adding huge chunks of foreigners to the Star Kingdom. They would worry that adding so many foreign elements would dilute or even destroy the unique amalgam which had allowed the Star Kingdom to come so far and achieve so much with such a relatively small population.
Elizabeth could understand all of that, and even sympathize with the last bit. But she also knew that the Star Kingdom's unique balance and accomplishments rested in no small part upon the steady stream of immigrants it had always attracted. There'd never been an overwhelming flood of such newcomers, but there'd always been some, and far from weakening the Star Kingdom, they'd added their own strengths to it. Elizabeth had always believed, firmly, that the continuation of that inflow was crucial to her kingdom's ongoing prosperity, and the thought of adding whole new planets held no dismay for her.
Not that she expected selling the idea to Parliament to be easy.
"Do you think we should support Ramirez, Allen?" she asked quietly, and the Prime Minister nodded.
"I do, Your Majesty. First, we need the manpower. Second, Trevor's Star is absolutely essential to us in a strategic sense. And third, I think that ultimately the San Martinos', um, liveliness, let us say, would be of great benefit to our own society. Moreover, it would establish a precedent for annexing other worlds that request it... and give us an excuse not to annex those who don't request it. And, frankly, Your Majesty, it would bolster public morale. The incredible lift Duchess Harrington's return gave it is starting to wear off, and the new emergency Navy appropriations — and the taxes they entail — are starting to sink in. And, of course," his lips twisted sourly, "our `friends' in the Opposition see absolutely no reason not to take advantage of either of the above."
He gave himself a little shake.
"Under the circumstances, the knowledge that another entire planet chooses voluntarily to join the Star Kingdom and share our risks and the burden of supporting the war would do wonders. After all, who would choose to formally join what he expected to be the losing side of a war like this one? If that thought doesn't occur naturally to the electorate and our public policy think tanks, I assure you we'll bring it to their notice!" He chuckled. "The Opposition isn't the only bunch who can play the public opinion game, Your Majesty!"
"I like your argument, Allen," Elizabeth mused, cuddling Ariel and pursing her lips while she considered all he'd just said. "Of course, it's all very preliminary, possibly even a little premature to speculate about, right now. But if it works out..."
Her voice trailed off, and Cromarty watched her face as she stared into the empty air at something only she could see. He'd seen that expression on her face before, and as he saw it now, he felt a vast certainty that, preliminary and premature or not, yet to be ratified or rejected by public opnion, Parliament, and the voters though it might be, the actual decision had already been made by the slim, mahogany-skinned woman sitting across from him.
And once that young woman makes a decision, the rest of the universe had better resign itself to the inevitable and get out of the way, he thought cheerfully. Because if it doesn't, it's going to get hurt.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"I think your Graysons think I'm a bad influence on you, dear," Allison remarked as she and Honor walked down the third-floor hall of Honor's new mansion on their way to the ground-floor dining room. They turned a corner, and Allison paused at a sitting room's open door to properly admire the huge swath of ankle-deep carpet that stretched luxuriously from the door to an entire wall of one-way crystoplast and a breathtaking view of Jason Bay. It was the fourth such door she'd paused at, and each sumptuously furnished room had boasted its own, unique color combination and decorating style.
"Not too shabby," she approved in a deliberately blase tone. "Still," she went on just a bit critically, "if I were you, I think I'd have the bay dyed a deeper blue."
"Very funny, Mother," Honor said severely, and pressed the door plate. The panel slid shut, and she turned to her unrepentant parent with a stern expression.
"And just what, horrible person that you are, have you been doing to my poor Harringtons now?"
"Why, nothing, dear!" Allison lowered long, dark lashes (one of many features Honor had deeply envied during her gawky, prolong-extended adolescence) and peeped innocently up through them at her towering daughter. "Nothing at all. It's just that they seem to have this fixation on schedules and message traffic. In fact, I believe `fixation' is probably too pale a word for it. `Obsession' would be better, and on more mature consideration, I'm not at all certain it might not properly be described as a pathological condition. Hmmmm... I didn't find anything in their genotype to explain it, but I'll bet that only means I missed something in the survey, because now that I think about it, it appears to be a nearly universal condition. Every single Grayson I meet seems to suffer from it, in fact, and—"
"You are a wicked and unnatural creature, Mother," Honor told her diminutive parent, "and all this babbling is not going to distract me from the fact that you've been bedeviling my Harringtons. I knew you'd been up to something from the way Andrew and Miranda were very carefully not mentioning your arrival this afternoon. And, clever soul that I am, I deduce from your otherwise incomprehensible comments that you deliberately declined to inform Andrew or Simon of your intended arrival time. Would it happen, perchance, that my chain of reasoning is sound?"
"It must come from your father's side of the family," Allison informed her with severe disapproval. "You never got that sort of dreary, plebeian logic from my genes, dear! Beowulfans' cognitive processes rely far more on the creative and intuitive manipulation of concepts without the drudgery of applying reason to them. Don't you realize how badly you can damage a perfectly good preconception or assumption if you insist on thinking about it that way? That's why I never indulge in such a vice."
"Of course you don't," Honor agreed affably. "And you're evading the question again. Which was something you never let me get away with as a child."
"Of course I didn't. A most unbecoming habit in a well-behaved child."
"Mother!" A gurgle of laughter spoiled the severity of Honor's look, and Allison giggled.
"Sorry. I just had to get it out of my system after spending the entire trip from Yeltsin aboard Tankersley with the twins' bodyguards, Jennifer, Mistress Thorn, and enough baggage for a six-month sojourn in the Sphinx outback. They're all very nice people, and I like them a lot, but do you realize how small the Tankersley really is? I didn't... until I discovered there was no place I could go where I didn't have to be on my best behavior."
"You never spent a day in your life on your `best behavior'!" Honor snorted. "Um." She cocked her head. "Unless you wanted to charm something out of some poor unsuspecting male with your winsome smile and dimples, that is," she amended.
"Oh, I can think of one or two times I behaved myself to get something out of a female, too," Allison said, then sighed. "That was before you were born, of course," she added pensively.
"Two or three? Are you sure you wanted something out of that many females? That sounds like an excessive estimate, considering how relentlessly heterosexual you are. You're not even a hundred years old yet, you know."