"I'm afraid you're right," O'Shaughnessy sighed. "He'd have to have been a lot smarter than we both know he really is to have tried to double-think his way into blowing up the Constitution that way. Unless someone else was pulling his puppet strings, at least."
"And there you come up against the time constraints again," Medusa pointed out. "You just can't move information across interstellar distances quickly enough to make something like that practical. Besides, if New Tuscany was in on the original plan, then why were they working so hard for a place at the feed trough? There's no question that the majority of the New Tuscan oligarchs wanted to get their own rice bowls out in front when the Star Kingdom started investing in the Cluster. That's why they supported the annexation in the first place, at least until they figured out how likely they were to lose control politically at home if it went through on Her Majesty's terms, instead of theirs."
"Then maybe they really are just pissed off enough over not getting their bowls filled that they're doing this on their own after all," O'Shaughnessy said with a shrug.
"No, Henri's right about that. Yvernau may be an idiot—he is an idiot—but there have to be at least some people on his planet and in his government who have IQs higher than a stewed prune's. By now, if nothing else, they'd have to realize Manpower had been playing them, as you put it. They'd be backing away from any kind of support for the people who turned Nordbrandt loose, I'd think. And especially with Nordbrandt's example to stir up their own underclass, they really, really wouldn't want to be ticking us off. Not unless they figured they had some powerful backing—backing powerful enough to keep us off their necks in retaliation and to help them keep their boots on the backs of their own underclass's necks—from somewhere."
"Somewhere closer than Mesa. That's what you're really suggesting, isn't it, Milady?"
"Yes," Medusa admitted with a grimace. "Meyers is closer to New Tuscany than Mesa is, and Frontier Security has a lot more in the way of resources than Manpower. It's got a depressing amount of experience in helping less-than-desirable régimes stay in power by repressing hell out of their domestic opposition, too, I'm afraid. That might just make it more attractive to New Tuscany than our own corrupting example. Not to mention the fact that Frontier Security was far better tapped into the star systems here in and around the Quadrant than anyone from Manpower was likely to be. Everything Ambassador Corvisart's turned up in Monica suggests that OFS brokered the deal between Manpower and the Jessyk Combine and people like Nordbrandt and President Tyler. I don't think there's any reason to assume Commissioner Verrochio wouldn't be thoroughly capable of brokering deals for himself if he decided to. And if there's anyone around who's probably more ticked off than Manpower by how Terekhov blew their Monica operation right out of space, it's got to be Lorcan Verrochio."
"That's a nasty thought," O'Shaughnessy acknowledged, pursing his lips thoughtfully. But then he shook his head. "It's a nasty thought, and it's possible you're onto something, Milady. But it occurs to me that a lot of the time constraints you've pointed out where Mesa is concerned would also apply to Verrochio. The transit time for a dispatch boat between Meyers and New Tuscany would only be about a T-week less than the time between Mesa and New Tuscany. That only saves them half a T-month on the round trip."
"Agreed. But I'm thinking that Manpower probably wouldn't have started sniffing around New Tuscany until after they'd assassinated Admiral Webster. Or no sooner than that, at any rate. In that case, they wouldn't have had enough time even to get the suggestion of an alliance to New Tuscany before the New Tuscans started manufacturing these 'incidents' of theirs. But if Verrochio started in on this the instant he found out how Monica had blown up in everyone's faces, they'd have had time for two complete two-way exchanges of communication before the first genuine incident in Pequod. Even assuming Manpower had started at exactly the same time, they could only have managed one and a half two-way exchanges in the same timeframe. In addition to which, Verrochio wouldn't have needed to invest still more time in coordinating with OFS, the way Manpower would. He is OFS in this neck of space."
"I agree with your logic," O'Shaughnessy said. "But with all due respect, Milady, both of us are just speculating at this point. We don't begin to have enough information for any kind of informed analysis, and it's one of the first principles of analysis that—"
"That if you start speculating too soon, with too little information, you predispose yourself to fit all later information into your initial hypotheses," Medusa interrupted, and gave him a remarkably urchinlike grin. "You see? I have been listening, Gregor."
"Yes, Milady, you have," he replied just the least bit repressively.
"I guess what I really wanted more than anything else was to get you brought up to speed with the information I've got and with the way my own thinking has been headed before we sit down with Khumalo and Chandler. I don't have any interest at all in double-teaming them into going along with my own brainstorms, but I figure it can't hurt to have that brain of yours already mulling over the info."
He nodded in understanding, and she glanced at the date-time readout in the corner of her desk display.
"And speaking about sitting down with Khumalo and Chandler, we're due to do that in about ninety minutes."
"All in all, Governor," Augustus Khumalo said the better part of three hours later, "I find myself substantially in agreement with you."
"Really?" Medusa smiled at him. "By this time, Augustus, I'm not sure what you're agreeing with!" She shook her head. "I've spun this around in my own mind so often that I'm half afraid I've forgotten my own theories!"
"Yes, I've noticed you can be easily distracted, Milady," Khumalo retorted with a level of comfort neither he nor Medusa would ever have predicted a few T-months earlier. "But allow me to summarize. Essentially, I think we're all in agreement that Minister of War Krietzmann's suspicions of New Tuscany would appear to have been soundly based in reality. I think we all also agree that they wouldn't have done this without some assurance of support to offset any retaliation we might be inclined to inflict on them. And that they wouldn't have gone to such pains to manufacture these so-called incidents of theirs if they weren't planning to use them as their 'evidence,' at least in the court of public opinion."
"And I think we should also add that our dispute with the Republic of Haven over the prewar correspondence is probably playing a part in the thinking of whatever mastermind's come up with all this," Amandine Corvisart put in.
Sir Anthony Langtry, the Foreign Secretary for the Star Kingdom of Manticore, had found himself occupying the same office for the Star Empire of Manticore, since foreign policy was one of the areas reserved for the imperial government, rather than being subject to local autonomy. Corvisart had been one of the Foreign Office's senior troubleshooters for years, which was how she'd come to be assigned to deal with the hot potato of Aivars Terekhov's completely unauthorized invasion of the Monica System. When the orders for Quentin O'Malley's battlecruisers to return to the Lynx Terminus had reached Monica, she'd received fresh instructions of her own from Langtry which had assigned her permanently to Baroness Medusa's staff. One of O'Malley's dispatch boats had diverted from the shortest possible flight home to Spindle just long enough to drop her off, and the imperial governor had been delighted to have her.