Profiteer

“I’d prefer to talk alone,” Adams said by way of introduction.

 

Ambrose showed no reaction.

 

Dimitri looked at his companion and decided it would gain him nothing to argue the point, even though the last thing Ambrose was was a security risk. “Wait outside, Ambrose,” Dimitri said.

 

“Very good, sir.”

 

Ambrose would walk out until he’d reached fifty meters and stop. The door closed behind him, leaving Dimitri and Adams alone with the Archeron blizzard on the wall.

 

“What did you want to see me about?” Adams asked.

 

Dimitri didn’t sit. He folded both hands on top of his cane and leaned forward. “I wanted to know why two of the SEEC seats dissented on the Rasputin vote.”

 

Adams looked at Dimitri a little oddly. “Perhaps you should talk to the Sirius Community about—”

 

“I don’t wish to talk to Kalin Green—yet.”

 

Adams sat with an impassive expression, unmoved.

 

“Shall I expound a theory of mine?” Dimitri asked.

 

“Go ahead. I still fail to see your point.”

 

“You will.” Dimitri turned toward the holo as he talked. “Setting Rasputin up for a proposal required a few years of preparation. Preparation that fell mostly to you and the Community, because it was a Sirius-Centauri proposal.”

 

“So?”

 

“Those two dissenting Community votes, theoretically, could have cost those years of investment.”

 

“If it wasn’t for Indi abstaining.”

 

Dimitri smiled at the frozen holographic landscape. “Now why did they do that?”

 

Adams didn’t respond.

 

“The coalition Indi is crafting shouldn’t like Rasputin, should they? They see the whole operation, legalities aside, as a bad precedent for TEC interference in planetary affairs. And because of the Centauri-Sirius monopoly on prime seats, they see the TEC as a tool of the Europeans.”

 

Dimitri turned around and faced Adams. “Obviously, Indi decided to ignore the obvious. They wanted Rasputin to pass.”

 

Adams smiled. “Why would they want to do that?”

 

“The same reason you wanted it to fail.”

 

“Can you get to the point without the obscure Machiavellianism?”

 

Adams was one of the few members of the Terran Congress who wasn’t enamored of diplomatic forms and procedures. If Dimitri admired Adams for anything, it was his bluntness. That and the fact that Adams was secure enough to talk that way to Dimitri. Few others dared.

 

“The point,” Dimitri said, “is the fact that this coming Congress has the potential of disrupting the power structure of the Confederacy. Indi is on the ascendancy. Their expansion during the last century is paying them with seats on the Congress; their coalition will have a majority on a straight vote shortly into the promotion process.”

 

“So far this is all common knowledge.”

 

“Is it common knowledge that Indi plans to bump some nonvoting seats in the Congress straight to prime?”

 

Adams’ expression cracked a bit. It was fractional, the man had terrific control, but it was obvious that Dimitri had just hit a point that disturbed him greatly. Slowly Adams said, “That is a severe breach of form.”

 

“Form, yes,” Dimitri said. “Law, no. Promotion through the ranks is traditional but not compulsory. All a planet has to achieve is continuous human occupation for eighty years and a population over half a billion.”

 

“And its name on the Charter.”

 

Dimitri nodded. “And its name on the Charter. There’s even a precedent—”

 

“The first five primes were promoted immediately upon signing the Charter. Yes I’m aware of that. I fail to see what any of this has to do with Rasputin.”

 

“Everything,” Dimitri said.

 

* * * *

 

Robert Kaunda sat in one of the Hotel Victoria’s private dining rooms. The hemispherical holo that surrounded him and the Protectorate delegate created the illusion that they were alone on the roof of the hotel. The open sky and the Pacific’s surf were both fake, as was the sprawl of the Confederacy’s capital city behind them. In reality, they were a few layers behind guards and other diners.

 

What counted was the fact that they were isolated behind that holo just as well as if they were really dining alone on top of Sydney’s premier hotel.

 

Kaunda drank his tea and repeated himself. “Even if it is, as you say, a win-win situation, I do not like giving the Confederacy—especially the Executive—this kind of power.”

 

Sim Vashniya, the delegate to the Executive Command from the People’s Protectorate of Epsilon Indi, representative to the Terran Congress from Shiva, and the Gods knew what else, reclined on a chair considerably higher than Kaunda’s, his expression betraying nothing but slight amusement. “You were satisfied with my reasoning before—”

 

“That was when we were counting seats. As you kept pointing out, the Centauri Alliance and die Sirius Community had a majority. But with those two Sirius dissenters we could have blocked the whole thing.”