“I want to make minimal, not maximal changes. They may amount to nothing more than strengthening trade relations with the heart stars of the Empire, to give you a larger stake in the Pax. Or whatever seems necessary. At present, however, I don’t know. I flounder about in a sea of reports and statistics, and as I go down for the third time, I remember the old old saying, ‘Let me write a nation’s songs, and I care not who may write its laws.’
“Won’t you help me understand your songs?”
Silence fell and lasted, save for a wind whittering outside, until the tadmouse offered a timid arpeggio. That seemed to draw Tatiana from her brown study. She shook herself and said, “What you’re askin’ for is closer acquaintance, Commissioner. Friendship.”
His laugh was nervous. “I’ll settle for an agreement to disagree. Of course, I haven’t time for anywhere near as much frank discussion as I’d like—as I really need. But if, oh, if you young Aeneans would fraternize with the young marines, technicians, spacehands—you’d find them quite decent, you might actually take a little pity on their loneliness, and they do have experiences to relate from worlds you’ve never heard of—”
“I don’t know if it’s possible,” Tatiana said. “Certainly not on my sole recommendation. Not that I’d give any, when your dogs are after my man.”
“I thought that was another thing we might discuss,” Desai said. “Not where he may be or what his plans, no, no. But how to get him out of the trap he’s closed on himself. Nothing would make me happier than to give him a free pardon. Can we figure out a method?”
She cast him an astonished look before saying slowly, “I do believe you mean that.”
“Beyond question I do. I’ll tell you why. We Impies have our agents and informers, after all, not to mention assorted spy devices. We are not totally blind and deaf to events and to the currents beneath them. The fact could not be kept secret from the people that Ivar Frederiksen, the heir to the Firstmanship of Ilion, has led the first open, calculated renewal of insurgency. His confederates who were killed, hurt, imprisoned are being looked on as martyrs. He, at large, is being whispered of as the rightful champion of freedom—the rightful king, if you will—who shall return.” Desai’s smile would have been grim were his plump features capable of it. “You note the absence of public statements by his relatives, aside from nominal expressions of regret at an ‘unfortunate incident.’ We authorities have been careful not to lean on them. Oh, but we have been careful!”
The tenuous atmosphere was like a perpetual muffler on his unaccustomed ears. He could barely hear her: “What might you do … for him?”
“If he, unmistakably of his own free will, should announce he’s changed his mind—not toadying to the Imperium, no, merely admitting that through most of its history Aeneas didn’t fare badly under it and this could be made true again—why, I think he could not only be pardoned, along with his associates, but the occupation government could yield on a number of points.”
Wariness brought Tatiana upright. “If you intend this offer to lure him out of hidin’—”
“No!” Desai said, a touch impatiently. “It’s not the kind of message that can be broadcast. Arrangements would have to be made beforehand in secret, or it would indeed look like a sellout. Anyhow, I repeat that I don’t think you know how to find him, or that he’ll try contacting you in the near future.”
He sighed. “But perhaps— Well, as I told you, what I mainly want to learn, in my clumsy and tentative fashion, is what drives him. What drives all of you? What are the possibilities for compromise? How can Aeneas and the Imperium best struggle out of this mess they have created for each other?”
She regarded him for a second period of quiet, until she asked, “Would you care to have lunch?”
The sandwiches and coffee had been good; and seated in her kitchenette bay, which was vitryl supported on the backs of stone dragons, one had an unparalleled view across quads, halls, towers, battlements, down and on to Nova Roma, the River Flone and its belt of green, the ocherous wilderness beyond.