7th December 2282
10:58 GMT
Across the table from me, the Private Secretary takes a moment to get his thoughts in order. I do him the courtesy of not reading them. No guards inside the room, I notice, but the doors have a surfeit.
I made sure to give Peter a disappointed glare.
"Look, you've-. Let's not beat around the bush. You've got me by the short and curlies. But-. Please.
How? How did you
do that?"
"I sat very still, then shared an anecdote about Prince Phillip. I make no promises that it would work again. Does she
know?"
He shakes his head. "We could
hardly tell her."
"You
could. Mentioning the Saudis set her off. She blames them for the Resource Wars?"
"No, I don't think so. You were right about the royal family having good relations with the Saudi royal family. The alliances that were formed in the run up to the Resource Wars were… Byzantine, to put it mildly, but after the Americans became isolationist the Saudis needed a new best friend." He snorts, a distinctly unpleasant sound from someone with no nose. "But just because you're someone's best friend, it doesn't follow that you're a
good friend. Their treachery… Or perhaps incompetence, it amounted to the same thing and at this point we'll likely never know for sure, it cost us the lives of King William and Prince Alfred. The Queen was very close to both of them. Now it seems, that whole… Period, that whole part of the world… Mentioning it…"
"Sends her feral."
He sucks in air through his teeth, then slowly lets it out. Then, he nods.
"Look, you did that whole etiquette briefing thing with me. Why not just say 'don't mention Saudi Arabia, she's very sensitive about it'?"
"Because we don't want it getting spread around. Why would I think that someone who by his own admission spent that whole period in cryogenic suspension and is working for the government of California would bring up Saudi Arabia of all places?"
"Because I was doing anecdotes about Queen Elizabeth the Second! Of
course the Saudis were going to come up!"
"That doesn't
follow!" He sags a little. "Or perhaps it does. I was born after she died, and I didn't study her life in any detail. I-." He bows his head. "I apologise."
"For your lack of comportment, or for leaving me in the room to be eaten?"
"Both, though more the former. I doubt that there's anything I could say or do to make up for the latter."
Hm. "She can't do public engagements. Given the collapse in the education system it's
unlikely that anyone would mention anything that could set her off, but if they did and she went feral in public…"
"I
know. And we can't
tell her why she can't do them. If it wasn't for
that we could have her visit towns and cities as we reintegrate them."
And they can't make use of normal counselling services because she goes feral the moment the issue gets raised. So… One of my telepathic specialists is… Essentially the only option. I'm not a specialist in that area -or any area, really- so while I could sort of muddle through it would be far from ideal.
The best cover I can think of is a proper trade mission. I
know that Hayes will be interested in transistors, because while the factories he's had built in Dayglow can produce new vacuum tubes, making new
micro vacuum tubes is still beyond the NCR. Their most advanced machinery has to be repaired using salvaged components which are becoming increasingly hard to source. Switching to transistors would increase their vulnerability to electromagnetic pulses, but in the core regions of the NCR and for civilian use, that wouldn't be much of a problem.
How to get them here? The Brotherhood has a
few transportation dirigibles, but they're slow and not particularly resilient. Our zetan fighters are one-man craft, we don't have any high seas sailors… The most obvious route would be to negotiate passage on Mothership Zeta, which would be quick and safe for however many people we wanted to send.
I'll have to check in with the salvage team to see how far they've got on recovering parts from the wreck of the
other Mothership and how far they've got in understanding Zeta's controls.
But if we're going to have to reveal-. No. No
quite.
"Tell me: have you ever heard of a device called a mesmetron?"
"I can't say that I have."
"The American army developed them, during the
food riots. They take the form of a gun, but when someone is hit by one, they become very calm and unusually suggestible for several minutes."
"Oh, that's
remarkable. We could-."
"When it works
properly."
"And when it doesn't?"
"Berserk rages or head explosions."
His face
can't pale, but I imagine it's trying to. "Ah."
"But I have… NCR special forces occasionally use them for taking prisoners for interrogation. Sometimes they
really don't want to talk, and constantly causing head explosions tends to reduce morale. If you fine tune them, you can guarantee getting the result you want. I could send a specialist over here as part of a trade mission or a permanent embassy, and you could have them on standby in case of… Incidents."
"At the risk of making Her Majesty's head explode-. How does that
work? Surely the skull would contain things even if the brain was cooked?"
"If things go wrong, the skull becomes very brittle. It can't contain the vaporised high-pressure brain matter. Though under controlled circumstances, the chance of that happening becomes next to nothing."
"It's still a rather
visceral picture that you paint."
"The next best I can do involves sending either a psychologist or a cybernetics specialist. Look, I doubt
very much that the Queen is the only ardens afflicted in this way-."
"We executed the rest."
"Oh."
"And we've found that more conventional counselling is sufficient to prevent anyone else decaying in such a way."
I nod, wincing faintly. "Yes, the Archbishop said. I'm sorry, but I don't have any better ideas."
"Do you use it on… Californian ardens?"
"Not to my knowledge. The mesmetrons are relatively rare, and… Well, the ardens who've lost it lost it long enough ago that I doubt they can find it again, and the ones who
have it don't need it. None of the NCR's enemies use ardens soldiers to any significant extent." I shrug. "I can ask for volunteers and ship them here so your people can observe the process, if that helps?"
"It would. I don't have the authority to make any decisions, but I have been assigned the duty of 'managing' Her Majesty's condition. It falls to me to review any possible treatments."
I nod. "I'll set something up when I get back. Will you handle the export permits for the transistors? We'll probably want to talk to the researchers who worked on them."
He nods. "I can certainly do that. And… Wool?"
"The NCR has been using cow and goat fur for softer clothing, and variously leathers for outerwear. We're starting to get
some shipments of cotton, but with the collapse of transportation infrastructure and government, the old cotton farms rather died off. There would actually be a pretty decent market for softer fabric."
"There's no difficulty in exporting
wool."
I nod. "Then I'll head back to California, and put together a full delegation. Thank you for receiving me."
Last thing you need is them jerking free, taking chunks of his brain with them.
Yeah, that would not leave a good association with them in her memories.
