Fic: Spin Recovery, Part Twenty One.
Feb. 4th, 2008 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalYeah! It turns out the Countess is not a villian after all.
Rufus marched through the halls of the manor until he reached his mother’s study. Blowing past the poor secretary manning the outer office, he burst in, slamming the door shut behind him. “Quadrupling commoner rents, Mother?” he asked angrily.
His mother turned away from her comconsole to face him, resting her arms on her desk and steepling her fingers. “Ah, you’ve spoken to that Swiftfoot vixen, I take it?”
“Even if I hadn’t, I’m sure I would have eventually heard the howls of outrage from those hills all the way over here! What are you doing, Mother? You gave me the task of trying to persuade them to leave, then you deliberately undercut my authority with this outrageous maneuver.”
Her ears twitched forward as she listened calmly to his rant. “Outrageous? I merely brought their rents in line with the value of the land they occupy.”
“There’s not a single tenant there who can afford that sort of increase and you know it. Why didn’t you give me the chance to convince them to leave on their own?”
“I did. Judging from the evidence you weren’t very successful. How is your foot, by the way?”
Oh, fruit. Details of Hazel’s abrupt departure must have filtered down to Mother from the servants that had been stationed near the front doors. “My foot is fine and has nothing to do with the negotiations that I had been conducting with Ms. Swiftfoot. She tends to use her crutches as a means of, er, emphasizing her conversational points.”
“She physically assaulted a farmer noble. I assume you remember that’s a crime under Vulpine law.”
“Assault is a crime under any specie’s law. Anyway, she was frustrated by my attempt to explain to her the greater need of Brushtail’s demesne as a whole compared to her district. We… well, we actually started arguing about it.”
“I don’t care that you were arguing Ru Ofanius. What I care about is whether you won that argument. It doesn’t look like you did.”
“Yes and now I’m never going to get the chance to try again. You gave me the charge of convincing them to move. Why did you pull it away so suddenly? Did you decide your trust in me was misplaced?”
All traces of humor disappeared from her expression. “No, I did not, Ru Ofanius. I do apologize for making you lose face in this situation, but I could not permit the negotiations to turn into a long, drawn out affair. Time will not permit it, now.”
Rufus frowned. “The sevenium in those hills has been there for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of years. Why should we be in a hurry now, the House hasn’t incurred serious debt recently, has it?” A darker thought crossed his mind suddenly. “You aren’t sick, are you?”
“No, my health is fine. I’m referring to more strategic considerations. It hasn’t been made public yet, but a decision was made last week in a closed session of the Council of Farmer Nobles. There’s been a twelve percent increase in the Naval Defence budget, most of which has been directed towards shipbuilding. The crystal lattice matrices will be installed in the newer ships coming on the line, but for older and still viable combat models the sevenium will be sorely needed.”
Rufus frowned deeply, finally sitting down in a chair in front of her. “Are the Ardactavians growing so aggressive? I hadn’t heard anything like that.”
“The Ardactavian Hive is not a concern right now. The Council was recently apprised of intelligence gathered by one of our allies in the GSA, concerning the rise of… an enemy we thought safely dead. More than that, I’m not permitted to say, even to you.”
“Oh,” Rufus said, as his mind raced. Captain Blake had to have reported back to her father that the Ferin boy she had been hunting had been returned to the Dominion. Worse, one of her own officers had gone with him. So naturally the Human Alliance’s first consideration once that disaster came to pass was to make everyone else in the GSA was as paranoid as they were, so they would be united to face the threat of the returning Varn Dominion. Except that there is no more Dominion, just a lonely and sick old man, trying to resurrect the one achievement that appears to have given him pleasure. He’s not threat. He had spent over a week with the Galapagos and their world weary master. The Gene Mage was dying, and the successor race he had made for himself appeared intent on a peaceable course of existence. If they rest of us will let them take it.
“Something on your mind, my son?”
“I have a fair idea of what threat the humans meant,” he told her.
His mother raised an eyebrow. “I never said the intelligence data came from the Human Alliance.”
“My mistake.” She’s going to rip apart an entire district to prepare for a non-existent threat. This is wrong. But if the Council had been willing to push through such a large budget increase, the intelligence they had been presented must have been compelling. Biased as hell, I’ll bet, but compelling. And the Council would be more than willing to listen, given the trauma we suffered at the Dominion’s hands.
For a moment, he thought he would tell her everything. The strange story of his twin, all of the twins that had encountered each other. The meeting with the Varn Gene Mage and Administrator Gisko. The discovery that their ancient enslavers were either dead or dying, and the terrible fate that the innocents that had powered their great dominion had suffered. He needed to convince her that the threat the Council had been presented with was ephemeral, that the disruption of Hazel and her neighbors’ lives was unnecessary.
There was one problem though. His reserve of credibility was nigh empty with his family right now. His mother, forced to choose between an ally’s intelligence and her son’s addicted rambling, would likely choose the more reliable source. Or at least the source that looks more reliable. He just didn’t have any way to convince her.
“Well, I suppose there’s nothing left for me to do then,” he said. He cleared his throat uneasily. “What are going to do, if any of those folk dig their claws in, when the time comes? I mean, there may be at least a couple that either will actually pay the rent increase, or refuse to on the grounds of it being an unreasonable burden.” The latter wouldn’t be a successful legal argument on Vulpine Prime, but it was a powerful moral one that had worked in similar situations in their history of land ownership and rental.
“Then they will be moved,” his mother answered darkly. “There are no other options.”
“I see none either,” he agreed.
For now.
TBC
Rufus marched through the halls of the manor until he reached his mother’s study. Blowing past the poor secretary manning the outer office, he burst in, slamming the door shut behind him. “Quadrupling commoner rents, Mother?” he asked angrily.
His mother turned away from her comconsole to face him, resting her arms on her desk and steepling her fingers. “Ah, you’ve spoken to that Swiftfoot vixen, I take it?”
“Even if I hadn’t, I’m sure I would have eventually heard the howls of outrage from those hills all the way over here! What are you doing, Mother? You gave me the task of trying to persuade them to leave, then you deliberately undercut my authority with this outrageous maneuver.”
Her ears twitched forward as she listened calmly to his rant. “Outrageous? I merely brought their rents in line with the value of the land they occupy.”
“There’s not a single tenant there who can afford that sort of increase and you know it. Why didn’t you give me the chance to convince them to leave on their own?”
“I did. Judging from the evidence you weren’t very successful. How is your foot, by the way?”
Oh, fruit. Details of Hazel’s abrupt departure must have filtered down to Mother from the servants that had been stationed near the front doors. “My foot is fine and has nothing to do with the negotiations that I had been conducting with Ms. Swiftfoot. She tends to use her crutches as a means of, er, emphasizing her conversational points.”
“She physically assaulted a farmer noble. I assume you remember that’s a crime under Vulpine law.”
“Assault is a crime under any specie’s law. Anyway, she was frustrated by my attempt to explain to her the greater need of Brushtail’s demesne as a whole compared to her district. We… well, we actually started arguing about it.”
“I don’t care that you were arguing Ru Ofanius. What I care about is whether you won that argument. It doesn’t look like you did.”
“Yes and now I’m never going to get the chance to try again. You gave me the charge of convincing them to move. Why did you pull it away so suddenly? Did you decide your trust in me was misplaced?”
All traces of humor disappeared from her expression. “No, I did not, Ru Ofanius. I do apologize for making you lose face in this situation, but I could not permit the negotiations to turn into a long, drawn out affair. Time will not permit it, now.”
Rufus frowned. “The sevenium in those hills has been there for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of years. Why should we be in a hurry now, the House hasn’t incurred serious debt recently, has it?” A darker thought crossed his mind suddenly. “You aren’t sick, are you?”
“No, my health is fine. I’m referring to more strategic considerations. It hasn’t been made public yet, but a decision was made last week in a closed session of the Council of Farmer Nobles. There’s been a twelve percent increase in the Naval Defence budget, most of which has been directed towards shipbuilding. The crystal lattice matrices will be installed in the newer ships coming on the line, but for older and still viable combat models the sevenium will be sorely needed.”
Rufus frowned deeply, finally sitting down in a chair in front of her. “Are the Ardactavians growing so aggressive? I hadn’t heard anything like that.”
“The Ardactavian Hive is not a concern right now. The Council was recently apprised of intelligence gathered by one of our allies in the GSA, concerning the rise of… an enemy we thought safely dead. More than that, I’m not permitted to say, even to you.”
“Oh,” Rufus said, as his mind raced. Captain Blake had to have reported back to her father that the Ferin boy she had been hunting had been returned to the Dominion. Worse, one of her own officers had gone with him. So naturally the Human Alliance’s first consideration once that disaster came to pass was to make everyone else in the GSA was as paranoid as they were, so they would be united to face the threat of the returning Varn Dominion. Except that there is no more Dominion, just a lonely and sick old man, trying to resurrect the one achievement that appears to have given him pleasure. He’s not threat. He had spent over a week with the Galapagos and their world weary master. The Gene Mage was dying, and the successor race he had made for himself appeared intent on a peaceable course of existence. If they rest of us will let them take it.
“Something on your mind, my son?”
“I have a fair idea of what threat the humans meant,” he told her.
His mother raised an eyebrow. “I never said the intelligence data came from the Human Alliance.”
“My mistake.” She’s going to rip apart an entire district to prepare for a non-existent threat. This is wrong. But if the Council had been willing to push through such a large budget increase, the intelligence they had been presented must have been compelling. Biased as hell, I’ll bet, but compelling. And the Council would be more than willing to listen, given the trauma we suffered at the Dominion’s hands.
For a moment, he thought he would tell her everything. The strange story of his twin, all of the twins that had encountered each other. The meeting with the Varn Gene Mage and Administrator Gisko. The discovery that their ancient enslavers were either dead or dying, and the terrible fate that the innocents that had powered their great dominion had suffered. He needed to convince her that the threat the Council had been presented with was ephemeral, that the disruption of Hazel and her neighbors’ lives was unnecessary.
There was one problem though. His reserve of credibility was nigh empty with his family right now. His mother, forced to choose between an ally’s intelligence and her son’s addicted rambling, would likely choose the more reliable source. Or at least the source that looks more reliable. He just didn’t have any way to convince her.
“Well, I suppose there’s nothing left for me to do then,” he said. He cleared his throat uneasily. “What are going to do, if any of those folk dig their claws in, when the time comes? I mean, there may be at least a couple that either will actually pay the rent increase, or refuse to on the grounds of it being an unreasonable burden.” The latter wouldn’t be a successful legal argument on Vulpine Prime, but it was a powerful moral one that had worked in similar situations in their history of land ownership and rental.
“Then they will be moved,” his mother answered darkly. “There are no other options.”
“I see none either,” he agreed.
For now.
TBC
