While Carmen San Filieu was engaged in the society of New Catalonia, Admiral Carmen San Filieu was about to successfully invade Triton and complete her conquest of the Neptune system. The two San Filieus were, of course, one person—personas of one LAP.
The commander of the Met DIED forces surveyed the Blue Eye of Neptune and wondered what the Mill looked like from this distance. She thought she could just make it out in the swirl, but that was unlikely. It was the Mill she meant to have, soon, and to present it, as a bauble, to Director Amés. How curious that the role she played here was, in a way, the reverse of her life in New Catalonia. In the Department of Immunity Enforcement Division Space Marine Task Force, she was the admiral-suitor, vying among the other brass for Amés’s favor and, hence, more power and autonomy. It was a mark of Amés’s regard for her abilities that she had been assigned to head the invasion force. She did not regard her other relation with Amés as being a determining factor. She had worked for this command, and, being a natural aristocrat, was best suited for it.
San Filieu might, she admitted, rather have been given Jupiter, but Triton was still an honor not to be shunned and would put her in good standing in the line of distinguished San Filieus stretching back to pre-Met days.
On the other hand, it was good to have part of oneself away from New Catalonia, to gain perspective on the life of the bolsa, even as one participated in it. San Filieu could both play the game she enjoyed, and, simultaneously, have other pursuits. That was the advantage of being a LAP, and the advantage, quite frankly, that made LAPs better than other people were. And a New Catalonia LAP . . . well, perhaps the Mercurians could compete. They had produced Amés, after all. It was pleasant to be superior, and to have everyone else know it and envy you for it. As far as San Filieu was concerned, that was what this action against the outer system was all about—to bring about a change to a more appropriate attitude. A bit of shock therapy for the servants.
Yet proper consideration had to be given as to the form such therapy should take, particularly when the servants were being so recalcitrant and stubborn as were the citizens of the Neptune system of moons. She had managed to take four of the eight moons, including Nereid, with its port and warehouses. But Triton had proved more difficult than anticipated. She had even lost a ship.
The fremden had repulsed the first wave of the invasion, taking out a ship and nearly twenty thousand Met soldiers, packed tightly and suspended for the trip, their last memories being entering the brightly lit hold of the Dabna, the destroyed ship, back on the Diaphany at Coalcrutter Port. San Filieu mourned the lost matériel as much as she did the soldiers. Soldiers could be replaced fairly quickly, but some of the invasion machinery was complicated to reproduce—particularly the free convert containment matrixes that were to be used to control the plague of algorithms that infected the moon. This profusion was extraordinarily distasteful to San Filieu, and would have been unthinkable in New Catalonia, where free converts were very carefully confined to specific hardware or specific tasks, and not allowed to wander about freely in the grist. This was a privilege reserved for LAPs alone, and properly so.
But the long night of the bourgeoisie was finally ending, and the sun of monarchy was finally rising once more. The reign of commerce and of the middle class had been, perhaps, necessary, as power moved from agriculture to the fruitful fields of information and finance. But now these fields had been firmly staked out and measured. The cream had risen to the top. It was a natural step to reinstitute the idea of nobility—since there were, in fact, some people who were better than others.
San Filieu turned her gaze from Neptune to the moon Triton. It was hanging in the sky like a yellowish egg. Hobbes was right, she thought. Your life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. I have come to offer you so much more, and in your insolence, you shun me, and through me, your true and rightful king. It will not be borne.
Her porter, Trinitat, brought in her meal, and with it a bottle of Sangre de Torro, her favorite red wine. This was a cabernet, going on eight years now, from the excellent ’06 harvest. The first course of the meal was calçots, a kind of onion, roasted black on the outside. San Filieu dampened her hands in a finger bowl, then took one of the calçots and, grasping it by the greenery, pulled the cooked interior from the burnt exterior. The interior onion bulb came away in a sticky fluid, like a huge pearl. She dipped it in an almond sauce, tilted her head back, and sucked in the meaty white vegetable.
It was so like the taste of Busquets’s young effusions, San Filieu thought. Salty sweet. She sighed.