David Weber - Empire from the Ashes

"No." Cohanna's spine relaxed. One thing about her, Colin reflected; she was a tartar when her toes got stepped on, but she recovered. "Although," she added pointedly, "I'm a bit surprised you don't object to the name."

"I wish I'd thought about it when Isis suggested it, but I didn't. And we're only using it internally and all the reports are classified, so I don't expect it to upset anyone."

"Hmph!" Cohanna sniffed, then smiled wryly. "Well, it's really more her project than mine, anyway, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. Anyway, we should be ready to move within the next year or so."

"That soon?" Colin was impressed, and he cocked his head to gaze at Brashieel. "How do you folks feel about that, Brashieel?"

"Curious," the alien said, "and possibly a bit frightened. After all, the concept of females is still quite strange, and the notion of producing nestlings with a nestmate is... peculiar. Most of us, however, are eager to see what they're like. For myself, I look forward to it with interest, though I'm highly satisfied with the way Brashan has turned out."

"Yeah, you might say he's a chip off the old block." Brashieel, whose race was given neither to clichés nor puns, looked blank, but Cohanna winced, and Colin grinned. "Okay, that's going to have to be it." His guests rose, and he wagged a finger at Cohanna. "But I meant what I said about experiments, 'Hanna! And I want to see them myself."

"Understood," the doctor said. She and Brashieel walked from the office, pausing to exchange greetings with Horus, Hector, and Jefferson on their way out, and Colin leaned back in his chair with a sigh. Lord! Combining Narhani literal-mindedness with someone like Cohanna was just begging for trouble. He'd have to keep a closer eye on her.

He opened his eyes to see his father-in-law studying the carpet. A quirked eyebrow invited explanation, and Horus chuckled.

"Just checking to see how deep the blood was."

"You don't know how close to right you are," Colin growled. "Jesus! After all the times I've lectured her on the subject—!" He stood to embrace Horus, then extended a hand to Jefferson. "Good to see you again, Mister Jefferson."

"Thank you, Your Majesty. You might see more of me if I didn't have to come by mat-trans." His shudder was only half-feigned, and Colin laughed.

"I know. The first time I used a transit shaft I almost wet my pants, and the mat-trans is worse."

"But efficient," the stocky, brown-haired Lieutenant Governor replied with a small smile. "Most efficient—damn it!"

"True, too true."

"Tell, me, Colin, just what has 'Hanna been up to now?" Horus asked.

"She—" Colin paused, then shrugged. "It stays in this office, but I guess I can tell you. You know she's bioengineering dogs for Narhan?" His guests nodded. "Well, she's gone a bit further than I intended. She's been working with a couple of Tinker Bell's litters to give them near-human intelligence."

"What?" Horus blinked at him. "I thought you told her not to—"

"I did. Unfortunately, she told me she wanted to 'enhance their ability to communicate with the Narhani' and I told her to go ahead." He grimaced. "Silly me."

"Oh, Maker," Horus groaned. "Why can't she have half as much common sense as she does brainpower?"

"Because she wouldn't be Cohanna." Colin grinned, then sobered. "The worst of it is, the first litter's fully adult, and she's been educating them through their implants," he went on more somberly. "My emotions are having a little trouble catching up with my intellect, but if she's really given them human or near-human intelligence, the whole equation shifts. I mean, if she's gone and turned them into people on me, it's not like putting a starving stray to sleep. 'Lab animals' or not, I'm not sure I even have a legal right, much less a moral one, to have them destroyed, whatever the possible consequences."

"Excuse me, Your Majesty," Jefferson suggested diffidently, "but I think, perhaps, you'd better consider doing just that." Colin raised an eyebrow, and Jefferson shrugged. "We're having enough anti-Narhani problems without adding this to the fire. The last demonstration was pretty ugly, and it wasn't in one of our more reactionary areas, either. It was in London."

"London?" Colin looked sharply at Horus, instantly diverted from Cohanna's experiment. "How bad was it?"

"Not good," Horus admitted. "More of the 'The Only Good Achuultani Is a Dead Achuultani' kind of thing. There were some tussles, but they started when the marchers ran into a counter-demonstration, so they may actually have been a sign of sanity. I hope so, anyway."

"Oh, Lord!" Colin sighed. "You know, it was an awful lot easier fighting the Achuultani. Well, simpler, anyway."

"True. Still, I think time is on our side." Colin made a face and Horus chuckled. "I know. I'm getting as tired of saying that as you must be of hearing it, but it's true. And time is one thing we've got plenty of."

"Maybe. But while we're on the subject, who organized this thing?"

"We're not entirely certain," Jefferson replied. "Gus is looking into it, but the official organizers were a bunch called HHI—'Humans for a Human Imperium.' On the surface, they're a batch of professional rowdies backed up by a crop of discontented intellectuals. The 'high-brows' seem to be academics who resent finding everything they spent their lives learning has become outdated overnight. It would seem—" he smiled thinly "—that some of our fearless intellectual pioneers are a bit less pioneering than they thought."

"Hard to blame them, really," Horus pointed out. "It's not so much that they're rejecting the truth as that they feel betrayed. As you say, Lawrence, they spent their lives establishing themselves as intellectual leaders only to find themselves brushed aside."

"I know." Colin frowned down at his hands for a moment, then looked back up. "Still, that sounds like a pretty strange marriage. Professional rowdies and professors? Wonder how they made connections?"

"Stranger things have happened, Your Majesty, but Gus and I are asking the same question, and he thinks the answer is the Church of the Armageddon."

"Oh, shit," Colin said disgustedly.

"Inelegant, but apt," Horus said. "In fact, that's what bothers me most. The church started out as a simple fusion of fundamentalists who saw the Achuultani as the true villains of the Armageddon, but this is a new departure, even for them. They've hated the Achuultani all along, but this is a shift to open racism—if I may use the term—of a particularly ugly stripe."

"Yeah. Anything more on their leadership, Mister Jefferson?"

"Not really, Your Majesty. They've never tried to hide their membership—why should they when they enjoy legal religious toleration?—but they're such an untidy agglomeration of splinter groups the hierarchical lines are pretty vague. We're still working on who actually calls the shots. Their spokesperson seems to be this Bishop Hilgemann, though I'm afraid I don't agree with Gus about her real authority. I think she's more a mouthpiece than a policy-maker, but we're both just guessing."

"You're going to discuss this with Ninhursag?"

"Of course, Your Majesty. I've brought Gus' report and I'm going up to Mother after this meeting. Admiral MacMahan and I will put our heads together, and perhaps Dahak can help us pull something out of the data."

"Good luck. 'Hursag's been trying to get a handle on them for over a year now. Oh, well." Colin shook his head and rose, holding out his hand to the Lieutenant Governor once more. "In that case, I won't keep you, Mister Jefferson. Horus and I have a birthday party to attend, and two pre-adolescent hellions who'll make us both miserable if we're late."

"Of course. Please give the Empress and your children my regards."