David Weber - The Shadow of Saganami

The admittance chime sounded, and he turned back towards his office door, folding his hands behind him. The door opened a moment later, and his secretary stepped through it.

"Mr. President," the well-groomed young man said, "Ms. Anisimovna is here."

The secretary stepped aside with a respectful bow, and perhaps the most beautiful woman Tyler had ever seen moved past him in a rustle of whispering silk. Tyler didn't recognize the style of Aldona Anisimovna's floor-length gown, but he approved of the way its filmy folds draped her spectacular figure. And of its deeply plunging neckline and the hip-high vent on its left side that displayed the perfection of her equally spectacular legs. As he was undoubtedly supposed to. No doubt Anisimovna had a full file on his own preferences and hobbies.

She was accompanied by three other people, all of whom Tyler recognized, although he'd actually met only one of them before. He knew the others' faces from the pre-meeting briefing conducted by Alfonso Higgins, his Chief of Intelligence, however, and he came forward, extending his hands to Anisimovna.

"Ms. Anisimovna!" he said with a broad smile. She held out her own right hand, and he shook it in both of his, still smiling. "This is a pleasure. A genuine pleasure," he told her.

"Why, thank you, Mr. President," she replied with a smile of her own which showed teeth as perfect as all the rest of her. Reasonably enough; her family had been availing itself of the advanced genetic manipulation techniques of Manpower for three or four generations now. It would have been shocking if her teeth hadn't been perfect.

"And, as always, it's a pleasure to see you, too, Junyan," Tyler continued, turning to Vice-Commissioner Hongbo.

"Mr. President," Hongbo Junyan murmured, bending his head in a polite bow as he shook the President's hand in turn. Tyler gripped it for another second, then turned to Anisimovna's other two companions with politely raised eyebrows, as if he had no idea who they might be.

"Mr. President," the Manpower board member said, "allow me to present Isabel Bardasano, of the Jessyk Combine, and Mr. Izrok Levakonic, of Technodyne Industries."

"Ms. Bardasano. Mr. Levakonic." Tyler shook two more hands, and his mind was busy.

Despite the amount of business Monica and Monican -interests-including quite a few of the Tyler family's enterprises-did with Mesa, he personally knew very few Mesans. Nor was he particularly familiar with the internal dynamics of Mesan society. But Alfonso Higgins was another matter. According to him, Bardasano's spectacular tattoos, and the dramatically cut garments which displayed a degree of body piercing that made Tyler want to wince, marked her as a member of one of the Mesan "young lodges." There were at least a dozen "lodges," all in bitter competition with one another for dominance, and all at odds with the older Mesan tradition of inconspicuousness. Secure in the wealth and power of their corporate hierarchy, they deliberately flaunted who and what they were, rather than attempting to blend into the "respectable" Solly business community. Given the track record of the Audubon Ballroom, Tyler doubted that he would have been quite so eager to mark himself out as a target. Perhaps Bardasano simply had an unreasonable degree of faith in her personal security arrangements.

And perhaps, if she did, she had justification. One thing Higgins' did know about Bardasano was that, despite her relatively junior status as a mere cadet member of the Jessyk board, she was considered a dangerous, dangerous woman. She'd come up through the clandestine side of Jessyk's operations-the ones no one was supposed to know about. According to the rumors Higgins had picked up, she favored a hands-on style, very different from the remote spymaster approach, with multiple layers of cutouts, others in her line of work preferred. And according to those same rumors, people who blew operations for which Bardasano was responsible tended to come to abrupt and nasty ends.

As for Levakonic, even Higgins' people knew very little about him. But they knew a great deal about Technodyne Industries of Yildun, and it was unlikely Technodyne would have sent a low-level flunky this far from home, and in the company of someone like Anisimovna.

And, the president told himself, Anisimovna is the spokeswoman, not Hongbo. That's interesting, too.

"Please, be seated," he invited, waving at the comfortable powered chairs scattered about his spacious office. They accepted the invitation, settling down in the main conversational nook, and well-trained servants-scandalously expensive luxuries in the Old League, but easily come by here in the Verge-padded in with trays of refreshments.

Tyler accepted his own wineglass and leaned back in the office's largest and most impressive chair, allowing himself a moment to savor the extraordinarily expensive hand-painted oils on its walls, the handwoven carpet, and the original DeKuleyere sculpture beside his desk. The constantly, subtly shifting sonics radiating from the light sculpture were almost imperceptible, yet he felt them caressing him like a lover.

He knew nothing he could possibly do would make him anything except a Verge neobarb in his guests' eyes, however courteously they might conceal that. But his father had had him educated on Old Earth itself. The experience hadn't done anything to dull his contempt for the Old League's gooey, saccharin attachment to its cult of the individual, but it had at least left him with an educated palate and an appreciation for the finer things in life.

He waited until all his guests had been served and the servants had withdrawn. Then, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and cupping his wineglass in both hands, he looked at Anisimovna and cocked one eyebrow.

"I was intrigued when your local representative screened my appointments secretary, Ms. Anisimovna. It isn't really customary for me to meet with people without at least some idea of why it is they want to see me. But in light of the business relationships between your corporation and so many of Monica's prominent citizens, I was certain whatever you wished to see me about would scarcely be a waste of my time. And now I see you accompanied by my good friend Vice-Commissioner Hongbo, and Mr. Levakonic. I must admit, it piques my curiosity."

"I rather hoped it would, Mr. President," she replied with a winsomely charming smile. He chuckled appreciatively, and she shrugged. "Actually, we're here because my colleagues and I see a situation in which all of us, including you and your republic, face a difficult problem. One which it may be possible not only to solve, but to transform into an extremely profitable opportunity , instead."

"Indeed?"

"Oh, yes. Indeed," she said. She leaned back, crossing her legs, and Tyler enjoyed the view as the clinging fabric molded itself to her trim, half-exposed thighs. It turned briefly invisible in intriguingly fleeting patches as it drew taut, too, he noted.

"The difficult problem to which I refer, Mr. President," she continued, "is the sudden, unwarranted and unwelcome intrusion of the Star Kingdom of Manticore into the Talbott Cluster."

Tyler's appreciation of the scenery faded abruptly, and his eyes narrowed. "Unwelcome" was an extremely inadequate way to describe Manticore's sudden arrival on his doorstep. The Cluster had never been particularly important to Monica (or anywhere else) before the Manties' discovery of their damned terminus. Even the label "Talbott Cluster" was thoroughly inaccurate; the body of stars it defined was neither a cluster nor centered on the Talbott System. It was only a convenient label Solarian astrographers had hung on it because the wretchedly poor Talbott System had been the site of Frontier Security's first observation post in the area. OFS had abandoned Talbott long since in favor of the much more valuable Meyers System once Meyers became an official League protectorate, but the name had stuck.