Tour D’Argent Restaurant
Seine Embankment
Phénix Paris
Old Terra
Sol System
“Did you watch the speech?”
“Yes. I had to make myself do it, but I did,” Jessica Stein said across the glass a server had just refilled with wine. The head of the Renaissance Association took time to inhale the wine’s fragrance. It was a Bordeaux whose cost didn’t bear thinking upon. Fortunately, she didn’t have to think about it, since it was being provided by her host, and he didn’t have to think about it, either. Not really. Edward Tecuatl had been born into a wealthy Mannerheim family, not to mention the fact that he was the CEO of one of Mannerheim’s major banks.
He was also a longtime supporter of the Renaissance Association, going back to when Jessica’s father Hieronymus had founded it. After Hieronymus’s assassination, Tecuatl had strongly supported Jessica’s bid to replace her father as the head of the organization. Given that he was one of the League’s two or three most generous donors, his opinion had carried a lot of weight. Enough that it might very well have been what ultimately tipped the balance in her favor.
Stein sipped the Bordeaux and smiled in pleasure, but the smile became a sneer as she set the glass on their table.
“The best I can say about Catherine Montaigne is that she’s a bloody nuisance. She’s been a thorn in our side for decades. I don’t think anyone else can possibly have impeded the fight against genetic slavery more than she has, with her radical rhetoric—a lot of good that ever did!—and her association with the Audubon Ballroom. She made it easy for the Mesans to smear all their opponents as terrorist sympathizers. Which—” the sneer became a scowl and her voice rose “—we most certainly were not.”
“No,” Tecuatl agreed. “Although Hieronymus was careful never to attack the Ballroom publicly. Not by name anyway.”
Stein sniffed.
“My father could be softheaded sometimes. I’ve never hesitated to name names—including that of Jeremy X.” She sat up a little, her shoulders stiff. “And damn the risk I took of being murdered by him myself.”
“Let’s be honest, Jessica,” Tecuatl said in the same mild tone. “That wasn’t much of a risk. Say whatever else you want about him, Jeremy X never struck at anyone just for being one of his many critics. You had to actually do something in support of genetic slavery, which was an accusation no one ever brought against the Renaissance Association or any of its members. Certainly not any of its leaders.”
Stein sniffed again and waved one hand dismissively.
“Enough on that subject. Now that Montaigne’s in the Sol System—and apparently plans to stay for a while—we need to step up our activities around the slavery issue at the Constitutional Convention, or the damned Anti-Slavery League will get all the publicity. Can we count on your support?”
“Of course.” Tecuatl sipped from his own glass. “I can’t say I feel as strongly about Montaigne as you do, but Mannerheim has always preferred your approach to that of the ASL.”
✧ ✧ ✧
The rest of the dinner consisted mostly of the chit-chat of two people who’d been well acquainted, if not what anyone could call real friends, for many years. Where’s so-and-so these days and whatever came of that project, anyway. It was pleasant for both of them, and the meal, of course, was superb—as one would only expect from a restaurant which claimed to trace its origins back to Ante Diaspora Paris.
That claim was fanciful, since the Tour D’Argent had gone out of business any number of times—once for almost four centuries—and had had more owners than anyone could remember. For that matter, the entire city of Paris had been obliterated in the Final War. The city of Phénix Paris had been rebuilt—magnificently—on the same site, rising from the ashes like the very phoenix with which it had become forever associated, but none of its original structures, including anything named Tour D’Argent, had survived the pair of megaton-range blasts which had levelled it. So the name was really just a name, now—one that kept getting resurrected because of its hallowed antiquity. But at least in its current reincarnation, the Tour D’Argent was back in the middle of a city on the River Seine. There’d been a stretch almost a thousand years back, shortly after the Final War and before Phénix Paris, when the restaurant that claimed the name had been located in Le Mans, of all places.
They went their separate ways, once dinner was done. Tecuatl had a permanently reserved suite in a nearby hotel—one equipped with very expensive and very secure communications equipment. Equipment he put to prompt use once he reached his suite.
“Yes?” a voice said.
“She’s solid,” he said, not bothering to identify himself. “No surprise there. But it never hurts to make sure.” He laughed softly. “What was that term some ancient politician used? ‘Useful idiot,’ if I remember right.”