Chương 24

Dinner began at eight. At the oval table, Louis found himself between Gladice and Angelique. The staff brought out the first courses: oysters, smoked duck breast, and sweet peppers stuffed with crabmeat. For the first half hour, Gladice and Angelique let him eat. Gladice played the mayor's daughter well. She asked Maria about the museum showing, complimented Judith's dress, and kept Louis out of it until he had finished half his duck. Then she said, without looking away from Maria, "Pepper."

Louis passed the nearest pepper mill.

"Thank you," she said. Then, after a beat, "No. The black." Louis exchanged it. Across the table, Maria shook her head. Angelique waited until Louis had set the pepper down before saying, "Bread." Louis passed her the basket.

"Not the basket," she said.

"One piece." Gladice's shoulders shook once. Louis placed a piece on Angelique's plate. Angelique buttered it and did not look at him. By the time the main course arrived, the table had relaxed. Staff kept the courses moving, and the talk grew less formal. Lamb chops, scallops, and summer vegetables came out. After that came stronger drink and lower voices. Louis had just started eating again when Gladice let her evening wrap slip halfway down one arm. She clinked the stem of her glass once. He turned.

"My shawl." Louis rose and stepped behind her chair. He lifted the wrap back over her shoulder. She made him use both hands. When he pulled the fabric higher over her bare shoulder, she leaned back.

"Thank you," she said, loud enough for Nova and Jessamine. Then, without turning her head, she said, "Higher next time." He sat. Beside him, Angelique broke a piece of bread and kept her gaze on her plate. David was the one who brought up New Orleans.

"New Orleans is asked to perform three jobs at once. We're expected to remain a living city, a functioning port, and a forward security screen. Any two of those can coexist comfortably. All three together cost more than most people enjoy remembering." Harvey leaned back slightly.

"Nobody in Austin forgets what New Orleans is carrying." David glanced at him.

"No, sir. But capitals are very good at remembering in principle." Judith smiled into her glass. Philip stepped in before the edge sharpened.

"David means New Orleans is thanked often and funded late. The city is expected to hold the port, keep people working, and stop trouble before it reaches the rest of the Collective. That is not a small bill."

"That's a courteous way to put it," David said. Constantine took a slow sip of bourbon before answering.

"Then let's say it plainly," he said.

"New Orleans can be a city and a front line, but that costs money." David nodded.

"Exactly." Harvey rested one forearm on the table.

"We already have enough troubles elsewhere. The army gets funded first." David pushed his glasses higher on his nose.

"I understand that. But if the port slows down, the army pays for it anyway. Fuel waits longer. Repairs cost more. Food moves slower. Troops sit where they are needed less because the roads, docks, and warehouses are doing work they were never built to do." Maria said, "And after enough underfunding, it becomes much harder to put in a photograph." Several people at the table laughed. Gladice lifted her left wrist and turned it once.

"It's too warm in here," she said. The table kept talking. Then she looked at Louis. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Feel." Louis set down his fork and took her hand. Her fingers were cool from the wineglass. Above the wrist, her skin was warmer. She kept listening to the conversation while Louis held her hand.

"Higher," she said. Louis slid his fingers up to the inside of her wrist. Her pulse moved under his thumb. She held him there. Philip rested both hands on the table and laced his fingers together.

"Martial law is the easy answer," he said.

"Everyone sees the appeal. But New Orleans has a larger problem. The city has to keep moving to stay alive. If you lock it down too hard, you may protect the port, but you start killing the city around it."

"Now we're speaking honestly," David said. Harvey cut a piece of lamb.

"Good. Then give me the list. What actually helps?"

"Not one answer," David said.

"Layered ones. Port analytics. Container irregularity mapping. Better labor intelligence that doesn't insult labor by treating every dockworker as a suspect. Hardened comms during weather events. More redundancy in the levee-control systems than Austin keeps trying to buy on discount schedules." He looked at Constantine then.

"And if the Dominion wants to be useful, it can stop asking where to make the grand gesture and start asking where to make our ugly systems fail less often." Louis heard the word useful and felt it like a kick under the ribs. Constantine set his glass down.

"Those systems help after trouble reaches the port," he said.

"You also need to stop it before it gets there." Everyone looked at him. Constantine continued.

"Dominion is willing to invest in New Orleans's internal security system. We have experience with dissidents. You change the laws. Give the police and intelligence services more room to act. Our system marks the high-risk individuals before they move. Then you arrest every last one of them." Harvey shook his head.

"Hell. I can barely get a road bill through three state parliaments. You think they'll vote to let us arrest people because your machine says they might become trouble?" Constantine looked at him.

"Then declare a state of emergency. Use your executive powers. Dixie is at your border, and they are sending suicide teams into your cities. If that does not justify acting before your parliaments finish arguing, what does?" Harvey stared at him.

"You think I haven't thought about emergency powers? Hell, Connie, I think about them every time another Dixie bastard blows himself up in our airports." He leaned back.

"But that's not the whole problem. The public wants to know if Dixie can pull off another big hit. That's what scares them. What scares me is simpler." He looked at David.

"Where do they only need to get lucky once?" Nova Hawks said, "That's not a simpler question."

"No," Harvey said.

"It's the only useful one." Philip answered before David could.

"In public, they are a terror state," he said.

"That part is simple enough. In private, we should be more precise. A crowd at the border is one problem. A bomb in the port is another. A local sympathizer who opens the right door at the right hour is a third. You do not stop all three with the same net." David nodded.

"I'm not worried about another D. C. or Houston," he said.

"Not here. I'm worried about something smaller. One charge in the right ship channel. One flood-control failure that pulls our crews out of position. One hit on the people sent to fix it. They do not need total war. They only need to break the city in pieces and make everyone watch us fail to keep it running." Louis saw Harvey's attention sharpen at the word. So did Constantine's.

"Of course it would," his father said.

"A serious enemy does not only want bodies. Bodies are easy. What he wants is footage. People watching the police arrive too late, the crews die, the government explains why it could not stop any of it. That is how you make a state look weak." As Constantine spoke, Gladice let her napkin slide from her lap. It fell between her chair and Louis's. She made no move to retrieve it. She kept listening to the conversation. Louis looked down. The napkin lay under the edge of the tablecloth.

He bent down, one knee touching the carpet. The tablecloth brushed his shoulder. Under the table were shoes, chair legs, and Gladice's legs crossed at the ankles. As he grabbed the napkin, she parted her knees just enough for him to see her pink panties beneath the black silk.

"Thank you," she said pleasantly. Angelique lifted her water, drank once, and set the glass down hard enough for Louis to hear it. Gladice touched the stem of her wineglass and spoke without looking at anyone.

"We do very well in this country at loving difficult places as long as someone else has to live in them." She glanced at Louis, then back at the others.

"It makes it easier to build statues later." Harvey said, "No one in this room thinks that way, Sergeant." Gladice looked at him. For once, there was no amusement in her face.

"No, sir. But I'm not the one who has to convince voters that New Orleans deserves the same priority as Dallas or Jacksonville." David turned his head toward her. Constantine raised his glass.

"Your daughter does not fear directness," he said to David. David exhaled once through his nose.

"Yes, she is." He turned to Gladice.

"That said, knowing the problem and announcing it in front of everyone are not the same thing. Timing matters. So does occasion."

"Like at dinner?" she asked.

"Like when you're at a table with our Dominion friends." Gladice set one hand on Louis's thigh beneath the table and left it there.

"I think they understand me fine." Louis looked down at it and did not move. By the time the second bottle of wine had been opened, the conversation had moved to Europe. Maria took a sip and set down her glass.

"The old world has become very good at expressing fatigue in the language of moral superiority. Brussels will say it is tired of lack of transparency or democracy. What it means, more often than not, is that it is tired of realities it did not authorize." Nova looked toward her with interest.

"That includes us?"

"It includes anyone who has built power without first asking permission to call it legitimate." Maria swirled her glass.

"The difference is that the Collective is easier for Europe to classify. You are a hard republic. Armed, disciplined, federal, defensive. Serious. Not charming, perhaps, but serious." She glanced at Constantine.

"The Dominion irritates them more." Constantine smiled.

"Because we make our authority pleasant and they don't know how to argue with pleasure." Several people around the table laughed. It eased the room for a moment. Louis heard the word pleasure and realized that every power in the room had its own way of making obedience feel voluntary.