A Battle Unseen

[Doc]

Cliff House, Southwest Kaliburg
1:32pm

"Her Imperial Majesty will see you now, Sir," said Lady Rene Houston to the Chancellor of the Empire. "You may go right in." The Chancellor waited until he heard a buzz at the door before entering. Once inside, he approached the Empress, who was sitting on he small couch. He stopped about 15 feet from her and lowered his head in respect for her position. She nodded acceptance of the salute, and invited him to sit with her in the small chair next to the table. He did as she bade him.

"Mr. Hanson, would you like some tea," she asked. He knew her tea tended to make him drowsy, but he was nearing the end of the work day, so he smiled and accepted her offer graciously. He also knew this signified the beginning of an informal audience with the Empress. He knew he was being called in to be questioned by Her Imperial Majesty, but he valued the opportunities he had to speak with her. She was elegant but forthright and did not like to waste time on small talk or unimportant matters.

She rose very gently, and moved to her tea service, prepared the hot water, poured it into her ceramic carafe, and brought the entire set to the table. There she carefully measured out loose tea into each cup, and with a much smaller, pure silver spoon, measured about an 1th of a teaspoon of dark brown powder, which the Chancellor knew to be opium, into each cup. She then inserted a small ceramic strainer into the bottom of the cup and poured the boiling water over the top of it. She gently stirred the water in both cups, and then placed the Chancellors' tea cup onto a saucer and placed it in front of him, repeating the process with her own cup. The strainer was made of mesh and was designed to separate the leaves from the tea, while allowing them to continue to steep, changing the flavor of the tea each time it was tasted.

"Thank you Your Imperial Majesty."

"You are quite welcomed, Mr. Hanson." She said as she sipped her first draught. The Chancellor sipped his tea as well, and almost immediately he felt the effects of the opium on his system. The Empress' opium was made of dried and processed poppy latex that has had most of the morphine removed, so the effects are significantly milder than full strength opium, but they were still noticeable, and the sense of ease and calm washed over the Chancellor. He had begun enjoying this feeling that he associated with taking weekly tea with the Empress, but knew that he should begin refusing tea more often than not: His predecessor, Lady Donahue had cautioned to refuse tea all together.

As the first wave went past, the Empress spoke. "Mr. Hanson, We understand that you have completed your Party's nominations and are preparing for the elections. And we are interested in your predictions."

The Chancellor nodded and answered, "Yes, Your Majesty. The Party has selected its candidates who will stand for election in January. Our internal polling suggests that the Moderates will make significant gains though we aren't sure if it will allow us to overcome the Nationalists in terms of gaining the upper hand."

"Will this make your faction’s agenda difficult to move through?" she asked.

"I am afraid so, Your Imperial Majesty. As you do not permit active advertising on political races, it may be a little difficult to overcome their incumbent advantage."

"We understand that the Institutional Party would like to change the policy on electioneering to permit candidates to spend money on their campaigns."

"Yes, Your Majesty, we did want that. What are the chances that we would be able to move that measure to the floor in the National Assembly?"

The Chancellor took another long sip, smiled and said, "There is no chance, Sir. We have no intention of altering our thinking on elections. You have your factions, we would like to see if they can win with ideas alone."

The Chancellor smiled politely. "Madame, you know politics very well, but surely you do not expect that a candidate can win simply with good ideas if he lacks the money to get those ideas out to the public."

The Empress nodded. "What you may consider to be a disadvantage, we view as an equal opportunity—everyone has the same disadvantage. The last thing we would want is someone with significant means utilizing those means to obtain a political office. Surely you do not advocate the purchasing of political offices. As you well know, this is how democracies are captured. We do not wish our National Assembly to be similarly captured."

The Chancellor noted to himself a measure of frustration--He did not believe democracies behaved this way. But there was no point in arguing about it with the Empress. Perhaps he could try a different tack. "Your Majesty, what if it was considered as voter education: the population needs to know what politicians believe before they cast their vote for the candidate. Resources, even if its air time on tv would allow candidates to present themselves to the voters, give them their credentials and let the voters make an informed decision."

"But Lord Hanson, your candidates may do that already. We still do have public funding for elections, is tis correct?"

"Yes Madame," he said, though he knew the sum of money was paltry compared to what was usually brought to bear in democracies.

"Money is corrosive in politics, Mr. Hanson," the Empress continued. "Not only does it allow politicians to more easily convince the people of untruth, but it also makes the office something to be used to provide a return on investment. If a person puts so much in, they will want the equivalent out of the office. Public service is just that: Service. This is a responsibility, not an opportunity. We are not a liberal nation, with all sorts of avenues with which to enrich one's self at the expense of the entire society. The resources that are available are adequate for our candidates to stand for election. That is adequate. But at the end of the day what matters is that you have 79 votes in the National Assembly: If your arguments are persuasive, it really doesn't matter which faction controls the plurality. What matters is that you will be effectively doing your job and serving the people of our Nation."

"Aye Madame," said the Chancellor, resigning to her now more definite statement.

"And what do you hear of Turkarali?" she said switching subjects.

"Your Majesty, it would appear that they are beginning to adopt the trappings of a leftist revolutionary government."

The Empress sat silently for a moment.

"Madame?" he asked.

"We were thinking," said the Empress after a moment. "Our father and mother were quite opposed to communism especially. Our previous Chancellor would go out and make statements opposing this thing or that thing to see what the reaction would be. If she went too far, which she did quite frequently, because Lady Donahue was an excellent politician, but she had a big mouth and didn't know quite when to stop talking, she would end up making my father and mother look bad internationally. We cannot fault her. She was, and now you are in a far better spot to more freely make statements than we are."

"Would you like me to craft a moderate statement on Tukarali?" he asked.

The Empress considered the offer. "What would it say?"

"Something to the effect of, we condemn any efforts to establish a revolutionary communist outpost here in Seleya. Something like this."

"But..." she paused. "Do we?"

The Chancellor was not sure he heard the Empress correctly, or completely. "Madame?"

"Do we oppose Communism?"

"I..." he stammered. "I... I assume so, Madame."

"We do not necessarily think so," said the Empress.

The Chancellor was silent for a moment. "Madame, this will likely be a military backed communist, or far leftist government. This sets a very dangerous precedent here in Seleya. I think we should explicitly oppose the coup there by these communists."

"We just read something about their goals being to empower workers, and to obtain aid from places like Xsampa to begin working on improving their agriculture. This hardly seems like a recipe for external destabilization, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes, but Madame, Xsampa is communist," said the Chancellor. "Of course they will help..."

"Yes and our ancestor and name sake, Carolina I helped communist Xsampa when they were bombed. Helping people need surely transcends ideology, don't you agree?"

The Chancellor studied her: he knew the Empress, even in his very short period of time, to be very inquisitive, and despite her looks, to be an almost cloistered bookworm. But was she making an argument for communism? This Empress? An Ananto? "Madame, you aren't... a communist, are you?"

The Empress smiled. "Perhaps we are, Mr. Chancellor. If so what would you do about it?"

"Madame, I would have to remind you of your own law, against Communism."

"Which law is that, Comrade Chancellor?"

The word comrade had been spoken by the Empress. That was completely unexpected. "Your Majesty, the single party act forbids radical ideology like communism and fascism.

The Empress finished the tea in her cup with a satisfied smile. "Relax, Friend," she meant in the Brethrenist sense, "a communist Empress is even unfathomable for us. We would like you to continue to observe Tukarali. It is possible that their little Revolution there may yield some benefits for the people of that nation for once. And we wish for them to consider our Nation friendly toward them."

"For what purpose, Your Highness? They are communists. We should strongly condemn their overthrow of the legitimate government in Tukarali."

"We will hold off on that, Mr. Chancellor." said the Empress definitely. "It is our desire to learn more about them, if not directly than through their paper, before we set a final policy toward them. We have already been internationally criticized for not taking more measured approaches to foreign relations. If Tukarali requires no immediate reaction from us, we will be content to completely hold off of making any statement whatsoever, to give them a chance to visit us."

The Chancellor came into this meeting ready to push out a draft of his speech against Communism in Seleya. But the Empress had made the decision for him. And the Chancellor's job was to turn her decisions into policy, so this would be what he worked on.

Throughout the remainder of the conference, the Chancellor updated the Empress on Kalistan's expected agriculture yield (Lower than expected, but will still enough to keep Kalistani refrigerators, pantries and plates fed--there just would not be a lot left for exportation this year. The Chancellor also noted that manufacturing was flat if you account for the slow but steady growth in the Kalistani population. Most sectors were like this: Modest output stable pries. "Over all we aren't doing bad," said the Chancellor.

"We thank you for coming to visit with us today," said the Empress. "And how is Mrs. Hanson doing?"

"She is doing well, we are expecting our second child next May"

"We are very happy for you and your family, Chancellor."

"Thank you, Your Imperial Majesty," he said back to her. "I will pass your well wishes to my wife. Is there anything else, Your Imperial Majesty?"

"Thank you, this will be all for today. You may rise." The Chancellor took that as his cue. He stood, and bowed his head, and then backed out of the room.

"Communist Empress," he thought to himself with a smile. "THAT would be funny." As he closed the door and turned about smartly, he said good by to Lady Houston, and she smiled and nodded back to him.