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chair, and Magnus bleeked a laugh as he tasted her emotions. “You actually agree with one of the space lords?”
    “I did say ‘in some ways,’” he pointed out with a smile. “And the truth is, Mom, none of them are malevolent, ill-intentioned manipulators. I’ll admit I don’t much like Truman, and I think Havinghurst is too much of a brown-noser where he’s concerned, but he’s absolutely sincere in what he believes the Navy’s requirements are. Low Delhi’s more concerned about keeping his skirts clean than I’d like—or than someone who’s attained his superiority needs to be, for that matter. I mean, my God, the man’s Third Space Lord! It’s not like his career’s going to turn into a dismal failure if he should slip up and do something innovative for a change. But despite that, I think his positions are sincere and I don’t doubt that he’d put patriotism above career if he were genuinely convinced the situation required it. The problem is that he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the situation, and nobody’s going to be able to change his mind about it, as far as I can see.
    “As for Countess Mailey, she’s doing an excellent job at BuMed. I don’t think anyone could complain about her. Earl Three Pines is too much in lockstep with Truman over at the BuTrain, but that’s inevitable. The First Space Lord has the overriding voice when it comes to formulating operational and strategic doctrine, and that’s the way it ought to be, however . . . inconvenient I personally may find it at the moment. And I actually like Sir William.”
    “Well, that’s nice to hear,” Samantha said dryly. “But what’s this business about agreeing with Lomax?”
    “Mom,” Roger’s voice turned suddenly very serious, “you know how much I’ve been thinking about this ever since the intelligence types started warning us about Haven. And the truth is that just like I said in that first letter to the Proceedings , we can’t go toe-to-toe with the kind of navy Nouveau Paris can build if it really puts its mind to it. We’re a hell of a lot richer on a per-capita basis than almost anyone else in the galaxy, but we just not big enough, and unless we want to start conquering people ourselves, there’s no way we’re going to get big enough in the time I’m afraid we’ve got.”
    His mouth twisted as if he’d bitten into something sour.
    “We’ve got what’s probably the biggest, most efficient single-system shipbuilding infrastructure in known space, but it’s overwhelmingly oriented around building civilian ships for private owners. Hephaestus and Vulcan can churn out freighters like nobody’s business, but we don’t have the scale of military building capacity Haven’s already built up, and all of your reports suggest they’re still increasing that capacity when we haven’t even started increasing ours yet. And even if that weren’t true, they’re getting bigger with every system they gobble up. Even with the BLS’ drain on their economy, they’ll probably be able to lay down at least twice as many ships as we’ll be able to, especially when we’re stuck with peacetime budgetary constraints and they’re already operating on a wartime footing.”
    Samantha’s expression had darkened with every word her son said. Not because she disagreed with him, but because she couldn’t disagree with him.
    “I absolutely agree with what you and Sir Abner are trying to do,” he continued. “We’ve got to build up our wall of battle, but even if Parliament was willing to give you the budgets you’re asking for, we still couldn’t match the Peoples’ Navy’s numbers. That means we’ve got to have qualitative superiority, and enough of it to offset their numerical superiority. I realize that’s why Sir Abner’s pushing for superdreadnoughts, although I don’t think he’s going to get them yet. Not with Truman still arguing about the need for increasing numbers of medium-weight