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Thirty-six

The Kalif had been right about the House of Nobles. Two weeks after the killing of Lord Nathiir, the delegates stood substantially where they'd stood before, on him and on invasion. Though his friends among them were mostly less wholehearted. One of them said that Coso Biilathkamoro, in taking Nathiir's life in front of them, had used up two of his own political seven lives. And in releasing the video record of it to the public, had used up three more of them.

It was Thoga who reported this privately to the Kalif. Thoga still was regarded by the nobles as unfriendly toward him, and simply masking his feelings since the Kalif's recent violence. Thus most of the noble delegates voiced their attitudes and complaints somewhat freely to him.

And significantly, the complaints weren't about his bloody hands, but about manipulating. The source of this attitude, Thoga told him, seemed to come from his release of the video record.

Meanwhile, unchanged was not enough. Straw polls showed him well short of the support needed to finance an invasion. In feet, Jilsomo's latest poll of the exarchs showed five, not four, prepared to vote against it, with two more uncertain. All in all, he seemed to have either twenty-two or twenty-three votes out of the total forty-five, but even twenty-three, a majority, was well short of enough.

Discussion in the Diet had been limited. There were explicit limits to discussion on the floor, except on bills formally proposed. While a proposal automatically required a vote on the bill within a week, and if defeated, it could not be proposed again that year.

With the solicitor imperial, the Kalif and Jilsomo had discussed legal interpretations that might permit constitutional sleight of hand. For routine finances—renewal of the previous year's financing—approval by fifty percent of those voting was enough. If an item was to be increased or its applications significantly altered, approval by sixty percent was needed; for new item or activity, seventy percent.

There were limited exceptions. The Kalif's Contingency Fund could be applied however he saw fit, and increased by up to ten percent if half the Diet approved, or fifteen percent if sixty percent approved.

Also, "in the case of armed revolution, or armed attack upon the empire, if the Diet is not in session and cannot be promptly convened, the Kalif may expend or commit such funds as necessary for the current defense until the Diet can in fact and safety be convened."

Jilsomo had seen no possible way of interpreting this to finance an invasion of the Confederation. And when the Kalif brought it up with the solicitor imperial, the man was vocally indignant at it.

Still the Kalif remained, if not truly confident, then optimistic, an optimism rooted in the idea that the poorer nobles—a class growing in numbers—and the gentry would push the idea through.

If it was promoted properly. Toward this end he wrote anonymous analyses of what might follow the conquest of Confederation worlds, proposals which his agents placed with newsfacs all over Varatos and podded to the rest of the empire.

From the faxes, they spread promptly to the broadcast media. Land fiefs, industrial fiefs, and mercantile fiefs on the conquered worlds should be granted to commissioned nobles in the invasion army who committed to stay there as reserve officers. Commissioned gentry who remained in service there till retirement should be titled, made nobles, and also granted fiefs according to rank attained, to the extent that fiefs were available.

Other articles were released describing the vast virgin territories on the Confederation trade planet Terfreya, from which the reader might assume such conditions were duplicated on other worlds. An assumption that might or might not prove true.

In addition, an undefined procedure should be approved whereby noncommissioned gentry, if they remained in the occupation army, might be promoted to brevet warrant officer their last two years, and on retirement titled, thus receiving both the privileges of nobility—basically, full citizenship—and a substantially better pension.

Another anonymous article discussed the expansion of both army and space forces, should funding be approved. Widespread promotions would be necessary to provide enough officers of higher ranks. The article also included tables showing what this would mean in pay, privileges, and pensions throughout the ranks.

Other articles had been released by the army and the Ministry of War. One described new training programs which were beginning to prepare commissioned and noncommissioned officers for promotions. Noncoms who completed their program successfully would qualify for bonuses; sergeants first class who completed theirs would qualify for commissions as sublieutenancies became available. Another article told of new training camps being platted, and plans drafted, for quick construction should funds become available, and the number of construction jobs this would create.

Still another described plans for the swift manufacture, in quantity, of equipment and weapons for all branches, given the funding. These plans would require three work shifts—round the clock operations—at all naval shipyards, and at certain other shipyards where troop and supply ships would be built; at armament plants of every sort; and at numerous widely located industries where other military needs would be met. One result was that unemployment would be greatly reduced or even disappear.

These articles had stimulated—some said instigated—meetings and resolutions by gentry workers' societies, in support of the invasion. For centuries there'd been gradual economic deterioration of the gentry as a class. To a smaller but troublesome degree this was also true for a majority of the lesser nobles, and the deterioration had accelerated over the last two decades. Now these classes saw a potential for a major reversal of the trend.

The Land Rights Party denounced the gentry resolutions as insolent, and the articles even more angrily as irresponsible, destructive of the public order, blaming them correctly on the Kalif himself, though without proof. In districts where the party was strong, it held open meetings and issued resolutions of its own.

These activities of the LRP in turn were criticized in the media, which pointed out that the entrenchment of privileges by a narrow segment of society could not improve conditions for the empire as a whole, but tended to worsen them.

All in all, except for brief "down" moments, it seemed to the Kalif that matters looked distinctly promising. The principal uncertainty was how long it would be before supportive social and economic forces could take effective shape and force the Diet to vote approval. The House would keep its present membership for this year and the next, and it seemed to him important—almost vital—that he get approval without waiting for a new set of delegates. Because surely the Confederation would not be sitting on its hands arguing.

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Framed