“McQueen is what’s made this the best time,” Pierre replied sharply. “When she took out the Levelers for us, she eliminated by far the most radical element of the Mob.” And, he added mentally, you and I used the coup attempt as our pretext to remove some of the more troublesome “moderates” just in case, didn’t we, Oscar? “In the process, she taught the other potential radicals what happens to people who try to overthrow the Committee. And she made it quite clear in the public mind that the military supports us.” He smiled thinly. “Even if she’s actually trying to build her own power base, the Mob doesn’t know that, so it has to assume that if we tell her to go out and kill another million or so of them, she will. Not only that, but the moderate elements of Nouveau Paris’ population have had a lesson in what a real insurrection costs everyone in the vicinity, even the innocent bystanders. They don’t want to see another one, and the radicals sure as hell don’t want ’Admiral Cluster Bomb’ dropping by to pay them another visit. So if we’re going to introduce a policy which risks public repercussions, this is the best possible time for us to do it.”

“I understand the reasoning, and I don’t question the need to do something,” Saint-Just said. “The timing does worry me, but that would probably be true whenever we decided to implement reforms. I guess part of it is the notion of deflating the currency and cutting the BLS simultaneously.”

“Better to put all the medicine down them in one nasty-tasting dose than to string it out,” Pierre disagreed. “Inflation was bad enough under the old regime; it’s gotten even worse in the last few years, and it’s hurting what foreign trade we’ve been able to maintain in Silesia and with the Sollies. As I see it, we have two options: we can go whole hog and completely nationalize the economy on the old prespace totalitarian model, or we can begin gradually phasing a true free market back in, but this half-assed socialism-by-regulation is killing us.”

“No argument there,” Saint-Just agreed when he paused.

“Well, I think we’ve pretty much demonstrated that the bureaucrats are almost as bad at running the economy under us as they were under the Legislaturalists,” Pierre pointed out. “Given their dismal track record, I’m not particularly enamored of the idea of giving them still more control. Which only leaves the free market route, and for that to work we’ve got to have a stable currency—with at least a passing relationship to its real purchasing power—and a work force motivated to get out there and actually work. Most of the out-planets are in better shape for that than Haven is—they never had the percentage of Dolists we had here to begin with—and even the Nouveau Paris Mob has been reacquiring the habit of work since the war started. If we deflate the currency and reduce the BLS, we’ll drag more of them into the nonmilitary labor force, as well. And as I say, this is probably the best time to make the attempt. I know it’s risky. I simply don’t see how we can avoid this particular risk.”