“I should think not. It damned well better not, anyway!” Pritchart glowered at the framed copy of the Constitution hanging on the wall opposite her desk.

Arnold Giancola’s signature was on it, one of the block of convention delegates who’d solemnly pledged to recreate the ancient glories of the Republic of Haven. Eloise Pritchart’s signature was on it, as well, although Thomas Theisman’s wasn’t… which she considered one of the worst miscarriages of historical justice on record.

But the fact that they’d both been at the Constitutional Convention was one of the very few things she and Giancola had in common. Which, unfortunately, hadn’t been quite enough, in light of the Republic’s current political realities, to keep him out of her cabinet.

Arnold Giancola had been a low mid-level Treasury bureaucrat under Hereditary President Harris. Like hundreds of thousands of other bureaucrats, he’d continued in his precoup position—in his case, administering disbursement of the Basic Living Stipend right here in Nouveau Paris—under the Committee. None of them had been given much choice about that, aside from the very senior Legislaturalist administrators, who’d all been purged by the new management, because someone had to continue to run the day-to-day machinery of the state, and Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just had innumerable ways to make sure they did. But to be completely fair (which Pritchart found difficult in her Secretary of State’s case), Giancola had done his job better than most, and with what certainly appeared to have been a genuine concern for the Dolists under his jurisdiction.

His competence had drawn favorable attention from his new superiors, and after four or five T-years, he’d been transferred to the Department of State, which was always in search of capable administrators. He’d done equally well there, rising steadily in seniority, only to be shifted back to Treasury when Rob Pierre nominated Avram Turner to drive through his enormous economic reform package. Giancola’s new position had brought him back to his old Nouveau Paris neighborhood, where he’d prospered despite the pain and economic dislocation involved in the Turner Reforms. He was, after all, an effective administrator who possessed an undeniable talent for attracting the loyalty of his subordinates, and he’d done his level best to minimize the reforms’ traumas for the citizens for whom he was responsible. As a result, he’d emerged from the Committee’s downfall with a base of genuine popular support—quite a large one, actually—on the Republic’s capital (and most populous) planet.

He’d capitalized on that support shrewdly. His brother Jason was a senator; his cousin Gerard Younger was a representative; and Arnold himself had played a prominent role in reorganizing the capital following Theisman’s overthrow of Saint-Just. He’d obviously had ambitions of his own at the time, but he’d been smart enough, whatever his other failings, to realize Theisman would have squashed him like a bug if he’d acted on them. So instead, he’d settled for building a powerful political machine in Nouveau Paris—still the most important single city in the Republic, although the Mob’s heady days of power were a thing of the past. That had not only assured him his slot at the Convention but also allowed him to directly influence the election of a surprising number of representatives and no less than eight senators (including himself), which was not an inconsequential Congressional power base.