Written in collaboration with @Princess_Hex
During the Arms Limitation Conference
It wasn't Toronto.
In fact, compared to the many fine ballrooms of the Divine Monarchy, it wasn't much. Those stately palaces and princely manors that had stood for centuries projected an air of gravitas and regality upon any event that took place in their hallowed halls. Theirs were designs refined over generations to create the best possible environment, though exactly for what varied between the designers and their patrons. In all honesty, there were few things in all the world that could compare to them, and as the CanMexican nobles were learning slowly, space had little competition either.
However, taken on its own terms, the venue had its charms. The building itself was somewhat austere, but a great deal of effort had been put into bringing that plain base more in line with what one would expect of a grand ballroom. The lighting was thoughtfully arranged to keep things well lit, but not so much as to be overwhelming, there remained plenty of shadows for when they were needed. It was also impossible to fault the quality of the decor itself, even if its presentation was on occasion amateurish.
The local flair took some of the edge off the lack of refinement. The edges of the room were dotted with silken shelters that mimicked the tents used by desert nomads, artfully arranged to let in just enough light. In addition to the fare one might expect at a CanMexican ball, or at least imitations of them, were many local delicacies whose presentation had been pushed by expert culinarians. The music had a distinct local sound as well, rather too experimental for the occasion but earnest nevertheless.
Perhaps the greatest difference was in the energy of the event. An event such as this in CanMexico could be anything from a gentle and regal affair to a tense evening where every word was a knife. The air here, however, was much more lighthearted. There was a distinct sense of playfulness and novelty that coloured every interaction and expression in the room, like this was a fun game that they were engaging in just this once. Even without a noble class, Algeria had put its best foot forward, and the attendants were dressed in the finest of gowns and danced with practiced grace.
Though now the first dances of the night had wound down, and those in attendance had the opportunity to rest or mingle as their hearts desired. The din was quiet, and many places still buzzed with excitement.
Prince Javier took all the ambience in with the air of a diplomat raised from birth, full of genuine praise for the decor that was light on details and high in flattery. In truth, the formal occasions that surrounded conferences like this had often become a blur to him in the past, but the newness of Algeria, a state that had changed almost as much in the last six months as it had in the last twenty years, and in those twenty years more than it had changed in the previous two hundred, were enough to keep him engaged. His bodyguards, unarmed but alert, shuffled around the perimeter of the party uncomfortably, but the Prince himself was happy to sample the novelty of it all. Whatever their conflicts, Algeria remained a beautiful country.
Of course, as much as he'd have liked to enjoy things on an epicurean level, he was still here to work, and that meant socializing with the army's enemies and his hopeful allies in keeping conflict down to a tolerable level of mass casualties, and that meant seeking out Algeria's own diplomats to rub elbows with. Informally, just to set the stage, of course. But the pre-show was typically, in his opinion, the fun part.
"I must thank you, Your Highness," the voice that came from Javier's left was husky and smooth, deep for a woman's voice. "For the opportunity to host a ball. We don't get to indulge in such extravagance often, and I consider it a shame." Javier had met the woman who came into view before, Lila Selem, the Foreign Secretary. She was a large woman, with enough muscles and scars that it was clear she had seen combat. Tonight, however, she was dressed in a gown and the most lethal weapon she held was a glass of wine. "I trust all has been well?"
"As well as it can be, Madam Secretary," Javier replied, tilting his own wine glass in acknowledgement. "Your hospitality has been amazing, as has the opportunity to see the prosperity Spacian trade has brought your nation. Were we not at war, I'd make it a point to vacation here."
Lila bowed, not quite as low as Javier might like, but enough to be diplomatic all the same. "You are kind to say so. We love our country, and any opportunity to share its beauty is precious. I hope that one day I can make a similar visit to CanMexico, and see its beauty for myself."
"You'd quite enjoy it, I think. The deserts in the south are very different from the Sahara, and Canada is a completely different climate from the Mediterranean, obviously," Javier observed. If he cared how low a foreign dignitary bowed on her own territory, he didn't show it. "Truthfully, I regret that the current war is going on at all, let alone how far it seems to have spread. I was very heartened to hear anyone else calling for anything other than further escalation - promises to appreciate each others' countries beauty won't amount to much if they're all craters by the time this messy business is over."
"A future I should quite like to avoid," Lila agreed, her polite smile slipping into something of a grimace. "To think we have come to this in only a few months, with barely a single country on earth not embroiled in war. Fires spreading across the ground and lancing down from the air, it's terrible. We are truly grateful that you have joined us in looking to ensure there is a future once these dark days are over."
"His Divine Majesty, as I'm sure he's quite notorious for on foreign shores, insists that we can look to the past, rather than the future, for peace and tranquility. At the risk of filial impiety, I'd say that the arrival of Spacians removed a lot of practicality from that sentiment," Javier admitted. "Their arrival was like a starting gun for the fear and tension that had built up over the last fifty years, although I don't doubt it would have snapped anyway eventually. As much wonder and prosperity as they've brought, especially here, it's still been a bit like throwing gasoline on a fire for international relations."
Lila allowed a smile at Javier's moment of indiscretion, not a hint of mockery in it, simply a recognition that they were both human. "That is all too true. For every blessing, there are just as many curses. For us, the spacians have been a new lease on life, but even here it's like the timers have all sped up on the problems we thought we could fix later." She took a thoughtful sip from her wine. "We have had to try to find a balance of respect for the past while integrating the future. I can only imagine how someone already committed either way must have felt when the future changed and arrived all at once. You have my condolences."
"Ha, you're not wrong," Javier admitted. "Algeria has always been a fascinating outlier among socialist states, really, not as willing or eager to throw away the past as your comrades. I heard through the grapevine about one of your secretaries having some very impassioned epistolary debates with the Pater Patreum Extraordinarii, which struck me as very different from the official line of state atheism you hear out of the Vangists or Asiatic Socialists."
"Ah yes, Raysha. I've never seen her so energetic as she has been since that exchange ended." Lila replied, a hint of wistfulness in her voice. "She has been the leading voice behind the religious freedoms in our country. I swear, the girl is fluent in four religions and can get by in another three. We're lucky for her, I think." Lila shifted her wine to her other hand, leaning against a small support for one of the tents. "Algeria's position has made us have to rethink our approach to things that other socialists may take for granted. There are certain extremities of views that we saw the choice to either embrace, or avoid, and as you can see," she said, looking pointedly at the Mondist prince standing on Algerian soil, "we have chosen the latter."
"Your charm offensive is noted," Javier replied playfully. "In truth, there's more than a few things about Algeria that make me question some political truisms. But I do have to wonder…"
The prince trailed off and took a sip of his wine, never one not to play to an imaginary audience. "Aren't you trying to have your cake and eat it too? Pluralism and a united ideology, egalitarianism and becoming an extraction economy for space, rushing for the future at breakneck pace while maintaining your ties to the past? If you were Liberals I'd accuse you of being milquetoast, with apologies to the Freeholds diplomats I'm sure just heard that, but you all genuinely seem to be reaching for every extreme at once, rather than avoiding any."
"Ha!" Lila's laugh was more of a bark than Javier's had been, a bit of the roughness of the former revolutionary slipping through. "You're not entirely wrong, Javier. Though it seems like you aren't entirely up to date on policy. We're hardly aiming to become an extraction economy for space. Some expansion, sure, but it's hardly a goal. The rest?" She waved a hand. "I challenge the assertion that those things are at odds. Why should we see the past and the future as inherently opposed? Why would we see a diversity of beliefs as a danger to our shared dreams? We are of the opinion that these things work best together, that together they can create stronger than either one can provide alone."
She took a sip of her wine, mulling over what she said. "As you can imagine, it's all very experimental."
"Thesis and antithesis making synthesis, as ancient philosophers would say," Javier said, nodding. "But there's some things that can't work together, or even if they could, they'll split a very young state in two before they merge. Has Algeria ever been tested by genuine local monarchist sentiment? Was that accepted as tolerantly as all the other trappings of the old world? And all this Spacian technology…with all respect to your scientists and engineers, it's not physically possible to understand it in fullness in a matter of months. Not on the scale you've deployed it. And then there's the intent of the Seraphim themselves…"
He left that sentence to dangle. He was a diplomat, after all, and there's some points where charging forward was less helpful than simply presenting a premise.
"As I said, experimental," replied Lila. "Truthfully, I don't know how things will turn out. I'm a diplomat, I go to other nations and solve problems. The problems at home are dizzying, they are beyond me." She paused, took a breath, then resumed speaking. "What I know is that we have to try. Algeria wouldn't have a future at all if we hadn't sought help in orbit, and we don't have any better odds split apart. We could have tried to stop the flow of progress, sure, we could avoid contact or even oppose them openly. That is the way many of the great powers have gone, after all, at least publicly."
"But could we, really? You saw what happened to the Cold League, an invasion on flimsy pretense. A flood of new and destabilising ideas is better than mobile suits from the Imperate stomping through our streets." She grimaced at the thought, all too easy to imagine when they were a short boat ride away. "It is easy to be cautious and protective of what you have when what you have is safe and prosperous. The Divine Monarchy has a lot to lose, if things go poorly, and comparatively little to gain. Which is why I don't begrudge you your stance."
"Besides," she continued, "you overestimate the Seraphim. Their intentions, whatever they are, are only as relevant to our future as we want them to be."
"I can hardly begrudge the sense of needing protection," Javier replied. "CanMexico may dominate a continent, but South America has been a powderkeg for decades, and one that you obviously know was just lit. We protect our sister monarchies, just as you trust the Seraphim to protect you…but that's where I find a contradiction."
Javier swirled his wine thoughtfully. "It's in our interests to protect Jaburo from Republican aggression and destabilization. As fond as I am of Evangeline as a person, that by itself is not motivation enough for us to be dragged into war on their behalf. Nor is simple ideological solidarity, for that matter. The Holy League exists in the way that it does because it benefits all parties, and that's a fact of international relations that dates back far longer than the Cataclysm, far longer than even our archaeology can reliably teach us. States exist to perpetuate themselves, competing when there's competing needs and cooperating when there's common interest. I'll just be damned if I can figure out what the Seraphim's common interest is in pouring so much of themselves, their technology, and their resources into Algeria if it isn't resource extraction."
He could, of course, think of several reasons, most of them even less beneficial to Algeria than the flow of commodities off-planet. But he wanted to hear what Lila thought the answer was.
"This will teach me to pay more attention when Taljat is speaking, I suppose," Lila muttered to herself.
"Well, that is something you would need to ask the Seraphim for a full answer, don't you think?" She could tell that the deflection wouldn't work, which meant Lila would have to actually give something in order not to be rude. "You are correct about the core purpose of a state, as inconvenient as that may be at times. However, there are many ways that benefit can be measured, and many ways that needs can be met. It's a problem I have noticed with some Mondist thought, an inflexibility on the ideas of power and relations." She waited just long enough before adding, "no offence."
"I won't pretend that a flow of materials doesn't help our partnership, we certainly have plenty to give. Our ores ship to practically everyone in space by now, not just the Seraphim." Lila opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. "Well, no matter how smooth you are, I've no intention of giving you all our secrets. Still, I can tell you that the Seraphim seem most intently focused on more nebulous, hard to define goals. Power, in the traditional sense, doesn't seem like a priority to them. They have little input into how we do things here, less than some would like even, but I prefer it this way."
"Well, I will say that if nothing else, I respect socialism for…let's call it returning to the basics of logic when it comes to 'benefit'. While Mondists focus on stability and continuity, I understand the reasoning behind collectivism as well - the greatest good for the greatest number, economically speaking. Most methods used to get there are deplorable, in my opinion, but that's going to need to be something where we agree to disagree, I suppose."
Taking a more serious tone, though, Javier held eye-contact with his counterpart. "I don't think you're naive enough to believe that any state doesn't want power, Lila. Nor do I think your government is so naive. I just worry that the gold they're dangling in front of certain states is cursed to consume the reckless. This whole summit was prompted in part because we saw what they do to their own people who dissent with them politically. And how vigorously they do it. Algeria is their friend now, but if that changes in the future…"
With that, Javier polishes off his wine glass. "This was a lovely chat, honestly stimulating, but I'm going to have to excuse myself to get another glass. We don't have nearly the country we ought to for vineyards back home, and I'm enjoying a function with something other than beer or millennium-old Californias."
"If that changes in the future, we'll have all sorts of new and novel ways to fight back." Lila raised her glass in a toast to Javier as he finished his. "A pleasure speaking with you, prince. Enjoy your evening and your stay in the country. With luck, it won't be your last."
