The End of All Things #2: This Hollow Union
Author: John Scalzi
Date: 2015-06-16 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Science Fiction; General
Description: Part Two of the four parts of The End of All Things, John Scalzi's conclusion to the bestselling Old Man's War tale that began with The Human Division. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And for the multi-species Conclave, desperate times have arrived. Faced with the prospect of major planets and species leaving the alliance, the Conclave's leadership has just a few cards left to play...to unpredictable effect. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

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To William Dufris and Tavia Gilbert, and any other audiobook narrator who might work in the Old Man’s War universe. Thanks for giving these characters a voice.

PART ONE

“I have to tell you that I am deeply concerned that our union is on the verge of collapse,” Ristin Lause said to me.

It’s been said, and I suspect largely by people who are not terribly fond of me, that I, Hafte Sorvalh, am the second most powerful person in the known universe. It’s certainly true that I am the confidant and closest advisor of General Tarsem Gau, the leader of the Conclave, the largest known political union, with over four hundred constituent member species, none of whom number less than one billion souls. It is also true that in my role as confidant and advisor to Tarsem, I have a great deal of choice in terms of which things to bring to his attention; also that Tarsem chooses to use me strategically to solve a number of problems he would prefer not to be seen involved with, and in those cases I have a wide amount of personal discretion in solving the problem, with the full resources of the Conclave at my disposal.

So yes, it would not be inaccurate to say that I am, indeed, the second most powerful person in the known universe.

Note well, however, that being the second most powerful person in the universe is very much like being the second most of anything, which is to say, not the first, and receiving none of the benefits of being the first. And as my position and status derive entirely from the grace and need of the actual most powerful person in the universe, my ability to exercise the prerogatives of my power are, shall we say, constrained. And now you know why it is said of me by the people who are not terribly fond of me.

However, this suits my personal inclinations. I don’t mind having the power that is given to me, but I have only rarely grasped for it myself. My position has come largely from being usefully competent to others, each more powerful than the next. I have always been the one who stands behind, the one who counts heads, the one who offers advice.

And, also, the one who has to sit in meetings with anxious politicians, listening to them wring whatever appendages they wring about The End of All Things. In this case, Ristin Lause, the chancellor of the Grand Assembly of the Conclave, an august political body that I was always aware of having a grammatical redundancy in its title, but nevertheless not to be ignored. Ristin Lause sat in my office, staring up at me, for I am tall, even for a Lalan. She held in her hand a cup of iet, a hot drink from her planet, which was a traditional morning pick-me-up. She had it in her hand because I offered it, as was customary, and because she was, at a very early time on the clock, my first meeting for the sur, the Conclave’s standard day.

“In truth, Ristin, are you ever not concerned that our union is on the verge of collapse?” I asked, and reached for my own cup, which was not filled with iet, which to me tasted like what might happen if you let a dead animal ferment in a jug of water in hot sunlight for an unfortunately long period of time.

Lause made a head movement which I knew corresponded to a frown. “You are mocking my concern, Councilor?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “I am offering tribute to your conscientiousness as chancellor. No one knows the assembly better than you, and no one is more aware of the shifts in alliances and strategies. This is why we meet every five sur, and I am grateful we do. With that said, you do proclaim concern about the collapse of the Conclave on a regular basis.”

“You suspect hyperbole.”

“I seek clarity.”

“All right,” Lause said, and set down her iet, undrunk. “Then here is clarity for you. I see the collapse of the Conclave because General Gau has been pressing for votes in the assembly that he shouldn’t be. I see it because his enemies have been pushing votes to counter and undermine the general’s power, and they are losing by smaller margins with each outing. For the first time there is open dissatisfaction with him, and with the direction of the Conclave.”

“For the first time?” I said. “I seem to recall an attempted coup in the not ancient past, brought on by his decision not to punish the humans for the destruction of our fleet at the Roanoke Colony.”

“A small group of discontents, trying to take advantage of what they saw as a moment of weakness on the part of the general.”

“Which almost succeeded, if you recall. I remember the knife coming down toward his neck, and missiles immediately thereafter.”

Lause waved this away. “You’re missing my point,” she said. “That was a coup, an attempt to wrest power from the general by extralegal means. What I see now, with every vote, is the power and influence—the moral standing—of the general being whittled away. You know that Unli Hado, among others, wants to put the general to a confidence vote. If things progress, it won’t be long until he gets his wish.”

I drank from my cup. Unli Hado had recently challenged General Gau’s actions dealing with the human Colonial Union, and been knocked back when he asserted evidence of new human colonies that turned out not to exist—or more accurately, they had been so thoroughly removed from their planets by the Colonial Union that there was no hard evidence they had ever existed. Those colonies had been quietly removed by General Gau’s request; Hado had been fed the outdated information on their existence in order to be made to look like a fool.

And it had worked; he had looked like a fool when he attempted to call out the general. What I and the general had underestimated were the number of other assembly members who would willingly continue to follow a fool.

“The general isn’t a member of the assembly,” I said. “A confidence vote wouldn’t be binding.”

“Wouldn’t it?” Lause said. “The assembly can’t remove the general from the leadership of the Conclave, no. There’s no mechanism for it. But you understand that a no confidence vote on the general is the fatal crack in his armor. After that General Gau is no longer the beloved, and almost mythical founder of the Conclave. He’s merely another politician who has overstayed his welcome.”

“You are the chancellor of the assembly,” I noted. “You could keep a confidence vote on the general from reaching the floor.”

“I could,” Lause agreed. “But I could not then keep the confidence vote on me from reaching the floor. And once I was out of the way, Hado, or more likely one of his more pliable lieutenants, would ascend to my position. The general’s confidence vote would not be avoided, merely delayed.”

“And what if it were to happen?” I asked, setting down my cup. “The general is not under the illusion that he will be the head of the Conclave forever. The Conclave is meant to survive him. And me. And you.”

Lause stared at me. In point of fact, as Lause had no eyelids, she was always staring. But in this case it was with intent.

“What is it?” I said.

“You have to be joking, Hafte,” Lause said. “You have to be either joking or oblivious to the fact that it is General Gau himself who has kept the Conclave together. It’s loyalty to him and his idea of the Conclave that kept it from falling apart after Roanoke. It was loyalty to him that allowed it to survive the coup attempt that followed. The general knows this at least—he made everyone swear personal loyalty to him. You were the first to swear it.”

“I also warned him of the dangers of doing it,” I said.

“And you were right,” Lause said. “Technically. But he was right that at that moment it was loyalty to him that kept the Conclave in one piece. It still does.”

“We have perhaps moved on from that personal loyalty. That’s what the general has worked toward. What we have all worked toward.”

“We’re not there,” Lause said. “If General Gau is made to step down then the center of the Conclave falls away. Will this union still exist? For a while. But the union will be hollow, and the factions that already exist now will pull away. The Conclave will fracture, and then those factions will fracture again. And we’ll be back to where we were before. I see it, Hafte. It’s almost inevitable at this point.”

“Almost,” I said.

“We can avoid a fracture, for now,” Lause said. “Buy some time and perhaps heal the fracture. But the general has to give up something he wants very much.”

“Which is?”

“He has to give up the Earth.”

I reached for my cup again. “The humans from Earth have not asked to join the Conclave,” I said.

“Don’t spout nonsense at me, Hafte,” Lause said, sharply. “There isn’t a representative in the assembly who doesn’t know that the general intends to offer Earth significant trade and technological concessions, with the intent of drawing them into the Conclave sooner than later.”

“The general has never said anything of the sort.”

“Not publicly,” Lause said. “He’s been content to let his friends in the assembly do that for him. Unless you believe that we don’t know who is working Bruf Brin Gus’s levers on this subject. It’s not been exactly discreet about the favors it can pull from the general now. Or from you, for that matter.”

I made a note to schedule a meeting with Representative Bruf at the earliest convenience; it had been warned against preening to other assembly representatives. “You think Hado would use any deal with Earth as leverage for a confidence vote,” I said.

“I think Hado has a hatred of humans that borders on outright racism.”

“Even though the Earth is not affiliated with the Colonial Union.”

“That’s a distinction too subtle for Hado,” Lause said. “Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it’s a distinction that Hado will not bother to make, either for himself or to others, because it would interfere with his plans.”

“Which are?”

“Do you have to ask?” Lause said. “Hado hates the humans, but he loves them too. Because they might get him to the job he really wants. At least he thinks so. The Conclave will have collapsed before he can get much use of it.”

“So remove the humans, and we remove his lever.”

“You remove the lever that he’s grasping today,” Lause said. “He has others.” She reached for her cup of iet, saw that it had grown cold, and set it back down again. My assistant Umman popped his head into the room; my next meeting partner had arrived. I nodded to him and then stood. Lause stood as well.

“Thank you, Ristin,” I said. “As always, our chat has been useful and enlightening.”

“I hope so,” Lause said. “A final piece of advice for the day, if I may. Get Hado in here the next chance you get. He’s not going to tell you what he has planned, but it’s everything else he says that will matter anyway. Talk to him even briefly and you’ll know what I know. And you’ll know why I worry the Conclave is in trouble.”

“That is very good advice,” I said. “I plan to take it very soon.”

“How soon?”

“As soon as you leave me,” I said. “Unli Hado is my next appointment.”

*   *   *

“I’m worried that the Conclave is being pushed toward destruction,” Unli Hado said to me, almost before I had time to sit down after welcoming him into my office.

“Well, this is certainly a dramatic way to begin our discussion, Representative,” I said. Umman discreetly slipped back into the office and deposited two bowls on my desk, one closer to me and one closer to Hado. Hado’s was filled with niti, an Elpri breakfast food that would kill me if I attempted to eat it, but which Hado was known to relish. My own bowl had tidbits on it shaped like niti, but made of Lalan vegetable matter. I did not wish to die in this particular meeting. I had other plans for the rest of the sur. I nodded thanks to Umman; Hado appeared not to notice him. Umman slipped back out of the room.

“I didn’t know that coming to you with a concern would be dismissed as drama,” Hado said. He reached over and fished one of the niti out of his bowl, and then started sucking on it, loudly. I did not know enough about Elpri table manners to decide whether he was being rude.

“I would in no way dismiss your concerns, as drama or anything else,” I replied. “But you may understand that from my end, leading with the destruction of the Conclave doesn’t leave much room for anything else.”

“Does General Gau still intend to bring the humans into the Conclave?” Hado asked.

“You know as well as I do that the general never lobbies a species to join the Conclave,” I said. “He merely shows them the advantages and allows them to ask, if they are interested.”

“That’s a nice fiction,” Hado said. He swallowed his niti and reached for another.

“If the humans asked to join the Conclave—if either of the human governments asked to join the Conclave, because as you know there is more than one—then they would go through the same process as everyone else has.”

“For which the general would heavily place his support for the humans.”

“I would imagine only to the extent he has done for any of our species, including the Elpri, Representative Hado. You may recall him standing in the well of the Grand Assembly, praising your people at the time of the vote.”

“For which of course I offer him many thanks.”

“As you should,” I said. “As should every member state of our Conclave. In point of fact, to date, the general has welcomed every species who has asked to join and was willing to accept the terms of union. I wonder why you would think—if in fact either human government wanted to join our union—that the general would do otherwise.”

“It’s because I know something about the humans that the general does not.”

“Secret information?” I said, and reached for one of my own tidbits. “With all due respect, Representative, your track record on secret information regarding the humans is spotty.”

Hado offered what to anyone else would appear to be a genial smile. “I am well aware that I have a history of falling into the traps that you’ve set for me, Councilor. But between ourselves let’s not pretend that we don’t know what really happened.”

“I’m not entirely sure I catch your meaning,” I said, pleasantly.

“Have it your way,” Hado said, and then reached into his vest to pull out a data module. He placed it on my desk between us.

“Is this your secret information?” I asked.

“It’s not secret, just not well known. Yet.”

“Will you give me a précis, or should I just plug it into my computer?”

“You should look at all of it,” Hado said. “But the short version is that a whistleblower from the Colonial Union has released information on all of the Colonial Union’s military and intelligence operations for the last several of their decades. Including the destruction of our fleet at Roanoke, the attacks on Conclave ships and planets using pirated Conclave member trade ships, biological experimentation on Conclave citizens, and the attack on Earth Station.”

I picked up the data module. “How was this whistleblower able to procure all this information?”

“He was an undersecretary of the Colonial Union’s State Department.”

“I don’t suppose this undersecretary is available to us.”

“My understanding is that the Colonial Union reacquired him,” Hado said. “If the Colonials’ standard practices hold, if he’s not already dead, he’s a brain suspended in a jar.”

“I’m curious how this information came to you, Representative Hado.”

“I got it this morning by diplomatic courier drone from Elpri,” Hado said. “The information has been readily available there for an Elprian day. The information was apparently released widely. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re offered the information by others, including your own planetary government, Councilor. Nor would I be surprised if it’s offered to the Conclave itself by the end of the sur.”

“We don’t know if this information is reliable, is what you’re telling me.”

“What I’ve read of it—which has been the most recent events, primarily—seems accurate,” Hado said. “It explains at the very least why we’ve been losing trade and cargo ships, and how the Colonial Union has been using them against us.”

“It might not surprise you to know that the Colonial Union has maintained their own civilian ships have been pirated.”

“I won’t deny I am not fond of humanity, but that isn’t to say that I think they are stupid,” Hado said. “Of course they would be doing a magnificent job of obfuscating their plans.”

“And what are their plans, Representative Hado?” I asked.

“The destruction of the Conclave, obviously,” Hado said. “They tried and failed at Roanoke Colony. They are trying again by using our own trade ships against us.”

“At that rate they should topple us at about the same time as the heat death of the universe,” I said.

“It’s not the physical damage. It’s persisting despite the obvious strength of the Conclave.”

“And attacking Earth Station?” I said. “How does that relate to the Conclave?”

“The Colonial Union has denied the attack. Who else should Earth think could orchestrate it?”

“But you don’t want the humans in the Conclave in any event.”

“Neither do I want Earth reconciled with the Colonial Union, offering it soldiers and colonists again.”

“In which case I’m not sure why you would oppose Earth’s admission into the Conclave,” I said. “That would shut the door to the Colonial Union using it as a recruiting station.”

“And frustrate the Colonial Union even further, making them more dangerous,” Hado said. “And aside from that, how would we ever be able to trust any humans? If one group of humans were at war with us and the other our ally, how many of our so-called allies would feel obliged, by species solidarity, to act against our interests?”

“So we are damned if we admit the humans, and damned if we don’t.”

“There is a third option,” Hado said.

I stiffened at this. “You know the general’s opinion on preemptive war, Representative Hado,” I said. “And on genocide.”

“Please, Councilor,” Hado said. “I am suggesting neither, obviously. I am suggesting, however, that war with the humans is inevitable. Sooner or later they will attack, out of opportunism or out of fear.” He pointed to the data module. “The information here makes that much clear. And when they do, if the general does not have a response, then I fear what happens next for the Conclave.”

“The Conclave is robust,” I said.

“Again, it’s not the physical damage to the Conclave I worry about. The Conclave exists because its members are confident in its leader. The general spared the humans once when he could have crushed them. If he does it twice, there comes the legitimate question of why, and for what purpose. And whether his judgment can be relied upon any further.”

“And if the answer is ‘no,’ then I suppose you have an idea of who might take his place,” I said. “To restore this ‘confidence.’”

“You misunderstand me, Councilor,” Hado said. “You always have. You think I have ambitions beyond my station. I assure you I do not. I never have. What I want is what you want, and what the general wants: the Conclave, whole and secure. He has the power to keep it that way. He has the power to destroy it. It all depends on how he deals with the humans. All of them.”

Hado stood, bowed, took a final niti from his bowl, and left.

*   *   *

“He thinks this is going to be the thing that destroys the Conclave,” Vnac Oi said, holding the data module Unli Hado had given me. I had traveled to its office, in part to get a change of scenery and in part because as the Conclave’s head of intelligence, its office was substantially more secure than my own.

“I think it’s more the thing Hado plans to use to try to oust Tarsem,” I said.

“It took some nerve to drop it on your desk,” Oi said. “He might as well have put a sign up over his head announcing his plans.”

“Plausible deniability,” I said. “It can never be said he was not the first to alert us to this information and the dangers within. He’s being the perfect example of a helpful and faithful officer of the Conclave.”

Oi gave a whistle of derision. “The Gods should protect us from such faithfulness,” it said.

I pointed to the data module. “What do we know about this?”

“We know Hado wasn’t lying about how he got it,” Oi said. “This information has showed up at several dozen Conclave worlds already and more reports are coming in. The data is consistent across the various planets. It even showed up here.”

“How?”

“Diplomatic courier skip drone. Credentials forged, which we determined right away, but we examined the data anyway. Same data as in every other packet we’ve been offered.”

“Any idea where it came from?”

“No,” Oi said. “The skip drone is Faniu manufacture. They make hundreds of thousands of them a year. The drone’s navigational cache was clear, no skip history on it. The data itself was unencrypted and in standard Conclave format.”

“Have you looked at it?”

“There’s too much to just look at. Reading it manually would take more time than we’d want. We’ve got computers doing semantic and data analysis on it to get the important information and trends. That will still take several sur.”

“I mean did you look at it,” I said.

“Of course,” Oi said. “There was a document that came with it highlighting particular bits of information whoever sent it thought might be relevant to us. I skimmed.”

“What do you think?”

“Officially or personally?”

“Both.”

“Officially, anonymous information that shows up randomly at one’s door should be treated as suspicious until proven otherwise. That said, the documents we’ve done spot analysis on conform strongly to the Colonial Union’s data formatting and known activity. If it’s fake, it’s very cleverly done, at least superficially.”

“And personally?”

“You know we have sources in the Colonial Union, yes?” Oi said. “Ones I don’t go out of my way to let either you or the general know too much about?”

“Of course.”

“As soon as this started popping up I sent a query to one of them about this alleged whistleblower, this Undersecretary Ocampo. Just before you got here I got a ping back. He exists, or at least did exist. He went missing several of their months ago. He would have had access to this information. So personally I think it’s very possible this is legitimate.”

“Hado seemed to be under the impression that the Colonial Union had found this Ocampo.”

“I have no information on that, and I’d be curious to know how he does,” Oi said.

“It might be a rumor.”

“This would be the time for rumors about this information,” Oi agreed. “Do you want me to look into it?”

Before I could answer my handheld buzzed out the sequence that told me Umman was trying to reach me for a critical purpose. I answered. “Yes?”

“Your manicurist called and wishes to inquire about your next appointment,” Umman said.

“I’m in Oi’s office, Umman,” I said, glancing over at Oi, whose expression was studiously neutral. “And you can be sure it already knows about my ‘manicurist.’”

“I’ll just send the message over, then,” Umman said.

“Thank you.” I terminated the call and waited for the message.

“Thank you for not being offended that I know your business,” Oi said.

“Thank you for not pretending to be offended that I would suggest you know my business,” I said.

The message arrived. “And what does Colonel Rigney of the Colonial Union have to say?” Oi asked.

“He says, ‘By this time you’ve probably seen the data alleging to be from our Department of State Undersecretary Ocampo,’” I read. “‘Some of it is true. Much of it is not. What is not is of concern to both the Colonial Union and the Conclave. We are sending an envoy to treat with the Conclave on this to reach an amicable resolution before things escalate. She is Ambassador Ode Abumwe, known to you, and will be in possession of information to clarify or refute what you have in your possession. I ask, with the basis of our previous association as proof of earnest intent, that you see her and hear what she has to say.’ And then there’s data on Ambassador Abumwe’s intended arrival time and position.”

“The Colonial Union’s coming here without presence,” Oi said. “That’s interesting.”

“They want to indicate their openness,” I said.

“That’s one interpretation,” Oi said. “Another is that they don’t think they have time to do their usual sneaking about before this blows up in their faces. And another will be that this is simply a move in a long-term game to maneuver us to where they can strike us most effectively.”

“That’s not been my experience of Colonel Rigney or Ambassador Abumwe.”

“Which doesn’t matter much because officially you haven’t had any experience with either Rigney or Abumwe, have you?” Oi said, and raised tendrils to pause my reply. “It’s not about what you or I think, Hafte. It’s about how Unli Hado and those around him will interpret the Colonial Union’s move here.”

“You think we shouldn’t meet with them.”

“I don’t have an opinion one way or another,” Oi said, lying diplomatically. “That’s not my job. But I do suggest that you talk with the general about it and find out what he and you want to do. And that you do it sooner than later. ‘Immediately,’ would be my suggestion.”

“I have another meeting first,” I said.

*   *   *

“You know that the nations of Earth would never condone or participate in any action that would bring about the destruction of the Conclave,” said Regan Byrne, the envoy to the Conclave from the United Nations, a diplomatic corporation that was not actually the government of the Earth, but which pretended to be for situations like this.

I nodded, minutely, to avoid hitting my head on Byrne’s ceiling. Byrne’s offices were former storage units that had been hastily cleared out when it was decided that it would be beneficial to have an Earth presence of some sort at the Conclave headquarters. These storage units were amply tall for most Conclave species, but then, again, Lalans were tall and I was taller than most.

I stood because there was nowhere for me to sit; Byrne usually came to visit me, not the other way around, and her office did not have a stool that would accommodate me. Byrne had the grace to look embarrassed by this fact.

“I assure you that no one in the Conclave has suggested that this new information has cast the Earth in a suspicious light,” I said, choosing not to mention that Unli Hado, in point of fact, had accused the planet of being full of traitors and spies. “What I am interested in knowing, prior to my meeting with General Gau, is whether the Earth has received this information, and what their response has been to it.”

“I was about to call Umman when he called me to set up this meeting,” Byrne said. “I received a skip drone from the UN this morning with the information, to give to you in case you did not already have it, and the denial of involvement that I just offered you. Done up much more formally, of course. I will have all of it sent to your office.”

“Thank you.”

“I have been also told to tell you that we’re sending a formal diplomatic party to brief the Conclave on the Earth’s definitive response to this new information. They will be here in less than a week. The diplomatic party is under the aegis of the UN but will consist of representatives of several Earth governments. That information is also in the data packet I am sending along.”

“Yes, fine,” I said. This meant that we were about to be in the rather awkward position of having diplomatic representatives from both the Earth and the Colonial Union at the Conclave’s headquarters at the same time. This would have to be managed. I frowned.

“Everything all right, Councilor Sorvalh?” Byrne asked.

“Of course,” I said, and smiled. Byrne offered up a weak smile in return. I remembered that my smile looked rather ghastly to humans, in no small part because it was offered by a creature who was close to twice their height. “This will all be of great use to me when I meet with the general.”

“That’s good to hear,” Byrne said.

“And how are you, Regan?” I asked. “I’m afraid I don’t see you or other members of your mission as often as I would like.”

“We’re good,” Byrne said, and I was aware that I was once again being lied to diplomatically. “I think most of the staff are still getting our bearings and learning the map of the station. It’s very large. Larger than some cities back on Earth.”

“Yes it is,” I said. The headquarters of the Conclave was a space station carved into a large asteroid and was one of the largest engineered objects ever made, not counting some of the more impressive bits made by the Consu, a race so technologically advanced above the rest of the species in this area of space that they should not be included in an estimation, simply out of politeness to everyone else.

“It would have to be,” I continued. “We have to house representatives from four hundred worlds, all their staff, and many of their families, plus a great number of the Conclave’s own government workers and their families, plus all the support workers and their families. It adds up.”

“Is your family here, Councilor Sorvalh?”

I smiled, more gently this time. “Lalans don’t quite have the family structure that humans and many other species do. We are more communally oriented, is the best way to put it. But there is a strong Lalan community here. It’s very comforting.”

“It’s good to hear,” Byrne said. “I miss my family and other humans. It’s lovely here, but sometimes you just miss home.”

“I know what you mean,” I said to her.

*   *   *

“If the Conclave must end, at least this is a pretty place for it to begin,” General Tarsem Gau, leader of the Conclave, said to me, standing next to where I sat in the Lalan community park. The park, one of the first created on the Conclave’s asteroid, was large enough for all three hundred of the Lalans stationed at Conclave headquarters to meet, relax, deposit eggs, and monitor the hatched young as they grew.

Tarsem spotted some of the Lalan young, playing on a rock on the far side of the park’s small lake. “Any of yours?” he asked. Jokingly, because he knew I was too old for further egg-laying.

But I answered him seriously. “One or both of them might be Umman’s,” I said. “He and one of the diplomats were in phase not too long ago and she laid her eggs here. Those young are just about the right size to be theirs.”

There was a sudden squawk as an older youth emerged from behind the rock, wrapped its jaws around one of the two youth sunning themselves, and began to bite down. The trapped youth began to struggle; the other one scuttled away. We watched as the younger youth fought to survive, and lost. After a moment the larger youth stole away, younger youth still in its jaws, to eat it in privacy.

Tarsem turned to me. “That still always amazes me,” he said.

“That our young prey on each other?” I asked.

“That it doesn’t bother you that they do,” he said. “Not just you. You or any Lalan adult. You understand that most intelligent species are fiercely protective of their young.”

“As are we,” I replied. “After a certain point. After their brains develop and their consciousness emerges. Before then they are simply animals, and there are so many of them.”

“Did you feel that way when they were your own?”

“I didn’t know which were mine at the age of that unfortunate youth,” I said. “We lay our eggs in common, you know. We go to our local common ground, to the laying house. I’d lay my eggs into a receiving basket and take the basket to the house supervisor. The supervisor would put them in the room set up for the eggs the house received that day. Thirty or forty women would lay eggs at a house each day. Ten to fifty eggs each. Fifteen of our days to hatch and then another five days before the outside door to the room was opened to let the surviving young out into the park. We didn’t see the eggs again once we left them. Even if we went back the day the outside door was opened, we wouldn’t know which of the survivors were our own.”

“But I’ve met your children.”

“You met them after they grew into consciousness,” I said. “Once you’re an adult, you’re allowed to take a genetic test to learn who your parents are, provided they had consented to be placed in the database. The two you met are the ones who decided to find out. I may have had others who survived but they either didn’t take the test or chose not to contact me. Not everyone asks to know. I didn’t.”

“It’s so—”

“Alien?” Tarsem nodded. I laughed. “Well, Tarsem, I am an alien to you. And you to me. And all of us to each other. And yet, here we are, friends. As we have been for most of our lives now.”

“The conscious parts of it, anyway.”

I motioned back to the rock, where the youth who had run away had returned. “You think the way we cull our young is cruel.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Tarsem said.

“Of course you wouldn’t say it,” I said. “You wouldn’t say it because you’re diplomatic. But it doesn’t mean you don’t think it.”

“All right,” Tarsem admitted. “It does seem cruel.”

“That’s because it is,” I said, turning again to Tarsem. “Terrible and cruel, and the fact that adult Lalans can just watch it happen and not weep in agony over it means that we might be terrible and cruel as well. But we know a story that other people don’t.”

“What’s the story?”

“The story is that not too long ago in Lalan history, a philosopher named Loomt Both convinced most of Lalah that how we culled our young was wrong and immoral. He and his followers convinced us to protect all of our young, to allow them all to grow into sentience, and to reap the benefits of the knowledge and progress so many new thinking individuals would give us. I imagine you think you know where this is going.”

“Overpopulation, famine, and death, I would guess,” Tarsem said.

“And you would be wrong, because those are obvious things, to be planned for and dealt with,” I said. “We did have a massive population boom, but we’d also developed spaceflight. It’s one reason why Both suggested we stop culling our youth. We populated colony worlds quickly and grew an empire of twenty worlds almost overnight. Both’s strategy gave us a foothold into the universe and for a time he was revered as the greatest Lalan.”

Tarsem smiled at me. “If this is meant to be a cautionary tale, you’re doing a bad job of it, Hafte,” he said.

“It’s not done yet,” I said. “What Both missed—what we all missed—was the fact that our pre-conscious life is not wasted. How we survive our culling leaves its traces in our brains. In point of fact, in a very real sense, it gives us wisdom. Gives us restraint. Gives us mercy and empathy for each other and for other intelligent species. Imagine, if you will, Tarsem, billions of my people, emerging into consciousness without wisdom. Without restraint. Without mercy and empathy. Imagine the worlds they would make. Imagine what they would do to others.”

“They could be monsters,” Tarsem said.

“Yes they could. And yes we were. And in a very short time we tore each other apart and tore apart every other intelligent species we met. Until we had lost our empire and almost lost ourselves. We were terrible and cruel, and in time we wept in agony over it and everyone we had doomed to a conscious death.” I pointed again to the youth on the rock. “What happens to our young on their way to consciousness is pitiless. But it strengthens us as a people. We take our pain and our risk early, and as a result we as a people are saved.”

“Well,” Tarsem said. “This is not what I was expecting when I suggested we meet here. I just thought it was a pretty place to talk.”

“It is a pretty place,” I said. “It’s just not nice.”

“Tell me what you think about the news today.”

“About the Ocampo data?” I asked. Tarsem nodded. “I think it means very bad things for the Conclave. Ristin Lause is right, Tarsem. The Conclave is in a fragile state because you’ve been pushing things too hard, including bringing the humans of Earth into the Conclave. I’ve warned you about that.”

“You have.”

“And you haven’t listened.”

“I’ve listened,” Tarsem said. “I have reasons not to agree.”

I gave Tarsem a look that expressed my disapproval, which he took without complaint. I continued. “She’s also right that if you lose a confidence vote, it could fracture the Conclave. You already have dozens of species wanting to bolt and either go it alone or form smaller alliances they think they will be able to control. If you give the Conclave an opportunity to crack, it will crack.”

“That’s independent of the Ocampo data.”

“But the Ocampo data feeds right into that,” I said. “It seemingly confirms that the humans can’t be trusted and that they mean us harm, the Colonial Union portion of humanity, in any event. If you try to bring Earth into the Conclave after this, Unli Hado will use that to suggest that you’re letting the enemy through the front door.”

“So we hold off on admitting Earth into the Conclave.”

“Then Hado hits you with leaving it available to the Colonial Union to retake. Make no mistake, Tarsem. Hado is going to use Earth against you no matter what you do. And if you take the unspeakable third option of attacking the Colonial Union without direct provocation, Hado will use your first military defeat as an opportunity for the confidence vote he’s looking for. Every option leads to the assembly voting to remove you. And when that happens it all falls apart.”

“This used to be easier,” Tarsem said. “Running the Conclave.”

“That’s because you were building it,” I said. “It’s easier to be the aspirational leader when the thing you’re building doesn’t exist. But now it exists, and you’re not aspirational anymore. Now you’re just the chief bureaucrat. Bureaucrats don’t inspire awe.”

“Do we have time to finesse this?”

“We might have had, if both the Colonial Union and the Earth weren’t sending full suites of diplomats for discussions,” I said. “Having one set of them would be bad enough. Having them both here, posturing over the Ocampo data, means that Hado and his partisans are going to have real live targets for their ire and might use that to push a confidence vote sooner than later. If you think they’re going to miss an opportunity to trim down your reputation, with real-life human diplomats, then you’ll be playing right into their hands.”

“Then tell me what you suggest,” Tarsem said.

“That you don’t see Ambassador Abumwe when she arrives. Turn her away publicly. That deprives Hado of the spectacle of the Colonial Union being received diplomatically.”

“And what about the new information they promised?”

“Leave that to me. Colonel Rigney and I can set up a meeting and I can get it then. All discreetly.”

“He won’t be happy.”

“We don’t need him to be happy,” I said. “We need him to understand the political landscape we’re working in. I can make him do that.”

“And the diplomats from Earth?”

“We’ll have to meet with them,” I said. “And as for Earth itself, we need to get it out of the reach of the Colonial Union without bringing it into the Conclave.”

Tarsem smiled. “I’m looking forward to hearing how this is going to happen,” he said.

“We have them ask for protection,” I said.

“Protection,” Tarsem said. “From whom?”

“From the Colonial Union, who attacked Earth Station,” I said.

“If it did.”

“It doesn’t matter if it did. It matters that Earth believes it’s a threat.”

Tarsem gave me a look that suggested a complicated response to this statement, but decided not to immediately follow it up. “So they ask for protection,” he said. “What does that solve?”

“It solves Unli Hado, for one,” I said. “Because the Earth doesn’t ask to join the Conclave, and it doesn’t stay vulnerable to the Colonial Union. And when it asks for protection, we’ll assign three of our member states to take up the guard.”

“Which three?”

“Two of them it doesn’t matter. Pick who you like. But the third—”

“The third is the Elpri,” Tarsem said.

“Yes,” I said. “And then Hado is trapped. His entire ploy is based on you being too soft on the humans. But now one branch of humanity is publicly rebuffed and the other is guarded by Hado’s own species. He said to me today that his sole concern is the unity of the Conclave; let’s hold him to his words, and let’s make him do it publicly. He’s trapped by his own posturing.”

“And you think the Earth will go along with this.”

“I think they believe we both have a common enemy, and they know they are defenseless without us,” I said. “The only thing we have to do is not make it look like we’re bottling them up, like they were under the Colonial Union.”

“Although that’s actually what you’re proposing we do.”

“These are the options at the moment.”

“And you think this will actually work,” Tarsem said.

“I think it buys us time.” I turned back to the rock where the young Lalan had been a few minutes before, and noticed it wasn’t there anymore. There was a splotch of blood, however. Whether it belonged to the youth or the one who had been killed before it, I didn’t know. “Maybe enough time to save the Conclave from collapsing. And that’s enough for now.”

PART TWO

“Wake up, Hafte,” someone said.

I woke up. It was Vnac Oi. I stared at it for a moment before gathering enough wit to speak.

“Why are you standing in my sleeping chamber?”

“I need you awake,” it said.

“How did you get in?”

Oi gave me a look that said, Really, now.

“Never mind,” I said. I lifted myself off my sleeping pedestal and moved to my wardrobe to get dressed. I don’t usually prefer other people see me without clothing, but it’s for their sake, not mine; Lalans don’t have a taboo against nudity. “Tell me what’s going on, at least.”

“A human ship has been attacked,” Oi said.

“What?” I looked out from my wardrobe at Oi. “Where? And by whom?”

“In our space,” Oi said. “And we don’t know. But it gets worse.”

“How does it possibly get worse?” I slipped a basic robe onto my body and stepped out of the wardrobe. Other accoutrements could wait.

“The humans’ ship is out of control and being dragged in by the gravity of this asteroid,” Oi said. “We have four serti before it hits.”

“That doesn’t leave much time,” I said. There are thirty serti in a sur.

“It gets worse,” Oi said.

“Stop saying that,” I said. I stood in front of Oi, now. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

“There are humans trapped on the ship,” Oi said. “Including the diplomatic mission from Earth.”

*   *   *

“Here is the Odhiambo,” Loom Ghalfin said, pointing at the image of a tumbling spacecraft on the briefing room monitor. Ghalfin was the director of the Conclave’s ports and facilities. In the briefing room were me, Oi, General Gau, Chancellor Lause, and Regan Byrne. Along the wall of the briefing room stood several of Ghalfin’s subordinates, all of whom looked as if they were lined up to be shot. Well, and if Odhiambo struck the asteroid, it would be the most merciful thing that could be done to them.

“The Odhiambo skipped into Conclave space roughly a hundred ditu ago,” Ghalfin said. Ninety ditu in a serti, so not very long ago at all. “Almost as soon as it entered Conclave space, it reported several explosions and extensive damage.”

“Do we know what caused the explosions?” Gau asked, and nodded toward Oi. “Vnac here told me and Hafte it was an attack.”

“We don’t know what it was,” Ghalfin said. “At entry the Odhiambo was reporting, verbally and by automated monitoring, that all systems were nominal. The next thing we know everything went haywire.”

“Vnac?” Gau said.

“My analysts started looking at data as soon as the damage reports came in, cross-referencing with what we know of the Odhiambo,” Oi said. “The Odhiambo is a lend-lease ship, originally an Ormu freighter. The pattern of damage it reported right after the explosions occurred isn’t consistent with what might happen with a power systems failure. It is consistent with what would happen if the power systems were attacked to cause secondary damage.”

“So an attack,” Gau said.

“Seems likely to me.” Oi motioned to Ghalfin. “Although I will bow to any additional information our colleague here can offer.”

“We’re combing through our own data now to see if anyone or anything else skipped in just before or close to the arrival of the Odhiambo,” Ghalfin said. “We’re back a full sur on the data now and nothing’s pinged.”

Tarsem nodded. “Let’s get back to the current situation.”

“The current situation is that the Odhiambo is heavily damaged and tumbling in Conclave space. The explosions have imparted a small bit of momentum on the ship toward the asteroid, and the asteroid’s native gravity is doing the rest. Left unchecked it will impact in three serti, fifty-five ditu.” The image Ghalfin was showing tracked out and showed the projected path of the Odhiambo toward the Conclave’s headquarters.

“What will the impact damage here?” I asked.

“No habitats, either general or specialized,” Ghalfin said. “We’re not looking at any substantial death toll. But the Odhiambo will impact directly on one of our solar power farms, and several surface-level agricultural domes are nearby, which are at substantial risk of damage. How much damage depends on how the Odhiambo’s power systems fail at impact. Best-case scenario is we lose the solar farm, solely from the impact. Worst-case scenario is the ship’s power systems fail spectacularly in addition to the impact.”

“In which case the asteroid gains a shiny new crater, debris gets thrown far and wide, including potentially into the docking area, damaging other ships, and into other areas of the asteroid, including possibly populated areas,” Oi said. “Which makes the potential death toll a bit more substantial.”

“And the crew of the ship?” Tarsem asked.

“Sixty crew, ten passengers, all part of the diplomatic team from Earth,” Ghalfin said. “The ship’s captain reported six dead, eight seriously wounded from the explosions, most from the engineering department. The dead are still on the ship. The wounded and most of the rest of the crew evacuated the ship via lifepods. The captain, executive officer, and the chief engineer are still aboard.”

“But our diplomats are trapped,” said Regan Byrne.

“That’s what the captain reported,” Ghalfin agreed. “The passenger quarters housing your team are sound but the passageways into their quarters are heavily damaged. There’s no way in or out, without landing on the hull and cutting our way in.”

“The problem with that is that the Odhiambo’s power systems are damaged,” Oi said. “They could go at any time. If we send rescue crews and the ship goes up, we lose our people as well as theirs.”

“You can’t just leave them trapped there,” Byrne said, staring at Oi.

“We have to rationally judge the risks involved,” Oi said, staring back. It turned to face the room. “And we have to make a decision soon.” It pointed to the image of the Odhiambo. “The ship is three and a half serti from impact, but we don’t have that much time. Right now, if we destroy the ship with our defenses, it’s far enough away that we can control the debris and minimize any damage to ourselves and other ships. After that serti, it becomes progressively harder to contain the possible damage. Add to that the fact the ship can go at any time, in which case its destruction is uncontrolled, which makes our risks greater.”

Tarsem turned to Ghalfin. “Loom?” he said.

“Director Oi’s not wrong,” she said. “Controlled destruction of the Odhiambo is the best option and the sooner the better. We cannot allow it to impact, and the longer we wait the more chance the ship’s power systems will rupture.”

“That means potentially sacrificing the diplomats,” I said. “Which is an unacceptable option.”

“I agree,” said Lause, looking at Oi. “If the Conclave doesn’t at least make the attempt to save them, what does that say about us?”

“You’re asking our rescue crews to risk their own lives,” Oi said.

“Which is part of their job,” Lause said.

“Yes, but not stupidly,” Oi replied. It turned to Ghalfin. “Your estimate for the Odhiambo’s power systems to fail, please.”

“In the next serti?” Ghalfin asked.

“Yes.”

“Given the damage we know about, I’d say sixty percent,” Ghalfin said. “Which means realistically the chance is greater, because the damage we know about is the bare minimum possible.”

“We’re asking our people to go to their deaths, almost certainly,” Oi said.

“Ms. Byrne,” Tarsem said. “I want to know your thoughts.”

Byrne took a moment to collect herself. “I can’t tell you I don’t want you to save my people,” she said. “I can’t even tell you that I will entirely understand if you didn’t. What I can say is that if you don’t, I’ll recommend to the governments of Earth that your refusal to act not be a factor in future discussions.”

Tarsem looked at me after the comment. I stared back, silently, knowing that after all this time he would almost certainly know what I thought of Byrne’s realpolitik answer.

“How long until we can have rescue crews on the way?” Tarsem asked Ghalfin.

“They’ve been prepping since the Odhiambo’s first distress call,” Ghalfin said. “They’re ready to go when you want them.”

“I want them,” Tarsem said. “Send them, please.”

Ghalfin nodded, and turned to a subordinate, who handed her a headset conforming to her species. Tarsem turned to Byrne. “We’ll get them out, Regan.”

“Thank you, General,” Byrne said. Her relief flowed off her like a waterfall.

“General, we have a complication,” Ghalfin said.

“What is it?”

“Hold on—” Ghalfin held up a hand while she listened into her headset. “A rescue attempt is already under way.”

“By whom and under what authority?” I asked.

“It’s being undertaken by the Chandler,” Ghalfin said, after a moment of listening to her headset. “It’s a human ship, from the Colonial Union. It skipped in right around the time we started this meeting.”

I looked over to Tarsem, who was smiling at me. I knew what that meant. It meant, Now aren’t you glad I decided to meet with the Colonials despite your advice.

“What do you want to do now?” Ghalfin asked Tarsem.

“I want you to tell the Chandler they have a serti to complete their rescue and after that we’re vaporizing the Odhiambo for the safety of our headquarters,” Tarsem said. “And I want you to tell them that we’re sending a crew to assist if they need it and to observe if they don’t.” Ghalfin nodded and spoke into her headset.

Then Tarsem turned to me.

“Don’t tell me, I already know,” I said. I got up.

“Where are you going?” Byrne asked, looking up at me.

“I’m going with our rescue team,” I said. “To observe.”

“You might blow up,” Oi said.

“Then the Earth knows I blew up helping to save their people.” And knows the Conclave didn’t let the Colonial Union take on all the risk alone. Or sacrifice, I thought, but chose not to say. I knew that was part of Tarsem’s math. I nodded to those in the room and made my way to the exit.

“Hafte,” Tarsem said, and I paused at the doorway. I looked back to him. “Come back alive, please.”

I smiled and left.

*   *   *

“All right, this pilot is just showing off,” Torm Aul, the rescue shuttle pilot, said to me, as we approached the Odhiambo and the Chandler. The rescue shuttle contained me, Aul, zis co-pilot Liam Hul, whose seat I was currently occupying while Hul loitered in the general cabin, and six fellow members of the Fflict species as the rescue team. The Fflict recognized five genders: male, female, zhial, yal, and neuter. Aul was zhial, and ze liked zis pronouns accurately stated. I would too, in zis position.

“Which pilot?” I asked.

“The pilot of the Chandler,” Aul said, pointing at the monitor that gave zim zis external view. “The Odhiambo is tumbling chaotically so the Chandler is matching its movements.”

“Why would it do that?” I asked.

“It’s safer for the people running the rescue,” Aul said. “Makes the two ships stable relative to each other. But it’s difficult to do because the Chandler pilot has to track the Odhiambo’s movements precisely.”

“Once the ship started tumbling it should continue to do so in the same manner,” I said. “I think that’s close to a thermodynamic law.”

“Yeah, but that assumes no additional input of momentum,” Aul said, and pointed to the Odhiambo in the monitor. “But the Odhiambo is damaged and venting all sorts of things. And we can’t tell when those venting events will happen. No, it’s a mess. So the Chandler pilot’s tracking all of that in as close to real time as it can.”

“Could you do it?”

“If I wanted to show off, sure,” Aul said. I smiled at this. “But I wouldn’t do it with anything larger than this shuttle. Whoever the Chandler’s pilot is, it’s doing it with an entire ship. If it messes up, you’re going to have two ships tumbling down on headquarters, not just one.”

“We need to tell them that,” I said.

“Trust me, Councilor, they’re way ahead of you,” Aul said.

“Hail the Chandler, please,” I said. “Tell them we’ve come to offer assistance if they wish it.”

Aul did as ze was told, muttering into a headset in zis own language while I watched the two human ships tumble in tandem.

“The captain of the Chandler is named Neva Balla, it sends its compliments and says that it requires no assistance at this point,” Aul said, after a moment. “It says that they are under some time pressure and incorporating us into their plans would just add to the pressure. It asks us to hold position at twenty klicks relative—that’s about twenty-five chu—and to monitor the Odhiambo for power surges or rapidly rising temperatures.”

“Can we do that?”

“Maintaining a twenty-five-chu relative distance is something we can do on auto pilot. And this shuttle’s packed with a good amount of sensory apparatus. We’re good.”

I nodded up to the monitor. “Any way we can stabilize the image of the ships so they don’t look like they’re tumbling? I want to be able to see what’s happening without getting vertigo.”

“No problem.”

“If the captain of the Odhiambo is still on the ship, ask it to send us a real-time data feed, please,” I said.

“Will do.”

“Also, Captain Neva Balla is ‘she,’ not ‘it.’”

“You sure?”

“I’ve met her before,” I said. “Humans generally prefer to not be called ‘it’ whenever possible.”

“The things you learn about people while you’re on the job,” Aul said.

*   *   *

“Here we go,” Aul said, nodding to the monitor. On it a lone figure stood in an open airlock on the Chandler, directly across from the Odhiambo. The distance between the two ships was less than thirty plint—about fifty meters in human measurement. Aul was right: Whoever was piloting the Chandler had impressive control.

The figure in the airlock continued to stand, as if waiting for something.

“Not a good idea to run out the clock,” Aul said, under zis breath.

A stab of light shot from the Chandler, striking across and at a small angle from the figure in the airlock.

“They’re firing on the ship,” I said.

“Interesting,” Aul said.

“Why is it interesting?”

“They need to cut into the hull,” Aul said. Ze pointed at the beam. “Normally for a rescue we’d send a crew over with some particle beam cutters to get through the hull. We have a couple here on the shuttle, in fact. But it takes time. Time they don’t have. So instead they’re just burning a big damn hole in the hull with a beam.”

“It doesn’t look very safe,” I said, watching. A venting blast of air puffed out of the Odhiambo, crystalizing in the vacuum wherever the beam didn’t turn it into plasma.

“It’s definitely not,” Aul said. “If there’s someone in the cabin they’re cutting into, they probably just died of asphyxiation. That is, if they weren’t vaporized by the beam.”

“If they weren’t careful they could have blown up the ship.”

“The ship’s going to blow up anyway, Councilor,” Aul said. “No reason to try to be dainty.”

The beam shut off as abruptly as it began, leaving a three-plint hole in the Odhiambo’s hull. In the monitor, the figure in the Chandler airlock launched itself toward the hole, trailing a cable behind it.

“Okay, now I get it,” Aul said. “They’re running a cable from the Chandler to the Odhiambo. That’s how they’re going to get them off the ship.”

“Across a vacuum,” I said.

“Wait for it,” Aul said. The figure disappeared into the Odhiambo. After a moment, the cable, which had drifted slightly, tightened up. Then a large container started moving across the cable.

“I’m guessing vacuum suits, harnesses, and automatic pulleys in that,” Aul said. “Get them suited up, secure them in a harness, and let the pulleys do all the work.”

“You sound like you approve.”

“I do,” Aul said. “This is a pretty simple rescue plan with pretty simple tools. When you’re trying to save people, simpler is better. A lot fewer things to go wrong.”

“As long as the Chandler can keep in sync with the Odhiambo.”

“Yes,” Aul agreed. “There is that. This plan has all its complications in one place, at least.”

There were several moments of nothing obvious going on. I took the time to look at the co-pilot monitor set, on which we were tracking the Odhiambo’s power and heat signatures. No excitement there either, which was a good thing. “You might suggest to the Odhiambo’s captain that any remaining crew might want to disembark as soon as possible,” I said to Aul.

“With all due respect, Councilor,” Aul said. “I’m not going to suggest to a captain that it abandon its ship a single second before it makes that decision on its own.”

“Fair enough.” I glanced back over to the monitor with the Odhiambo on it. “Look,” I said, pointing. The first of the diplomats was making its way across the line, swaddled in a highly reflective vacuum suit, chest in a harness, trailing behind a pulley.

“That’s one,” Aul said. “Nine more to go.”

The Chandler collected seven before the Odhiambo blew itself up.

There was almost no warning. I glanced over as the seventh diplomat disappeared into the Chandler’s airlock and saw the feeds on the co-pilot’s monitor spike into critical territory. I yelled to Aul to warn the Chandler just as the external monitor showed a wrenching jerk, severing the cable between the two ships. Aul zoomed out the picture in time to catch the eruption on the Odhiambo, mid-ships.

Aul yelled in zis headset and suddenly the image in the monitor began spinning wildly—or appeared so, as the monitor had stopped tracking with the two ships’ movements and had reoriented itself to our perspective. The Odhiambo had begun tearing itself apart. The Chandler had begun moving away from its doomed compatriot.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Aul was yelling at the monitor. “Move it, you stupid shit-for-brains, you’re too close.” I had no doubt ze was yelling at the Chandler’s pilot.

And ze was right; the Chandler was too close. The Odhiambo had now split in two and the pieces were moving independently of each other, with the fore portion now careening dangerously close to the Chandler.

“They’re going to hit!” Aul yelled.

And yet they didn’t; the Chandler’s pilot yawed and skewed its ship, moving it across three axes in a mad ballet to avoid collision. The separation between the ships widened, too slow for my taste: fifty plint, eighty, a hundred fifty, three hundred, one chu, three chu, five chu, and then the Chandler stabilized its movement relative to Conclave headquarters and began to pull away at speed from the Odhiambo.

“You should be dead!” Aul yelled at the monitor. “You should be dead, your ship should be dead, you should all be dead! You magnificent shit-eater!”

I looked over to Aul. “Are you all right?”

“No,” ze said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve soiled myself.” Ze looked over and on zis head was an expression that I assumed was of sheer amazement. “That should not have happened. Everyone on the Chandler should be dead. The Chandler should be an expanding cloud of debris. That was the single most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life, Councilor. I’d be surprised if it weren’t the single most amazing thing you’ve ever seen, too.”

“It might be in the top few,” I allowed.

“I don’t know who that pilot is, but I am going to buy that shit-eater all the drinks it wants.”

I intended to respond but Aul held up a hand, listening into the headset. Then it looked up at the monitor. “You have got to be kidding me,” ze said.

“What is it?”

“Those three other diplomats and the Chandler crewman,” ze said. “They’re still alive.” Aul spoke into zis headset and zoomed in on the aft portion of the Odhiambo, where the Chandler had burned its hole through the hull.

And as we zoomed in, we saw it: a reflecting suit, launching out from the hole, tumbling into space, followed by a second, followed by a pair, holding on to each other – the final diplomat and the crewman from the Chandler. The Odhiambo spun away from them, slowly.

“How much breathable air do you think they have?” I asked Aul.

“Not a lot,” ze said.

I glanced over to the co-pilot’s monitor, which still erroneously showed the Odhiambo as a single unit. The fore of the ship was rapidly cooling; all power had shut down and heat and power were venting into space.

The aft of the ship, on the other hand, was warm and getting warmer as I watched.

“I don’t think they have much time,” I said.

Aul followed my gaze to the co-pilot’s monitor. “I think you’re right,” ze said, then looked up at me. “You didn’t bring a vacuum suit with you, by any chance, Councilor?”

“I did not,” I said. “And the very fact of your question makes me begin to regret that fact very much.”

“It’s fine,” Aul said. “It just means I have to do this without a co-pilot.” Ze pressed a button on his pilot monitor. “Attention, team,” ze said. “You have two ditu to get on your vacuum suits. In three ditu I’m pumping the air out of the hold and opening her up. Be ready to take on passengers at speed. Have emergency air and heat prepared. These people are going to be cold and near asphyxiated. If they die once you got them, I’m leaving you out here.”

“Inspiring,” I said, after ze had finished.

“It works,” Aul said. “I’ve only had to leave them out here once. Now, slide in a little more, Councilor. I have to seal up this compartment. Unless you want to try holding your breath for a while.”

*   *   *

“The four of them haven’t drifted too far from each other,” Aul said, as we were underway, two ditu later. Ze put an image on the main screen showing the positions of the diplomats. “And two of them are together so we really only have three targets.” A curving line swept through all three positions. “We open the gate, bring our speed down, and literally let them drift into the hold. Three targets, three ditu, we go home, we’re heroes for the sur.”

“You’ll curse us if you put like that,” I said.

“Don’t be superstitious,” Aul said.

The aft portion of the Odhiambo erupted.

“Oh, come on,” Aul yelled.

“Give me tracking, please,” I said. Aul transferred the screen to the co-pilot monitor. The main portion of the Odhiambo’s aft was still spinning away from the diplomats, but a large chunk of debris was now launching itself in a different direction entirely. I watched as the shuttle’s computer plotted its trajectory.

“This debris is going to hit these two,” I said, pointing to the paired diplomats.

“How long?” Aul asked.

“Three ditu,” I said.

Aul seemed to think about it for a moment. “All right, fine,” ze said.

“All right, fine, what?” I asked.

“You might want to make your center of gravity as low as possible. The inertial and gravity systems in this thing are pretty reliable, but you never know.”

I hunkered down. “What are you about to do, Aul?”

“It’s probably best you wait until it happens. If it works, it will be really great.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then it’ll be over quickly.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“If it’s all the same, Councilor, don’t talk to me until it’s over. I need to concentrate.”

I shut up. Aul pulled up the diplomats’ positions on zis pilot screen and overlaid the trajectory of the debris. Then ze started moving the shuttle forward. Aul stared at zis pilot screen, typed furiously into it, and never looked up.

I on the other hand looked at the external view monitor and saw a distant rising mass of debris, and our shuttle moving inexorably closer to it. We appeared to be on a suicide mission straight to the heart of that debris. I glanced over to Aul but ze was in focus, all attention drawn to the screen.

At almost the last possible instant I saw on the monitor a white starburst which I registered—too late!—as a vacuum suit we were going to hit head on, just as the debris rose like a leviathan below us. I sucked in a breath to shout, saw the images on the monitor streak, and then clenched for the violence of the debris smashing into our shuttle from below. As Aul promised, it would be over quickly.

“Huh,” Aul said, and spoke into zis headset. “You get them? Yes. Yes. Right. Good.” Ze looked over to me. “Well, that worked,” ze said.

“What worked?” I asked.

“High-speed rotation around the target,” Aul said. “It takes a tiny bit of time for the shuttle’s inertial field generators to register a new entity and adjust its velocity. If I picked up our new passengers on a straight path at the speed I was going, they would have turned into jelly against the interior of the shuttle. So I rotated us very quickly, to give the field just enough time to register their presence and match them to us.”

“Oh.”

“That’s the short version,” Aul said. Ze was entering commands into zis pilot monitor, presumably to pick up the two remaining diplomats. “I also had to tell the shuttle what speed I wanted the targets to have relative to the interior of the shuttle, and burn off the momentum we suddenly had dumped into the system. And such. Point is, it worked.”

“Where’s the debris?”

“Behind and above us. It missed us with a couple plint to spare.”

“You almost killed us.”

“Almost,” Aul agreed.

“Please don’t do that again.”

“The good news is, now I don’t have to.”

Picking up the other two human diplomats was the very definition of anticlimactic.

As we headed back to the Conclave’s asteroid, Aul restored air to the cabin and opened up the pilot’s compartment. “One of the rescued diplomats would like to speak to you,” Aul said.

“All right.” I ducked and found my way to the main cabin. As I did so a Fflict nudged past me, nodding; the co-pilot, anxious to get back on duty. I ducked again and entered the cabin.

The rescue team were busily attending to the diplomats, all of whom were covered in self-heating blankets and sucking air through masks. All except one, who was covered only in what I now recognized was a Colonial Defense Forces combat unitard. The unitard’s owner was kneeling, speaking to one of the diplomats, a woman with dark, curled hair. She was holding his hand with a grip that I imagined would be uncomfortable for anyone else but a genetically engineered super soldier, which is what the unitard’s owner was. His green skin gave him away.

The soldier saw me and motioned to the woman, who stood up, shakily. She removed her mask and shrugged off her blankets—a bad idea because she started shivering immediately—and walked over to me, hand extended. The soldier stood with her, slightly behind.

“Councilor Sorvalh,” the diplomat said. “I’m Danielle Lowen, of the United States Department of State. Thank you so much for rescuing me and these other members of my team.”

“Not at all, Ms. Lowen,” I said. “Welcome to the Conclave’s headquarters. I am only sorry your entrance was so … dramatic.”

Lowen managed a shaky smile. “When you put it that way, so am I.” She began shivering violently. I glanced over at the soldier, who picked up the hint, stepped away, and returned with a blanket. Lowen accepted it gratefully and slumped slightly into the solider, who bore her weight easily.

“Of course, we of the Conclave cannot take all the credit for your rescue,” I said, nodding at the soldier.

“I regret to say that I was only seventy percent successful with my own rescue attempt,” the soldier said.

“No, you were one hundred percent successful,” I said. “You got seven safely to the Chandler, and you knew that if you got the other three away from the ship, we would come find you.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I did hope.”

“How lovely,” I said. I turned to Lowen. “And you, Ms. Lowen? Did you hope as well?”

“I trusted,” Lowen said, and looked at the soldier. “It’s not the first time this one’s tossed me out into space.”

“I was with you the whole way the last time, too,” the soldier said.

“You were,” Lowen said. “That doesn’t mean we have to keep doing it.”

“I will keep that in mind,” the soldier said.

“The two of you have an interesting history, clearly,” I said.

“We do,” Lowen said, and then motioned to the soldier. “Councilor Sorvalh, if I may introduce you to—”

“Lieutenant Harry Wilson,” I said, finishing her sentence.

Lowen looked at the both of us. “You two have met before, also?”

“We have,” I said.

“I’m popular,” Wilson said, to Lowen.

“That’s not the word I would have used,” she said, and smiled.

“If memory serves, the last time we met there were also exploding starships,” I said, to Wilson.

“That’s odd,” Lowen said. “The last time I saw Harry, there were exploding starships, too.”

“It’s coincidental,” Wilson said, looking at Lowen and then at me.

I smiled at him. “Is it?”

PART THREE

“I didn’t expect you to challenge me so much on my request to come back alive,” Tarsem Gau said to me, as I entered his office after the rescue mission.

Tarsem’s private office was, as ever, cramped; after years in spaceships and their tiny spaces Tarsem still felt most comfortable in close quarters. Fortunately I was not claustrophobic, and I agreed with the political wisdom of his personal office being smaller than that of even the most undistinguished Conclave representative. The office was even smaller than the one given to the human envoy, which I suspect might shock Ms. Byrne. Fortunately Tarsem kept a sitting pedestal for me so I did not have to crimp my neck.

“If you don’t want me to almost die, you shouldn’t task me to missions where dying is a real possibility,” I remarked, sitting. “Or at the very least don’t put me on missions where the pilot is a mad Fflict.”

“I could have zim disciplined, if you would like.”

“What I would like is for you to give zim a commendation for quick thinking and admirable piloting, and never put me on another of zis shuttles.”

Tarsem smiled. “You have no sense of adventure.”

“I do have a sense of adventure,” I said. “It’s overawed by my sense of self-preservation.”

“I don’t mind that.”

“Nor do you seem to mind testing the proposition, from time to time.”

“I don’t want you to be bored.”

“I am, alas, never that,” I said. “And now with chatty preliminaries out of the way, I want to impress upon you what an utter disaster this entire event has been for us.”

“I thought it went rather well,” Tarsem said. “The humans were saved, the Odhiambo was successfully destroyed without collateral damage to headquarters or other ships, and thanks to the actions of your mad Fflict in rescuing the stragglers, we remain in the good graces of Earth, and even got a tiny bit of credit with the Colonial Union diplomats for rescuing one of their own.”

“A thin skin of self-congratulation on a rather messy pudding,” I countered. “Which includes the very likely fact of an enemy action against the Odhiambo in our own space, which we neither saw coming nor could defend against, the fact that now we are no longer able to keep separate the humans from the Colonial Union and the Earth, as we intended to do for these discussions, and the fact that all of this plays perfectly well into the plans of those who are even now gathering against you in the Grand Assembly.”

“I seem to recall you arguing to save the human diplomats,” Tarsem said. “And me taking that advice.”

“You were going to attempt to save the diplomats regardless of what I advised,” I said, and Tarsem smiled at this. “And the decision to save them was more important than mere politics. Nevertheless, saving them will be seen by your enemies as proof of your regard for the humans, not a sign of basic decency.”

“I don’t see why I should care how they see it. Anyone with intelligence will understand what happened.”

“Anyone who isn’t blinded by ambition and frustration with the Conclave will understand it. But those who are blinded will choose not to see it, as you well know. They will also choose to see Colonials rescuing the earthlings as hugely significant, which it is.”

“You don’t think any ship so close would have made the attempt to rescue those diplomats?”

“No,” I said. “I think the humans might have made the attempt regardless. These particular humans, at the very least.”

“You think well of the Colonials.”

“I think well of Ambassador Abumwe and her team, including their CDF liaison,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust their government with a cooking fire, and I don’t advise you do, either, no matter what comes out of Ambassador Abumwe’s mouth in your meeting with her.”

“Noted,” Tarsem said.

“Even the two sets of humans arriving within a serti of each other will be augured as consequential,” I said, returning to the topic at hand. “And this was an easily avoidable blunder, as I warned you not to meet with the Colonials.”

“And if I had not agreed to, then all the humans would likely be dead because our rescue mission might have failed. And you dead with them, I might add.”

“You wouldn’t have sent me on the rescue mission if the Colonials hadn’t been there,” I pointed out. “And if the humans from Earth were dead that would indeed be tragic, but it would not then be leverage for your enemies.”

“The fact their ship was destroyed in our space would be.”

“That’s something we could finesse with findings and if necessary with resignations. Torm Aul would not be pleased to be out of a job but that’s easily dealt with.”

“This line of conversation is the sort of thing that makes me smile when people who don’t know you praise your gentility to me,” Tarsem said.

“You don’t keep me around for gentility. You keep me around because I don’t lie to you about your situation. And your situation is now worse than it was when we woke up this morning. It’s going to get worse from here.”

“Should I send both sets of humans away?”

“It’s too late for that now. Everyone will assume you’ve had clandestine meetings with both groups and your enemies will intimate you had that meeting with both at once, because they are functionally the same in their eyes.”

“So no matter what, we’re damned.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes we are. Although as always I am merely providing you with information. It’s what you do with it that counts.”

“I could resign.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, I could resign,” Tarsem said. “You said before that I was most effective when I was building the Conclave, when I was a symbol of a great idea, and not an administrator of a bureaucracy. All right, fine. I resign, stay a symbol, and let someone else be the administrator.”

“Who?”

“You could take the job,” Tarsem said.

“What in this benighted universe gave you the impression that I would ever want it?” I asked, genuinely shocked.

“You might be good at it.”

“And I might be appalling at it.”

“You’ve done pretty well so far.”

“That’s because I know my talents,” I said. “I’m the advisor. I’m the councilor. I’m occasionally the knife you slide into someone’s side. You use me well, Tarsem, but you use me.”

“Then who might you suggest?”

“No one,” I said.

“I’m not going to live forever, you know. Sooner or later it has to be someone else who is in charge.”

“Yes,” I said. “And until that moment I’m going to make sure it will remain you.”

“That’s loyalty,” Tarsem said.

“I am loyal to you, yes,” I replied. “But even more than that I am loyal to the Conclave. To what you’ve built. To what we’ve built, you and I and every member state has built, even the stupid ones who are now trying to tear it apart for their own gain. And right now, being loyal to the Conclave means keeping you where you are. And keeping certain people from making confidence votes in the Grand Assembly.”

“You think we’re that close to it,” Tarsem said.

“I think a lot matters in how the next few sur play out.”

“What do you suggest?”

“At this point you have to take Ambassador Abumwe’s report,” I said. “You have yourself locked into that action.”

“Yes.”

“Abumwe expects to make it to you directly.”

“She does,” Tarsem said. “I imagine she expects you will be there, as well as Vnac Oi, either in person or via surreptitious listening device.”

“She does not expect the report to stay private for long.”

“These things rarely do.”

“Then I suggest getting to that point a little earlier than expected,” I said.

*   *   *

“You still think this is a good idea,” Vnac Oi said to me.

“It’s a useful idea,” I said. “This is a thing separate from good.”

Oi and I sat in the far reaches of the Grand Assembly chamber, on a level typically reserved for observers and assistants to representatives, the latter of whom would occasionally swoop down into the inner recesses of the chamber, like comets in a long-term orbit, to do their representative’s bidding. Normally when I was in the chamber I sat on the center podium as Tarsem did his regular question-and-answer period, counting heads. This time, Tarsem was not on the podium, and I wanted a slightly different vantage for the head counting.

The Grand Assembly chamber was filled. Tarsem sat, alone, on the bench usually reserved for the chancellor and her staff; for this particular address the chancellor had been demoted to her usual representative bench and her staff milled at the level just below mine. I saw some of their expressions; they were vaguely scandalized by their demotions.

On the level below that were the humans. The Colonial Union diplomats sat on the side of the arc; the humans from Earth filled the other side. There was a substantial gap between them.

“We still don’t know what’s in this report,” Oi said.

“A fact I find very impressive, considering who you are,” I replied.

“Yes, well,” Oi said, and made a gesture of annoyance. “Obviously we made an attempt.”

“What did you do?”

“We tried to infiltrate the Chandler’s system,” Oi said. “We got shunted into a sandbox with a single file on it, with the title ‘For Vnac Oi.’”

“Dare I ask what was in it?”

“A video clip of a human exposing its posterior and the words ‘Wait like everybody else.’”

“It’s nice they thought of you.”

“It’s less nice that their computer systems are now firewalled too well for us to get into them.”

“You have other sources in the Colonial Union, I’m sure.”

“I do,” Oi said. “But not for this. This is why this is not a good idea, Hafte. You have no idea what this human is about to say. You don’t know what damage it can do.”

“It’s the general’s choice to do it this way, not mine,” I said, which was technically true.

“Please.” Oi gave me a small look. “This has your smell all over it. Don’t pretend I don’t know who put this idea into his head.”

“I put lots of ideas into his head,” I said. “And so do you. That’s our role. He decides what to do with them. That’s his role. And look.” I pointed. Ambassador Abumwe had emerged from behind the central point and was moving to the lectern that had been provided for her. “It’s time.”

“Not a good idea,” Oi repeated.

“Maybe not,” I allowed. “We’re about to find out.”

The sounds of hundreds of species of intelligent beings quieted as Abumwe reached the lectern and placed, unusually, several sheaves of paper on them. Usually human diplomats kept their notes on handheld computers they called PDAs. This information was apparently sensitive enough that Abumwe chose to keep it in a format difficult to replicate electronically. Next to me I heard Oi make a sound of annoyance; it had seen the paper too.

“To General Tarsem Gau, Chancellor Ristin Lause, and the representatives of the constituent nations of the Conclave, I, Ambassador Ode Abumwe of the Colonial Union, send honorable greeting and offer humble thanks for this opportunity to address you,” Abumwe began. In headsets, her words were being translated into hundreds of different languages. “I wish that these circumstances were happier.

“As many of you know, very recently information has come into the possession of many of your governments. This information appears to detail both historical records relating to Colonial Union activity against many of you, and against the Conclave generally. It also purports to outline future plans against the Conclave and several of your nations generally, as well as against the Earth, the original home of humanity.

“Much of the information in this report—specifically information relating to past action—is true.”

There was an eruption of noise in the chamber to this. I understood why and yet I was not impressed. Abumwe had essentially admitted that things we already knew to be true were in fact true; that the Colonial Union had warred against many of us, and against the Conclave. This was not news to anyone, or should not have been. I scanned the room for the affronted, as opposed to the unimpressed.

“However—however,” Abumwe continued, holding up a hand for silence. “I have not come here to either justify or to apologize for past action. What I am here to do is to warn you that the other information in the report is false, and that it represents a danger to all of us. To the Colonial Union, to the Conclave, and to the nations of Earth.

“We believe, we have believed, that each of us is the other’s enemy. Let me suggest today that there is another enemy out there, one that threatens human and Conclave nations alike. That this enemy, though small in numbers, has been extraordinarily adept in strategy, using dramatic action for outsized effect, terrorizing each of us while allowing us to believe we are terrorizing each other. That this enemy means to destroy both the Colonial Union and the Conclave for its own dogmatic ends.”

Abumwe looked up to her staff two levels down from me and nodded. One of them, who I recognized as Hart Schmidt, tapped the PDA he was holding. Beside me Oi grunted and pulled out its own computer. “I’ll be damned,” it said softly, and then was entirely lost into its screen.

“I have just authorized my staff to release to Vnac Oi, your director of intelligence, a complete accounting by the Colonial Union of our knowledge of this mutual enemy, a group which calls itself Equilibrium,” Abumwe said. “This group is comprised of members of species unaffiliated with either the Conclave or the Colonial Union, including, prominently, the Rraey. But it also has active in it traitors from other governments and nations, including Tyson Ocampo, former undersecretary of state for the Colonial Union, Ake Bae of the Eyr, Utur Nove of the Elpri, and Paola Gaddis of Earth. Their schemes include, among many others, a planned assassination of General Gau.”

The chamber erupted in chaos.

I scanned quickly to where I knew Unli Hado sat. He was up from his seat, screaming. Around him several other representatives were screaming and gesturing at him. I scanned again, to the Eyr representative, Ohn Sca. Sca was pushing past several other representatives, trying to exit the chamber; other representatives were pushing back, trying to force Sca back into its seat. I glanced up to the humans; a couple of the ones from Earth were yelling at the ones from the Colonial Union. In the middle, three figures were leaning into each other, apparently conferring. I recognized them as Danielle Lowen, Harry Wilson, and Hart Schmidt.

“Oi,” I said, over the din.

“She’s not lying,” Oi said, still looking at its screen. “About the file, I mean. It’s huge. And it’s here.”

“Send it out,” I said.

“What?” Oi looked up at me.

“Send it out,” I repeated. “All of it.”

“I haven’t had time to mine it.”

“You didn’t have time to mine the Ocampo data either,” I said.

“That’s not a recommendation for sending this out.”

“The longer you have it solely in your possession, the better position you give those who just now got accused that we are massaging the data, in collusion with the Colonial Union. Send it out. Now.”

“To whom?”

“To everyone.”

Oi’s tendrils danced across its screen. “I don’t think this is a good idea, either,” it said.

I turned my attention back to Abumwe, who was waiting silently at the lectern. I was beginning to wonder if I should have assigned her a security detail. I also wondered when she was going to speak again.

That, at least, was answered momentarily. “None of us is innocent,” she said, forcefully. The chaos began to settle. “None of us is innocent,” she said again. “The Colonial Union and the Conclave, those from Earth and those outside of our governments. All of us have people who saw weaknesses, who saw pressure points, and who saw ways to use our own ways and stubbornness against us. This threat is real. This threat is both practical and existential. If it isn’t met by all of us, all of us are likely to be destroyed.”

“You are the enemy!” someone shouted to Abumwe.

“I may be,” Abumwe said. “But right now, I’m not the enemy you should worry about.” She walked off the podium, to a rising chorus of anger.

*   *   *

“How dare you,” Unli Hado spat at Abumwe.

We were in the conference room adjacent to Tarsem’s public office, the impressive one he used for formal events. In the room were Tarsem, me, Oi, Lause, Abumwe, Hado, Sca, Byrne, Lowen, and Harry Wilson; essentially, representatives of every group called out in Abumwe’s speech. Tarsem had us all pulled into the room immediately after the speech.

“How dare you,” Hado said again. “How dare you question my loyalty, or the loyalty of my nation to the Conclave. How dare you suggest that any of my people would conspire against it, or conspire with you.”

“I didn’t dare, Representative Hado,” Abumwe said. She sat at the conference room table, impassive. “I merely told the truth.”

“The truth!” Hado said. “As if the Colonial Union had ever bothered with that particular concept.”

“Where is Utur Nove, Representative Hado?” Abumwe asked. “Our information about him tells us that he was a diplomat of some note among the Elpri. If you doubt the information that we’ve provided, why not ask him?”

“I’m not obliged to stay apprised of the whereabouts of every member of the Elpri diplomatic corps,” Hado said.

“That may be, but it’s of interest to me,” Oi said. “And I’ve just looked at the cached version of his information. We have Utur Nove allegedly retired for several Elpri years, and offered a sinecure at a research foundation. The foundation’s contact information for Nove has him ‘on sabbatical,’ with no additional information.”

“Are you serious, Director Oi?” Hado said. “The absence of information is not the same as the presence of information. I knew Utur Nove. There is nothing in his past that even suggests he would act against Elpri or the Conclave.”

“Not against Elpri, I’m sure,” Oi said. “But against the Conclave?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you have been immensely critical of the Conclave recently. It’s not unreasonable to assume you are offering a perspective shared by your government at large.”

“I have been critical of them!” Hado flung an arm in the direction of Abumwe, who continued to sit impassively. “These humans, who represent the single largest material threat to the Conclave in our history. Or have you forgotten Roanoke, Oi?” Hado turned to Tarsem. “Have you, General?”

“I don’t recall the Colonial Union pretending to be an ally, Hado,” Oi said.

“Do that again,” Hado said, turning his attention back to Oi. “Accuse me of treason one more time, Director Oi.”

“Enough, both of you,” Tarsem said. Hado and Oi quieted. “No one will accuse anyone here of treason, or of faithlessness to the Conclave.”

“It’s too late for that, General,” Sca said, speaking for the first time. It glowered at Abumwe.

“Then let me say it plainly,” Tarsem said. “I have not accused either you or Unli Hado of treason or faithlessness, nor will I. In this particular case, this is a statement that matters.”

“Thank you, General,” Sca said, after a moment. Hado said nothing.

Tarsem turned to Abumwe. “You’ve dropped a bomb on us, haven’t you?”

“I offered to share this information with you alone, General,” Abumwe said.

“Yes you did, but that’s not the relevant part,” Tarsem said. “The relevant part is that you’ve accused us of having traitors in our midst.”

“Yes,” Abumwe said. “Traitors. And spies. And opportunists. And all of the above, in one or more combinations. Just like we have.” Abumwe nodded to Byrne and Lowen. “Just like they have. But that’s not the real problem, General. There have always been traitors and spies and opportunists. Our current problem is that all of our traitors and spies and opportunists have found each other and decided to work against us, for their own ends.”

“And what do you propose we do about it?” Oi asked Abumwe.

“I am not proposing we do anything about it,” Abumwe said, and turned back to Tarsem. “Allow me to be blunt, General.”

“By all means,” Tarsem said.

“We need to be clear why I am here,” Abumwe said, turning her attention back to Oi. “I am not here because the Colonial Union feels fondly toward the Conclave or because we believe sharing this information will allow our two unions to move in a more friendly direction.” Abumwe motioned to Hado, who gave every impression of being offended that a human would dare to bring attention his way. “Representative Hado may be wrong about his obvious suspicions concerning this information, but he’s not wrong that the Colonial Union has been a material threat to you. We have been.”

“Thank you,” Hado said, and then immediately appeared to realize the inappropriateness of his comment.

“It’s nothing I need to be thanked for,” Abumwe said, and I admired the subtle stomp of the statement, adding to Hado’s embarrassment. “I am merely stating an obvious fact. This isn’t an overture or a thawing of relations. I am here because we have no other choice but to share this information with you. If we allow the Equilibrium’s lies about our intentions to spread unchallenged, two things are very likely to happen. One,” Abumwe motioned again to Hado, “he or someone like him would be demanding the Conclave attack and destroy the Colonial Union.”

“Which it could do,” Sca said.

“We do not disagree,” Abumwe said. “But the cost of doing so would be high, and it would not be nearly as easy as some people would want to suggest it is, despite the Colonial Union’s current situation with regard to the Earth.” She looked at Tarsem directly. “Humans have a term called ‘pyrrhic victory,’ sir.”

“‘Another such victory and we are undone,’” Tarsem said.

“You’re familiar with the term, then.”

“It pays to know one’s enemy.”

“No doubt,” Abumwe said. “And no doubt you are aware that we know you as well as you know us. You could destroy us. But we would take you with us.”

“Not all of us,” Hado said.

“We would take the Conclave,” Abumwe said, looking directly at Hado again. “Which is the only enemy here that matters, Representative Hado. And that is the second thing. Once we have bloodied the Conclave, diminished its vaunted reputation of being too big to fail, and have bled the fear of it out into the vacuum of the stars, the Conclave itself will crack.” She pointed rather than motioned to Hado. “This one or someone like him will do it. Especially if, during this struggle with the Colonial Union, the Conclave moves to bring the Earth into its ranks.”

“We have no official interest in joining the Conclave,” Lowen said.

“Of course you don’t,” Abumwe said, looking at her. “At this point why would you, because at the moment you’re getting the benefits of an association with the Conclave without any of the obligation. But if the Conclave and the Colonial Union go to war, you will start to worry that we will come to you and take what you used to give to us: soldiers. And then you’ll ask to join the Conclave. And that will be the leverage someone like Representative Hado needs.”

“Again we come to my alleged treason,” Hado said.

“No, not treason, Representative Hado,” Abumwe said. “Allow me to give you the compliment of assuming you are too intelligent for that. No, I imagine you, or someone like you, will position yourself as the savior of the Conclave, someone to rescue it from the shadow of itself that it’s become. And if you can’t get enough other members to come along, then perhaps you’ll break away, with a few other like-minded nations, and call yourself the New Conclave or something. And after that, it won’t take long. Because while you are too intelligent to commit treason, Representative Hado, I sense that you are not nearly intelligent enough to realize how your ambitions outweigh your ability to keep four hundred species together. Once again, bluntly: You’re not good enough, sir. Only one person in this room is.”

I glanced over to Oi, who glanced back. I knew it was enjoying the dressing-down Hado was getting from a representative of the species he hated the most.

“How arrogant of you to assume so much about me in these few ditu, Ambassador,” Hado said.

“I didn’t,” Abumwe said. “We have a file on you.” She turned to Sca. “And on you. And on every diplomat for every nation we know has a representative in Equilibrium, including our own. It’s all in the report.”

“I’d like to return to this report,” Tarsem said.

“Of course,” Abumwe replied.

“The existence of this report implied that you have a spy in Equilibrium, and have had for some time. Which makes me curious as to why you chose now to give us this information, if this group has represented a threat to both of us.”

“Again I ask permission to be blunt.”

“Ambassador Abumwe, at this point I cannot imagine you being otherwise.”

“If Equilibrium had never done its own data dump, we never would have shared this,” Abumwe said. “We would have been happy to take the information and shape it, and Equilibrium, to our own needs. I reiterate that we are not sharing this information to be friendly, General.”

“Understood.”

“But as to our spy, the fact of the matter is that we didn’t have a spy. Equilibrium made an error and took a hostage it couldn’t control. That hostage was smarter than his captors. He stole their data and one of their ships and brought both to us.”

“Out of loyalty to the Colonial Union?”

“No,” Harry Wilson said. “Mostly because Equilibrium pissed him off.”

“Before we commit to trusting this information, perhaps we should consider the source,” Hado said. “Where is this so-called source of yours?”

“As it happens, he’s the pilot of the Chandler,” Abumwe said.

Hado turned to Tarsem. “Then I move he is brought here for questioning.”

“It’s not that simple,” Wilson said.

“Why?” Hado said, to Wilson. “Is he somehow incapable of taking a shuttle ride?”

Wilson smiled at this for some reason.

*   *   *

“General Gau, Councilor Sorvalh, Representative Hado, and Ms. Lowen, allow me to introduce to you Rafe Daquin, pilot of the Chandler.” Wilson motioned to the box on the bridge of the Chandler, in which a human brain had been placed.

“This seems familiar,” I said, to Wilson, as I stared into the box.

“I thought you might think so,” he said.

“Who did this to him?” Hado asked.

“Sir?” Wilson said.

“Removing brains from skulls is a thing the Colonial Union does,” Hado said. “It’s notorious for it.”

“Are you asking me if the Colonial Union did this?”

“Yes, although honestly I wouldn’t expect you to answer truthfully if it had,” Hado said.

“You could ask him,” Wilson said.

“Pardon?”

“You could ask Rafe,” Wilson said.

“Yes, you could,” a voice said, through speakers. “I’m literally right here.”

“All right,” Lowen said. “Mr. Daquin, who did this to you?”

“Put my brain in a box? That would be the group calling itself Equilibrium, Ms. Lowen,” Daquin said.

“Why did they do it?” Tarsem asked.

“Partly to trim down the number of working parts they needed to run the ship,” Daquin said. “Partly to make sure I stayed in their control. They assumed that I would do anything they wanted if they promised to give me back my body.”

“Why didn’t you?” Tarsem asked.

“Because I figured that they didn’t have any intention of ever giving it back.”

“But the Colonial Union could give you another body,” Hado said. “They haven’t. They’re using you like this Equilibrium group had.”

“They’re growing me a new body as we speak,” Daquin said. “It’ll be ready soon. But Harry here asked me if I wouldn’t mind being a part of the Chandler’s crew for a bit, especially for trips like these, where people might need convincing that Equilibrium is a thing and not just a convenient cover story for the Colonial Union.”

“If this is real,” Hado said.

“Get some scientists over here to test me if you like,” Daquin said. “I like company.”

“It still doesn’t prove anything,” Hado said, turning to Tarsem. “We’re being asked to believe this unfortunate creature isn’t being coerced into saying these reports are his. We can’t believe that someone in his position can be expected to say anything but what his captors want him to.”

“Captors,” Daquin said, and the derision was hard to miss. “Seriously, who is this guy?”

“Representative Hado has a point,” I said. “You’re a brain in a box, Mr. Daquin. We have no assurance that you aren’t being used.”

“Do you want to tell them, Harry, or should I?” Daquin asked.

“For obvious reasons, you should,” Harry said.

“General Gau, Councilor Sorvalh, you’re aware that your director of intelligence tried to hack into the Chandler’s systems when we arrived, yes?” Daquin asked.

“We, we knew that,” I said.

“Of course you did. You know what Director Oi found, right?”

“Oi said it was a picture of someone showing their posterior.”

“Yup, that’s called ‘mooning,’” Daquin said. “I did that, Councilor. Not the mooning, for obvious reasons. But I put the picture where Director Oi would find it. I did that because I don’t only pilot this ship, I am this ship. It is entirely and completely under my control. The Chandler has crew and they run operations—you can ask Captain Balla if you like, to confirm this—but ultimately they have only as much control over the ship as I allow them. Because this ship is me. And I choose to help. Without my cooperation, the only way the Colonial Union can control this ship is to destroy it. And I’d destroy it myself before that could happen.”

“You still need sustenance, I assume,” Tarsem said. “Your ship still needs energy. You have to rely on the Colonial Union for that.”

“Do I?” Daquin said. “General, if I were to ask you for asylum right now, would you give it to me?”

“Yes,” Tarsem said.

“And I assume you wouldn’t let me starve.”

“No,”

“Then you’ve just invalidated your own assertion.”

“But you still need the Colonial Union to get your body back,” Lowen said.

“To grow a new one, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Lowen, there’s a door to your left. When the ship was built, it was the captain’s ready room. Go ahead and open it.”

Lowen found the door and opened it. “Oh my god,” she said. She opened the door fully so the rest of us could see.

Inside was a container with a human body in it.

“That’s me,” Daquin said. “Or will be me, anyway, once it’s done growing and once I decide to put myself into it. Representative Hado, you can have your scientists check its DNA against the DNA in my brain here. It checks out. But the point is that no, the Colonial Union isn’t holding my body hostage. It’s not holding me hostage. It’s not coercing me. Now, you can still believe it or not, but at this point, if you don’t believe me, it’s not because we haven’t made an effort to make it easy for you to believe.”

“Mr. Daquin,” I said.

“Yes, Councilor Sorvalh.”

“You were the one piloting during the rescue of the diplomats.”

“Yes, I was,” Daquin said. “We have two other pilots, but I was the one at the helm for that.”

“I know a pilot who called it an amazing piece of piloting, and wants to buy you several drinks to commemorate it.”

“Tell your pilot friend I accept, in theory,” Daquin said. “The actual drinking part will have to wait.”

*   *   *

“Are you happy?” I asked Tarsem, when he and I were again alone in his office.

“Happy?” he said. “What an odd question.”

“I mean did everything you plan for the day happen.”

“All I planned for was to have Abumwe give her speech, and that wasn’t even my plan,” Tarsem said. “That was yours. So I suppose I should ask you if you’re happy.”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Why not?” Tarsem said. “Abumwe’s speech entirely disrupted the momentum Unli Hado and his partisans had in pushing a no confidence vote. The fact I assured Hado and Sca that I don’t consider them traitors doesn’t mean their reputations aren’t irretrievably destroyed. Even if they stay on as representatives.”

“I’m not going to pretend I didn’t enjoy seeing Hado get crushed today,” I said. “That vainglorious martinet deserved the thumping. But now we have the somewhat larger problem that both the Elpri and the Eyr have been smeared with the accusation of, if not treason, then treachery of the worst sort. And you know they’re not going to be the only nations who harbor members of this Equilibrium group. Vnac is sifting through the data right now.”

“You’re worried about what’s going to come out in the sifting.”

“No,” I said. “I’m worried that you’re going to get accused of using it to start picking off political opponents, including entire nations. As much as I liked seeing Hado shut down, it didn’t help that the Elpri, of all people, are one of the two peoples called out by name in Abumwe’s report. No matter if Vnac clears her entire report—no matter if all of it is unimpeachably true—there will still be those who will see it only as a chance for you to settle scores at a moment when you were vulnerable.”

“You ordered Oi to release the data to avoid that.”

“I ordered it to release the data so it didn’t look like you were colluding with the Colonial Union,” I said. “That problem is solved. The other problem remains.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I think you need to address this directly and personally and on the floor of the Grand Assembly.”

“And what would you have me say there?”

“What you said to Hado and Sca,” I said. “Only writ larger. Encompassing nations, not diplomats.”

“We’re going to find traitors,” Tarsem said.

“Yes, but they are people. Individuals.”

“Individuals who might be able to persuade their governments to leave the Conclave.”

“All the more reason to make it clear that the actions of a misguided few don’t reflect on the people as a whole.”

“You think this will work.”

“I think it’s better than encouraging our members to start accusing each other of undermining the Conclave. That road goes nowhere we want to go.”

“How committed are you to this idea?” Tarsem asked. “Presuming the Colonial Union isn’t running a long con on us, which is a thing you’ve begged me to consider and so I shall, it’s possible that entire member state governments are working to end the Conclave. We’ve had attempts before. We’d be allowing them to get away with it.”

“No. We’d be offering them a way to step back from the abyss before we tumble into it.”

“That’s an optimistic way of looking at it.”

“It’s not optimistic at all. It’s giving us more time to deal with the problem.”

“And if we have no more time?”

“Then we deal with the problem now,” I said. “But I think everyone is beginning to realize just how close the abyss is at the moment. Very few people actually want to go in.”

“You are optimistic, then,” Tarsem said. “Because at the moment I think there are still a few who think the abyss sounds like a very good idea.”

“That’s why I want you to convince them otherwise.”

“I appreciate your faith in my abilities.”

“It’s not faith,” I said. “It’s trust.”

PART FOUR

“Which news do you want first?” Vnac Oi asked me. I was in its office again, the first meeting of the sur.

“You have good news?” I asked.

“No,” Oi said. “But some of the news is less objectively bad than the rest.”

“Then by all means let us begin with that.”

“We’re done with the first pass of semantic and data mining of the Abumwe report,” Oi said. “And we’ve cross-referenced with information we have in our own databases. The very short version is that the data are less problematic than the data in the Ocampo report.”

“‘Less problematic.’”

“It means there are fewer obvious untruths compared to, and contradictions with, our own data set.”

“So you’re saying the Colonial Union, in a refreshing change of circumstances, is actually telling us the truth.”

“I never said ‘truth,’” Oi said. “I said there were fewer untruths that we can immediately see. And even if they are largely telling the truth, which is something we still have to ascertain, the truth in itself is not necessarily a positive thing. What they are telling the truth about—what information they are sharing with us—is just as relevant. When Abumwe shared this with us what I really wanted to know is what she wasn’t sharing.”

“I need to know whether you think this Equilibrium group exists and is the threat Abumwe says it is.”

“Yes to the first, and inconclusive to the second. We need a couple more passes through the data to be sure. But here is the thing about that, Councilor.”

“I am imagining this is where the less good news graduates into the bad news,” I said.

“You are correct, because right now it does not matter whether the Abumwe information is true or not,” Oi said. “The general is correct that the Colonial Union and Abumwe dropped a bomb into our lap—a bomb you suggest we let her set off, I will remind you—and now all the chatter I’m hearing is our members triangulating toward it or away from it. We’ve introduced chaos into the usual mix of ambition and venality we lovingly call the Grand Assembly. Before, we had two primary groups in the chamber: those generally drifting away from the Conclave and those generally supporting it. Right now my analysts have identified six distinct emerging philosophical groups. Some of these believe the Ocampo report and some believe the Abumwe, and then there are some who don’t care about the truth value of either but merely whether they can be used as tools to settle political scores. The group that especially worries me at the moment is the one my analysts are calling the ‘purgers.’ You can guess what the purgers want to do.”

“The general is addressing the Grand Assembly about this very problem.”

“No doubt because of your advice.”

“That sounds more accusatory than usual, Director.”

“Apologies,” Oi said. “I don’t mean to imply it was bad advice. Just that you appear to have more influence over the general than usual recently.”

“I don’t believe that’s true.”

“If you say so. At the very least everyone else is too busy to notice.”

“Do you think the general is worse off than he was before, politically?” I asked, changing the topic.

“No,” Oi said. “Before Abumwe addressed the Grand Assembly, a large faction had targeted the general in order to push one of their own into power. Now that faction has fragmented and all the factions are fighting each other. So if your plan was to divert attention away from the general, it worked. Of course, now there are complications. What was best for the general in the short term is not, I think, the best for the Conclave in the long term. You do see that, Councilor.”

“I do,” I said. “We buy time where we may.”

“You bought yourself time,” Oi agreed. “I don’t think it’s of very good quality.”

*   *   *

In my own office, just before the general’s address, I regarded Ode Abumwe, and she me. “I believe we might be two of a kind,” I said to her, finally. “Two people who believe in the usefulness of truth, despite the environments in which we work.”

“I am glad you believe so, Councilor,” Abumwe said, and waited for me to continue.

“You were blunt yesterday in our meeting after your presentation,” I said. “I was hoping you might be again.”

“As you wish,” Abumwe said.

“What does the Colonial Union hope to gain by sharing the information you have with us?”

“We hope to avoid a war with the Conclave,” Abumwe said.

“Yes,” I said. “But what more than that?”

“I was given no other brief, either publicly or privately,” Abumwe said. “We knew Ocampo and Equilibrium wanted to set each of us on the other for their own reasons. We knew it would end poorly for us, and that we would be obliged to make it end as poorly as possible for you as we could.”

“Presenting us this information does not end the potential of conflict between us.”

“No, of course not. But if conflict happens, it will be because of our own damn foolishness, and not anyone else’s.”

I smiled widely at this. Abumwe, a professional diplomat, did not flinch. “But you don’t believe that your brief is the whole of the reason this information was given to us,” I said.

“You’re asking me for my opinion, Councilor.”

“I am.”

“No, I don’t,” she said.

“Will you offer me your thoughts as to some of the other reasons?”

“That would be irresponsible of me.”

“Please.”

“I would imagine we wanted what in fact happened,” Abumwe said. “Using the information to destroy the comity of the Conclave and to force open the fissures that were already developing. You could destroy us, and even if we took you with us that would be of little comfort. Better if you destroyed yourselves without going through us first.”

“And do you believe that’s how it would happen?” I asked. “That members of the then-former Conclave, individually or severally, would conveniently forget it was your report that started us on the path to our destruction? Would forget Roanoke? Would forget all the other reasons we have to despise you?”

“What I believe is aside from what my responsibilities are to the Colonial Union.”

“I understand that,” I said. “But it’s not what I asked.”

“What I believe is that both our governments are in an impossible situation at the moment, Councilor,” Abumwe said. “We’ve been pushed there by this Equilibrium group, yes. But Equilibrium could not by itself have gotten us to where both of us are now. We can blame this situation on Equilibrium, or on each other. But we are where we are because we put ourselves there. I don’t know if there’s any way for us to avoid what’s coming. The best we can do is put it off and hope something else develops along the way, to save us from ourselves.”

“Another thing we have in common, Ambassador.”

“I don’t doubt it, Councilor,” Abumwe said. “The rumor is that the general is going to address the Grand Assembly today.”

“He is.”

“He’s hoping to repair the damage my report created.”

“That’s some of it, yes.”

“If I’d have been him—or you—I wouldn’t have let me address the assembly.”

“If we hadn’t have had you do it, we would have different problems.”

“They might have been better ones.”

“It’s debatable,” I said.

“Do you think it will help anything? The general addressing the assembly today.”

“Let’s hope it does,” I said. “For both our sakes.”

*   *   *

“We are at a critical time in the history of the Conclave,” Tarsem was saying, from the lectern at the focus of the Grand Assembly. And then he launched into many more words.

I was not paying attention to the particular words. From my vantage point behind and to the side of him, I was doing what I do best: I was counting heads. Looking at the ones who were nodding attentively at what he had to say. Looking at the ones which were registering skepticism, or anger, or fear.

If you think this is an easy task to do across four hundred species, some of which do not have heads which show appreciable emotion, or indeed, some which do not have what might properly be construed as “heads,” I certainly invite you to try it.

“You need to be paying specific attention to Prulin Horteen,” I said to Tarsem, directly before he began his speech. “She’s the one that Oi has targeted as being the head of this emerging ‘purger’ faction. We need to cut them off before they get any larger.”

“I know what she is up to,” Tarsem said. “I spoke with Vnac.”

“When?”

“Just before I was here. While you were speaking to Ambassador Abumwe. I do have meetings you aren’t present for, you know.”

“I don’t advise those.”

“I don’t imagine you would.” Tarsem smiled. “Don’t worry, Hafte. This speech will resolve a number of issues. I’m confident of that.”

“It could be a start, in any event.”

“We’ve made a good thing here,” Tarsem said. “The Conclave, I mean. You and I and everyone else in this assembly. It’s been a life’s work making it.”

“It’s indeed a wonderful thing,” I said. “If we can keep it.”

“I think we will,” Tarsem said.

“Start by tamping down Prulin Horteen,” I said. “And Unli Hado while you’re at it.”

I glanced over to where I knew Hado would be. There was substantial room around him; it appeared he was in bad odor after the Elpri had been accused by Abumwe of participating in Equilibrium. Not too far from him, however, was Prulin Horteen, who no doubt thought she was helping Tarsem by trying to put entire species on the Conclave’s chopping block. I returned my attention to Tarsem, who as it happened was addressing that very issue.

“… Director Oi and its analysts are even now sifting through the data of both competing reports to tell us what information is accurate, what isn’t, and, importantly, what isn’t being told to us. Until we have that full analysis and report from Oi’s office, I cannot and will not speculate with regard to the loyalties of any of our member nations. Are there individuals within those nations who may mean the Conclave ill? Yes, of course. They will be found and they will be dealt with.

“But individuals are not precise mirrors of their nations. And regardless of which report you now place your faith in, the Ocampo report or the Abumwe report, the intention behind both is the same: the dissolution and destruction of the Conclave. A return to the violence and savagery between our nations that we all still remember. We cannot allow that to happen. I will not allow that to happen. We are not a hollow union. We all have chosen to take part in this best chance for peace.

“I repeat: We must not fall back into savagery. We are not a hollow union—”

Tarsem’s lectern exploded.

I was not aware of it immediately. I was pushed backward by the blast and toward the ground. My physiology makes me or any Lalan difficult to topple. I fell nonetheless, stunned and deaf, and amazed that somehow I had found myself on the floor.

Then my mind snapped back into function, I screamed, and I dragged myself over to Tarsem.

He was torn apart but not dead yet. I grabbed him and held him as his eyes searched around, looking for something to focus on. Finally he found me.

He said nothing—I don’t believe he could say anything at that point—but simply watched me looking at him, holding him in his last moments of life.

Then he stopped watching and left me.

As he did I became aware of the din and madness around me as representatives and their staffs climbed over each other trying to escape the Grand Assembly chamber. Then I became aware of Tarsem’s security staff swarming over me and him, pulling me off of him and dragging the both of us away, me presumably to safety, and Tarsem to oblivion.

*   *   *

“You need to be examined by a physician,” Oi said to me.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re not fine. You’re in shock and you’re yelling because you can barely hear. And you are covered in blood, Councilor. Some of it might actually be yours.”

We were in a secure room not far from the assembly chamber. I was surrounded by members of Tarsem’s security detail, who were no longer his security detail because they had somehow fundamentally managed to fail at their task. The anger I felt at that fact was growing within me; I held it down and looked at the security officer closest to me.

“Go fetch me a physician,” I said. “Preferably one familiar with Lalans.”

The security officer looked up at me. “Councilor, perhaps it would be better if you went to the hospital itself, once we’ve secured the area.”

“I don’t recall asking you for your opinion,” I said. “Do it. Now.”

The security officer scuttled off. I returned my attention to Oi. “How did you miss this?” I asked.

“I don’t have a good answer for you right now, Councilor,” Oi said.

“No, I don’t imagine you do. You don’t have a good answer to how you could have missed someone planning to assassinate the general.” I waved a bloody hand at the remaining security detail. “They don’t have a good answer, I’m sure, how someone slipped past them to place a bomb at the lectern. No one has a good answer for who is in charge of the Conclave right now. We are all without good answers for anything that actually matters right at this very moment.”

“What would you like me to do, Councilor?” Oi asked.

“I would like you to go back in time and to have done your goddamned job, Oi!” I said, and this time I was yelling not because I could not hear very well.

“When this is all over, if you want it, you will have my resignation on your desk,” Oi said.

I laughed, bitterly. “My desk,” I said.

“Yes, your desk,” Oi replied, forcefully. “And you’re wrong, Councilor. I don’t have a good answer for you about who killed General Gau. But I have a good answer for who is in charge of the Conclave. It’s you.”

“That was Tarsem’s job description, Oi. Not mine.”

“With due respect to the moment and your grief, Councilor, the general is dead. The position is vacant. And it needs to be filled, immediately.”

“And you don’t think that’s a thought that’s not already occurred to several dozen representatives?”

“I know it has,” Oi said. “I know that without even having to check with my analysts. And I know what an extended season of would-be General Gaus trying to claim his mantle would cost us.”

“You take the job, then,” I said. “You’re better qualified for it.”

“I’m not the right person for the job,” Oi said. “No one would follow me.”

“You have an entire directory of people who follow you.”

“They follow the job, Councilor. I don’t flatter myself that their loyalty extends to me.”

“What makes you think it would extend to me, then?” I asked, and then waved again to the security detail. “Or their loyalty? Or anyone’s?”

“Councilor, why do you think this security detail is here?” Oi asked. “This was General Gau’s detail. It’s yours now.”

“I don’t want the job.”

“Think of who does. Think of who will, once it occurs to them that it’s open.”

“So you would have me take the job simply to avoid something worse.”

“Yes,” Oi said. “Although that would not be my main motivation.”

“And what would be your main motivation?” I asked.

“To preserve the Conclave,” Oi said. It motioned out, toward the Grand Assembly chamber. “Unli Hado wants the position for his own personal ambition, as would a dozen other representatives. Prulin Horteen would take it to settle scores, as would another dozen representatives. Ristin Lause, were it offered to her, and it wouldn’t be, would take it out of the bureaucratic instinct to keep things running. None of them truly understand why the Conclave is more important than themselves or their immediate goal. In all three cases—in every case—it would end in ruin.”

“It might buy time,” I said.

“We have bought all the time we can buy, Councilor,” Oi said. “The general has just paid for all of it. There is no more time. There are only the choices we have in front of us right now. You take control of the Conclave, or allow someone else to. One choice will preserve the union. The other won’t.”

“You have a lot of faith in me, Oi.”

“I have absolutely no faith in you, Councilor,” Oi said. “What I have is analysis. You don’t think I haven’t been modeling what would happen after the general left power, do you? Who would try to claim his position and what would happen from there?”

“No, I suppose that would be your job,” I said. “Although I didn’t expect to be part of that math.”

“If anyone else said that I would call that false modesty,” Oi said. “In your case it’s not, I know. You’ve always been the one to walk behind, Councilor. But there is no one for you to walk behind anymore. The Conclave needs you to step forward.”

I looked around the room, at the security detail there. All ready for something.

“I don’t want the job,” I repeated to Oi.

“I know,” Oi said. “But with all due respect, Councilor, at the moment I don’t care about what you want. I care about what you will do.”

The security officer returned, a Lalan in tow.

“You’re a medical doctor,” I said.

“Yes,” the Lalan said. “Dr. Omed Moor, ma’am.”

“Well, Doctor?” I held out my arms. “Am I dead?”

“No, ma’am.”

I put my arms down. “Then that’s all the time I have for a checkup at the moment, I’m afraid. Thank you, Doctor.” I turned from the bewildered doctor to Oi. “Does your analysis include you working on my behalf?”

“I serve at the pleasure of the leader of the Conclave,” Oi said.

“And that’s me.”

“It has been since the moment of the general’s death. All we have to do now is make it known.”

“I have some people I need to see,” I said. “And there are people you need to see too.”

“I can guess who you want to see,” Oi said.

“I’m sure you can.”

“Do you still want my resignation?”

“If at the end of this sur I’m still in a position to accept it, no,” I said. “And if I’m not, I’ll assume it’s because we’re in the same airlock, waiting to be pushed out into space by whoever is.”

*   *   *

“I question your right to call us here,” Unli Hado said. “You are not General Gau. And the general did not leave instruction for passing on leadership of the Conclave to you. If anyone should be the leader of the Conclave now, it is Chancellor Lause.”

Hado sat in the conference room next to Tarsem’s public office, along with Lause, Prulin Horteen, Ohn Sca, and Oi.

“It’s a fair point,” I said, and turned to Lause. “Chancellor?”

“I’m leader of the Grand Assembly, not the leader of the Conclave,” she said. “I neither want nor can accept that position.”

“You’re a coward,” Hado said.

“No,” Lause said. “But I’m not a fool, either. The Conclave has just lost its leader, Unli, and it’s lost it to assassination. Are you so blinded by your own ambition that you don’t realize that anyone claiming the general’s title will look like the assassin’s employer?”

Hado flung an arm at me. “And she won’t?”

“No, I won’t,” I said. “Not if we come to terms now.”

“I repeat: I question your right to call us here,” Hado said.

“Oi,” I said.

“Representative Hado, I have it on very excellent information that you are the one who authorized the assassination of General Gau,” Oi said. “Evidence from the Abumwe report combined with my own agents’ intelligence gathering lays it squarely at your door. Within the sur I expect that you will be arrested for treason and that a comprehensive report will show the Elpri government was providing logistical and material support not only for the assassination but for Equilibrium in general.”

Hado stared, disbelieving. “That’s a lie!”

“Don’t protest too much, Hado,” Horteen said.

Oi turned to her. “Prulin Horteen, I have evidence that you offered material support to Representative Hado for the assassination, and that your recent rhetoric about purging nations you deemed traitorous to the Conclave is a feint to draw attention from your own involvement.”

“What?” Horteen said.

“Representative Sca, your government’s collusion with Hado’s assassination of the general and with Equilibrium in general is exhaustively documented as well,” Oi said.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Sca said.

“I do,” Hado said, turning to me. “This is a beheading of anyone who is in a position to oppose you.”

“No,” I said. “It’s a precautionary measure against a trio of representatives who are a material threat to the unity of the Conclave at the moment of her greatest instability. Any of the three of you could shatter the Conclave, by your own ambition, by your own greed, or by your own stupidity. We are not four serti past the assassination of our leader. The Grand Assembly is in chaos. The representatives are utterly terrified. And if Vnac Oi had the three of you arrested on charges of assassination and conspiracy, I could have you all on the other side of an airlock by the end of the sur and no one would do anything but congratulate me on my decisiveness. I might even get a commendation from the chancellor for it.”

“Indeed you might,” Lause said. It was instructive to watch the reaction of Hado, Sca, and Horteen to that comment.

“And when the evidence eventually shows that the accusation was a flat-out lie?” Hado asked. “Because it will. Both Ocampo’s and Abumwe’s reports are out there for everyone to see and compare.”

“Representative Hado, I’m deeply insulted,” Oi said. “You apparently have so little faith in my ability to manipulate data to tell precisely the story I want it to tell.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Sca said. “If this was your plan, why didn’t you just have us arrested?”

“I didn’t say it was my plan,” I said. “It was my rebuttal to Representative Hado’s questioning of my right to call you all here. I trust I’ve made it clear that at the moment right is not the correct frame of reference. I have the power to call you here. As I have the power to condemn you to death. I hope we understand each other.”

“You want to make an example of us, then,” Hado said.

“What I want, Representative Hado, is to save the Conclave,” I said. “And offer you three the chance to increase your power and influence while doing so.”

“By throwing us out of an airlock?” Horteen said.

“I have a better idea,” I said. “And it is precisely this simple. Representative Horteen, you and Representative Hado have significant power bases among assembly members. They don’t overlap. You two are to come to Chancellor Lause and together declare that for the good of the Conclave you ask that I take on the leadership role of the Conclave. Representative Sca, you will second that proposal. Horteen and Hado will deliver their blocs for the vote, Lause will take care of the rest, and Oi will handle any stragglers. This will happen tomorrow, by mid-sur.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Hado asked.

“Then you three will have a meeting with an airlock,” Oi said.

Hado glanced over at Oi and then turned back to me. “You didn’t have to threaten us,” he said. “You could have just asked.”

“Representative Hado, we’ve been doing so well being bracingly honest with each other,” I said. “Let’s not ruin it now.”

“General Gau would never have negotiated with us this way,” Horteen said.

I glanced over at Hado for this. “Yes, he would have,” Hado said, to Horteen. “He simply would have had Sorvalh here to cover for him.”

“The general is no longer with us,” I said.

“Pity,” Hado said.

“It is,” I said. “How ironic, Representative Hado, that it took you until this very moment to recognize his value.”

“Do we have a deal?” Oi asked.

“Do we have a choice?” Hado replied.

“You said this would increase our power,” Horteen said. “I haven’t heard the part where that happens.”

“This is how,” I said. “After the present crisis is over, and the stability of the Conclave is no longer in question, I will announce the formation of a task force to create and establish a succession plan for the leader of the Conclave, so that we have no more crises like the one we are now conspiring to avoid today. I will name the three of you, with the chancellor, to head the task force, and give you free reign to create the process, with only one condition: that the next leader of the Conclave must come from the Grand Assembly.”

“Interesting,” Horteen said.

“I thought you might see it that way,” I said. Already I could see both Horteen and Hado starting to think how they could use such a task force to their own advantage. “Please note that this process will be for after I retire.”

“But you do plan to retire,” Hado said.

“Yes. Not soon, to be clear. But soon enough.”

“And in the meantime you will still have this threat over our heads,” Sca said.

“No,” I said. “The threat dies when the Grand Assembly elects me leader of the Conclave, tomorrow.”

“But only then,” Oi said.

“And who do you place the blame on then, I wonder?” Hado asked. “For the death of the general?”

I felt a pang in that moment, for my friend and against my own conscience, for having to use his death so opportunistically. “Let that be my concern for now, Representative Hado.”

“As you wish, Councilor,” he said, and stood to rise, as did the others. “But it’s not ‘councilor’ anymore, is it? What do we call you now?”

“I’ll let you decide,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

They exited, except for Oi. I slumped, exhausted.

“Well done,” Oi said to me.

“It was a basic threatening,” I said, weakly. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

“Possibly higher stakes this time.”

“Yes, possibly,” I said. “Thank you for coaching Lause for me.”

“It might interest you to know I didn’t, really,” Oi said. “When I met with her I just asked her if she would follow your lead. Do you know what she said?”

“I don’t know.”

“She said, ‘For the Conclave, I will.’ And there you have it.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I think she knows stability is the key to her keeping her job.”

“And the other three?” I asked. “Do you think they’ll keep the deal?”

“I don’t doubt it,” Oi said. “One of the nice things about my line of work is that people who don’t know much about it have an infinite capacity to believe that I can do anything, including fabricate incriminating evidence out of thin air.”

“And don’t you?”

“It’s not infinite,” Oi said. I smiled at this. “In any event they don’t need to know that we were bluffing blind. And by the time they figure it out, it will be far too late. You have my assurance of that, Councilor.”

“Thank you, Vnac,” I said. “Now, would you send in our next two visitors.”

Oi nodded and made its way to the antechamber, where the principals of my next meeting waited.

“Ambassador Abumwe, Ambassador Lowen,” I said, as the two humans entered. “Thank you both for seeing me at such short notice.”

“Councilor Sorvalh, please accept my condolences,” Lowen said. “And the condolences of the governments I represent. This is a terrible day.”

“Condolences from me and the Colonial Union as well,” Abumwe said.

“Thank you both,” I said, and motioned to the table. “Please sit.”

They sat. Oi positioned itself in a corner, to observe. I stood, considering my two guests.

“Is everything all right, Councilor?” Lowen asked.

“Yes,” I said, and smiled, slightly. “I apologize, ambassadors. I am trying to decide how to say what I have to say next.”

“You told me earlier that you prize truthfulness,” Abumwe said. “In spite of the environment in which we work. Perhaps at this moment truthfulness would be even more useful than usual.”

“All right,” I said. “Then here it is: By this time tomorrow I will be the ruler of the Conclave. The deal has already been made. It’s not a role I would have asked for but it’s one I need to take, for the stability of the Conclave.”

“Understood,” Abumwe said. Lowen nodded.

“One consequence of today’s events is that the members of the Conclave will be looking to place blame for the assassination of General Gau. Time will eventually provide an answer but that won’t stop the drive for a target in the short term. There are fundamentally two choices here: place blame internally, on a nation or nations within the Conclave, or place it externally.”

“I can see where this is going,” Abumwe said.

“You’re not wrong, I imagine,” I said. “But please let me finish. Understand, both of you, that at this very moment I have one priority: to keep the Conclave intact. There is nothing else that comes close to that goal. At this moment, this means I cannot allow internal doubt, internal accusation, or internal blame, even if it is correct to do so.”

“So you will blame us,” Lowen said. “We humans.”

“Yes,” I said. “Officially.”

“What does that mean?” Abumwe asked.

“It means that for the moment, the official response of the Conclave is to privilege the Ocampo report over your report. It means that we officially assume that the Colonial Union intends malicious action against the Conclave. It means that it is under suspicion with regard to the death of General Tarsem Gau. It means that although we will not declare that a state of war exists between our two governments, any future provocation from the Colonial Union will be met with the harshest appropriate response.”

“It means you’re using us as a scapegoat,” Abumwe said.

“I’m not entirely familiar with that term but I can guess what it means. And yes.”

“You understand that the Equilibrium group will use this as an excuse to make attacks that appear to be from the Colonial Union.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then you understand what my next concern will be,” Abumwe said.

I nodded at Lowen. “Perhaps you wish to have further discussion on this topic privately. Ambassador Lowen does not need to be read in for this part.”

“It’s too late for that now, don’t you think.”

“All right,” I said. “You know I have a back channel open to the Colonial Union. Director Oi here,” I nodded to Vnac, “will be keeper of that channel. If the Colonial Union is genuinely interested in avoiding a war with us, Ambassador, then it will consider continuing the free sharing of information between us. It won’t change the Conclave’s official position on the Colonial Union for now. Unofficially it will help me keep the warmongers in the Grand Assembly in line. We understand each other, I trust.”

“And what about Earth?” Lowen asked.

“I can’t give the Colonial Union the slightest provocation or excuse for an attack,” I said, turning to her. “Or allow any other group to use such as cover for attack. I am withdrawing our diplomats from Earth and expelling yours from Conclave headquarters. Existing agreements on trade and lend-lease ships will be followed to their precise letter and no more. Don’t expect any further for the time being.”

“That puts you in a bad position with us in respect to the Colonial Union,” Lowen said. “Without your trade and material support, a number of our governments will start to look favorably at the CU again.”

“I don’t have any choice in the matter,” I said. “Until things are settled I can’t allow humanity to be a distraction to the Conclave.” I turned to Abumwe. “With that said, let it be known that if the Colonial Union takes any hostile action against the Earth, the Conclave will assume the Colonial Union is doing so in order to build up its military and colonial populations, with the intent of attacking the Conclave and setting up new colonies. I don’t think I have to tell you what our response will be.”

“We have no intention of attacking the Earth,” Abumwe said.

“Attacking the Earth again,” I said. “Our official point of view, Ambassador. For now.”

“I can’t say that I’m happy with this choice.”

“I don’t need you to be happy with it, Ambassador. I would like for you to understand why it’s necessary.”

Abumwe turned to Lowen. “And you? What’s going to be the Earth’s official position on Equilibrium?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Lowen said. “We only just found out it existed. Or that you allege that it does exist. I’ll take your information back to Earth with me, of course, and share it. You can expect a high amount of skepticism.”

“I understand. But if I may ask, what do you think, Ambassador Lowen? Privately.”

Lowen looked at me before continuing. “I would very much like to believe the Colonial Union had nothing to do with the destruction of Earth Station. I would very much like to believe that it means us no harm. But I don’t know if we can trust the Colonial Union, Ambassador. As much as I would like to. I don’t see it happening.”

“Perhaps we’ll find a way to earn it,” Abumwe said.

“I know a way you can start,” Lowen said.

“Tell me.”

“My ship blew up,” Lowen said. “And I’ve just been told that we can’t stay here to wait for another one to arrive. I could use a ride home.”

*   *   *

“The humans are off?” I asked Oi, as it came up to me. I was in the Lalan park. I was taking my last few minutes of peace in what was likely to be a very long time.

“A serti ago,” it said. “The Chandler was rather crowded, as I understand it. They are going to Earth first to drop off Lowen and her team. Then I understand they are back to Phoenix Station.”

“Understood.”

“Not necessarily a very good idea to let them spend more time together,” Oi said. “The two varieties of human. Our people have a hard enough time making a distinction between them.”

“I’m not sure we had a choice,” I said. “We needed them all away, sooner than later.”

“We found it, by the way,” Oi said. “The weapon that attacked the Odhiambo.”

“What was it?”

“A very interesting new toy. A particle beam weapon, heavily cloaked in material that scatters electromagnetic radiation. We literally ran into it, otherwise we wouldn’t have found it. The weapon had no particular manufacturing marks on it but my analysts guessed it might be human manufacture.”

“The Colonial Union?”

“Or these Equilibrium people, borrowing their designs. We’ll figure it out, but at the moment your guess is as good as mine. We figure either it was skipped in just before the Odhiambo, or it’s been sitting out there for a while, waiting for a target.”

“Are you looking for more of them?”

“We are now,” Oi said. “You’ll understand when I say they’re hard to find. When you’re elected leader you might authorize some more resources to the task.”

“Indeed. And, how is the vote going?”

“It’s going uneventfully,” Oi said. “You will be elected leader of the Conclave in just a few ditu, I expect. It would have been done sooner but some of the representatives can’t vote without making a speech.”

“How hard did you have to work to change minds?”

“Not as hard as I might have in any other circumstance,” Oi said. “People are still in shock about the general. They know who you were to him. Many of them are voting for you as a final way to honor him.”

“That’s a sentiment that would amuse Tarsem,” I said.

“I’m sure,” Oi said. “Not that I didn’t have to threaten a couple of representatives, of course. But, again, fewer than I might have to otherwise.”

“I’ll need their names.”

“You’ll have them. Try not to have them killed.”

“I’m more subtle than that.”

“You’ll have them killed later, you mean.”

“I won’t have them killed at all. Just their careers.”

“When the vote is final they will want you to speak to the Grand Assembly.”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll be ready. Thank you, Oi. That will be all.”

“One more thing,” Oi said, and produced in its tendrils a paper envelope. “A letter.”

“From whom?”

“From the general,” it said. “He gave it to me in our last meeting. He asked me to hold it and to give it to you, after his speech. He told me I would know when to give it to you.” It held it out to me. “I think it’s all right to give it to you now.”

I took the letter. “I assume you read it,” I said.

“In fact that is the one piece of information on this entire asteroid that I have not read.”

“Remarkable,” I said, looking at the envelope. “How did that happen, I wonder.”

“Simple. The general asked me not to.” Oi nodded and departed.

I opened the envelope and read the letter inside.

Hello, Hafte.

First I will apologize. If you are reading this, you are now leader of the Conclave. I know it’s not a position you wanted for yourself, and if you resent me a little for making you take it I understand. But also understand that I can’t imagine that the next leader of the Conclave would be anyone but you. You have too long contented yourself to be the advisor and the councilor. It’s not that I did not value your advice and counsel. But I always understood that your talents were not being used to their best extent, either by yourself or the Conclave. Now they will be. I hope you can forgive me for giving you that final push.

Not too long ago you and I sat in the Lalan park and you told me the story of Loomt Both and how he almost doomed the Lalans to extinction. You said to me that it was best for your people to have their pain early, to grow into their wisdom. I have come to believe the same is true for the Conclave. We had growing pains, rebellions, and loss. But none of these events have fixed the Conclave, changed it from a disparate collection of peoples into a single, galvanized nation. It needs something to be that catalyst.

If you are reading this, then you know what that catalyst was.

I set the letter down, trying to make sense of what I had just read. I looked around the park, and saw nothing but greenery, and a single young Lalan, mindlessly swimming in the pond. After a few moments I started reading again.

You were right. When the Conclave was an idea, and when it was growing, I was the right leader for it. But I’m not the right leader for it now. It needs someone else, someone with a cannier set of political skills. Someone like you. But neither can I simply step away and fade into the background. We both know there are those in the Grand Assembly who would have no intention of allowing me to pick my own successor. The process would be drawn out and messy and at the end of it I would be what you feared I would become—just another politician, who left the stage long after he should have.

Instead I choose to become something else: A symbol. A legend. A martyr to the Conclave. And, to be less precious about it, a bludgeon for you to pummel anyone who dares to get out of line, for a good long time now. I’ve given you a tool to build the founding myth of the Conclave—to set it on a path toward wisdom rather than dissolution. I trust that you will know how to do it. You would know how to do it better than I would.

Now, as to the matter of my death. I am reasonably certain that Vnac Oi has suspicions; it is very good at its job. I am also reasonably certain that it has no intention of delving too deeply into the mystery, or rather, will be content to pin it on some conveniently unprovable set of circumstances. This will leave you, and only you, to know the true nature of events. The only accounting of it is in this letter. What you do with this knowledge is entirely your choice. From my point of view there is no wrong answer. But I think you know what I would suggest you do. At least for now.

There is nothing left to say other than this: I wish I could be there to see you do what will come next. I cannot. Instead I will take comfort in knowing that you will be the one to finish our work. To set the Conclave’s future in stone.

I wish you joy in the work, my dear Hafte.

Tarsem

I stared at the letter for a good long while, seeing the page but not reading the words.

Then slowly, deliberately, I tore the letter into pieces as small as I could make them and tossed them into the pond.

The paper drank in the water of the pond, turning to bits of pulp, and the ink on the individual torn shreds of letter spread and ran, obliterating any chance of legibility. After several moments there was nothing left of the letter but my memory of it.

“Madam Premier,” Oi said, behind me.

I turned and saw it, along with Umman, my assistant.

“‘Madam Premier.’ So that is my title now,” I mused.

“It is, Madam Premier,” Umman said.

“Your presence is requested in the Grand Assembly chamber,” Oi said. “The Grand Assembly would acknowledge you as the Conclave’s leader.”

“I would be pleased to see it,” I said.

“They have also asked if you would speak to them.”

“If they wish.”

“May I tell them what you will say?”

“Yes,” I said. “You may tell them that I intend to say the following: The union is preserved.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His debut, Old Man’s War, won him science fiction’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, his most recent novel Lock In, and also Redshirts, which won 2013’s Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com) has earned him two other Hugo Awards as well. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter. You can sign up for email updates here.

OTHER TOR BOOKS BY JOHN SCALZI

Agent to the Stars

The Android’s Dream

Fuzzy Nation

Lock In

Redshirts

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded:
A Decade of Whatever, 1998–2008

The Old Man’s War Novels

Old Man’s War

The Ghost Brigades

The Last Colony

Zoe’s Tale

The Human Division

Edited by John Scalzi

Metatropolis

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

About the Author

Other Tor Books by John Scalzi

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE END OF ALL THINGS #2: THIS HOLLOW UNION

Copyright © 2015 by John Scalzi

All rights reserved.

Cover art and pastel drawings by John Harris

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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e-ISBN 9780765384843

First Edition: June 2015