“I’ll come,” he said.
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38
President Erno Chivu’s speech to the combined legislative assembly of the Nova Levis government was scheduled to begin at precisely ten in the morning, one month to the day after the
“Terran incursion,” which was his preferred terminology. The speech was widely expected to answer his critics, who accused him of leaving the business of governance to a group of ideologically motivated advisers while he devoted himself to his business interests back on Earth—among which were a voting interest on the board of Kopernik Station and a seat on the shareholder council of Nucleomorph. A few loud voices hoped he would use the opportunity to resign and take the first shuttle off-planet.
The Gernika massacre had provoked a tremendous amount of investigative activity regarding the financial interests and political allegiances of Triangle leadership, and it was broadly assumed that the aftermath of the Terran strikes marked the beginning of journalism as a profession on Nova Levis. This was, of course, not welcomed by the parties under investigation, particularly when the activities of Vilios Kalienin and Eza Lamina came to represent the endemic corruption and malfeasance of Triangle elected officials—none of whom had 250
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really been elected by the people they were alleged to represent. That was the fundamental problem, and the cause of sporadic rioting in Stopol and Noresk. Disturbances in Nova City, at least inside the walls, were quelled with great speed and alarming efficiency, and President Chivu’s speech was to take place in a legislative chamber ringed by militia and local police.
Room L116 of the Triangle—known formally as the Combined Debate and Resolution Chamber, but colloquially as the Echo Chamber because of the perfunctory nature of legislative discourse under Chivu’s administration—seated one thousand people. Forty-nine desks formed a semi-circle around a dais reserved for committee arrangements or special speakers such as presidents; behind and above the speaking floor, two levels of raked public seating offered excellent views of the proceedings. On this day, the public areas were jammed, and the media presence—as measured by the number of drones flitting above the floor—was heavy. At the head of each aisle stood a pair of armed militia; other pairs stood at either end of the dais and at the outer edges of the semicircle of desks.
Near the leftmost aisle sat Derec, Ariel, and Hodder Feng. Mia Daventri fidgeted in her seat on the other side of the room, an empty seat between her and an oddly subdued Filoo. Periodically, a drone flitted up to Derec or Ariel, less often to Mia, not at all to Hodder or Filoo; but their presence at Chivu’s speech was unremarkable.
At precisely ten o’clock, the president appeared to stony silence from the public and dutiful applause from the assembled seventeen senators and thirty-two representatives, a sizable minority of whom had careers and already-tattered reputations riding on Chivu’s words.
At one minute after ten, the applause having faded even in the Echo Chamber’s excellent acoustic environment, President Chivu said,
“Thank you.”
Immediately thereafter, Hodder Feng stood and, in a clear baritone, said, “I reject your authority to govern this people.”
A hushed murmur swept through the crowd, and security started 251
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to converge on Hodder, but members of the audience stood as they passed and with uncanny speed swept the weapons from their hands.
All through the auditorium, the security detail found themselves disarmed before they were aware that someone was approaching them—including on the debating floor, where a number of people seemed simply to appear, holding the captured weapons. The legislators scrambled to their feet, and the public erupted in a roar punctuated by a few screams that might have been cheers.
Weapons fire crackled from the balcony, and the figure nearest President Chivu buckled and fell. Then the upper portion of the audience swarmed over the shooter, and people started to scramble for the exits. Amid the swelling chaos, Feng strode across the floor to the dais and stepped up to the president. Chivu backed away, face pale with fear, and allowed his personal detail to guide him as far as the door through which he’d entered. There he stopped, faced with a single armed figure—a boy perhaps eleven years of age. The wounded man on the podium struggled to his feet and stood leaning against his nearest compatriot.
When Feng spoke again, his voice was amplified by overhead sound equipment, and his words rang out across the subetheric to Earth, the Fifty Worlds, and all the Settler colonies.
“The governed revoke their consent,” he said. “We declare this government failed in its obligations to represent the interests of the people of Nova Levis, and we hereby dissolve it.”
A moment of absolute silence hung over the assembly, and then a fierce roar of approval boomed from the audience, drowning out the stunned calls for order from some members of the legislature. It grew in intensity until the ears of every human in the chamber began to ring, but when Hodder raised his arms it subsided.
“Flanking me on this podium are the survivors of Gernika,” Hodder said. “Their crime was the will to live, and the willingness to take any action to survive. There are nineteen of them, where once there were more than two thousand. Look at them.”
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Four women, three men, twelve children. As the eyes of the assembled public and the viewing audience across settled space fixed on them, they set down the weapons they had taken from security and stood erect and proud.
“Every one of you in the audience knows someone who died at Gernika,” Hodder said. “Too few of you, but still many, know one or more of these survivors. We reject the proposition that actions taken to save their lives could, at the same time, have robbed them of the humanity that is their birthright. We reject the idea that the people of Nova Levis are incapable of governing themselves and must be subjected to the whim of a corrupt and profiteering cabal of disgraced offworlders. And we deny the legitimacy of the Triangle and its agents throughout the incorporated cities and outposts of this planet. The people of Nova Levis were born free, and today demand the freedom until now denied them.
“From this moment forward, only adults born on Nova Levis or naturalized citizens may serve in the elected government or the judi-ciary. From this moment forward, the natural resources of Nova Levis and its moons are the property of its people. And from this moment forward, Nova Levis forbids the presence in its space, as defined by interplanetary common law, of any military unit except our own duly sworn armed forces. Violation of this prohibition will be considered an act of aggression subject to local and interplanetary sanction.
“President Chivu and members of the House and Senate, your positions are vacated and all associated privileges revoked. Criminal and civil proceedings will begin against any of you determined to have conducted yourselves in a manner unbecoming to your offices. If you wish, we will grant you amnesty in return for your immediate departure from Nova Levis and binding pledge never to return. Quit-ting the planet under these circumstances will entail relinquishing any real property or interest in same that does not physically accompany you at your departure.”
At this, a few shouts of outrage echoed through the chamber before 253
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being buried by an avalanche of cheers and catcalls. Hodder allowed things to die down again before going on.
“Beginning tomorrow morning, any citizen of Nova Levis is welcome to attend a public convention at which the details of a constitution will be formulated. The first task will be to designate a committee to write this document. Nominations will be accepted for the next seven days, and a caucus held during the week following.
“Also tomorrow morning, the first shuttle will be available for former elected officials and their staffs. The amnesty period will be seventy-two hours.”
Hodder stopped, and those closest to h
im could see that his eyes were shining with tears. “People of Nova Levis. As of right now, your destiny belongs to you,” he finished, and if he had said anything else it would have been lost in the overwhelming wave of sound.
People poured onto the floor, jostling the erstwhile legislators and pelting them with curses. A few fistfights broke out, and were broken up by the appearance of one of the Gernika survivors between the two combatants. The press of bodies carried the members of House and Senate out of the building before letting them go; President Chivu was allowed to leave with his personal security. People pressed around Hodder, bombarding him with proposals, theories, complaints, demands. Tomorrow, tomorrow, he told them until his voice gave out. Then he just shrugged and went outside to the plaza that lay between the Triangle and Nova Boulevard, where the first spontaneous street celebration in the history of Nova Levis was raucously underway.
Derec and Ariel joined in, with Mia and the laryngitic Hodder Feng, Filoo, and whoever came by with a bottle or an idea or both. It was a cool, fine fall day, and after a while they were both drunk and elated and it was a cool fall evening.
Eventually, Derec got to his feet. He caught Ariel’s eye and said,
“Time to pay a visit.”
They walked through the crowd, past Derec’s lab to the south gate, 254
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and on from there into New Nova, where the party was more intense but also tinctured with mourning for Gernika’s dead. Here the cyborg question had always been more than philosophical, and here the bigoted opposition ran deepest, because poverty breeds extremism.
Derec and Ariel found the address they were looking for and knocked on the door.
Basq opened it and let them into the apartment that had once housed Mika Mendes. The surviving cyborgs were in the middle of their own more reflective celebration; the looks they cast in Derec and Ariel’s direction were thoughtful and curious. How he had survived the bombing of Nucleomorph, neither Derec nor Ariel knew, and he would not speak of it. He rarely left the apartment, and during his days there had scored every wall with the devastating lines of the painting, reworking them with obsessive care. His leadership was at an end, and he was content to withdraw; but the survivors of Gernika clustered around him because he was their only link to the lives they led before.
“Even you use us,” Basq said.
Derec nodded. “We did. With your consent.”
Basq shrugged. “You’ll ask again. Perhaps the next time we will refuse.”
“Perhaps we won’t have to ask.”
A few of the cyborgs chuckled. “And I was called utopian,” Basq said with glittering eyes.
“You were utopian,” Ariel said.
“Of course I was. Without a dose of utopian dreaming, I could never have held Gernika together.”
That, and a dose of authoritarian brutality, Derec thought. But there had been no shortage of that on Nova Levis.
“And your little revolution is not utopian?” Basq prodded. “We abound in ironies.”
“That we do,” Derec said.
They left soon after. Walking back through the boisterous streets 255
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of New Nova, Derec found himself thinking of the opposition to their plans that even now must be under discussion as intense as the constitutional convention that would be in the coming weeks. Nova Levis would never speak with one voice; the task was to keep each voice respected and distinct. Easy.
He chuckled, and Ariel said, “What?”
“Nothing.” They entered the city proper again, walking north along Nova Boulevard with the sounds of celebration ringing around them.
Enjoy it now, Derec thought. It gets much harder.
Ariel nudged him. “This is supposed to be a party.”
Derec gave an embarrassed laugh. “Don’t let me ruin the mood,”
he said. “I’ve just got one other thing to do.”
“One? Would that be putting together a census, arranging for naturalization, conducting an inventory of natural resources and vacated property, setting up elections, or what?” Ariel laughed. “Tomorrow, Derec. There will be plenty of time for that tomorrow.”
They had reached his lab. Derec stopped. “I’ve got to take care of something here.”
Ariel rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. Didn’t you hear me?”
“I did, and I’ll meet you at Kamil’s in half an hour. Okay?”
Now she was interested. “What are you going to do?”
“Half an hour. Kamil’s.”
She gave him a beat to change his mind, then said, “Have it your way,” and walked off in the direction of the Triangle plaza.
The lab was dark and quiet, the only light a faint ambience of telltales from the few terminals that ran aroundn the clock doing gene sequences or regressions. Miles was back at Derec’s apartment and if there was any justice in the universe, Elin was joyously drunk and surrounded by her friends.
Derec crossed to a closet, moving mostly by feel, and opened the door. On the floor at the back of the closet, under the lowest shelf, was a malfunctioning centrifuge that he’d been unable to get permis-256
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sion to repair. He slid it out and reached inside, removing the datum Hofton had given him.
Derec didn’t speak until he’d crossed the lab again and opened the door. The sounds of celebration broke like a wave over the silence.
He held the datum up. “Hear that?”
No response.
“Hofton. I know you’re listening.”
No response.
“All right. I’m going to say this once, to you and Bogard both: Leave us alone.”
He dropped the datum to the floor and crushed it under his heel.
Then Derec walked away from his lab, back into the jubilant chaos of Nova Boulevard where Ariel was waiting.
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