by Patty Jansen
From the moment that it had become clear that President Sirkonen’s murder was through Aghyrian technology, I had expected this issue to surface. The Amoro Renkati group had been found guilty, but the Aghyrians had remained silent on the issue. They had simply moved their technology to a less visible place. Many people were not happy with that.
All through the problems with the Exchange outage, they had not assisted the operators in re-establishing contact with the network, even though I had no doubt that they could. They’d simply watched as the operators struggled.
I had to confront this issue. Defuse it, if I could, but I didn’t hold my hopes up.
I rang the bell for silence, and when the noise had calmed somewhat, I said, “I think the Delegate could have been more subtle about it, but I think the underlying question is valid.” It grew very quiet in the hall. “I would like to give Delegate Akhtari the opportunity to comment on it.” It also occurred to me that, being the main speaker, I had acquired the chair of the meeting by default.
She glared at me, nostrils flaring. “What is there to comment?” Her voice vibrated with anger. “Have I ever acted in a way that is not in line with the requirements for this office? What my ethnic group does or doesn’t do has no bearing on my position.”
I said, “I think the assembly would like to hear your unambiguous statement that you are not involved in their talks to the ship, that you knew nothing of the communication that I’ve just shown the assembly, and that you absolutely hold to your position of neutrality in this matter.” Again, I used dhoya pronouns.
“Of course I do.” She took a deep breath through flaring nostrils. She frowned at me. “What are you on about, actually?”
It was probably the most sincere thing she had ever said to me. I wanted to say, I’m giving you the opportunity to save your skin, but of course I couldn’t do that. “It is in the assembly’s interest that we maintain a unified front. Gamra will soon come under threat from outside. We can’t let the fact that some of us have been talking to this ship come between us. We are closer to each other than anyone is to the crew of this ship. We don’t know what they want. We don’t know if they’re hostile. We don’t know what their claims will be. None of us should be negotiating with them behind the scenes. It’s deplorable that some contact has already taken place. That must absolutely stop. If necessary all assembly members should take a pledge of loyalty to this assembly.”
“Iyamichu ata!” a Coldi voice shouted at the back, and that pledge was repeated a few times. It was originally a battle cry of troops about to go into a fight, a declaration of loyalty to the leadership. It was also very Coldi, in-your-face and confrontational. It said, Coldi people are ready, why not all of the rest of you? I wasn’t sure that it was helpful, because I got too many accusations that I was a puppet for Asto already.
Ezhya remained impassive at the table. I thought he looked pleased with himself.
Chief Delegate Akhtari came to the dais. Her penetrating voice echoed through the hall. “Delegate Wilson speaks true. We should be determining a response to this issue as a united group. We should be talking about the ship and how we will approach it. This vessel,” she gestured at the projection, “This vessel is the greatest threat to us since the time of the wars. We should not bicker amongst ourselves while this ship listens and approaches.”
“That is very well, but we want hard guarantees that we can trust you,” the Indrahui man said again, continuing with his very direct pronouns. “We want proof that you are not part of this group that spoke to the ship without our knowledge. We want assurance that you are impartial as you should be—”
Some shouts went up in the hall.
“Be quiet!” Delegate Akhtari shouted over the tumult, but the shouting increased.
It came, not just from the rebellious delegates at the back, but also from people at the front, now starting to ask questions, yelling louder to be heard over the noise. She had to ring the bell repeatedly until a semblance of silence returned to the hall. “I would like Delegate Wilson to continue with the proceedings—”
Another shout at the back of the hall—
“Quiet!” Her nostrils flared. “Either apply for permission to speak or hold your silence.”
Several people yelled that they would be applying.
Delegate Akhtari stepped off the dais, and I climbed on again. My hands were sweaty. It was up to me to defuse the situation. Ignore the concerns of the assembly, and they would never shut up.
I said, “I hear a lot of concern. The Chief Delegate could allay the assembly’s misgivings simply by answering the question: how involved is our Chief Delegate with the Barresh Aghyrian group?”
She snorted. Her cheeks had gone red.
“Of course I am pro-Aghyrian. This is like asking Ezhya if he is pro-Coldi.” Her response was very direct and very much out of character. Rattled, I thought. Surely she had to have expected to answer these questions one day?
“I lived in the Aghyrian compound for most of my life. Still have a room there in fact. I grew through the ranks to be their rightful representative and that of the whole of Barresh—”
“—You represent anyone as long as those people have money!” I couldn’t see who that was. Probably Pengali.
A fairly large group of people applauded.
Delegate Akhtari continued over the noise, “I’ve represented all of Barresh, even the people who have done nothing to earn that representation.”
Oo—er. She was really losing it now.
Several shouts of protest went up in the hall. Another scuffle broke out higher up in the tiered benches. The guards were running short on people to control the mayhem. If chaos broke out everywhere, there would never be enough guards to control it. I guessed that was why we wore armour.
I rang the bell long and clear. When a modicum of order had returned, I said, “At this point in time it is most important to present a unified face when that ship eventually turns up. We do not want any major disagreements dividing us. We do not want one of the groups siding with one side and one with the other. We do not want both groups of Aghyrians to be fighting each other.”
Someone said, “We do not want a Chief Delegate who is going to favour one side or the other.”
Delegate Ayanu added to this, “We do not want a Chief Delegate who is going to hand control of our Exchange network or any part of our planet to these people. What do they even want?”
“Who says that any of us have any interest in handing over control to them?” Delegate Samari said, his face red.
Delegate Ayanu yelled across the hall, “Then why have you been talking to them in secret?”
“Since when aren’t we allowed to speak to our kinsfolk without letting everyone listen in?”
Delegate Ayanu rose and spread her hands in a theatrical gesture. “Since these supposed kinsfolk of yours brought down our entire Exchange network once before and I, for one, would like to make damn sure that it doesn’t happen again. And oh, there has been this mysterious ship floating about and we’ve been wondering if it’s live or some empty shell of the past, but no, you’re already talking to it, never mind everyone else. It would have been nice if at the very least you’d have informed the rest of us that the ship is live and talking to you?”
Delegate Samari snorted. “Certainly, Delegate, all of this is not news to you?”
Delegate Ayanu glared at him, nostrils flaring. “This is not about me. It’s about the entire assembly, about gamra as a community.”
Delegate Samari continued, primly. “Tell me, if you had been the first to establish contact, would you have shared it with everyone in this assembly? Including entities you don’t like, you don’t trust and suspect of illegal activities? You wouldn’t. In fact, I know that you’ve had this information in your possession, and you’ve known about the status of this ship for quite a while. Possibly even longer than we’ve been talking to it—”
“That’s nonsense! And I can prove it.”
“Prove it, prove it!”
Others in the hall took up the chant.
Delegate Akhtari was banging her closed fist on the table. “Quiet, delegates! Quiet, or I will be forced to suspend this sitting!” She rose from her seat and came to the dais again.
Someone yelled, “If you do that, we’ll just keep talking outside!”
“You will suspend the sitting to do what?” Delegate Ayanu yelled. “To save your name? You are with these people, this secretive sect that closes its doors to other people. You call us artificial, but meanwhile you have breeding programs?”
Delegate Akhtari gave her a prim look. “That has nothing to do with the matter under consideration. You have been putting undue pressure on some of the key members of the Aghyrian delegation with all these outrageous claims. You have made threats. You have tried to scare our people into telling you what you wanted to hear—whether it was true or not.”
“Because you were deliberately keeping information from us.”
“We were not.”
“You were.”
The discussion between the two women descended into a shouting match of mutual accusations.
Thayu glanced at me sideways, her expression disturbed. I’ve never seen a meeting get out of hand like this.
Two major delegates abandoning all protocol and starting mud-slinging matches. To be honest, I’d found this sort of posturing quite common, and despite the fact that gamra main assembly meetings had the reputation for being boring and staid, I had never experienced that.
Ezhya was still sitting relaxed, with his arms crossed over his chest. It was very unusual for him not to have tried to steal the limelight, but he had yet to say a single word to the assembly.
I looked at Thayu. Do you think he’s letting Ayanu self-destruct?
“Ayanu has no defensible position in this argument,” Veyada said, behind me. “Whatever she is going to do or say, she will be damned by everyone. Yes, it was her right to know about the Aghyrians talking to the ship, but no, she should not have kept that a secret and she should definitely not have used that to try and blackmail the group.”
“Is that why Ezhya isn’t saying anything in the meeting?” Because he didn’t want to become tainted by her bungling or in any way look like he was involved with it?
He’ll have his reasons, Thayu said.
Yes, he did, as always.
But somebody had to take control of the situation or this entire assembly would explode.
Delegate Ayanu was saying, “We are merely defending our position and you think we’re using unreasonable means to do so?”
I stepped back to the dais, pushed myself to the microphone and said, “Can I bring the meeting to order, please.”
There were some cheers and stamping of feet. Both delegates Ayanu and Akhtari gave me penetrating looks. Delegate Akhtari’s face returned to her usual emotionless expression. Oh, she knew she’d let herself get carried away. She nodded to me. “Thank you, delegate. I’ll take it from here.”
“My concerns have not been allayed,” the Indrahui delegate said, still standing in the audience. “The fact that both delegates seem to think it’s appropriate to argue like children makes me think that both have too much personal involvement. I have no trust that the delegate for Asto tells us the truth. Sadly, I also have no trust that the Aghyrian representative tells us the truth, especially in the light of the fact that the regular representative appears to have vanished. Neither do I have any confidence in the words of this assembly’s leader. I think the assembly would agree with me in asking for an explicit statement that she did not have any knowledge of her kinsfolk speaking to the ship.”
Someone shouted, “Hear, hear!” and others stamped their feet. The low rumble spread through the hall.
Delegate Ayanu rose to speak—
“And we need a declaration from you, too!” someone shouted.
And more people stamped their feet until the whole hall filled with the sound, and they clapped and chanted, but I couldn’t hear what they said. Numerous delegates rose from their seats and slowly made their way through the hall until they formed a solid wall around Asto’s box. The guards formed a circle around it, with their backs to the box’s low walls. The administrative workers inside looked more than a little panicked.
Thayu was frantically checking her reader and then checking the audience.
Delegate Akhtari grabbed the microphone. “Silence, all!”
The sound boomed through that space, over all the noise. People fell quiet and watched.
“This assembly seems to favour those who spread rumours and make false allegations—”
“Then disprove them!”
“Quiet!” She glared in the direction of the speaker, somewhere up in the higher tiers of the audience.
She blew out a breath through her nose which was so strong that it made the microphone pop. And she let a long silence lapse.
“Right then,” she said, and her voice trembled with anger. “Take the vote, because I can’t work like this. Take your damn vote and see if someone else can do a better job of taming this chaotic, vindictive pack of predators. I’ve dedicated most of my life to this assembly, but I’ve had enough.”
She whirled around, stepped off the dais and sat down at the table, nostrils flaring.
Oh shit, and I was meant to have prevented this, although, against the wishes of thousands, I didn’t see how I could have done that.
The tumult that broke out in the hall was deafening. People yelled and shouted over the heads of others to communicate with people in the stands. Delegates left their seats to talk to their staff. The guards didn’t quite know what to do. They were heavily outnumbered.
I gestured to Thayu and Nicha in the direction of our box. We crossed the floor, sidestepping groups of arguing people.
What were they going to vote?
What was the text of the general referendum?
Delegate Ethvos sat with a few administrators at the table, deep in discussion.
The crowd around Asto’s box had already evaporated, but the last people now left, too. Delegate Ayanu herself was in deep discussion with some of her staff.
“Well, that is disturbing,” Thayu said. “Expected, but disturbing.”
Veyada said, “Where is Ezhya?”
“I don’t know, I saw him—”
His chair at the table was empty. Damn it. What was he up to?
“He’ll be around somewhere,” Nicha said. “He’s given Ayanu a lecture this morning, so maybe he trusts her to deal with this issue in the appropriate way.”
“Ezhya places his trust in someone else in a vital issue? Someone he isn’t known to be very close to?” Not likely.
Thayu nodded. My feeder told me that she agreed with me.
“We can’t worry about it now.” He’d probably turn up at the most inopportune moment, but while it worried me, I couldn’t do anything about it.
I took my chair in the middle of the box and the staff all gathered around me.
“The first vote is easy,” I said. “I think Delegate Akhtari knows a lot more about the dealings of her kinsfolk with the ship than she can say. I don’t trust her and have never trusted her. The vote is warranted, and she won’t survive. I won’t attempt to help her survive.” The more I thought about it, the more I felt this way. This should have happened after the dismantling of Amoro Renkati and the whole business with Seymour Kershaw. Someone should have insisted that the Aghyrians come clean about their technology. Maybe they’d been talking to the ship even back then. Maybe the ship had provided them with the technology. I felt cold.
Nicha said, “So, what? Vote her out?”
“Yes.” I didn’t normally discuss my voting intentions, but I thought this was important enough to affect everyone.
“She can’t stay,” Veyada said. “She’s lost the loyalty of too many people.”
Like Risha Palayi, who had challenged for the leadership of Asto, and lost.
I could still see his body on the table in the zeyshi warren.
I said, “The problem comes with who should replace her. I don’t know that we have a candidate who has majority support, who won’t upset any of the sides, and who can step in quickly. That is the real problem—”
The voting bell rang and most of the talk died down.
The screen went white, the gamra logo appeared and faded, to be followed by the text, Does your entity support the current candidate in the office of Chief Delegate?
I had never seen that text on the screen, although I had known that it was one of the standard voting questions that were spelled out in the gamra rules. A vote of no confidence in the Chief Delegate was so rare that it hadn’t happened for many years.
A murmur of talk went through the hall. Delegate Ethvos kept saying to be quiet, but it was a lost cause. Every delegate had only one vote. Everyone was talking with their staff.
We didn’t need to talk anymore. There really was no viable solution.
The second bell rang.
I pressed against.
There was a brief countdown and then the result appeared on the screen. For: two hundred and fifteen. Against: one thousand, five hundred and ninety-three. After more than seventy years in the job, she was finished.
Delegate Akhtari stared at the screen as if she couldn’t believe it, as if the cheers and shouts in the hall were in her support.
Then she slowly got up. This was history in the making. This was the woman I’d first seen when I was a boy at Midway Space Station, who’d held the position of Chief Delegate for more years than I’d been alive. The woman who had inspired fear in the hearts of many, who had blasted me at various occasions, but who had, as a result of the behaviour of her fellows, lost more of her credibility with each passing year.
As if in slow motion, she took off the ceremonial cloak and laid it on the table. The light made the gold embroidery glitter. She produced an object on a chain from under her tunic, pulled the chain over her head and put the object on the table, too. It was some sort of access key, I thought. Then she pushed her chair to the table.