Things Fall Apart: Chapter 43

Newer York, Forward Docks, 5 Tammuz 2541, mid-afternoon

They walked in silence, the Governor and the Admiral, side by side, for quite some time. They hadn't discussed it ahead of time. It just happened that they each had a lot to think about, even from so brief a conversation as they had just had with the delegation from Zephyr.

For her part, though, the Governor-General also decided discretion was the better part of valor. The docks were not as busy as they should have been, yet. Even in-system traffic remained reduced for the moment. However, they were also not quiescent. Silverman and Donato passed knots of dockworkers at various cargo piers, loading freight off the lifts that came down from the ships. Occasionally, someone would catch their eye and wave greeting. It was not a place for serious discussion of State business.

No one, however, accosted them. This was a bit of hard-won etiquette that remained from the earliest days of the city. Leaders could walk without security through the streets, and hardly ever be so much as importuned by an aggrieved petitioner, unless they made it clear they were in a given place at a given time to talk to people. Knowing that would happen reliably kept people polite the rest of the time.

So they walked, wrapped in their thoughts, anti-spinward for nearly half the circumference of the deck, to a train station diametrically opposite the one the ambassador and her party would be taking. The admiral had argued for this choreography—allow the Zephyr crew to brief their ambassador first and give them plenty of space to feel like they were not being pressured. Silverman had put up a brief fight for a joint briefing right up front, but it had been more for argument's sake.

Finally, they reached the station. Here, one concession to their rank and their need for privacy had been made: a private pod was waiting on a siding, ready to slide onto the back of the next aftbound train. A crewmember at the station guided them to where they could board the pod, rather than having to wait on the concourse.

When the doors slid closed and they were both seated, Silverman opened with, "It's much worse even than we feared, isn't it."

Donato nodded soberly. "I think it must be. Public data on TCTF fleet personnel is extensive. Six months ago, Singer was a lieutenant on Bellerophon. Now she's commanding a ship that should still be in mothballs. It's the one and only fleet ship we've seen since all the ones here blew up or turned ram. This is...Red Fifteen, maybe? Something in that range."

"I was thinking Red Seventeen, myself, but Fifteen would be bad enough."

Despite that they were alone, they were talking somewhat in shorthand. The Contingency Files—extensive analyses and syntheses devised by the founders when the city was still a generation ship—laid out a wide variety of scenarios, color coded by broad categories.

Red was for genocidal catastrophe.

Silverman made a face and said, "Knowing how bad it was likely to be, why did you provoke Singer—and Ellison—like that?"

"Simplest reason of all. I needed to see what Singer was made of. The record we have for her shows a perfectly competent officer who never reached for command. Yet, here she is, commanding. I needed to know if she had risen to the occasion, or had merely been the only person left available."

"Why? She's not your officer."

"Yet."

Silverman blinked, but Donato did not elaborate, and instead went down a different path. "She may, however, be the person we actually have to deal with going forward. The lack of contact from Tau Ceti proper, which has a shipyard of its own, leaves me convinced that TCTO authority is entirely broken, or at any rate so fragmented that it's going to be a long time pulling itself together. Those fragments are going to need actual leaders, not just people with titles."

"And you wanted to know if Singer was going to be one of those?"

"Mmhm."

"And?"

Donato actually grinned. "She's certainly quick with a comeback, isn't she. She was polite enough, but she was absolutely not going to let me beat her even on my own ground."

"That isn't really an answer."

"It's a start."

That, Silverman decided, was about as much as she was going to get out of him right now on the topic, so she changed gears. "You know what Ellison was getting at about having other people at the briefing, right?"

The admiral sighed. "Yes. And she's right. Twenty-five hundred years of grudge aside, we need to invite the Revi'ini to the table."

The Revi'ini. The Cousins Below. Three years after Starfall, the most recalictrant pro-landing faction staged an uprising. The survivors were exiled to the planet they wanted so badly. Too small a population to safely reproduce more than one or two generations, they had turned to cloning. Ultimately, like Newer York and all her daughter cities, like the human diaspora itself, they had thrived. Slowly, oh, so slowly, they were changing their planet to be truly habitable.

Officially, Revi'i and the David's Star Republic were friends, now. There was trade, even some tourism back and forth. A couple of Revi'ini over the centuries had emigrated upwell, or even out-system.

In matters of system security, there had long been an agreement that the people who lived in space were best positioned to deal with it, and could call upon resources from the planet. But they were not actually members of the Republic, and they deserved to have their own representative at the table when the TCTO folks finally briefed them all on what they knew.

Silverman said next, "Do you want me to do it?"

Donato thought about that. "Yes. Best it come from the civilian side. If I invite them, the implication is that there's an actual threat to us. Right now, I see a calamity that's happened to a large segment of humanity. That's a threat to the diaspora, to the overall project of human survival, absolutely. But this system? Not yet. Not 'til we know more. It's subtle, but the current president of Revi'i is a subtle woman, in my experience. I think she'll see the difference, and come prepared accordingly."

"You're betting a lot on a woman you've only spoken to occasionally on a video call."

"And I could be wrong, but it's not likely to leave her more alarmed to have you make the call. We need everyone at the table to be in the most receptive mood possible. The scope of this is going to be hard to accept, and probably still incompletely known. We're all going to want answers we don't have yet."

The train had started moving while they were talking and had already stopped once for the Bronx Ring. Two more stops, and they would transfer for the spoke lift to take them up to the Manhattan Ring. They could use their position to requisition a private ride down the lift, but they tried to do that as little as possible to avoid disrupting people's commutes.

So, no time for a long argument, and anyway, Donato changed the subject again.

"Were you as surprised as I was to see Espinoza?"

Silverman smiled faintly. "Absolutely. I thought he had firmly chosen the private life of a tech mogul, cranking out new innovations in time-compression tech. I'm betting there's a real story behind how he wound up on Singer's ship."

Donato nodded, "Agreed, but we already know part of the story, or I do anyway. Zephyr is what the TCTF always calls their first starship with a new class of drive. This one had been slated for completion a while ago but got mothballed by the Council."

Silverman figured out where that was going immediately. "So it would have been sitting idle and unpowered when the catastrophe hit."

"Exactly. Whatever else happened, clearly whoever's in charge at G-581 decided to finish the ship, presumably without orders. If it's Haraldsdottir, I've met her. She'd only do that if she was pretty solid in her justification."

"If you've only got a crew for one ship, send the fastest," Silverman said.

Donato nodded, "Although it's also possible it was just the one easiest to complete in a short time. We'll know more tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, I suspect. Our Cousin Below may need time to come upwell. Also, did you notice that they carefully have not said they came out of New Norfolk, but out of G-581?"

"I...hadn't. But you're right." A pause, and then, "Shit."

Then, the realization hit Silverman anew: her nephew was alive. That bit of news from Singer had left her crying openly on the dock, but now it came over her again. She felt pride—hadn't Singer said he'd been vital in getting them afloat? Anger—if he'd stayed here at home, he wouldn't have been in danger—which she knew was irrational. She felt elation, for he was by far her favorite nephew, and one she had hoped some day to groom for leadership here in the DSR. Guilt, because that hope was exactly why he'd taken his talents elsewhere.

And finally, she just felt joyful relief. He was alive, and she could tell her brother as much.

Them being alone, she made no effort to hide any of this sudden storm of emotion from Donato, who guessed correctly, saying, "I was glad for you to hear your nephew's all right."

She smiled wanly. "Yes. And it's totally selfish of me to feel so strongly about it, but..."

Donato shook his head. "Take every win you can take, Yehudit. Hold them close. We're going to need them."

She met his eyes and nodded, not trusting her voice just then. Then the train announced they'd arrived at the transfer station for the Manhattan ring. Together, they walked out, and joined the mercifully short queue waiting for the spoke lift.