conference table from Edger. Mazian had his own. at the head, leaned on his
folded arms, glared at her. “Well? Where’s the report?”
“It’s coming,” she said. “I’m taking the time to interview and collect positive
id’s. Di took names and numbers before they shot him.”
“Your orders that sent him in there?”
“My standing orders to my troops that they don’t back off from trouble if it
sets itself in front of them. Sir, my people have been systematically harassed
since the incident with Goforth. I shot the man, and my people are harassed,
shouldered, subtle stuff, until someone got too drunk to know the difference
between harassment and outright mutiny. A trooper was asked for her number and
directly refused to give it. She was arrested and she drew her gun and opened
fire on an officer.”
Mazian looked at Edger and back again. “I hear another story. That your troops
are encouraged to stick together. That they’re still under your orders even on
supposed liberty. That they go in squads and under officers and throw their
weight around the dock. That the whole operation of Norway troops and personnel
is insubordinate and provocative, direct defiance of my order.”
“I have given my troops no duties during their liberties. If they’re going in
groups it’s for self-protection. They’re set upon in bars that are open to all
but Norway personnel. That kind of behavior is encouraged among other crews. You
have my complaint of that matter on your desk as of last week.”
Mazian sat and stared a moment, tapped the table in front of him, a slow,
nervous gesture. Lastly he looked toward Edger.
“I’ve hesitated to file a protest,” Edger said. “But there’s a bad atmosphere
building out there. Apparently there’s some difference of opinion about how the
Fleet as a whole is ordered. Ship loyalties—loyalties to certain captains—are
encouraged in some quarters, for reasons I refuse to guess at, perhaps by
certain captains.”
Signy sucked air and slammed her hands down, all but out of her chair before
colder sense asserted itself. Much colder. Edger and Mazian had always been
close… were close, she had long suspected, in a way in which she could not
intervene. She evened her breath, leaned back, looked only at Mazian. It was
war; it was as narrow a chute as ever Norway had run, the straits of Mazian’s
ambition, and Edger’s. “There is something vastly amiss,” she said, “when we
start shooting at each other. By your leave… we’re the oldest in the Fleet, the
longest survivors. And I’ll tell you plainly I know what’s afoot and I’ve played
your charade, gone on with this station organization, which isn’t going to have
any importance whatsoever when the Fleet moves. I’ve done your make-work
operations and done them well. I’ve said no word to my troops or my crew about
what I know; and I get the drift of things, that the troops are allowed to do
what they like on this station because in the long run it doesn’t matter.
Because Pell has stopped mattering, and the survival of it is now contrary to
our interests. We’re aiming at something different now. Or maybe we always were,
and you’ve moved us to it by degrees, never to shock us too much, when you
finally propose what it is you really have in mind, the only choice you’ve left
us with. Sol, isn’t it? Earth. And it’s going to be a long run and dangerous,
with plenty of trouble when we get there. The Fleet—takes over the Company. So
maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s the only thing to do. Maybe it makes sense and it
began to make sense a long time ago, when the Company quit backing us. But we
don’t get there if Pell destroys the disciplines on which this Fleet has
functioned for decades. We don’t get there if the units of it are homogenized
into something that can’t work apart. And that’s what this harassment does. It
tells me how to run Norway. If that starts, then it all breaks down. You take
from the troops their badges and their designations, their identification and
their spirit and it goes, it all goes… and whatever you call it, that’s what’s