“I’ll come with you, if you want,” Jack had told her that morning. Smiling, he’d added, “If only so that you’ll have someone around you can talk to without having to worry about their individual or cultural political agenda. No one’s getting much work done at the lab these last few days anyway.”
She’d seriously considered taking him up on the offer, before finally turning him down. “Thanks, sweetie, but it wouldn’t look good. People on staff as well as independents and natives would start wondering if maybe you had some influence over Commonwealth policy.”
“Don’t I?” He’d punctuated the comment with a playful kiss.
She had to smile back. “Of course you do.” She put a finger to his lips. “But don’t tell anybody—it’s a Church secret between me and the Last Resort.”
“You’re the Last Resort here,” he’d reminded her.
That was the thought she carried with her now. Even by Commonwealth standards, Fluva was a long way from the government and Church nerve centers on Earth and Hivehom. While bureaucrats on both worlds dithered, she was the one on-site. The one faced with issuing life-or-death edicts. The one responsible not only for her own people but, to a lesser extent, for the Deyzara and the Sakuntala as well.
She didn’t want it. What she liked was the routine, the sane, and the predictable. Signing off on directives that came from her superiors, implementing modest improvements, and facilitating the humdrum. Instead, she was faced with a refugee crisis not of her own making and an escalating interspecies war. She would have been within her rights to ignore it. Within her rights but not her conscience. Had the situation been reversed and it had been the Sakuntala who were being driven from their homes by the Deyzara, she would have reacted in exactly the same way.