A cold, green flare bathed the vessel, covering the bulkhead like a lambent curtain. Passengers gasped in awe and delight.
Wanda looked at Ran. “The thing I don’t understand,” she said, “is . . .”
Her voice trailed off as three pulses of topaz yellow followed the green, drawing her eyes by reflex.
“Is . . . ?” Ran said softly.
“Is how they can live here and rush into a war, not that the war’s all their fault,” she said to complete the thought
“I suppose,” Ran said as he stared wide-eyed at a light show the size of a continent, “they don’t see things the way outsiders do. . . .”
* * *
“This war,” cried Miss Oanh from the center of the family room, paneled with painted screens, “is evil!”
“War with Grantholm,” said her father gently, “is probably inevitable and certainly morally right.”
Mr. Lin knew his long service in Nevasa’s Ministry of External Affairs was the cause of many of his family problems. His daughter had spent half of her eighteen years on foreign worlds with him. The three years on Earth, where Mr. Lin had been ambassador before being brought back to the ministry, had been particularly unfortunate in forming Oanh’s attitudes regarding planetary honor—and filial piety.
Lin cleared his throat and went on, “I realize that you feel you have a right to your own opinion, but please keep it to yourself for the time being. I become a plenipotentiary when I arrive on Tellichery. So long as we remain on Nevasa, I do not have the prerogative of overruling the security services.”
Mr. Lin’s aides in the open, adjacent rooms which served as Lin’s home office discretely avoided staring. The squad of gray-clad guards seemed equally focused on people other than the minister and his daughter. They watched the aides and the petitioners waiting in the outer office. Many of the latter were foreign nationals.
The three-meter area cleared around the perimeter of the family room’s open doors was a result of the civilians’ nervousness about the guards’ openly carried weapons.
Almost certainly some of the guards were members of the Counterintelligence Bureau. The chances were good that one or more of the personnel from Lin’s own ministry reported to the bureau as well.
“It’s never morally right to kill other human beings!” his daughter snapped.
Lin sighed inwardly. Oanh hadn’t wanted to leave Earth, where her friends were, and she was even angrier to be uprooted again in less than six months. He would have preferred to leave her on Nevasa, since in most senses she was capable of looking out for herself—
But Oanh’s anger at the situation came out in the form of statements that were likely to be viewed as treasonous if war with Grantholm broke out.
When war broke out. Mr. Lin wouldn’t have been sent on this mission were war not inevitable and alliance, military alliance, with Tellichery not a crucial factor in that war’s outcome.
“There may be no war,” he said aloud, in the calm voice that he knew grated on his daughter’s nerves worse than a shriek would have done. Lin couldn’t help it. In a tense argument he became preternaturally calm, which was a reason for his career success . . . but had driven his wife into the arms of a grain merchant on Skeuse and was looking as though it might drive his daughter away as well.
Oanh sniffed.
“And in any case,” her father continued, “the behavior of the Grantholm military leaves it open to question whether they can be considered human.”
Lin’s spacious home overlooked the heart of Nevasa City to the east, and Con Ron Landing, the starport, to the west. An incoming vessel and its tugs formed a blight ring above the family room’s clear ceiling. The panels of smoked polycarbonate were mounted in flexible troughs so that they did not rattle audibly, but the starliner’s roar made them vibrate and caused the image to quiver.
“What a fascist pronouncement,” Oanh said without looking at him. “And I suppose only the military is going to die in this moral crusade?”
“Oanh,” Mr. Unsaid. “Please.”
He knew it was his fault. She’d never had a proper home, even before her mother fled. Lin’s duties required that he work eighteen hours on those days he didn’t work twenty-four. Servants could care for Oanh and teach her—but they couldn’t give orders that the strong-willed daughter of an increasingly high official had to accept.