“But the fact that you have received this mail means that you have succeeded, against whatever the odds, and so, once again, I say, Congratulations. You did it, and, no matter whose descendant you are in the multiple chains of Watchers we have set, I personally am very proud of you all.
“Now I come to the purpose of this mail. Having achieved your purpose, against all the odds, you now find yourself in control of a huge organization. I suspect at this point, you are simply feeling overwhelmed. You were plucked out of whatever life you were leading, first to watch over Galactic Mail, and then to assert control over it, to right its course. You have fulfilled all your ancestors' dreams to have accomplished such a feat, and it may now be time to go home.”
Childers paused for a moment before continuing.
“If your heart leapt when I said that, then I have read my tea leaves correctly.”
Childers smiled, and picked up her cup and took a sip of tea. She set it back on the table.
“Having succeeded in pulling Galactic Mail back from the plunge into totalitarianism, you now find yourself in a position for which you have neither the skills nor the experience to be successful.
“When I founded Galactic Mail, it was much smaller than the organization you are now heading. A few million people. Nevertheless, I already had for over a decade headed up the largest military organization in human space. Subsequent leaders of Galactic Mail probably did as I did, coming up through the ranks, shouldering the responsibility for larger and larger portions of the company, learning the leadership and delegation skills required to be successful in heading up such a huge organization.
“No one who did not come up through the ranks of Galactic Mail has those skills. In particular, you do not have those skills, as you are probably realizing.
“So I just wanted to point out to you that your huge responsibility is ended. You have succeeded. You have my heartfelt gratitude, and that of all of the Watchers' ancestors.
“You should not feel like you are abandoning our trust in you, or leaving the job half finished, or walking away from your responsibility, if you step down now as CEO. Far from it. You set aside your life, left your home world, ignored your family, underwent whatever hardships, took terrible risks, made difficult decisions. It is likely that many people have died, many at your own hand, or at your command, in the fight for control. And that weighs heavily on you.
“I know. I've been there, and I know.”
Childers paused there, and her eyes once again struck Dawson. The eyes of someone used to wielding tremendous authority, yes. But more than that, those eyes reflected the burdens of that authority, and the regrets. The feeling that, if she had been that little bit better, her own ghosts would perhaps be less numerous. Dawson saw the authority there, as before, but now she also saw sympathy, and more, understanding.
“You did all that, took those risks, made those fraught decisions, and you succeeded. You have forced Galactic Mail back onto the straight and narrow path of ensuring peace while avoiding tyranny.
“Your sole remaining responsibility is to ensure that the leadership of Galactic Mail has the skills and experience it needs to lead the company going forward.
“The Watchers remain the Board of Directors for now. They can continue to exercise oversight over the new management for the next five years. They will be replaced over the next ten years – the next two shareholders meetings – with new directors, per the by-laws. But it is the responsibility of this Board, at this time, to find within Galactic Mail the leadership it needs to be successful.
“Once more, to you and all the Watchers, Congratulations. Job well done. I am so very proud of you all.
“For you, Mister or Madame CEO, it is now time to step down, to take back your seat on the Board of Directors. Attend Board meetings, of course. Make sure the new leadership stays on the correct path, of course.
“But it is time now to go back home, to your family, to your life.
“And thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
Dawson sat for a long time there, on that porch, Jan Childers beside her, looking out at the town of New Hope. She felt like a huge weight had been taken off her shoulders.
She looked back at Jan Childers, now in an end-of-recording loop, looking out at New Hope and slowly rocking in her chair. She had seen the future. No, more than that, she had dreamed the future as it could be, and made it happen. She had forged it with her own hands.
And now she had given her seventh great-granddaughter, Patricia Dawson, permission to go home.
Stepping Down
Dawson asked Enfield to a private dinner in a small meeting room off her office that evening. When Enfield arrived at her office, a waiter met him at the door and showed him into the inner room. The table was set for dinner for four, with fine china, wine glasses, and candles. A wine cooler stood to the side next to a catering cart, and another server was preparing a tossed salad on the cart.
“Wow. What's the occasion?”
“We're celebrating. Have a seat,” Dawson said as she waved him to a chair.
“We expecting guests?” Enfield asked as he took the indicated seat.
“Yes. In a moment. First things first. I have a little announcement to make. I am stepping down as CEO of Galactic Mail.”
Enfield just stared at her.
“The job is done. The job we set out to do. I've just pushed you a mail I received this morning. You should view it. I'll wait.”
Enfield's expression settled into the blank look of someone in immersive VR. After several minutes, his attention returned to the here and now.
“That woman never ceases to amaze me. She saw all this coming. She's right, of course. It just never occurred to me,” Enfield said.
“Or to me. But she's right. And I'm going home.”
“Who should we install as CEO in your place? Do you have a recommendation?”
“Yes, actually. Sylvain Costa.”
Enfield started at that.
“Reinstall him as CEO? The guy who was the problem in the first place?”
“Yes. With Micheli as his chief of staff and heir apparent. He finishes out his original term, then Kali takes the helm. We'll still have the board then, as it will be right before the next shareholders meeting.”
“That could work. We get the continuity, Micheli gets, what, four years in the number-two spot, then takes the helm for ten years. And we know where she's coming from. I like it.”
“And I like that I get to go home.”
Just then, the waiter reappeared and showed Bob Morgan and Tatiana Khatri into the room.
“Did you start the party without us?” Morgan asked.
“I was told this was a surprise party,” Khatri said.
“It's a surprise, all right,” Enfield told his wife. “Pat just told me she's stepping down as CEO of Galactic Mail.”
Khatri and Morgan both turned to Dawson.
“Our job is done,” Dawson said. “We're going home.”
The dinner was wonderful.
Costa tapped on the doorway to Dawson's office.
“You wanted to see me, Pat?”
“Yes, Syl. Come on in and close the door. Have a seat.”
Dawson waved him to a chair in the side seating arrangement and they both sat. It was unusual for Dawson to close her door, and the staff knew not to bother her if it was closed.
“I wanted to tell you something, and I need to ask you a question.”
Dawson looked down, and settled her hands in her lap. She looked back up at Costa.
“I'm stepping down as CEO of Galactic Mail. The job I came to do is done, and I now find myself in a position for which I have neither the skills nor the experience to be successful.”
“I'll admit it is a handful, even for someone who came up through the ranks.”
“Which leads me to my question. The Board has asked me for a recommendation for my replacement, which, as you say, should be someone who came up through the ranks.
“My inclination is to recommend you to finish out your last appointed term, with Kali Micheli as your chief of staff and heir apparent, to replace you at the end of your term. I was wondering if you would be open to that.”
Costa said nothing. He was struck silent, as if someone had sucked all the air out of his lungs. Dawson simply waited. When he finally recovered, he spoke with deliberation.
“I will say it was deeply disappointing to be removed so abruptly, in the middle of my term. It was a personal failure. Not going out on top, not completing my term. I would appreciate the opportunity to finish the job, cap off my career successfully, and lead Galactic Mail down the road Jan Childers chided me about in that VR you shared.”
“The road you had departed from.”
“Yes, although I was following in the direction my predecessors had pointed us. That's part of the problem. I can see now we need much more education, and continuing education, about what Galactic Mail is, and what it must remain, for all employees. It would be good to have everyone in Galactic Mail view that VR of Jan Childers once a year, for one thing.”
“It would require you to move here to Kalnai. Doma will not be the headquarters.”
“I understand. Vivian has been coming with me on these trips, and she likes it here. She loves the mountains. At worst, it's four years to a remote posting before returning to Doma. We've had those before as well.”
“Is all that a 'Yes' then?”
“Yes, Pat. Ms. Dawson. I accept, if the Chairman sees fit to nominate me and the Board concurs.”
Patricia Dawson officially communicated her resignation as CEO of Galactic Mail to George Enfield as Chairman of the Board in a mail the next day. That triggered a whole bunch of things to happen in rapid succession over the next twenty-four hours.
Jack Turner also communicated his resignation as vice president.
Natasha Sanna, age 91, and Juan Linna, age 88, communicated their resignations as members of the Board of Directors.
The Board, now down to fourteen members, voted via mail to reinstate Patricia Dawson and Jack Turner to their Board seats, bringing the board back up to the sixteen-member complement authorized by the by-laws.
George Enfield, who remained Chairman, named Sylvain Costa as CEO, and the Board concurred via mail.
Sylvain Costa made Kali Micheli his vice president and chief of staff.
The board also voted affirmatively by mail on a motion to provide the former CEO Patricia Dawson the standard retirement package for retiring CEOs of Galactic Mail, despite the fact she had only held the post for a bit over five weeks.
PRESS RELEASE
– For Immediate Release –
SLENIS, KALNAI – Galactic Mail has announced the move of its corporate headquarters from Nadezhda, Doma, to Slenis, Kalnai. The firm already maintains a large regional headquarters on Kalnai. The new corporate headquarters will be built on the company's existing site fifty miles south of the capital of Slenis.
Kalnai is the company's largest regional hub, and is closer to the population center of its service area. The move will make the company more responsive to customer needs by shortening communications paths from the headquarters to its regional and divisional locations.
Galactic Mail's corporate headquarters had been located on Doma, thirty miles east of the capital of Nadezhda, for its first one hundred and eighty-five years, even as the population center of its customer base moved over a thousand light years toward the center of the galaxy
GALACTIC NEWS SERVICE
***** Breaking News *****
GNS–Slenis, Kalnai. Galactic Mail has announced that Sylvain Costa has been reinstated by the Board of Directors as its chief executive officer. This is widely taken as a sign among corporate observers that the turmoil that has engulfed the company for the last month is beginning to die down.
Stepping down after only five weeks at the helm is Patricia Dawson, an accountant and investigator, who, it is widely believed, was brought in by Galactic Mail's Board of Directors to investigate irregularities within the company centering around the actions of Padma Kosar, Costa's former chief of staff.
The internal power struggle for control of Galactic Mail, which apparently did not involve Costa, devolved into military operations between groups within the company loyal to Dawson and Kosar. Major military actions occurred within the last month on Kalnai, Doma, and Odla, three of its major regional locations.
Ultimately Dawson's forces wrested control of the company from forces loyal to Kosar, who was killed in a kinetic strike on the former corporate headquarters on Doma. An estimated two hundred thousand Galactic Mail employees died in the corporation's internal war.
The company's mail and freight services were unaffected by the turmoil.
GALACTIC NEWS SERVICE
***** Breaking News *****
GNS–Nadezhda, Doma. In an unexpected move, Helen Utkin, Prime Minister of Doma, has announced that she is stepping down and retiring from politics. She cited health reasons for her resignation. It is widely expected that Foreign Minister Monica Jin will attempt to form a new government.
Finance Minister Dmitri Katsaros and Justice Minister Alexandra Fiala also stepped down, to provide Jin the opportunity to form her own cabinet. They also announced their retirements from politics.
The resignations come just a week after the suicide death of Trade Minister Horace Duncan. Duncan was found dead in his office within the executive office building. It was not known how he had secreted a firearm into the building.
Horizon
Patricia Dawson scrambled up the last few feet to the peak, a rocky outcropping at the top of a foothill of the mountains rising to the east. She turned around to the west, looking out over the trees toward New Hope. She could see Campbell Hall and its grounds below her, on a lower hill closer to the city. She watched as a large freight shuttle took off from the New Hope Spaceport, taking containers of freight or resupply up to a Galactic Mail ship somewhere in orbit.
Galactic Mail. Wherever you looked, there it was.
It was only six weeks since she had been on a passenger shuttle, headed up to the GMS Mnemosyne in orbit. How much had changed. Not New Hope, or Horizon. It was she who had changed, who carried those changes around inside her.
She had wrestled with titanic historical forces, run the largest company in human history, commanded a space fleet in battle, directed kinetic and nuclear strikes on three planets, killed two hundred thousand people with large-scale weapons, most of whom, truth be told, had been innocents caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had killed over a dozen people herself, up close and personal, with the handgun she now carried everywhere. Most of them had simply been following orders.
And she had won. She, and George, and Jack, and the rest of the Watchers. Kali Micheli, and yes, even Sylvain Costa. They had pulled humanity itself back from the brink of an apocalypse most people had known nothing about, still knew nothing about, and probably never would.
There was still work to do. What system could the Board devise to pull Galactic Mail back from the brink next time? They had the copious notes and staff work from Jan Childers and her fellow founders. They also had the experience of having done it once already, an advantage Jan Childers had not had. The work on that had not yet begun.
The Board had to keep an eye on Sylvain Costa. So far so good. He had distributed the initial Jan Childers VR recording to all Galactic Mail employees with the request to watch it and take it to heart. He pledged to do more to build a culture within Galactic Mail that enshrined the ethic of hands off internal planetary policies, however benighted.
He had also proposed, and the Board approved, a reinstatement of Galactic Mail's longstanding, but since abandoned, policy of transporting refugees away from trouble spots to planets willing to take them. The human right of people to leave, to emigrate, would once again be enforced.
Of the twenty-four systems in which Sylvain Costa and Padma Kosar had interve
ned, nine had begun the path toward a better system, while fifteen, including Wallachia, had sunk back into despotism. On the hundreds of other worlds where revolutionary movements had been emboldened by Galactic Mail's policy under Costa and Kosar, dozens of governments had resorted to kinetic bombardment of their own people once the Board rescinded the policy.
There would be local despotisms, but no galactic tyranny. She and the other Watchers had fulfilled Jan Childers' mandate and rescued her legacy.
Having done all that, Patricia Dawson found it impossible to go back, to take up the reins of her life as it had been. Accountancy for local companies did not now stir the interest it once had. Instead, she would concentrate on her position on the Board, which would run for the next ten years.
Money was no worry. The Board of Directors received a generous stipend, with a generous retirement to follow. Either was more – much more – than she and Morgan had both made before her involvement with Galactic Mail. The additional retirement the Board had decided was due her as a former CEO of Galactic Mail was much larger still.
On moving back to Horizon, her mother had made her an offer. To swap houses, trading their little suburban house for Campbell Hall. Dawson had insisted on paying the substantial difference in value, but her mother had demurred. She said she had all the funds she needed, and, besides, the house was a family heirloom, intended to be handed down at the proper time. The maintenance and upkeep on the huge house had simply grown too much for her, and the small suburban house would be a relief. Also, the suburban house was closer to her “man friends” in town. Never having remarried, her mother maintained an active social life into which Dawson had been careful not to inquire too deeply.
As the sun passed into mid-afternoon, Dawson set aside her wool-gathering. She checked her watch. Time to be heading down to Campbell Hall if she wanted to be home when the twins got home from school.
Galactic Mail: Revolution! (Childers Universe Book 3) Page 15
