The ironic tone was characteristic of Caselnes. A man of thirty-five, of middling height with a healthy-looking stoutness, he worked as top aide and second in command to Marshal Sidney Sitolet, director of the Alliance Military Joint Operational Headquarters. With more experience at desk work than frontline service, he was a man of great ability when it came to things like organizing projects and dealing with bureaucracy; there was little doubt that the director’s chair at Rear Service HQ lay in his future.
“Is it really okay for you to come over here, though?” asked Yang. “What with ‘top aide’ really meaning ‘errand boy,’ I figured you’d be busy, but …” Under light counterattack, the capable military bureaucrat returned a subtly formed smile.
“Well, this show is being run by the Bureau of Ceremonies. It’s not for the soldiers and not really even for the families. The one most excited for all this is His Excellency the Defense Committee Chairman. Because if I may say so, this whole thing is a political show for the chairman, as he is aiming to run the next administration.”
The face of Defense Committee Chairman Job Trünicht rose up in both of their recollections.
A tall, handsome, youthful politician of forty-one. An energetic, argumentative hard-liner against the empire. Half of those who knew him praised him as an eloquent orator. The other half loathed him for a sophist.
The alliance’s current head of state was Supreme Council Chairman Royal Sunford. An elderly politician who had risen out of political strife to play the role of moderator, he was in all things devoted to respect for precedent. Since he was somewhat lacking in vigor, the spotlight was beginning to shine on Trünicht as the leader of the next generation.
“But having to listen to that man’s tasteless rabble-rousing at length is worse than pulling an all-nighter,” Caselnes said disgustedly. Although he was in the military, he was in the minority opinion on this. A publicity hound Trünicht may have been, but he spoke passionately of providing ample facilities for the military and of crushing the empire, and among those whose affection he garnered, many were uniformed soldiers. Yang, too, was one of the minority.
Inside the auditorium, the two men were seated far apart. Caselnes sat behind Director Sitolet in the seats reserved for honored guests, while Yang was front and center, right beneath the podium.
The ceremony had begun in a conventional manner, and in a conventional manner it was proceeding. Chairman Sundford left the stage after an emotionless, monotone delivery of a script prepared by bureaucrats, then Defense Committee Chairman Trünicht stepped lightly onto the stage. At the mere appearance of the man, the air in the auditorium became charged, and a round of applause rose up, even louder than the one for Chairman Sundford.
Trünicht—who wasn’t holding a script—called out to the sixty thousand attendees in a rich and sonorous voice.
“Citizens and soldiers! What is the purpose for which we’ve all come rushing out to assemble in this place? It is to give comfort to the heroic spirits of those 1,500,000 who so valiantly gave their lives in the Astarte Stellar Region. For it was to protect the freedom and the peace of their country that they offered up their precious lives.”
He was only this far into the speech, and Yang was already wishing he could plug his ears. He wondered, had this situation—of listeners cringing at empty, flowery words, even as their speaker feels perfectly at ease rattling them off—been a part of humanity’s heritage since the days of ancient Greece?
“I just said, ‘their precious lives.’ And truly, life is something that must always be respected. But, friends, they died to show those of us left behind that there exist things more precious still than the life of the individual. What are these? They are country and freedom! Their deaths were beautiful, precisely because they set aside themselves and gave their lives for the sake of a great and noble cause. They were good husbands. They were good fathers, good sons, and good boyfriends. They had a right to lead long, fulfilling lives. Yet casting that right aside, they departed for the field of battle and there laid down their lives! Citizens, if I may be so bold as to ask … why did 1,500,000 soldiers die?”
“ ’Cause the leaders’ operational command sucked,” Yang muttered, his voice a little loud for a private commentary. Shocked expressions appeared on the faces of a few of the people around him, and a young black-haired officer shot a glance his way. Yang’s eyes met that glance head-on, and its owner, flustered, quickly looked back toward the podium.
And from where he was looking, the defense committee chair’s speech was still dragging on. Trünicht’s face was flushed red, a gleam of self-intoxication in his eyes.
“Yes, I have said the answer already. It was in the defense of country and of freedom that they gave up their lives! Is there any death more worthy than this of the word ‘noble’? Is there anything else that speaks to us so eloquently of what a petty thing it is to live for oneself only, and die for oneself only? You must all remember that the country is what makes the individual possible. That is the thing that exceeds even life in importance. Bear that truth in mind! And what I want to say most loudly is this: that country and freedom are worth protecting, even at the cost of human lives. That our battle is a just one! To those of you who are self-styled pacifists, demanding that we make peace with the empire … to those of you who are self-styled idealists, thinking that it’s possible to coexist with tyrannical absolutism, I say, awaken from your delusions! Whatever your motivation for what you do, it results in a sapping of the alliance’s strength, and it benefits the empire. In the empire, antiwar and pacifist ideologies are suppressed. It’s because our alliance is a free nation that opposition to national policy is even permitted. Don’t just take advantage of that! There’s nothing easier than advocating for peace with words.”
There is one thing, thought Yang. Hiding in a safe place and advocating for war. Yang could feel the excitement of the surrounding crowd all over him, increasing by the moment like a rising river. He had had enough of it, but agitators, it seemed, were never wanting for support, no matter what the era or the times.
“If I may be so bold, all of those who oppose this righteous war to bring down the Galactic Empire’s tyrannical absolutism are undermining the country. They are unworthy of their citizenship in our proud alliance! Only those who fight fearlessly in the face of death to protect our free society and the national establishment that guarantees it are true citizens of the alliance. The cowards who lack that readiness shame these heroes’ spirits! This alliance was forged and built by our ancestors. We know the history. We know how our ancestors paid for their freedom in blood. Our homeland, with its grand history! Our free homeland! Will we not stand and fight to defend the one thing worth defending? Let us fight, now, for the homeland! Hail the alliance! Hail the republic! Down with the empire!”
With each shout of the defense committee chairman, the listeners’ reason was being blown away like chaff. Churning waves of exuberance lifted the bodies of sixty thousand people as they rose from their seats to join Trünicht in his hails, their mouths opened so wide he could probably see all the way back to their molars.
“Hail the alliance! Hail the republic! Down with the empire!”
A forest of arms beyond counting sent berets dancing high up into the air. There was a capriccio of applause and cheers.
In the midst of it, Yang remained silent, resolutely staying seated. His black eyes were fixed coldly on the warrior at the podium. Both of Trünicht’s arms were raised high in response to the excitement of the full auditorium, and then his gaze fell down to the front row of spectators.
For an instant, the gleam in his eye became hard, showing disgust, and the corners of his mouth drew tight. He had recognized that one young officer in his field of view who was still sitting. If Yang had been seated in the back, he probably wouldn’t have been noticed, but he was in the front row, a shameless rebel sitting right beneath the nose of sublime patrio
tism incarnate.
A jowly middle-aged officer shouted at Yang, “Officer, why aren’t you standing?!” He was wearing commodore’s insignia, same as Yang.
Shifting his gaze, Yang quietly answered. “This is a free country. I ought to be free to not stand up when I don’t want to. I’m just exercising that freedom.”
“Well then, why don’t you want to stand up?”
“Exercising my freedom not to answer.”
Yang knew that was a smart-aleck response, even for him. Caselnes would have probably laughed and said, That was rather awkward, even as a show of resistance. Yang, however, had no enthusiasm for behaving like a grown-up here. He didn’t want to stand up, he didn’t want to clap his hands, and he didn’t want to shout “Hail the alliance!” either. If not being moved by Trünicht’s speech was enough to merit criticism of his patriotism, what response could there be except, “Whatever you say”? The adults were never the ones to cry out that the emperor had no clothes; it was always a child.
“What are you trying to—”
Just as the middle-aged commodore was starting to yell at him again, Trünicht, at the podium, lowered his arms. He gestured lightly toward the crowd, both hands open, and as he did so, the level of excitement dropped off, and a quiet stillness began to smother all the noise. The people lowered their heads.
Even the middle-aged commodore who had been glaring at Yang took his seat, his thick, meaty cheeks trembling in discontent.
“Ladies and gentlemen?”
The defense committee chair opened his mouth again at the podium. Between his shouting and his long-winded speech, his mouth had dried out, leaving his melodious voice hoarse. After coughing once, he began to speak began.
“Our most powerful weapon is the unified will of all the people. With our free country and our democratically elected system of republican government, we cannot force on you any goal, no matter how noble. Every one of you has the freedom to oppose the state. But this much should be obvious to all conscientious people: true freedom means casting aside our petty egos, banding together, and advancing as one toward a common goal. Ladies and gentlemen …”
The reason that Trünicht closed his mouth at that point was not because of his dry mouth. It was because he had noticed a woman walking down the aisle toward the podium, alone. She was a young woman with light-brown hair, and pretty enough to probably turn the heads of half the men she passed on the street. From both sides of the aisle down which she strode, there arose low, suspicious stirrings of whispers, spreading outward through the crowd like ripples.
Who is that woman? What’s she doing?
Yang, like the other listeners, looked toward the woman as well, figuring anything was better than looking at Trünicht’s face, but when he saw her he couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows slightly. It was a face he remembered all too well.
“Defense Committee Chairman?” she said, calling toward the podium in a mezzo-soprano voice that had a nice, lingering ring. “My name is Jessica Edwards. I am—or, I was—the fiancée of Jean Robert Lappe, a staff officer in the Sixth Fleet, who died in the Battle of Astarte.”
“Why, that’s …” The eloquent “leader of the new generation” found himself at a loss for words. “… that’s a terrible shame, ma’am, but …”
His words going nowhere, the defense committee chairman looked meaninglessly around the vast assembly hall. The crowd of sixty thousand listeners reciprocated with sixty thousand silences. All of them were holding their breath as they stared at this young woman, bereaved of her fiancé.
“I don’t need your consolation, Chairman, because my fiancé died a noble death defending his country.”
Jessica quietly calmed the chairman’s discomfiture, and an unguarded expression of relief rose up on Trünicht’s face.
“Is that so? Well then, you should be considered a role model for all the young women on the home front. Such a laudable spirit is sure to be rewarded richly.”
At this point, Yang wanted to shut his eyes on that shameless man. All he could think was, Nothing is impossible if you have no sense of shame.
Jessica, on the other hand, appeared composed.
“Thank you very much. I came here today because there’s a question—just one question—I’d like to have the chairman answer.”
“Oh? What kind of question might that be? I hope it’s one I can answer …”
“Where are you now?”
Trünicht blinked his eyes. So did most of the onlookers, unable to grasp the question’s intent.
“Ah, what did you say?”
“My fiancé went to the battlefield to protect his country, and now he isn’t anywhere at all in this world. Chairman, where are you now? You, with your praise of death, where are you?”
“Young lady …” The defense committee chairman appeared to be flinching from everyone’s gaze.
“Where is your family?” Jessica continued relentlessly. “I offered up my fiancé as a sacrifice. You, who preach the need for sacrifice to the people, where is your family? I don’t deny a single word you’ve said here today. But are you living it yourself?”
“Security!” Trünicht called out, looking toward the right and then the left. “This young lady is very upset. Escort her to another room. Conductor, my speech is over. National anthem! Play the national anthem.”
Someone took hold of Jessica’s arm. She was about to try to shake it off when she saw the man’s face and gave it up.
“Let’s go,” Yang Wen-li said quietly. “I don’t think this is a place you need to be …”
Stirring music, abounding in a sense of exaltation, was beginning to fill the assembly hall. It was “Freedom’s Flag, Freedom’s People,” the national anthem of the Free Planets Alliance.
My friends, someday, the oppressor we’ll o’erthrow,
And on liberated worlds,
We’ll raise freedom’s flag.
Now, we fight for a shining future;
Today, we fight for a fruitful tomorrow.
Friends, let us sing; the soul of freedom praise.
Friends, let us sing; the soul of freedom show.
The crowd began to sing along with the music. Unlike the chaotic cries of just moments ago, this was a unified and rich melody.
From beyond the darkness of tyranny,
With our own hands, let’s bring freedom’s dawn.
Backs turned on the podium, Yang and Jessica walked up the aisle toward the exit. Attendees glanced at the two of them as they passed, then immediately turn their gazes back toward the podium and continued singing. When the door that had opened silently before them had closed on their backs, they heard the final line of the national anthem:
Oh, we are freedom’s people,
Through eternity unconquered …
II
The last gleam of the setting sun faded, and all the land was covered in the cool air of a relaxing evening. The silvery blue light of gorgeous swarms of stars was beginning to shine. At this time of year, a constellation said to resemble a spiral belt of silk was particularly vivid.
The spaceport in Heinessenpolis was filled with hustle and bustle.
In its vast lobby, people of all sorts were crowded together. Those who had completed their journeys, those about to depart on them. Those who had come to see someone off, those who had come to pick someone up. Regular citizens wearing conventional suits, soldiers in black berets, technicians in their combination suits. Security officers standing still at strategic points and looking irate at the heavy crowds, overworked spaceport employees walking quickly, children running wild with excitement. Robot cars threaded their way like mice through gaps in the interposing walls of humans, carrying baggage.
“Yang,” Jessica Edwards said to the young man sitting by her side.
“Hmm?”
“You must have thought
I was a horrible woman.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Most of those bereaved families were sitting there in silence, enduring their grief, but I went and caused a scene in front of all those people. It’s only natural you should take offense.”
There’s not a single example of things getting better thanks to silently enduring it, Yang thought. Somebody needs to criticize the leadership and hold them responsible. But when he opened his mouth to speak, all he said was, “No, not at all.”
The two of them were sitting side by side on one of the sofas in the spaceport lobby.
Jessica had said she was heading back to Heinessen’s neighboring world of Terneuzen on a liner leaving in about an hour. There she worked as an elementary school music teacher. If Lieutenant Commander Jean Robert Lappe had survived, she had planned to quit that job upon her marriage.
“You’ve really come a long way, haven’t you, Yang?” said Jessica, staring as a family of three passed by in front of her.
Yang didn’t answer.
“I heard all about what you did at Astarte. And your achievements before that … Jean Robert was always impressed. You’re the pride of his graduating class, he’d say.”
Jean Robert Lappe was a good man. Jessica made a wise decision in choosing him, Yang thought with just a touch of forlornness. Jessica Edwards: daughter of the Officers’ Academy purser, who had been attending music school. Now a music instructor who had lost her fiancé …
“Aside from you, the whole admiralty should be ashamed. Due to their incompetence, over a million people are dead from a single battle. Morally, too, they should be ashamed.”
That’s not quite right, Yang thought. Acts of barbarism such as truce breaking and the slaughtering of noncombatants aside, there was no fundamentally high or low ground morally between a great general and a stupid one. When a foolish general got a million allies killed, a great general killed a million enemies. That was the only difference, and if viewed from the standpoint of absolute pacifism—the kind that said, “I will not kill, even if it means being killed myself”—there was no difference between the two. Both were mass murderers.
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