The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  She paused, midstride, having already started for the door. “Yes, Grandpa?”

  “Your husband just made a roomful of mighty powerful enemies. Don’t ever forget it.”

  “No, sir,” she said faintly. “I won’t.”

  Then she and Estevao were running for the aircar.

  II

  So much for starting over, Simon reflected bitterly.

  In a room jammed with more than three hundred people, all of whom tried their utter damnedest to look anywhere but directly at him, he felt an eerie kinship with the ghosts of Etaine’s dead and largely unburied millions. If enough people pretended desperately that you didn’t exist, you started to feel a little unreal, even to yourself. Or maybe the trouble was within himself. Whatever the cause, Simon sat surrounded by a cloud of silence against which the strident voices of those voting on the Joint Chamber floor shattered like Etaine’s fragile glass towers.

  He made a mental note to have Sonny triple the range that would trigger his Bolo to snap from Standby Alert to Proximity Alarm. The hatred directed his way by a good many of those refusing to look directly at him was no more than he’d expected. It was doubtless an omen of things to come and Simon was too good an officer to think himself immune to retaliation. Bolos were hard to kill. Their commanders were not. He wouldn’t let himself think about Kafari.

  The voting did not take nearly as long as he’d feared. Given the wording of the ultimatum he’d just delivered, any further delays would have been suicide and the Assembly members knew it. The ratification of treaty obligations passed virtually unopposed. Simon took careful note of those who cast dissenting votes, mentally comparing that short list against a roster of political affiliations and campaign funding he’d been compiling over the past few weeks.

  A few of the yes votes surprised him, given what he knew. A cynical corner of his mind whispered, They’ve got something sneaky in mind. You’d better figure out what. Some bright analyst must’ve come up with an advantageous angle to casting a yes vote, or those particular senators and representatives would never have acted against their own political interests, let alone in opposition to their major campaign donors. They were in a numerical minority deep enough to’ve voted against honoring the treaty, had they wanted to make a show of standing on their principles, without actually jeopardizing the legislation’s passage through the Senate and House of Law.

  Whatever they were up to, he hoped it fell flat on its doubtless ugly face.

  The final tally was two-hundred fifty-eight in favor of honoring the treaty obligations and seventeen opposed. Abe Lendan rose to take the podium.

  “Since the legislation authorizing expenditures to meet our treaty obligations has passed, I see little point in delaying finalization. Does somebody have a printout of the final language approved by this Assembly?”

  A clerk came running, the stack of paper in his hands appallingly thick.

  “I am going to assume,” the president said grimly, “that the wording has been correctly transcribed, since mistakes at this juncture would be mighty expensive?”

  The clerk was gulping and nodding.

  “Very well, there’s no point in putting this off. Colonel Khrustinov, will my signature passing this,” he tapped the stack of paper, “into law constitute compliance under Sector’s demands?”

  “Provided the legislation is not overturned by Jefferson’s High Court,” he glanced at the High Justices seated to one side, “and provided the materiel requirements are immediately initiated and are completed within the schedule mandated by Sector Command, yes, it will.”

  Abe Lendan started signing. He scrawled initials across page after page, handing them off to the clerk, who carefully stacked them in proper order. The hush in the Joint Chamber was such that the scratching of the pen against paper could be clearly heard, even from where Simon sat ramrod straight in his chair. By the time he reached the final page, the president’s hands were visibly unsteady. He scrawled out the final signature and stepped aside for Vice President Andrews, who signed on the line beneath.

  The president’s eyes bore a hollow, exhausted look that had nothing of triumph in it. “Very well,” he said quietly into the microphones, “that, at least, is done. And now,” he added, “the truly hard part begins, turning that stack of paper into a physical reality. I am deeply aware of just how much each and every Jeffersonian has been asked to give, in meeting these obligations. But as we love life, we can do no less.”

  With no further fanfare, Abraham Lendan simply turned and stepped down from the podium, moving slowly toward the doorway through which he had entered. The ranking committee chairpersons in the upper tier of seats surged to their feet, in a show of respect that was, to Simon’s faint surprise, utterly silent. He was more accustomed to seeing applause and cheering for exiting planetary heads of state. Out of deference, perhaps, for the utter solemnity of the moment, no one was making a sound, other than the shuffling of feet as the Joint Assembly rose to its collective feet.

  Jefferson’s president had gone slightly more than half the distance to the doorway when he lurched against Vice President Andrews. The younger man shot out a steadying hand, then cried out when Abe Lendan literally crumpled to the floor, landing in a boneless huddle. An icy dagger speared its way through Simon as pandemonium erupted in the Joint Chamber. Vice President Andrews bellowed orders to summon an emergency medical team. Security guards rushed forward, some forming a protective screen around the fallen statesman while others blocked the exits.

  Simon slapped his commlink. “Sonny, go to Emergency Alert Status. Set your Proximity Alarm sensors to Battle Reflex distances.” A reflex of his own caused him to scan the room for a potential sniper, although common sense told him the collapse had been triggered by stress and exhaustion.

  “Understood, Simon,” Sonny responded instantly. “I am monitoring the Joint Chamber through a variety of data sources. Stand by for arrival of a medical airlift from University Hospital, ETA one hundred eighty seconds.”

  The familiar voice in his earpiece, calm and rational, steadied him. Memory of Etaine had shaken Simon more than he wanted to admit. “Thank you, Sonny,” he said quietly as he scanned the chamber, both visually and electronically. He couldn’t help feeling a painful twinge of guilt. Simon knew how deeply his own testimony had increased the president’s stress. Abe Lendan was too good a leader to hear that kind of thing and not project it onto the people whose safety lay in his hands.

  But what, in God’s name, could he have done differently? Simon had read the roster of Assembly members opposed to the treaty, while still in the president’s office. Abraham Lendan had shoved it into his hands, making certain Simon knew precisely what the odds were, if he didn’t speak as plainly and brutally as possible. There’d been enough names on that list to vote down the treaty and doom this whole world. And potentially a great deal more, beyond. Simon knew only too well the choice he’d had, forcing the Assembly to face reality.

  So he stayed out of everyone’s way and watched in silence as the president’s personal physician arrived, emergency kit in hand. The medical team should be here in less than another minute, as well, given Sonny’s occasional comments as the airborne crew rushed toward them. Simon forced his gaze away from the brave man on the floor, feeling disloyal in an intense and privately painful way as he shifted his attention to his immediate duty. Simon was only too aware that the dynamics unfolding in front of him were far more critical to Jefferson’s future than the fallen president, which meant he needed to focus his attention on the men and women whose careers would outlast a far better man’s.

  Simon therefore made them his immediate and serious concern. Some, he already knew first-hand, having met with them briefly at one time or another. He knew all the names, faces, and “fireball issues” of those on the Assembly’s Joint Planetary Security Committee, whose members were drawn from both the House of Law and the Senate. Simon had made it his business to learn everything he could about them
. What they said and to whom they said it. What they supported and what they opposed. The men and women they allied themselves with and why. Which families they were related to by blood or marriage. What business ties they had. Which issues would turn them into blazing demons out for justice or vengeance.

  Most of the Planetary Security Committee’s members were arrayed solidly behind President Lendan, but not all. Representative Fyrena Brogan, an ardent advocate for protection of natural habitat, seemed at first glance to be out of place on a committee charged with military defense of this star system. On closer examination, however, Simon had discovered that her passion for preserving Jefferson’s pristine ecosystems for future generations had led her in some very interesting directions, including a seat on the Agricultural Appropriations and Terraforming Finance Committees as well as Planetary Security, with its mandate to preserve Jeffersonian interests from harm. Simon had quickly ascertained that Representative Brogan’s notions of what constituted Jeffersonian interests — let alone harm to those interests — did not match his in the slightest.

  She was, at the moment, involved in an intense conversation with Senator Gifre Zeloc, a man who had the dubious distinction of topping Simon’s watch-most-closely list. The senator was leonine in stature, dignified and deliberate in habit and speech, with prematurely silver hair that lent him an air of distinguished statesmanship at odds with a coldly vindictive temperament that lurked beneath a fatherly and benign appearance. Sonny’s surveillance had discovered, by unexpected chance, that Senator Zeloc was clandestinely opposed to virtually everything President Lendan had ever said or done.

  What disturbed Simon, however, was not the senator’s opposition, per se; it was Zeloc’s favored method of governance — pulling strings behind the scenes, manipulating people and events to suit his objectives, orchestrating situations that caused people to say what he wanted said, do what he wanted done, or destroy those he wanted destroyed. Simon had seen the type before. They popped up like poisonous weeds wherever high-stakes power games were played.

  Clever and politically astute, Gifre Zeloc was, in Simon’s opinion, one of the most dangerous individuals on Jefferson. Simon found it disturbing that Zeloc and Fyrena Brogan were discussing something so intently, they effectively ignored the turmoil around them, a circumstance that surprised Simon sufficiently to make him wonder what use Zeloc might find for a woman whose sole passion was protecting vast stretches of wilderness from human despoilment.

  Another of Zeloc’s quiet little alliances was a cozy relationship with the youngest member of the Planetary Security Committee, an outspoken firebrand named Cyril Coridan. Representative Coridan, who was violently opposed to spending the people’s taxes on expensive military projects, had granted Simon a fifteen-minute audience, during which he had poured forth a list of grievances and philosophical “positioning statements” so full of vitriol, Simon had felt in need of an antivenin treatment afterwards. He hadn’t allowed Simon to say anything beyond, “Good afternoon, Representative Cori—”

  He was another man on Simon’s watch-closely list, particularly since Coridan’s name was linked to an “anti-war chest” of money raised by Vittori and Nassiona Santorini. POPPA, their brainchild, had the potential to be far more dangerous than the riot that had nearly killed Kafari, if it succeeded in its avowed goals. That demonstration outside the Assembly Hall — little more than an irritation at face value — spoke volumes to Simon, who had altogether too much familiarity with the history of charismatic fanatics.

  Mother Russia had been cursed with her share of them and had fought others, through the centuries. Unfortunately for the human race, Mother Terra had exported fanaticism, along with everything else humanity had carried to the stars. Simon had asked Sonny to start tracking the campaign contributions doled out by the Santorinis’ organization. He wanted to know just whom POPPA was paying, and why, although he didn’t see much that he could do about it, other than keep a watchful eye peeled. Unless there was clear evidence of treasonable activity — as defined by the Concordiat under the provisions Jefferson’s treaty-sanctioned charter — Simon was not authorized to intervene in a planet’s internal affairs. Given the history of military abuses of power and the curtailment of planetary liberties, Simon agreed wholeheartedly with that particular set of regulations.

  But he had broad powers of intelligence gathering, particularly when conditions indicated a potential for abrogation of treaty status on a world considered militarily strategic by Sector or Central Command. His duty as an officer of the Brigade mandated tracking such activity and reporting it, when necessary. Simon hoped like fury that he wouldn’t have to transmit news any worse than he’d already been forced to do, in reporting Jefferson’s refusal to vote on funding for treaty-mandated actions.

  On the heels of that thought, the emergency medical team arrived, cutting through the chaos with smooth efficiency. Without fanfare or hand-wringing hoopla, they transferred the president to a gurney, activated the auto-doc, adjusted the floater controls, and rushed out again, surrounded by a protective shell of uniformed security guards. The Joint Assembly’s speaker was banging his gavel again, trying to restore order. Simon was torn between a powerful desire to accompany Abraham Lendan, the man, to the hospital and the bitter knowledge that his duty as an officer of the Brigade was to remain where he was, since the governance of this world was clearly — and doubtless irrevocably — now in the hands of others. Vice President Andrews, badly shaken, climbed to the podium and added his voice to the speaker’s, eventually restoring order to the chamber.

  “I would suggest,” the vice president said in a hoarse voice, “that we adjourn this Joint Assembly for now. We’ve accomplished the most critical task at hand. Those committees directly involved in the work of carrying out the provisions passed and signed into law, today, should reconvene in their respective meeting rooms. Until we have word on President Lendan’s condition, our best course is to move forward and look to the future. Mr. Speaker, the podium is yours.”

  Simon frowned as the speaker gavelled the Joint Assembly closed. Vice President Andrews had just blundered — badly — and didn’t seem to be aware of it. The people of this world would be in desperate need of a strong presence calming and reassuring them that the government was in capable hands during this new crisis. Yet the vice president’s first action had been to dismiss the government for necessary but routine committee work, without even one comment directed toward the stunned millions watching the broadcast.

  Andrews might be a capable administrator, but he was clearly accustomed to working effectively behind the scenes, which was the definition of a good vice president during the course of ordinary affairs. But his statesmanship skills were seriously inferior to Abraham Lendan’s. The president knew, intuitively, how to communicate directly to the people, how to command respect, how to read a political situation for its fine nuances and built-in landmines.

  One glance at Cyril Coridan, whose eyes were glacial and whose lips wore the faintest hint of a smile at one corner, broke Simon into a cold sweat. When Sonny spoke again, unexpectedly, his words deepened that chilly sweat into profound grief.

  “I detect no heartbeat from President Lendan’s auto-doc, Simon. There is no sign of respiration. The emergency physicians with him are attempting resuscitation. Their attempts are not proving successful.”

  Simon closed his eyes against the terrible knowledge even as the Assembly, still unaware of Jefferson’s loss, came to its collective feet. Members were shuffling out of the room, voices raised in a babble of conversation as the group sorted itself out into committees and eddies of party affiliation that swirled through the main current of exiting dignitaries. Simon was abruptly exhausted. He remained where he was, partly to avoid being drawn into meaningless, stress-induced conversations and partly because there was not one soul in this chamber that genuinely wanted him there.

  But before that thought had finished echoing through the bleakness gripping him, Simon saw h
er. She was pushing against the tide of outbound politicians, determined to get into the room. For long moments, Simon literally couldn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes. Kafari was in Klameth Canyon, with her family, watching the broadcast. She couldn’t possibly be only ten meters away — and closing fast, at that — shoving her way through the outbound crowd. He couldn’t move, stared in rising amazement as she plowed toward him, a naval cruiser cutting through the chaos of enemy fire to reach her destination.

  Him.

  The look on her face as she closed the final distance between them scared Simon silly. Fierce. Gentle. Beautiful. Ravaged eyes brimmed with tears and pride and compassion. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t comprehend how she’d come to be here at all. She hesitated for just one heartbeat, one hand lifting to touch his face with a gesture that reached through the pain, the agony of loneliness, the blackened cinders of memory. Then both arms were around him, strong and loving, and Simon’s world changed forever. He crushed her so close, neither of them could breathe for long moments. When the dangerous storm of emotion finally waned, Kafari simply took him by the hand and said, “Let’s go home, Simon.”

  He nodded.

  He had done what he could.

  Jefferson — and Jeffersonians — would have to do the rest.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Eleven

  I

  The doctor’s office was jammed.

  Apparently, when folks were out of work, they had little better to do with their time than create more people. Not that Kafari minded, per se. She was too grateful for a chance at having Simon’s child — and too distracted by preelection news — to dwell on the urban population explosion underway. The ob-gyn clinic’s waiting area boasted the obligatory datascreen for viewing news programs, talk shows, and the mindless round of games and domestic operas most of Jefferson’s daytime broadcast stations featured as standard fare, but with the presidential election tomorrow — along with about half the seats in both the House of Law and Senate — virtually everything had been preempted for the biggest story in town.