The End of All Things (23 page)

“Go fetch me a physician,” I said. “Preferably one familiar with Lalans.”

The security officer looked up at me. “Councilor, perhaps it would be better if you went to the hospital itself, once we’ve secured the area.”

“I don’t recall asking you for your opinion,” I said. “Do it. Now.”

The security officer scuttled off. I returned my attention to Oi. “How did you miss this?” I asked.

“I don’t have a good answer for you right now, Councilor,” Oi said.

“No, I don’t imagine you do. You don’t have a good answer to how you could have missed someone planning to assassinate the general.” I waved a bloody hand at the remaining security detail. “They don’t have a good answer, I’m sure, how someone slipped past them to place a bomb at the lectern. No one has a good answer for who is in charge of the Conclave right now. We are all without good answers for anything that actually matters right at this very moment.”

“What would you like me to do, Councilor?” Oi asked.

“I would like you to go back in time and to have done your goddamned job, Oi!” I said, and this time I was yelling not because I could not hear very well.

“When this is all over, if you want it, you will have my resignation on your desk,” Oi said.

I laughed, bitterly. “My desk,” I said.

“Yes,
your
desk,” Oi replied, forcefully. “And you’re wrong, Councilor. I don’t have a good answer for you about who killed General Gau. But I have a good answer for who is in charge of the Conclave. It’s you.”

“That was Tarsem’s job description, Oi. Not mine.”

“With due respect to the moment and your grief, Councilor, the general is dead. The position is vacant. And it needs to be filled, immediately.”

“And you don’t think that’s a thought that’s not already occurred to several dozen representatives?”

“I know it has,” Oi said. “I know that without even having to check with my analysts. And I know what an extended season of would-be General Gaus trying to claim his mantle would cost us.”

“
You
take the job, then,” I said. “You’re better qualified for it.”

“I’m not the right person for the job,” Oi said. “No one would follow me.”

“You have an entire directory of people who follow you.”

“They follow the job, Councilor. I don’t flatter myself that their loyalty extends to me.”

“What makes you think it would extend to
me,
then?” I asked, and then waved again to the security detail. “Or their loyalty? Or anyone’s?”

“Councilor, why do you think this security detail is
here
?” Oi asked. “This was General Gau’s detail. It’s yours now.”

“I don’t want the job.”

“Think of who does. Think of who will, once it occurs to them that it’s open.”

“So you would have me take the job simply to avoid something worse.”

“Yes,” Oi said. “Although that would not be my main motivation.”

“And what would be your main motivation?” I asked.

“To preserve the Conclave,” Oi said. It motioned out, toward the Grand Assembly chamber. “Unli Hado wants the position for his own personal ambition, as would a dozen other representatives. Prulin Horteen would take it to settle scores, as would another dozen representatives. Ristin Lause, were it offered to her, and it wouldn’t be, would take it out of the bureaucratic instinct to keep things running. None of them truly understand why the Conclave is more important than themselves or their immediate goal. In all three cases—in every case—it would end in ruin.”

“It might buy time,” I said.

“We have bought all the time we can buy, Councilor,” Oi said. “The general has just paid for all of it
. There is no more time
. There are only the choices we have in front of us right now. You take control of the Conclave, or allow someone else to. One choice will preserve the union. The other won’t.”

“You have a lot of faith in me, Oi.”

“I have absolutely no faith in you, Councilor,” Oi said. “What I have is analysis. You don’t think I haven’t been modeling what would happen after the general left power, do you? Who would try to claim his position and what would happen from there?”

“No, I suppose that would be your job,” I said. “Although I didn’t expect to be part of that math.”

“If anyone else said that I would call that false modesty,” Oi said. “In your case it’s not, I know. You’ve always been the one to walk behind, Councilor. But there is no one for you to walk behind anymore. The Conclave needs you to step forward.”

I looked around the room, at the security detail there. All ready for something.

“I don’t want the job,” I repeated to Oi.

“I know,” Oi said. “But with all due respect, Councilor, at the moment I don’t care about what you
want
. I care about what you will
do
.”

The security officer returned, a Lalan in tow.

“You’re a medical doctor,” I said.

“Yes,” the Lalan said. “Dr. Omed Moor, ma’am.”

“Well, Doctor?” I held out my arms. “Am I dead?”

“No, ma’am.”

I put my arms down. “Then that’s all the time I have for a checkup at the moment, I’m afraid. Thank you, Doctor.” I turned from the bewildered doctor to Oi. “Does your analysis include you working on my behalf?”

“I serve at the pleasure of the leader of the Conclave,” Oi said.

“And that’s me.”

“It has been since the moment of the general’s death. All we have to do now is make it known.”

“I have some people I need to see,” I said. “And there are people you need to see too.”

“I can guess who you want to see,” Oi said.

“I’m sure you can.”

“Do you still want my resignation?”

“If at the end of this sur I’m still in a position to accept it, no,” I said. “And if I’m not, I’ll assume it’s because we’re in the same airlock, waiting to be pushed out into space by whoever is.”

*   *   *

“I question your right to call us here,” Unli Hado said. “You are not General Gau. And the general did not leave instruction for passing on leadership of the Conclave to you. If anyone should be the leader of the Conclave now, it is Chancellor Lause.”

Hado sat in the conference room next to Tarsem’s public office, along with Lause, Prulin Horteen, Ohn Sca, and Oi.

“It’s a fair point,” I said, and turned to Lause. “Chancellor?”

“I’m leader of the Grand Assembly, not the leader of the Conclave,” she said. “I neither want nor can accept that position.”

“You’re a coward,” Hado said.

“No,” Lause said. “But I’m not a fool, either. The Conclave has just lost its leader, Unli, and it’s lost it to assassination. Are you so blinded by your own ambition that you don’t realize that anyone claiming the general’s title will look like the assassin’s employer?”

Hado flung an arm at me. “And
she
won’t?”

“No, I won’t,” I said. “Not if we come to terms now.”

“I repeat: I question your right to call us here,” Hado said.

“Oi,” I said.

“Representative Hado, I have it on very excellent information that you are the one who authorized the assassination of General Gau,” Oi said. “Evidence from the Abumwe report combined with my own agents’ intelligence gathering lays it squarely at your door. Within the sur I expect that you will be arrested for treason and that a comprehensive report will show the Elpri government was providing logistical and material support not only for the assassination but for Equilibrium in general.”

Hado stared, disbelieving. “That’s a lie!”

“Don’t protest too much, Hado,” Horteen said.

Oi turned to her. “Prulin Horteen, I have evidence that you offered material support to Representative Hado for the assassination, and that your recent rhetoric about purging nations you deemed traitorous to the Conclave is a feint to draw attention from your own involvement.”

“What?” Horteen said.

“Representative Sca, your government’s collusion with Hado’s assassination of the general and with Equilibrium in general is exhaustively documented as well,” Oi said.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Sca said.

“I do,” Hado said, turning to me. “This is a beheading of anyone who is in a position to oppose you.”

“No,” I said. “It’s a precautionary measure against a trio of representatives who are a material threat to the unity of the Conclave at the moment of her greatest instability. Any of the three of you could shatter the Conclave, by your own ambition, by your own greed, or by your own stupidity. We are not four serti past the assassination of our leader. The Grand Assembly is in chaos. The representatives are utterly terrified. And if Vnac Oi had the three of you arrested on charges of assassination and conspiracy, I could have you all on the other side of an airlock by the end of the sur and no one would do anything but congratulate me on my decisiveness. I might even get a commendation from the chancellor for it.”

“Indeed you might,” Lause said. It was instructive to watch the reaction of Hado, Sca, and Horteen to that comment.

“And when the evidence eventually shows that the accusation was a flat-out lie?” Hado asked. “Because it will. Both Ocampo’s and Abumwe’s reports are out there for everyone to see and compare.”

“Representative Hado, I’m deeply insulted,” Oi said. “You apparently have so little faith in my ability to manipulate data to tell precisely the story I want it to tell.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Sca said. “If this was your plan, why didn’t you just have us arrested?”

“I didn’t say it
was
my plan,” I said. “It was my rebuttal to Representative Hado’s questioning of my right to call you all here. I trust I’ve made it clear that at the moment
right
is not the correct frame of reference. I have the
power
to call you here. As I have the power to condemn you to death. I hope we understand each other.”

“You want to make an example of us, then,” Hado said.

“What I want, Representative Hado, is to save the Conclave,” I said. “And offer you three the chance to increase your power and influence while doing so.”

“By throwing us out of an airlock?” Horteen said.

“I have a better idea,” I said. “And it is precisely this simple. Representative Horteen, you and Representative Hado have significant power bases among assembly members. They don’t overlap. You two are to come to Chancellor Lause and together declare that for the good of the Conclave you ask that I take on the leadership role of the Conclave. Representative Sca, you will second that proposal. Horteen and Hado will deliver their blocs for the vote, Lause will take care of the rest, and Oi will handle any stragglers. This will happen tomorrow, by mid-sur.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Hado asked.

“Then you three will have a meeting with an airlock,” Oi said.

Hado glanced over at Oi and then turned back to me. “You didn’t have to threaten us,” he said. “You could have just asked.”

“Representative Hado, we’ve been doing so well being bracingly honest with each other,” I said. “Let’s not ruin it now.”

“General Gau would never have negotiated with us this way,” Horteen said.

I glanced over at Hado for this. “Yes, he would have,” Hado said, to Horteen. “He simply would have had Sorvalh here to cover for him.”

“The general is no longer with us,” I said.

“Pity,” Hado said.

“It is,” I said. “How ironic, Representative Hado, that it took you until this very moment to recognize his value.”

“Do we have a deal?” Oi asked.

“Do we have a choice?” Hado replied.

“You said this would increase our power,” Horteen said. “I haven’t heard the part where that happens.”

“This is how,” I said. “After the present crisis is over, and the stability of the Conclave is no longer in question, I will announce the formation of a task force to create and establish a succession plan for the leader of the Conclave, so that we have no more crises like the one we are now conspiring to avoid today. I will name the three of you, with the chancellor, to head the task force, and give you free reign to create the process, with only one condition: that the next leader of the Conclave
must
come from the Grand Assembly.”

“Interesting,” Horteen said.

“I thought you might see it that way,” I said. Already I could see both Horteen and Hado starting to think how they could use such a task force to their own advantage. “Please note that this process will be for
after
I retire.”

“But you do plan to retire,” Hado said.

“Yes. Not soon, to be clear. But soon enough.”

“And in the meantime you will still have this threat over our heads,” Sca said.

“No,” I said. “The threat dies when the Grand Assembly elects me leader of the Conclave, tomorrow.”

“But only then,” Oi said.

“And who do you place the blame on then, I wonder?” Hado asked. “For the death of the general?”

I felt a pang in that moment, for my friend and against my own conscience, for having to use his death so opportunistically. “Let that be my concern for now, Representative Hado.”

“As you wish, Councilor,” he said, and stood to rise, as did the others. “But it’s not ‘councilor’ anymore, is it? What do we call you now?”

“I’ll let you decide,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

They exited, except for Oi. I slumped, exhausted.

“Well done,” Oi said to me.

“It was a basic threatening,” I said, weakly. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

“Possibly higher stakes this time.”

“Yes, possibly,” I said. “Thank you for coaching Lause for me.”

“It might interest you to know I didn’t, really,” Oi said. “When I met with her I just asked her if she would follow your lead. Do you know what she said?”

“I don’t know.”

“She said, ‘For the Conclave, I will.’ And there you have it.”

“Do you believe her?”

“I think she knows stability is the key to her keeping her job.”

“And the other three?” I asked. “Do you think they’ll keep the deal?”

“I don’t doubt it,” Oi said. “One of the nice things about my line of work is that people who don’t know much about it have an infinite capacity to believe that I can do anything, including fabricate incriminating evidence out of thin air.”