“Yes, we do, don’t we?” murmured Dionte. She took another sip of her tea and lowered the cup, lacing her fingers around it. “Tam, I want…”
“What?” he asked warily. Hesitation was not something Dionte was known for.
Dionte gazed across the dome, as if searching for a particular face among the various gatherings of their kin. “Brother, we are in danger.”
Tam chuckled ruefully and shook his head. “Yes, Dionte. That’s why things are such a mess.”
“You don’t understand me.” Dionte’s hands tightened around her cup. “We’re not acting like we are in danger. We are acting like this is the old days and some bunch of colonists have come to us to ask for advice. The Authority has declared war on us. They did it ten years ago when they dropped that bomb in the Vastness, and we decided to pay no attention.”
“We paid attention, Dionte. We surrendered. It was all we could do.”
“All we could do then,” Dionte said. “But not all we can do now.”
“What are you getting at?” asked Tam, even though he was sure he did not want to know the answer.
She still didn’t look at him. She spoke to the steam, to the tea, perhaps to herself. “I am saying there are other possibilities for the Eden Project. We do not have to give it over to the Authority and the Called to save ourselves. There are more effective ways it could be used.”
Tam clamped the cover on his cooling cup of tea. “Sister, I do not want to hear this.”
“Brother.” Dionte turned her face back to him, and he saw she truly was troubled and afraid. Mostly afraid. “If we try to placate them, the Authority is going to overwhelm us no matter what we do. We have to go on the offensive.”
“If that’s what you believe, Dionte, then you need to take it up with the whole family. Not with me.” He handed Dionte back her teacup.
“I have tried. You know the rest of our family does not want to hear it either.”
“A sign that you and I do not have a monopoly on wisdom.” Tam spoke the hard words and felt no guilt, no guilt at all. How many debates had there been? A hundred? A thousand? In every family meeting since the Authority’s initial threat had come down, someone had a proposal for how they could strike back, how they could prove Pandora was a force to be reckoned with.
“Then you will have to bring it up again and again, if necessary. You are free to say whatever you want during meetings.”
Dionte sighed. “I suppose it will have to be enough.”
“Yes,” replied Tam levelly. “I suppose it will.”
They regarded each other in silence for a long moment, until Dionte realized Tam really didn’t plan to say anything else. Dionte stood and bowed slightly in farewell. Tam returned the bow, but remained seated while Dionte descended the stairs to the main court.
Tam rubbed his temple where his Conscience implant was and for a moment hated his own decision. How had all these doubts come to haunt him? Dionte never doubted herself, though her Conscience was as truncated as his.
Maybe he should just confess all at his next head dump and let them fix whatever organic flaws kept his implant from taking full hold of him and then he could have peace.
What was it like to have a wholly integrated Conscience? Did it truly make life easier? Basante, at least, made it seem like it did. Sometimes, though, Tam saw, or thought he saw, a look of yearning on the faces of his branch siblings, like they were trying to remember something long forgotten.
Then again, maybe that was just a projection of his own confusion. Tam had no way to tell.
He sighed again and got to his feet. This was useless. There was still the meeting to prepare for. Maybe it wasn’t a total loss. Maybe now that he knew the family would conclude Beleraja’s actions were treacherous, he could prepare a means to show them that was not true.
“Becuase if I don’t, we slip that much further into our own arrogance,” he murmured.
They are your family, said his Conscience. You can trust them.
“Oh, yes,” murmured Tam, looking over the busy, happy garden of his home. “I can trust them very well.”
Dionte left her brother’s alcove calmly, carrying a teacup in each hand. She did not look back. She could not afford to. She knew that if she saw Tam watching her leave, she would be tempted to turn around and try once again to make him see what was really happening, and it wouldn’t work any more than it had the last hundred times.
Dionte had not been in the conference room that day the Authority had come to make its initial threat. She had been in the laboratory with her kin and fellow students, watching on one of the video screens. She saw the swelling dust cloud and heard the thunder, and she had known then that they were all prisoners. In dropping that bomb, the Authority had changed its whole nature. Before this, they had clung to their statements that they were just go-betweens, importers and exporters, and mediators. But with that show of force, they became something else. They became rulers, and Pandora became their subject, and that would never change until Pandora took action, because no matter how far away the Authority went, they could always come back.