When Sadiq had focused on her again, Su asked, “Anything wrong?”
“We seem to have a demonstration on the deck.” Sadiq stood. “Peaceful but illegal. Care to come?”
“Not really.” Su waved him away. “I’ll see you at the Sec-Gens this afternoon.”
“Until then.” Sadiq left her there. The door swished shut behind him. Su sat still for a moment, then swiveled her chair toward her working wall. “Window function,” she ordered, “show the political activity identified on main deck.”
A patch of Colorado sky cleared away, replaced by the image of one of the observation towers. Normally, the side of the three story building was a blank, forbidding gun-metal gray. Today, however, someone had managed to hang a gigantic sheet screen from the side and light up a scene of Venus and Earth orbiting around each other in a display that was as pretty as it was inaccurate. A crowd had gathered at the foot of the tower to watch the show. In front of the casual observers, a set of feeders with briefcases and camera bands had already jacked into the deck and were rapidly dropping the entire experience into the stream.
Venus and Earth faded, replaced by a man of moderate coloring and moderate age, wearing a suit so conservative he might have bought it in the previous century.
“And what are we doing with this wonder, this Discovery?” He swept one hand out. Venus appeared, neatly balanced in his palm. “We are using it as a focus of fear. We are using it to tighten the chains already on the wrists of our brothers and sisters in the colonies. Millions of people whose only crime is not living on Mother Earth.” He closed his fist around the Venus globe. The low moan it gave was gratuitous, Su thought, but it did make its point. “We must, every one of us, ask what is our government so afraid of? Aging men and women who failed in their dream?” The starry background blurred and shifted until the speaker stood in a bare red-ceramic cell filled with people whose eyes were dark and haunted. “The guilty have been punished and punished again. Must we punish their children now?”
Before the speaker could answer his own question, the screen went black. A groan rose from the assembled crowd. Three people in coveralls of U.N. blue appeared on the observation tower’s roof and started rolling up the screen. Still grumbling, the crowd began to disperse. Show’s over.
“Window function off.”
The screen melted back into the meadow scene around her.
Su considered. That wasn’t much as demonstrations went, but it would give her an opening to talk with Edmund. Su rubbed her forehead. Her mind had been shying away from the memory of how she’d left the morning’s interview. What had happened? What had snapped? There was no excuse, none, especially now, as she’d said to Sadiq. If she didn’t find a way to clean up after herself, it would be…bad.
“Desk. Contact Edmund Waicek.” Compose yourself, Su. Don’t let the boy get to you. There is too much going on for that. “Put display on main screen.”
The whole wall cleared until Su saw Edmund’s clean, blank-walled office. Edmund himself was hunched over his desk screen. He did not look up.
“I’m rather busy, Su. We do have a meeting this afternoon.”
“Yes, I am aware of that.” Calm, calm, calm. “Were you aware that we’ve just had a separatist demonstration on the main deck?”
Edmund’s head jerked up. “What?”
Su waved her hands in a gesture both dismissing and soothing. “It was small. Sadiq’s people have already handled it.” She lowered her hands. “But it did draw a crowd. Here. People were listening. The speaker was making sense to them.”
Edmund’s face went cold. Su held up her hand again before he could even open his mouth. “It does matter. This is U.N. City, and our people were listening to the idea that perhaps the restrictions on the colonies have gone too far.” She spread her hands. “There is more than one kind of bias we need to avoid here, Edmund. If it appears that we are sending up a team that has an anticolonial agenda, we run the risk that their conclusions will be discounted by popular opinion. We have both been around the world far too many times to pretend that doesn’t matter.”
She watched Edmund’s expression waver as that thought sank in. “We cannot be seen to encourage irresponsible rhetoric,” he said, resorting to some rhetoric of his own.
Good. He’s running short on arguments. “Of course not. We must be seen to be aiming for a strict neutrality. That is where people like Veronica Hatch can benefit us. People appreciate that she put a human face on a terrible tragedy. On both sides of the tragedy.”