Starliner(110)

He licked his tight lips. "It's possible," he added bleakly, "that government officials lied to me."

He raised his eyes to the vision of the Empress lowering herself onto Nevasa in all her unique splendor. "There were provisions for the—officer in charge of operation to escape by lifeboat. I doubt Commander Cunha left the Brazil. I certainly would have ridden the Empress down if a similar—error—had occurred. If it hadn't been for you, Ran, and Ms. Holly; and some few others."

"Sir," Ran whispered, "it could be a million people died. There were better ways. Earth could have sent a fleet to Nevasa. This was a government problem, not the company's."

"Who do you think installed this equipment?" the commander snarled, thrusting an angry thumb toward the bulkhead's false innocence. "You know Federated Earth can't play galactic cop openly. The voters would never stand on it, and every ex-colony from here to the Rim would be up in arms at the idea."

"They hijacked—"Ran offered.

"Prove it!" Kneale retorted. "The Brasil is gone, the Empress of Earth would have been gone—prove which of the warring parties hijacked her. Or either of them!"

"It'd have come out," Ran said. He rose and turned so that he didn't face the commander's fierceness. "They couldn't hide her—either ship—once they used her to ferry troops for an invasion."

Holographic farmers worked terraced fields in the area of Bu Dop, across the planet from the steaming crater that was now Nevasa City. The embassy official he'd met . . . Susan. She was going to Bu Dop, she'd said.

"And the guilty party would pay an indemnity to Trident or Consolidated, whichever," the commander rejoined. "And they'd release the passengers, probably, from some detention camp on a planet nobody ever heard of, where they'd have enough food and most of them would have survived. For years! And Federated Earth wouldn't take military action, because the villains had apologized, hadn't they? And it was all the former government anyhow. And—"

Ran turned to face him. Kneale too was standing.

"—they'd do the same goddamned thing again, and other people would, and star travel would never be safe for any peaceful purpose ever! Isn't that true, Ran Colville?"

Ran licked his dry lips. "Yes," he said. "I suppose it is."

He drew in a deep breath. "Who knew about this?" he asked.

"I did," said the commander. "And you've guessed. One or two members of the Company's board of directors. A few people—very few—in the bureaucracy of Federated Earth. None of the elected officials."

Kneale looked up at his ceiling image again. His tone softened. "The installers wouldn't have known what they were doing, though it's possible that some of them have guessed by now also. What I'm quite sure of . . ."

He locked his eyes with Ran's again, and his voice rasped like the tongue of a lion. "What I'm sure of is. That as a result of Nevasa. Everybody in the galaxy knows or will know. That if you hijack a Terran ship, your planet will be gutted. And the government of Federated Earth will smile and go its wholly deniable way."

"Oh, God, Hiram," Ran said softly as he kneaded his brows with his fingertips. "And Grantholm goes on, and . . . ?"

"Nobody picked Nevasa City," Kneale said. "The Nevasans picked it, and—if the crash wasn't an autopilot error—it would have been Sonderburg except for what you managed to do. But there won't be a next time. That's what makes it worthwhile."

Ran shivered. "I . . ." he said. His lips quirked in a smile. "There isn't really anything to say, is there? It's done. I guess I'll go now."

"Sometimes quick ruthlessness is the gentlest course in the long run," Kneale said. His voice fell into a whisper. "Governments have to think about the long run."

Ran reached for the latch plate. As he did so, his eyes strayed to the left, toward the image of children playing on the outskirts of Nevasa City.

* * *

"Want a drink?" Ran asked.

Wanda was drawing figure-8 patterns with her index finger across the face of the autobar at their table. "Not here," she said.

They were alone in the starliner's Darwin Lounge. On the walls, cartoon figures capered through skits illustrating evolution: the evolution of drinks, from rancid grape juice to the incredibly-complex cocktails in which the lounge's autobar specialized; the evolution of transport, from log float to the Empress of Earth herself; the evolution of living spaces, from cave to the Darwin Lounge. . . .

The scenes were so funny, and so obviously non-serious, that "nobody could take offense at them"; though of course people did, several on every voyage, for reasons as diverse as they were uniformly absurd. For that matter, passengers had been known to complain about the rest rooms off the Social Hall, because the crossing patterns of the plaid decorative scheme "suggested Christian motives."