Starliner(35)

Lin's spacious home overlooked the heart of Nevasa City to the east, and Con Ron Landing, the starport, to the west. An incoming vessel and its tugs formed a bright ring above the family room's clear ceiling. The panels of smoked polycarbonate were mounted in flexible troughs so that they did not rattle audibly, but the starliner's roar made them vibrate and caused the image to quiver.

"What a fascist pronouncement," Oanh said without looking at him. "And I suppose only the military is going to die in this moral crusade?"

"Oanh," Mr. Lin said. "Please."

He knew it was his fault. She'd never had a proper home, even before her mother fled. Lin's duties required that he work eighteen hours on those days he didn't work twenty-four. Servants could care for Oanh and teach her—but they couldn't give orders that the strong-willed daughter of an increasingly high official had to accept.

For all that, she hadn't become wild. Just opinionated; and under present conditions, voicing the wrong opinions could be more dangerous than drunken sprees.

"Father," Oanh replied—but at least she did lower her voice so that it might not be heard over the pulse of the starship, "you know as well as I do that this war isn't necessary. It isn't even over things, it's just perceptions. There's no excuse for it!"

"There may be no war," Lin repeated softly.

To an extent, his daughter was right. A nation can always avoid war, almost always, by rolling over on its back and baring its belly. Whether that could ever be considered a valid alternative, however, was another matter entirely.

Private firms on Grantholm and Nevasa had together begun to develop Apogee, a world with a climate that was moderate and also unusually stable because the planet had no axial tilt. Nevasa saw Apogee as a rice basket, while the Grantholm entrepreneurs developed resorts on their sections.

Both plans had been set out publicly before any colonization took place. The problem arose when the Grantholm government—not the private developers—noticed that the population in the Nevasan sections was a hundred times greater than that in those under Grantholm control. Rice is a labor-intensive crop. Nevasa was importing a labor force from disadvantaged regions of Earth—from the Orient of Earth.

Grantholm claimed that the pattern of development was a plot to bring the entire planet under Nevasan suzerainty . . . and Mr. Lin knew that in the secret councils of the Nevasan government, that possibility had indeed been floated. All Nevasan activities on Apogee to date had been perfectly in line with the original agreements, however.

The arrogance of the Grantholm delegation which ordered Nevasa to cease shipping colonists to Apogee would have been quite unacceptable to any sovereign government. Certainly to the government of Nevasa, which had the military potential to teach Grantholm the lesson for which that world had been begging for so long.

Probably. And certainly with the support of Tellichery. Almost certainly with the full support of Tellichery.

"Oanh," he said, "I understand your feelings."

Lin didn't know whether or not that was true. As with so many of the statements he had to make, truth or falsity did not matter as much as appropriateness did.

"But you must understand," he continued over his daughter's attempt to reply, "that honor is not merely a word."

"Neither is life, father!" Oanh said.

Any further discussion was lost in the resonating boom of the Empress of Earth landing.

* * *

Transient Block, the ground facility on Nevasa for Trident's Third Class passengers, was neither a slave pen nor a prison. It wasn't a palace, either, and Ran didn't like the sound of the door banging behind him to shut out the soft night

The block consisted of three levels of rooms built around a central court. It housed Third Class passengers while the Empress was on the ground. That way the on-board accommodations could be thoroughly cleaned, and the human cargo got a degree of variety when that was possible.

Residents now crowded the court, the stairs, and the interior walkways serving the rooms on the higher levels. The speaker addressing them through a handheld amplifier spoke in an unfamiliar language, but the translator on Ran's shoulder chirped, "Join us, then, brothers and sisters, so that you personally can live better lives—"

Mohacks was close to the door with a woman wearing a green Trident ground staff uniform and a set expression. From the look of her, she was a local or at least of oriental descent.

"Sir!" said Mohacks. "These indigs—"starship crewmen rarely had much use for ground-based personnel, but Mohacks made "indigenous staff" sound like "dog shit" "—let in unauthorized people and—"