Starliner(40)

"Tough time, sir?" asked the sergeant commanding the six Terran soldiers who'd passed Ran into the building.

"Tough enough," Ran murmured. He straightened his uniform jacket. When the door opened for the Trident officer, at least a dozen other people had tried to force their way past him. "Are all those folks out there Earth citizens?"

"Not a one of them," the guard said. "They're fringe-worlders and they're scared, that's all. They figure Earth can protect them. West Bumfuck or wherever they come from sure-hell can't."

"Mr. Colville?" called a plump civilian from the second balcony. He looked about Ran's age or a few years younger. "I'm very sorry you've had this useless trip. I told your Commander Kneale—"

"I'm coming up!" Ran interrupted in an artificially cheerful voice as he headed for the stairs.

Kneale had called ahead to announce him—without that, Ran would never have gotten through the embassy doors at this hour and set of circumstances—but the whole reason for his presence was to make a face-to-face request. It's harder to turn down a person than it is a voice.

The stairs were of the same black stone as the columns, but inset grip pads prevented the treads from being lethal to someone in a hurry, as Ran was now. As he passed the second-floor landing, three people whispering in the open hallway turned and stared at him. Their faces were as frightened and uncertain as those of the crowd outside the building.

The man who'd called to Ran shifted his weight from one foot to the other as though he had a desperate need to run for the bathroom. "Really, Mr. Colville," he said, "there's nothing more to—"

The third-floor hallway had doors on the outer perimeter and overlooked the lobby on the inside. Paintings of women wearing 17th-century dresses covered the ceiling in broad, filigreed-silver frames. Your taxes at work . . .

Money spent on expensive buildings wasn't going to get anybody killed. Hiring dithering fools to make decisions in a crisis just might do that.

Ran stuck out his hand. "And you are, sir?" he said.

The embassy official shook hands in a practiced reflex. "Emrys-Dunne," he muttered. "Assistant Political Officer. As you can imagine, we're quite busy just now. I should be in a meeting right—"

He nodded toward the door standing ajar across the hall beside them. Ran could see half of those around the table within. The striking blond woman would have been worth comment in other circumstances, but none of the conferees were senior people. An older man near the foot of table was clearly a Nevasan national, locally employed embassy staff.

"—now."

You bet. There's a crisis, so call a meeting and cluck. With luck, the ambassador and other ranking personnel were doing something useful, but Ran wasn't willing to bet on that.

"Sir, I know this is a crisis, but the Empress of Earth is more than just a hugely valuable vessel," Ran said as persuasively as he knew how. He was so tired and hungry that he was getting light-headed. "She's a symbol of Earth itself, just as the embassy here is. A few Terran soldiers may be the only thing between normal lift-off and an ill-judged attempt to seize her. That sort of mistake could bring Federated Earth into the war, as you know."

"That's out of the question!" said Emrys-Dunne, more forcefully than Ran would have guessed the plump man could be. "Deploying members of the guard detachment off embassy property would be a clear violation of the treaty—"

The meeting in the conference room broke up. The people spilling out the door looked drawn and gray. Ran suspected that Emrys-Dunne had kept the gathering together longer than would otherwise have been the case, and that his absence gave the others an excuse to leave.

"Sir," Ran said, "There's already been one—"

"No!" snapped the official. "No, absolutely not. What you're suggesting could be construed as an act of war on our part."

That was probably true, but—there wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell that the government of Nevasa would try to make anything out of it. Whereas a Nevasan misstep here, in the middle of the crisis, might arouse the sort of public outcry at home that forced Earth to take public action. The government of Federated Earth collectively hated to act as much as Emrys-Dunne seemed to dislike the idea as an individual.

"Sir, just as a symbol," Ran pleaded. "To make it clear that the Empress is Earth territory and—"

"No!"

The blond woman stopped nearby, looking intently from Emrys-Dunne to Ran. "We could send a few watchmen," she said unexpectedly. "He's right, you know. The department won't thank us if we let Earth be dragged into this because the Nevasans—or some Nevasans—miscalculated."