“It might buy time,” I said.
“We have bought all the time we can buy, Councilor,” Oi said. “The general has just paid for all of it. There is no more time. There are only the choices we have in front of us right now. You take control of the Conclave, or allow someone else to. One choice will preserve the union. The other won’t.”
“You have a lot of faith in me, Oi.”
“I have absolutely no faith in you, Councilor,” Oi said. “What I have is analysis. You don’t think I haven’t been modeling what would happen after the general left power, do you? Who would try to claim his position and what would happen from there?”
“No, I suppose that would be your job,” I said. “Although I didn’t expect to be part of that math.”
“If anyone else said that I would call that false modesty,” Oi said. “In your case it’s not, I know. You’ve always been the one to walk behind, Councilor. But there is no one for you to walk behind anymore. The Conclave needs you to step forward.”
I looked around the room, at the security detail there. All ready for something.
“I don’t want the job,” I repeated to Oi.
“I know,” Oi said. “But with all due respect, Councilor, at the moment I don’t care about what you want. I care about what you will do.”
The security officer returned, a Lalan in tow.
“You’re a medical doctor,” I said.
“Yes,” the Lalan said. “Dr. Omed Moor, ma’am.”
“Well, Doctor?” I held out my arms. “Am I dead?”
“No, ma’am.”
I put my arms down. “Then that’s all the time I have for a checkup at the moment, I’m afraid. Thank you, Doctor.” I turned from the bewildered doctor to Oi. “Does your analysis include you working on my behalf?”
“I serve at the pleasure of the leader of the Conclave,” Oi said.
“And that’s me.”
“It has been since the moment of the general’s death. All we have to do now is make it known.”
“I have some people I need to see,” I said. “And there are people you need to see too.”
“I can guess who you want to see,” Oi said.
“I’m sure you can.”
“Do you still want my resignation?”
“If at the end of this sur I’m still in a position to accept it, no,” I said. “And if I’m not, I’ll assume it’s because we’re in the same airlock, waiting to be pushed out into space by whoever is.”
* * *
“I question your right to call us here,” Unli Hado said. “You are not General Gau. And the general did not leave instruction for passing on leadership of the Conclave to you. If anyone should be the leader of the Conclave now, it is Chancellor Lause.”
Hado sat in the conference room next to Tarsem’s public office, along with Lause, Prulin Horteen, Ohn Sca, and Oi.
“It’s a fair point,” I said, and turned to Lause. “Chancellor?”
“I’m leader of the Grand Assembly, not the leader of the Conclave,” she said. “I neither want nor can accept that position.”
“You’re a coward,” Hado said.
“No,” Lause said. “But I’m not a fool, either. The Conclave has just lost its leader, Unli, and it’s lost it to assassination. Are you so blinded by your own ambition that you don’t realize that anyone claiming the general’s title will look like the assassin’s employer?”
Hado flung an arm at me. “And she won’t?”
“No, I won’t,” I said. “Not if we come to terms now.”
“I repeat: I question your right to call us here,” Hado said.
“Oi,” I said.
“Representative Hado, I have it on very excellent information that you are the one who authorized the assassination of General Gau,” Oi said. “Evidence from the Abumwe report combined with my own agents’ intelligence gathering lays it squarely at your door. Within the sur I expect that you will be arrested for treason and that a comprehensive report will show the Elpri government was providing logistical and material support not only for the assassination but for Equilibrium in general.”
Hado stared, disbelieving. “That’s a lie!”
“Don’t protest too much, Hado,” Horteen said.
Oi turned to her. “Prulin Horteen, I have evidence that you offered material support to Representative Hado for the assassination, and that your recent rhetoric about purging nations you deemed traitorous to the Conclave is a feint to draw attention from your own involvement.”
“What?” Horteen said.
“Representative Sca, your government’s collusion with Hado’s assassination of the general and with Equilibrium in general is exhaustively documented as well,” Oi said.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Sca said.