“There is some irony to that.”
I nodded at this. “And the thing we have to remember is that it’s doing it for its own purposes.” I pointed in the direction of the very small room in which we were currently keeping Khartoum’s prime minister. “Okada and his government got sold a bill of goods by Equilibrium, which attacked us. But it’s not Equilibrium who is being punished, it’s Khartoum.”
“When you lay down with dogs, you get fleas,” Hart said.
“Yes. I’m not defending Okada’s act. He and the planet wouldn’t be in the position they are today if he and his government hadn’t let Equilibrium through the door. But Equilibrium got what it wanted out of the exchange. More Colonial Union oversight means more resentment of the Colonial Union, not just here, but everywhere that finds out about it.”
“The Colonial Union holds a virtual monopoly on information,” Balla said.
“It did,” I agreed. “It doesn’t anymore. And, leaving aside the general philosophical issue with a single source bottlenecking every bit of communication for its own purposes, that presents its own problems.”
“Like Equilibrium creating its own version of events here on Khartoum and presenting it to the other colonies,” Abumwe said.
“Right again,” I said. “Which goes back again to my point about Equilibrium maximizing its efforts. It doesn’t take a lot for them to leverage mistrust of the Colonial Union into the appearance of being a fair dealer to the colonial worlds.” I pointed to Abumwe. “You said we don’t have much time. I think it’s more correct to say that we’re already out of time. Equilibrium is almost certainly already out there selling its version of events, and when it shows a feed of all our ships floating above the surface of Khartoum, that’s just going to act as confirmation to the rebellious colonies.”
“How do we know about the rebellious colonies?” Balla asked.
“The Colonial Union is not entirely without friends on the colony worlds,” Abumwe said. “Or in their governments. We have had people feeding us information for a while now.”
“And we never did anything on it? We let it get to this point?”
“With the politics of the colony worlds the Colonial Union prefers to do things as quietly as possible, until they can’t be handled quietly anymore.” Abumwe shrugged. “It worked before, for decades. The Colonial Union is resistant to change. And at the top there’s the belief that things can still be managed quietly. That we will be able to control the actions of the colonies.”
“That’s not working out very well at this point, Ambassador,” Balla said.
“No, it isn’t,” Abumwe agreed.
“And we knew nothing about Equilibrium’s involvement.”
“Remember that one of the prime movers of Equilibrium turned out to be a highly placed member of our State Department,” I said, to Balla. “It’s entirely possible that what we thought we knew about the independence movements on the colony worlds was based on highly edited information. And once Ocampo was retaken, Equilibrium would naturally change tactics. That would be my guess, anyway.”
Balla turned to me. “Have you always had this sort of paranoid mind?”
I smiled. “Captain, the problem is not that I’m paranoid. The problem is that the universe keeps justifying my paranoia.”
Abumwe turned her attention back to me. “So, your analysis, paranoid or otherwise, is that this encounter was a success for Equilibrium.”
“Yes,” I said. “It wasn’t perfect; I think they would have liked to have destroyed the Tubingen, killed everyone aboard, made it look like the Khartoumian government was entirely responsible for it all, and have us none the wiser for it. But as it is, they’ll be able to sell their version to people who are receptive to hear it. Equilibrium’s been working on a strategy of making us look deceptive and dissembling for a while now. It works because we are, in fact, deceptive and dissembling.”
“What’s their next step, then?” Hart asked.
“I think that may be the lieutenant’s point,” Abumwe said. “They don’t have to have a next step. They just have to wait for us to do what we always do, the way we always do it.”
I nodded. “Why do the work to destabilize us when we’ll do it for ourselves.”
“But there still has to be a point to it,” Balla said, to Abumwe. She turned to me. “Look, Lieutenant, I understand that you are deeply enthusiastic about this convoluted web of actions that you’re spinning. I’m not going to say that it’s wrong. But Equilibrium isn’t doing this just for the fun of it. They’re not nihilists. There has to be a point. There has to be a plan. This has to lead to something.”
“It leads to the end of all things,” I said. “Or less dramatically, to either or both the Colonial Union and the Conclave fracturing, and the return of every species in our local slice of space being constantly at war with each other.”