"Captain Ling," Seele said to the man occupying the captain's chair, "could you please activate the view screens?"
"Yes, ma'am." He twirled a dial and the main screen brightened to reveal a starscape. It was no different from any other starscape you might see. That's why view screens are almost always turned off, except to impress visitors. No FTL ship navigates by sight. Running with the screen active would simply distract the crew from watching more important things: the gauges and readouts that gave solid information instead of useless scenery.
"Now, Explorer Ramos," Seele pointed to the screen, "what do you see?"
"Stars," I answered.
"Captain Ling," Seele said, "what is our current distance from Melaquin?"
Ling gestured toward the navigator. The navigator said, "9.27 light-years, ma'am."
"Are we in interstellar space?"
The navigator's eyes widened slightly. "Yes, ma'am."
"Out of any star's local gravity well?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Thank you," Seele said. "As you were."
She turned and stepped back into the corridor. A moment later, she took me by the dumbstruck arm and pulled me after her.
"You see?" Seele said in a gentle voice. "Whatever you did, you aren't non-sentient. The League is never wrong about these things. We're alive and we've reached interstellar space; therefore, Festina, you are not a murderer." She gave the ghost of a smile. "It's almost as if God has personally declared you innocent."
The Admiral's Story
Back in the cabin, I told Seele everything. This time was different from when I confessed to Jelca. Then, I was trying to connect with him, partly to reach his sanity and partly to reach mine. Now, I was trying to connect the facts: to see the chains of cause and effect, to understand why the League had incomprehensibly given me a reprieve.
Seele said nothing as I talked — no attempt to make me admit that Yarrun's death was an accident, no easy comments on what I should or shouldn't have done. She simply listened and let me tell the story. When I was finished, she asked, "What do you want to do now?"
"Apart from pushing the High Council out an airlock?"
She didn't smile. "Is that what you need to do, Festina?"
"Someone should." I gave her a look. "Why didn't you?"
"You think Chee and I could actually sway the council?" She shook her head. "We gave it a shot: all the silly things you see in entertainment bubbles. Letters marked TO BE DELIVERED TO THE PRESS IF SOMETHING HAPPENS TO US. Sworn affidavits, with accompanying lie-detector certificates. A plan for confronting the council in public forum… naive nonsense. At worst, we could have made ourselves an inconvenience — forced the council to sacrifice a scapegoat low down the chain of command. But before we could do even that, we were outmaneuvered. We'd taken too long to set things up. The council was ready for us."
"What happened?"
"We were shown trumped-up documents proving we were mentally unstable… histories of our inventing complaints to get back at superiors who were only doing their jobs. The frameup was quite thorough. Maybe we could defeat it in court, if we had enough resources to expose the lies; but we didn't." She spread her hands wide, then let them fall. "What could we do? And the alternative they offered looked better than getting locked up as liars or paranoids."
"The alternative was becoming one of them!" I protested. "How could you stomach that?"
"I may have become an admiral," Seele said, "but I was never one of them. That's an important distinction. The Outward Fleet has many admirals: seven different ranks of them. Only the top rank sits on the High Council. Most other admirals do reasonably honest work — pushing papers, organizing this project or that, keeping the wheels turning. The council are the ones who make policy. Chee and I weren't even traditional admirals. We were officers without portfolio, so to speak. Or perhaps, officers without politics — without obligations to people who had paid us favors and without the ambition to seize more power. The shrewd half of the council realized they needed people like us to be troubleshooters and muckrakers… just as they needed Explorers for the same work. They need people to do the job, Festina. To stand apart from the mentality that says, 'It's someone else's problem,' and to do the thing that needs doing.
"Chee set up his spy network to keep an eye on planetary bureaucracies," Seele went on. "I did the same within the Admiralty itself. We did good work, Festina. We saved lives that would have been lost through greed and negligence. I'm proud of what I've done, even if I had to put on an admiral's uniform to do it."
"But you still let them send Explorers to Melaquin," I said.
"How could I stop it?" she asked. "The High Council likes using Melaquin to solve their problems. It's convenient. And the League of Peoples doesn't object. That's what makes the council happiest; the League doesn't give a damn. If the League ever intervened — if there was even a suggestion the League might intervene — the council would cower and back off. They're terrified of being labeled a non-sentient governing body.
"Like the Greenstriders," I said.
"Precisely. But for forty years, I've tried to think of a way to involve the League in Melaquin, and haven't made a millimeter of headway. Sending humans to an Earthlike world doesn't put them in lethal danger… not when you compare Melaquin to almost every other planet in the galaxy."
"No…" I said slowly.
"I promise you," Seele went on, "I've tried to rescue Explorers from time to time, but I've always been stopped by the picket ships. You're the first person I've got out, and that was only because the ship with the other Explorers distracted the sentries. I've tried to help as much as I could. Most of the time, I hear advance rumors about missions to Melaquin, and I tip off the Explorers involved. Unfortunately, the council moved on Chee while I was distracted with other business. I only found out when I received your eggs…"
Her voice trailed off, but I was only half paying attention. "Admiral," I said, "I know what I want to do with my future."
"What?"
"First, we head for the High Council chambers on New Earth…"
The Chamber of the High Council
Guards saluted crisply as we marched into Admiralty headquarters — saluted Admiral Seele, of course, not me. I wore nondescript black coveralls, without insignia. It was one of the five recognized uniforms for Explorers, but it was also the sort of drab attire any civilian worker might wear. Since I had no apparent blemishes or flaws, the guards likely took me for nothing more than a repair-worker.
Gaining admittance to the High Council chamber took more work: mostly bluster on Seele's part. She repeated the word "urgent" to more than a dozen obstructionist deputies before we were grudgingly passed through. Anyone else might never have bullied the gatekeepers into surrender; but as semiofficial troublespotter for the Outward Fleet, Seele could demand immediate attention in a crisis. When the last bureaucrat buckled under to Seele's insistence, we only had to wait in the council's anteroom for five minutes: just long enough to be scanned for hidden weapons and for Seele's identity to be verified.
They can't have bothered to identify me. If they had, they might not have blithely admitted an Explorer who was supposed to be on Melaquin.
The doors in front of us opened. Admiral Seele strode forward, with me matching step two paces behind.
The president of the council, Admiral Vincence, smiled politely as Seele reached the foot of the Round Table. He did not invite her to take a chair. "Admiral Seele," Vincence said, "you have an urgent need to address us?"
"There is a pressing matter for the council to consider," Seele replied. "But I will not be the one to address you." She gestured for me to come forward. "Proceed, Explorer."