"Emperor Zindel," he said crisply, "what is the nature of your protest?"
"Mr. Director, I protest the utter waste of our time into which shortsighted members of this Conclave are forcing us! This is the second day we've met. We sat here for fourteen hours yesterday. We've been sitting here for twelve and a half more hours today, and we've decided exactly nothing. Not one, solitary, blessed thing! The troop movements arranged unilaterally by Emperor Chava and myself, with your cooperation, are the only military preparations anyone outside the Portal Authority has managed to carry out, even though three weeks have passed since the attack on our survey crew."
He glowered around the huge, marble chancellery's gorgeous precincts, as if daring any person present to dispute what he'd just said.
"This Conclave has one purpose. Just one. We aren't here to decide where to put traffic signs. We aren't here to decide which school our children should attend. While we sit here bickering over inconsequential trivia, Sharonian men and women?Sharonian children?are in mortal danger.
"We have colonies?not just forts with garrisons of soldiers, but colonies?within four transits of New Uromath, and by my conservative count, there are no fewer than twenty-three survey crews in that region. The Chalgyn Consortium crew was less than two days away from a portal fort, yet every member of it was massacred. Ternathia's Third Dragoons are en route to Fort Salby, but they won't arrive there for more than another full month, although Uromathia's cavalry regiments, fortunately, will reach Salby in two weeks, and the remaining divisions of Fifth Corps will entrain over the next several weeks.
"I'm sure we're all relieved to know troops are moving towards the front. But those troops are all we have moving towards the threat, and it's another five thousand miles from Salby to New Uromath," he said grimly. "It will take them almost a month and a half just to reach Salby, and then another two and a half months to reach the front, and we have no idea what sort of attacks they may face along the way. No way of knowing what numbers of troops we'll need at the front. And still we haven't taken a single step towards organizing our planet for the sort of war we may face. Not one … single … step."
His voice echoed in a dead silence.
"It's obvious the other side knows about multiple universes and portals, since Company-Captain chan Tesh found them camped right in the middle of one. I shouldn't have to point out that we have no idea how large their territory is, how many universes they've already occupied. How long have these people known about portals? How many universes have they explored? How many have they colonized?
"How big are they?"
He paused again, sweeping them with his eyes before he resumed.
"We've been exploring for eighty years. That seems a long time, my friends, but it isn't. Not really. It certainly hasn't been long enough for us to build a large population base out there. Most of our colonies have been established in the last thirty or forty years, directly from Sharona. That leaves our out-universe populations stretched thin. We're strung out, like beads on a broken necklace, and none of our colonies have the manpower, out of their own resources, to hold against a powerful attack. None of them is capable of self-defense, yet there are far too many people living in them for evacuation to be a practical option even if we decided to pull them all back to Sharona.
"Our enemies might have just discovered portals in their backyard, but it's just as likely they've been exploring and colonizing for centuries. We could be facing a population two, or ten, or even a hundred times our size. Yes, the point of contact is forty thousand miles from here. Yes, the thought of someone being able to successfully project military power along an invasion route that long boggles the mind. But think about the troop movements rail lines and steamships make possible. We can get troops from here to Fort Salby, even allowing for water crossings, in less than two months. That's how long it took Captain of the Army chan Baraeg to march an infantry army from the Bernith Channel to the Janu River three thousand years ago. Does anyone in this chamber wish to suggest that we haven't fought wars?terrible, destructive wars?over greater march distances and despite far greater logistical challenges than that?
"With modern transport, wars can be fought at distances that great. Never think they can't! I pray that we can avoid fighting any war at all, that diplomacy and sanity can still stop this situation from lurching into an all out military confrontation with someone we know nothing about. But what if they can't? If diplomacy fails, we do have a war to fight, and however long it might take for that fighting to reach Sharona itself, it will sweep over our colonies far, far sooner unless we prevent that. Are we going to sit here, secure in the safe insulation of distance, and try to use this Conclave to settle long-standing, purely Sharonian problems while combat marches towards those colonies? Are the people who live there somehow less important than where we put our traffic signs?
"We have lives to save, godsdamn it! Do you honestly believe the mothers in the colonies closest to the people who've massacred an entire survey crew of civilians give a single solitary damn about who catches fish off the coast of Limathia? They're too busy wondering when their children will be shot down before their eyes, or burned to death in a fireball!"
He glared at them, and all of his frustration, anger, and driving need to save Sharonian lives, boiled up in a bullthroated challenge roar.
"We don't have time to argue about the godsdamned fish!"
Somebody in a high gallery behind him cheered. An instant later, what seemed like every gallery in the chancellery?and at least a third of the delegates on the chamber floor itself?had broken into thunderous applause. The Prince Regent of Limathia had gone crimson. Reporters were snapping photographs so fast the flash powder half-blinded Zindel, and Orem Limana wasn't even trying to gavel the crowd of spectators to order. He just stood there, watching it roar its approval, while a strange half-smile flickered across his face.
The tumult eventually wound down, and when Limana finally raised his hands for silence, the last of the applause died away. People settled back into their seats at last, but Zindel remained standing. Not only could he not abide the thought of sitting back down in that hateful chair, but he intended to finish this business.
"Emperor Zindel," the Portal Authority's First Director said into the restored silence, "thank you for lodging your protest. It is well taken?very well taken, indeed. If more Sharonian lives are lost because we fail to act swiftly enough, their blood will be on our hands, and no one else's."
"Will the Emperor yield?" another voice asked, half-lost in the enormous chamber, yet firm. Zindel turned his head until he saw the speaker, standing in the midst of the Shurkhali delegation.
"Master Chairman," the Emperor said to Limana, "Ternathia yields temporarily, and without prejudice, to the Honorable Parliamentary Representative from Shurkhal."
"Representative Kinshe, you have the floor," Limana said, and actually managed to sound as if he had absolutely no idea what Halidar Kinshe was about to say.
"Your Majesty, I thank you," Kinshe said simply, then turned to face the rest of the assembled delegates.
"As Emperor Zindel has just so … eloquently pointed out, we've sat here today for twelve and a half hours?over twenty-six hours, in all?listening to what amounts to no more than opening remarks," he said into the ringing silence. "I suppose that's inevitable, to some extent. This is the greatest gathering of heads of state in Sharona's history. Of course every nation represented here has some problem, some dispute, some need which it wishes to place upon the record, and for which it wishes to seek resolution.