Neither Zhukovski nor Admiral L’Houillier liked the open conceit in her voice, but there was nothing to be done about it at present.
“Very well,” the president said briskly. “Admiral L’Houillier, Dr. Rabat, set this up as soon as possible. Ladies and gentlemen, this meeting is adjourned until then.”
Two raps of the gavel, and it was over.
The president. Reza mulled over the word and its significance. The humans did not have an Empress as did his own people. This they had told him, the words sparking dim memories of things he might at some time have known long ago. But seeking the knowledge of the human child who lay somewhere deep within him was by and large fruitless, for he was no longer a boy, nor was he truly human any longer. He had to learn everything anew.
Although it was very difficult in the beginning, he understood most of what they spoke to him now, and he could answer intelligibly. He felt their frustration when they asked him about things that dealt with the Way and his people, of the Empress and Her designs, and he became mute. Those things were not privy to any not of the Way, and although he no longer was bound to Her and his sisters in spirit, he did not feel compelled to cast aside his vows and beliefs. His honor was Kreelan, as was his soul, and these things he pledged to forever uphold as inviolate. He had tried to communicate this to the “scientists,” but they had not taken his words as final. There were things he could tell them, perhaps, that would not endanger his honor or bring shame before Her eyes. But he sensed that the time was not yet right, that those who had swarmed around him in the bowels of the great ship like starving carrion eaters were but lackeys to a greater power.
The president. Undoubtedly not endowed with Her powers or divine grace, Reza understood that this person was the most high among humanity, the giver of laws, the maker of war, the one with final responsibility for all that happened or did not happen in the human realm. It was initially difficult for Reza to accept that the leader of humanity was a male. He had thought the scientists had been telling him a joke, as they periodically were wont to do to test his understanding of the concepts he was relearning, human-style humor not least among them. Doubting their words, Reza had demanded that they produce a likeness of this person, and they did so, presenting him with a small life-like image of a stately, if not quite regal, man wrapped in brightly colored scarlet cloth, with vibrant insignias and other ornaments around his neck and arms. His hair was a silvery gray, a handsome contrast to his skin, which was nearly as black as Reza’s armor.
“This is President Nathan,” they told him.
“Why,” Reza had asked, perplexed not by the man’s color or garments, which he knew were diverse among humans, but by how he had been addressed, “does the president have a name, and is not simply the president for always?”
This, in turn, confused them. “He – or she, as the case may be – is not president forever,” one of the scientists had replied, deeply curious as always at anything he said or asked, “but only for the time he has been elected by the people, the voters. Then he is replaced by someone else, again selected by the people. That is the way a democracy works.”
“And his spirit lives on in whoever follows, to help guide… him, or her?” Reza had asked.
At this, the researchers began asking him questions that he could not answer for fear of revealing more than he was able of the Way and his Empress. The researchers were intensely interested in all his beliefs learned while among the Children of the Empress, but there was little he could tell them. He fell silent, his own question unanswered.
Had Jodi or Braddock, or especially Father Hernandez, been at hand, Reza was sure they would have answered without expecting information in return as the scientists often seemed to. Of all the humans he had met so far, those three and the red-headed one called Sinclaire were the only ones he trusted, for their hearts were true, if strange in their own way. But they all had been barred from him for reasons he did not understand.
But now, he thought, he would be able to see the president himself.
“This way, sir,” one of the four Marine warriors who attended him said, gesturing to the left, down yet another corridor in the great building that was the ruling place of the “government,” another concept that he had vaguely understood as a child, but that now eluded him entirely. The Kreela had no similar thing, only the Empress and Her will.
Now, approaching the great wooden doors to what could only be a throne room, it was time to see the essence of that for which he had given up all that he cherished and loved, to his very soul.
The Marines stopped abruptly and stood to the sides of the door. The commander of the guard, a highly decorated staff sergeant, opened the door, then stood aside.
“Please, sir,” he said, motioning Reza through the portal. He was to meet the president without a formal guard.
The president was a man of courage, Reza thought. Perhaps, a man of honor.
He stepped over the threshold into the main Council chamber, the same room where the closed-door session had been held several days before. Now, as then, it was full of people, all of them staring silently at Reza as he stepped into the room.
Uncertain, he stopped a few paces from the doors, sensing them closing behind him. He did not feel threatened, only uncomfortable, as might a tiny scree lizard, cupped in curious hands.
Reza knew, however, that he was far more powerful than such a tiny creature, and in this knowledge he drew comfort.
He surveyed the room and drank in the strange mix of emotions that floated here like the smoke from Braddock’s cigarettes. He sampled the unfamiliar smells of different perfumes, was amazed at the dazzling array of colorful clothing. Standing in his armor and weapons, having stolidly refused the flimsy human garments endlessly pressed upon him, he felt as if he were the only solid, tangible object in the room. Everything else before him was as much an illusion as had been the small holograph of the president.
Suddenly, as if on an unseen signal, the assemblage in the room stood and turned to face him. A female whom he had never met before stepped forward.
“Welcome, Reza,” she said, beckoning him to come closer, to the center of the raised semicircular dais at which the human elders sat, observing him closely. “My name is Melissa Savitch, and I’ll do what I can to help you communicate with the others.” And keep you from being thrown to the wolves, she added silently to herself. Rabat had been outraged that Savitch should suggest – demand – that she herself be by Reza’s side during what Savitch knew was in all respects an interrogation, but Savitch had held firm. Without her to keep the less constitutionally scrupulous at bay, she knew that Reza would soon find himself strapped to a table, an electronic probe sticking out of his skull. “Mr. President, members of the Council,” she said, turning to face the elders, “may I introduce to you Reza Sarandon Gard of Hallmark.”
And there, standing but a few paces away, was the president himself.
“Welcome home, young man,” he said. President Nathan had wanted very much to have himself and the entire Council down there, on the floor, to welcome Reza in a more personal fashion. But the Secret Service had been adamant that they remain separated, and more than a few of the senators had voiced their own personal objections. An unknown quantity, armed and known to be extremely dangerous to his opponents, Reza posed an incalculable threat to the core of the Confederation government at close quarters; the Council was quietly protected by an invisible force field immune to any attack Reza could make. Or so the Secret Service hoped. “I bid you welcome home to the Confederation, on behalf of all of humanity.”