Yoshi Yamashiro, the governor of Ezer Kri and the head of the delegation, next resubmitted a petition asking for permission to change the name of his planet from Ezer Kri to “Shin Nippon.”
The chairman of the Linear Committee pointed out that “Shin Nippon” meant “New Japan,” and refused to consider the petition.
At this point the story switched to video footage shot in the Committee chambers. The Ezer Kri delegation, made up of elderly men in black suits, sat at a huge wooden table covered with charts and computers. Their table faced a towering gallery packed with senators. The seven men in the delegation chatted among themselves in a language that I had never heard. Their voices rose and fell dramatically, and they did a lot of bowing. “Mr. Chairman,” one of them said in a breathless voice. “We ask that the official language of Ezer Kri be changed to Japanese. That is the language spoken by a plurality of our population,” he said, with a slight bow.
Angry chatter erupted in gallery.
“Governor Yamashiro,” the speaker shouted, banging his gavel. “I will not entertain such a request. You are entirely out of bounds. Your behavior signifies contempt for this body.”
The Japanese men spoke quietly among themselves. Yamashiro stood up. He was a short man with a stout chest and broad shoulders. He bowed. “I apologize for my offense, Mr. Chairman,” Yamashiro said. The room calmed, then Yamashiro spoke again. “I humbly suggest that you change the name of the Republic to the ‘Unified Singular Authority.’ ”
There was a moment of shocked silence, as if Yamashiro had performed some crude act that stunned every man in the room. Then hisses and angry conversation filled the chamber. The chairman pounded his gavel as the video segment ended.
The picture of the hearing faded and my shades now showed three analysts sitting around a table. One of them leaned forward. “This was footage of the Ezer Kri delegation’s meeting with the Linear Committee this morning. After having several requests denied, Governor Yoshi Yamashiro suggested that the Unified Authority be renamed ‘the Unified Singular Authority.’As you can see, the reaction was swift and angry.”
“Jim,” a woman analyst cut in, “that reaction was to Yamashiro’s veiled suggestion that the government is really an extension of the old United States. The point of his comment was that we should take on the initials USA. Yamashiro made some good points,” the woman continued. “The Linear Committee has been openly antagonistic toward the Ezer Kri delegation. We’re not talking about a planet trying to break from the Republic, forgod’ssake, they just want to rename their planet.”
“It’s not just the planet name…” the first male analyst started.
“There are already planets named Athens, Columbia, Jerusalem!” another analyst added.
“Those are city names, and they do not have majority populations of Greek or Israeli descent. It’s not just the name, it’s the language. Governor Yamashiro wants to speak an entirely different language than the rest of the Republic.”
“Jim,” the woman commentator said, with a patient and all-knowing smile, “when was the last time you watched a broadcast from outside the Orion Arm? By the end of the century, linguistic scholars predict the dialects spoken in the outer arms will have evolved into unique languages. You cannot expect people who live ten thousand light-years apart to go on speaking the same language forever.”
“And you think switching from English to Japanese is part of that evolution?”
“What I find most disturbing is the paranoia that is surrounding this entire issue,” the woman said, ignoring the question. “It’s as if the committee believes that switching the language is the first step to an invasion. It’s ridiculous.”
The woman made more sense, but I agreed with the male commentator. Perhaps it was my upbringing in a military orphanage, but I could not see how letting planets speak different languages would bring the galaxy closer together.
By that time I was losing interest in the story, so I switched off my shades. When I removed my shades, I saw a message light blinking over my bunk. Sergeant Shannon wanted me to come to his office. I climbed out of bed and dressed quickly, but Shannon was not in his office when I arrived. I found my helmet waiting on his desk.
Lee, just back from the gym, came into the barracks as I was stowing my helmet. “Hey, how was your workout?” I asked, as Lee passed my rack.
“Fine,” he said, sounding brusque. I waited for him to shower and change, then we went to the commissary for breakfast. We had eaten almost every meal together since landing on the ship. I think we had sort of adopted each other. I hadn’t yet figured out that Lee liked me because I was not a clone. As for me, after my time on Gobi, I was just glad to have a friend who truly fit the description “government- issue.” Lee was acting odd and distant. I wanted to ask him what his problem was, but I figured he would cough it up in good time. As we walked toward the mess area, I saw a strangely familiar sight on some of the monitors along the hall—a picture of General Amos Crowley bent over a stack of poker chips, holding a particle-beam pistol. I recognized the table, the room, and the way Crowley pinched the pistol with his fingers. “Enemy of the Republic,” was the headline. “Former general and noted terrorist Amos Crowley stands accused of sedition, rebellion, and murder.”
I stared at the display hardly believing my eyes. “Son of a bitch,” I mumbled.
“Do you know him?” Vince asked.
“I think I took that photograph,” I said.
“You don’t know if you took it?” Lee asked, suddenly interested in me again.
“I was at that card game, but I didn’t have a camera. Neither did anybody else.”
“Somebody had one,” Lee said dismissively. “Do you play cards with traitors on a regular basis?”
I stared at the image for a moment, then continued down the hall. And then it struck me. All those gadgets packed into our visors…polarizing lenses, telescopic lenses, communications systems. Add a little data storage, and you could record everything.
“Do our visors record data?” I asked.
“Sure,” Lee said, sounding as if I should have known that without asking. “How long have you been…” He paused to stare at me and laughed. “You wore your helmet to a card game? Harris”—he seemed to warm up as he sensed my embarrassment—“you’re all right.”
“Glad I’ve got your seal of approval,” I said. I was again tempted to ask what was bothering him, but held back.
He looked back at the picture. “That’s not your sidearm, is it?” he said, struggling not to laugh.
“No, it’s not,” I snapped.
“Just asking,” Lee said, still sounding more than amused. The corners of his mouth still twitched. “Whose is it?”
“It belonged to a guy named Taj Guttman,” I said, as we entered the mess hall.
“He wagered his firearm? I bet he wasn’t wearing his helmet.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I said.
“His goose is fried,” Lee said.
We grabbed trays and moved to the chow line. Vince clearly wanted to ask more questions but had the good sense to wait until we had our chow and had moved to a quieter corner of the room. I felt a wave of panic. How many people knew what I had done—that I had lost my pistol to an enemy agent in a card game? I seriously doubted that McKay would keep the information to himself.