Langtry nodded again, grinning even though his eyes were just a bit dazed from her ruthless dispatch. He walked out of the conference room with Honor on his heels, and an even more dazed-looking Commander Brentworth trailed in their wake.
None of them even looked back at the diplomat still sobbing quietly in the shadow of the overturned table.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"How dare they?!" Jared Mayhew glared around the council room as if hunting a Manticoran to attack with his bare hands. "Who do they think they are?!"
"With all due respect, Councilman Mayhew, they think they're the only people who can keep those fanatics on Masada from conquering this star system," Chancellor Prestwick replied far more calmly.
"God wouldn't want us to save ourselves at the cost of such ... such sacrilege!"
"Calmly, Jared. Calmly." Protector Benjamin touched his cousin's shoulder. "Remember that they don't see this as a sacrilegious demand."
"Perhaps not, but they have to know it's insulting, degrading, and arrogant," Howard Clinkscales, Grayson's Minister of Security growled. He and Jared Mayhew were the most conservative Council members, and his mouth worked bitterly. "It spits on all our institutions and beliefs, Benjamin!"
"Hear, hear!" Councilman Phillips murmured, and Councilman Adams, the Minister of Agriculture, looked like he wanted to say something even stronger. Barely a third of the faces present showed disagreement, and Prestwick looked around the long table despairingly.
He and Mayhew had been genial opponents for the five years since Benjamin had become Protector, sparring with elegant good manners over the authority the last six protectors had lost to Prestwick's predecessors. Yet Prestwick remained deeply and personally committed to the Mayhew dynasty, and they'd worked closely to secure the Manticoran alliance. Now it was crashing down in ruins, and there was anguish in his eyes as he cleared his throat.
"At the moment, our concerns" he began, but the Protector's raised finger stopped him.
"I know it looks that way to you, Howard," Protector Benjamin said, focusing on Clinkscales' face as if to exclude everyone else, "but we have to consider three questions. Do they truly realize how insulting this demand is? Will they really pull their warships out of this system if we reject it? And can we hold Grayson and preserve those institutions and beliefs if they do?"
"Of course they realize how insulting it is!" Jared Mayhew snapped. "No one could have put so many insults into one package by accident!"
The Protector leaned back in his chair and regarded his cousin with a mix of weariness, patience, disagreement, and exasperated affection. Unlike his own father, his Uncle Oliver had steadfastly refused to have any of his sons contaminated by off-world education, and Jared Mayhew was bright, talented, and the quintessential product of a conservative Grayson upbringing. He was also next in line for the Protectorship after Benjamin's brother and ten years older than Benjamin himself.
"I'm not at all sure `insult' is the proper word, Jared. And even if it were, surely we've given them just as many `insults' as they've given us."
Jared stared at him in astonishment, and Benjamin sighed mentally. His cousin was a gifted industrial manager, but he was so confident of the rectitude of his own beliefs that the notion anyone else might find his attitudes or behavior insulting was irrelevant. If they didn't like the way he treated them, then they should stay away from his planet. If they insisted on contaminating his world by their presence, he would treat them precisely as God wanted him to, and if they felt insulted, that was their problem.
"If you'll forgive me, Protector," a resonant voice said, "I rather think that whether they realize they're insulting us or not is somewhat less important than the last two questions you raised." The Reverend Julius Hanks, spiritual head of the Church of Humanity Unchained, seldom spoke up in Council meetings, but now he gave Prestwick a very hard look indeed. "Do you think they truly would withdraw and leave us to Masada's mercy, Chancellor?"
"I don't know, Reverend," Prestwick said frankly. "Were Admiral Courvosier still alive, I'd say no. As it is ..." He shrugged. "This Harrington woman is now in complete control of their military presence, and that means her policies are driving their diplomatic position. I doubt Ambassador Langtry would support any decision to withdraw, but I don't know if he could stop her from doing it. And" he hesitated a moment, glancing at Clinkscales and Jared Mayhew "I have to say the experiences on Grayson of Captain Harrington and the other women in her crews may well incline her to do exactly that."
"Of course she feels inclined to!" Clinkscales snorted. "What d'you expect when you put women in uniform? Damn it, they don't have the self-control and stability for it! She got her feelings hurt when she was here before, did she? Well, at least that explains why she's cracking the whip over us this way now! It's for revenge, damn it!"
Prestwick clamped his lips on a hasty retort, and the Protector hid another sigh. Actually, this one was more of a groan. His was the third Mayhew generation Clinkscales had served, and not just as Minister of Security. He was the personal commander of the Protectorate Security Detachment, the bodyguards who protected Benjamin and his entire family every hour of their lives.
He was also a living fossil. The old man was an unofficial unclea curmudgeonly, irascible, often exasperating uncle, but an uncleand Benjamin knew he treated his own wives with great tenderness. Yet fond as Benjamin was of the old man, he also knew Clinkscales treated them so because they were his wives. He knew them as people, separated from the general concept "wife" or "woman," but he would never dream of treating them as equals. The notion of a womanany womanasserting equality with a manany manwas more than merely foreign to him. It was totally incomprehensible, and as the personification of that notion, Captain Honor Harrington was a fundamental threat to his entire way of life.
"All right, Howard," Benjamin said after a moment, "assume you're rightthat she's just likely to pull her ships out of here for revenge because she's a woman. Distasteful as all of us may find the notion of submitting to her ultimatum, doesn't her very instability make it even more imperative for us to maintain an open mind as we consider it?"
Clinkscales glared at him. For all his conservatism, the old man was no fool, and his Protector's attempt to turn his own argument against him was the sort of thing the overly clever young sprout had been doing for years, ever since his return from that fancy university. His face reddened, but he clamped his jaws and refused to be drawn to the obvious conclusion.
"All right, then," Councilman Tompkins said. "If there's a real possibility this woman will abandon us, do we stand any chance at all of holding off the Faithful without her?"
"Of course we do!" Jared Mayhew snapped. "My workers are drawing weapons, and my shipyards are converting every freighter we have into missile carriers! We don't need foreigners to defend ourselves against scum like Masadansjust God and ourselves!"
No one else said a word, and even Clinkscales looked away in discomfort. Jared's fiery hatred ofand contempt forMasada had always been very public, but no amount of rhetoric could hide Grayson's nakedness. Yet even though they all knew Jared's strident assertions were nonsense, no one had the willor the courageto say so, and Benjamin Mayhew surveyed the council room with a sense of despair.