“Then you admit—”
She did not pause. “I am prompted to wonder at times where we would be if we humans hadn’t been fighting each other tooth and nail. I am not ashamed of the pedigree of our tools. On the contrary, I think that in many cases we have redeemed the creators of those tools by finding better uses for them than those for which they were originally intended.”
“I hear in that answer exactly the kind of arrogance of which Allied stands accused—”
“Stands accused by whom, Mr. Minor?”
“By Homeworld. By public opinion. Isn’t arrogance implicit in the fact that within an hour of the Singapore tragedy, the Kasigau cannon was back in operation?”
“What’s implicit is necessity,” she said calmly. “Prainha and Kasigau are lifelines for the orbital communities—for Technica and Horizon and Aurora. All of the aerospace vehicles owned by all of the planet’s governments and corporations could not make up the shortfall if Prainha and Kasigau shut down—”
Donovan and Dryke had been monitoring the broadcast from Sasaki’s private inner office, using the center four cells of the display wall. While Donovan sat self-evidently at ease, lounging back in Sasaki’s Swendon club chair, Dryke stood, sometimes pacing by the windows, sometimes standing close enough to the display that its changing patterns of light played on his face.
“Come on, come on,” Dryke muttered to himself.
“She’s doing wonderfully,” Donovan said. “She’s absolutely fine.”
“I wasn’t talking to Hiroko,” Dryke said.
“Director Sasaki, how much has Memphis cost?” Minor was asking.
“How much does a city cost?” Sasaki replied.
“Excuse me?”
“Before I answer, I want to know that you’ll have something appropriate to compare it to. How much is invested in a modern community of ten or fifteen or twenty thousand? Draw a circle around one and tell me. How much in their roads, their businesses, their homes? How much in their play yards and factories? Don’t draw the circle too small—”
Attagirl,” Donovan said, sitting forward and beaming.
“—don’t leave out the land that grows their food, the quarries and mines and wells that supply their stone and water and steel. How much for the endless maintenance to keep what you’ve built whole? How do you value the man-years of unpriced labor? How much did it cost to bring it all together? How much has it cost to keep it alive?”
“Not a billion dollars a person.”
“That’s your figure, not mine,” Sasaki said. “How much, Mr. Minor? Everything that goes into Memphis has a price tag, because it’s all being done at once, by one organization. I know what building this city cost. But that number would mean nothing to you or to the audience, because you don’t know the value of what you’ve inherited yourselves.”
If she said more, neither Donovan nor Dryke heard it. There was a buzzing sound, which Dryke later decided sounded like electric butterfly wings. The four-cell display seemed to collapse toward its center, then stabilized with a new image: a red-haired, bearded man perhaps forty years old.
“Of course you know what Memphis costs,” said the image. “A good thief always knows the value of what he steals—”
“Yes,” Dryke said approvingly. “There you are.”
“What the hell is that?” Donovan demanded, brow wrinkling.
Dryke walked forward a step and studied the face. “Not what, Mr. Donovan. Who.”
“And who is—”
“Jeremiah.”
Recovering quickly from his surprise, Donovan scrutinized the display. “Any chance that’s what he really looks like?”
“Not much.”
“I thought not,” Donovan said, then looked quizzically at Dryke. “Ah—shouldn’t you be doing something?”
Dryke shook his head. “It’s being done.”
There was confusion in the outer room. The monitor at hand still showed Sasaki’s face, but Minor was on his feet and demanding explanations for something he had heard through his earpiece.
“Are we on or off? Off? How—then give it to me here, goddammit, so I can see what’s going on.”
The image of a gentle-eyed bearded man replaced Sasaki’s puzzled expression on the monitor.
“Sound,” barked Minor. “I want sound.”
“—it is arrogance, arrogance in the service of imperialism, which forgives such plundering,” the man was saying. “They want, and so they take. They call their wants needs and justify their greed with necessity—”
“Jammed? From where? Are you sure this isn’t their doing?” Minor demanded. “No—who? Are you sure?” He stared at the monitor. “Jesus,” he said, turning to his crew. “Let’s go back live.”
“Nothing’s getting through,” the engineer protested.
“Do it,” Minor snarled.
“—what do they want? More, always more. For those who are empty inside, there is no such word as enough. Never enough power, never enough wealth—”
The engineer shrugged. “On three. But you’re talking to yourself. Three—two—one—”
Minor looked into the lens. “Jeremiah? Jeremiah, this is Julian Minor of Newstime. Can you hear me?”
“—never enough to satisfy the unsatisfiable need.” Then he paused. “Yes, Julian,” he said. “I can hear you.”
“You’re Jeremiah, leader of the Homeworld?”
“I am Jeremiah,” said the pirate.
“Would you answer a few questions?”
The bearded man nodded. “Ask your questions.”
“Some have called you the John Muir of the Earth. You use an Old Testament prophet’s name—a reluctant prophet with a flair for theater and an uncompromising message of danger and destruction. Do you see yourself as an oracle for the twenty-first century—”
“I am not important. Ask another question.”
Minor blinked in surprise. “Very well. Jeremiah, why do you oppose the Diaspora?”
“It is those who support it, not those who oppose it, who must explain themselves,” said Jeremiah. “Ask Hiroko Sasaki to explain. Explain by what right you squander your inheritance, the Earth. Explain what you have bought at such a dear price. The choking summers. The burning forests. The rising oceans. The killing rays of the Sun. You have trampled the Earth underfoot in your headlong rush to the stars.”
Sasaki held her head high as she answered. “We are all collaborators in that crime. Not Hiroko Sasaki alone. Not Allied Transcon. But I, and you, Jeremiah, and you, Julian Minor, and each of those listening, and ten generations dead and departed. The Amazon forest was burning, the river poisoned by mercury, long before Allied began to build at Prainha. The Earth was warming, the ozone vanishing, when starships were only engineers’ dreams.”
The Starlink technician was shaking his head. “No,” he said. “It’s not going through.”
“What?”
“He doesn’t want an answer,” Sasaki said quitely. “He only wants an audience.”
“Jeremiah, this is Julian Minor again. I still have Director Sasaki here, on camera just as I am. Are you stopping her answers from being heard? Are you afraid of what she might say?”
“Hiroko Sasaki is programmed with lies,” said Jeremiah. “She is abducting ten thousand of our brightest and best to send on a modern Children’s Crusade. What can she say that we can believe?”
Minor looked to Sasaki. “What about that, Director? Have you taken a look at what the effects of giving up that many people of that quality might be? From a human resources standpoint, it seems that Jeremiah has a reasonable case.”