"Contrary to what you may think, Aleksandra," he said, forcing his voice's harshness back into a tone of reason by sheer willpower, "that wasn't an attempt on my part to say 'I told you so.'"
"No?" She glowered at him. But then she scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, and her shoulders slumped once more. "No, I guess it wasn't," she said wearily. "It's just-" Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head, slowly.
"Henri wasn't saying he'd told you so, Aleksandra," Alquezar said after a moment. "And neither am I. But it's probably going to feel like we are."
She looked up at him, green eyes flashing, and it was his turn to shake his head.
"Look, Aleksandra. All of us, including you, have been saying for months now that some degree of backlash was inevitable. And we've all been admitting there's at least a lunatic fringe-like Westman-that was likely to take things into its own hands. But I don't think anyone, including me or Henri, ever expected something like this. We should've at least allowed for the possibility, though, and there's going to be a lot of recriminations-and self -recrimination-while we cope with the reality. Some of it's going to hurt, and a lot of it's going to be ugly. But here in this room, the four of us-especially!-have to be able to talk to each other as frankly as we possibly can."
She glared at him for a few more seconds, then nodded, manifestly unwillingly.
"All right. I can see that."
"Thank you," he said softly. Then he drew a deep breath. "But having said all that, Aleksandra, this is exactly the sort of incident I've been most afraid of. Oh, I never expected something this bloody, this… vicious, or on such a scale, so quickly. But I've been predicting violent acts of some sort, and I have to reiterate my position. The longer we drag out this Convention, the worse it's going to get. And the worse it gets, the more likely the Star Kingdom is to rethink its willingness to accept the original plebiscite at all."
"Oh, nonsense!" Tonkovic said sharply. Yet it was evident she was throttling her own deep surge of anger and trying to maintain at least some detachment. "Of course this was a horrible, horrible act! I've always known Agnes Nordbrandt was an idiot, but I never guessed she was a lunatic, as well. The woman has to be insane-she and her entire NRP! Not that an insanity defense's going to help her when we apprehend her! But blaming her actions on the fact that the Convention hasn't reported out a draft Constitution yet is ludicrous!"
"I didn't blame her actions on the delays. What I said is-"
"A moment, Joachim, please," Lababibi interrupted gently, and he paused, looking at her.
"Of course you're not saying that somehow Aleksandra's refusal to abandon her position created Nordbrandt or this 'Freedom Alliance of Kornati' nightmare of hers. But you are arguing that the extended debate here in Thimble helped create the opportunity for her to commit this atrocity. And that any failure to embrace your party's platform will only make things worse. Not to mention your implication that if things do get worse, Manticore will probably decide to reject our annexation request, after all."
Alquezar's jaw muscles clenched, and he glowered at her, his brown eyes hard. But then he flipped one hand in a gesture of unwilling assent-or at least concession.
"All right," he acknowledged. "I suppose I am. But I also think that whether Aleksandra agrees with me or not, these are serious concerns which need to be addressed."
"I think Joachim has a point," Krietzmann said in his most noninflammatory tones. Despite his effort to avoid any appearance of additional provocation, Tonkovic glared at him. And, he noticed, Lababibi didn't look especially happy, either.
"First," Tonkovic said, "let's remember whose planet this happened on. I'm not just the Split System's chief of delegation here at the Convention. I'm also the Planetary President of Kornati. Vuk Rajkovic is the acting head of state-my deputy, while I'm here on Thimble. And those people who were killed in the Nemanja Building were colleagues of mine. They were my friends , damn it! People I've known for decades-some of them literally all my life! And even the people I never met were my citizens, my people. Don't you ever think, not for one fleeting second, that I don't want Agnes Nordbrandt and every one of her butchering lunatics arrested, tried, and executed for this atrocity. And when the time comes, I'll put my own name in the hat when the court draws the lots for the firing squad!
"But you've seen the reports. I'm assuming you've read them as carefully as I did, and there's nothing in any of them to indicate that this Freedom Alliance of hers is anything but a tiny, super-violent splinter group. Yes, they planted bombs all over the capital. And yes, they got away with it. But not because they have thousands of members lurking behind every hedge, every door, with bombs in their hands. They obviously planned this all very carefully, and before she went underground, Nordbrandt was a member of Parliament herself. She had access to all our security data, all our contingency plans. Of course she knew where the loopholes were-where we were vulnerable! We should have completely overhauled all of our security arrangements as soon as she dropped out of sight. I admit that. And the responsibility for our failure to do so rests squarely on my shoulders. But they did it with homemade weapons. With commercially available blasting compound, and with timers and detonators any farmer on Kornati would have in the electronics bins in his barn. They planned it meticulously; they placed their bombs to inflict the maximum possible casualties and psychological shock; and much as I hate them, they showed as much skill as ruthlessness in carrying it out. They're obviously a serious threat, one we have to take seriously. But they're not ten meters tall, and they can't pour themselves through keyholes like vampires, and they damned sure aren't werewolves we're going to need silver pulser darts to kill!"
She glowered around the conference table, her nostrils flared and her green eyes hard.
"And your point?" Lababibi asked very gently.
"My point is that I'm not going to let myself be panicked into doing exactly what Nordbrandt wants me to do. I was sent to this Convention by the voters of Kornati with a specific mandate. A mandate supported by a clear majority of those same voters. I'm not going to permit this madwoman and her insane followers to manipulate me into violating that mandate. I can think of nothing which would be more likely to produce exactly the sort of polarization she's looking for. And to be brutally cold-blooded and honest about it, what's happened doesn't change a thing vis- -vis the political realities of this annexation proposal. Not unless we permit it to, and I refuse to do that."
Krietzmann stared at her, unable to keep his incredulity completely out of his expression, and she glared defiantly at him.
"Whatever it does domestically, in terms of the Cluster's 'political realities,'" Alquezar said after a moment, "its impact on the Manticoran political calculus is beyond our ability to affect by a sheer act of political will, Aleksandra. Queen Elizabeth's fighting a war for her Star Kingdom's survival. If a situation arises in the Cluster which causes her to believe she'd be forced to divert a significant military force here, to act in a morally repugnant suppressive role, she may very well decide that all she really needs is the Lynx Terminus. And if that happens, just how do you think Frontier Security is going to react to our efforts to avoid its embrace by courting Manticore?"
"I think you may be overstating the potential consequences, Joachim."
Alquezar's head snapped around in surprise, because the comment hadn't come from Tonkovic. It had come from Lababibi.