Salera bowed his head slightly and stood aside, allowing them to pass down the short set of steps leading to the floor. As they crossed in front of him, Salera put his hand on Woorunmarra’s arm, stopping him. “Please inform your Commander that I’ll speak with him as soon as I can. I’m sorry it had to come to this, Lieutenant.”
The Imperial officer paused as he considered his response carefully. “Let us hope,” he said levelly, “that we are not all a lot sorrier before this is finished.” He turned away abruptly and led Adela to the floor, where the guards fell dutifully into step on either side of them.
It didn’t take long for the voting to be completed. A glance at the tally board showed that, while a handful of the Eastlanders had abstained, there were no dissenting votes.
Again, Adela was convinced that the secession vote had been planned in advance.
“He knew he would win.”
“Of course he did,” Woorunmarra agreed, pointing to the board. “Or he’d’ve never made the attempt. Look there, he’s even managed to talk the few members who were against the move to abstain, making the secession vote unanimous.” He allowed the hint of a smile to form at the corners of his lips, adding, “Which is why I wish you outranked me.”
She raised a puzzled eyebrow. “Why is that?”
“So that you would be the one to tell Montero.”
Adela couldn’t help laughing aloud and pretended not to see the guard seated next to her turn a sudden curious eye in her direction. Thank you, Adela thought, for bringing a moment’s laughter to this hopeless situation.
The hammering of a gavel cut obtrusively into their brief conversation, and they returned their attention to the dais as the constant background of talking decreased in intensity.
“May I have your attention?” While Salera waited for order to return he spoke a few words to one of the officials seated at his left. The man nodded curtly and rose, quickly descending the steps and exiting the chamber. “The vote is unanimous,” he said simply once the official had left. “As of this date, Eastland is no longer a part of the Dominion of Pallatin.”
Again, Adela was surprised by the response. There was no outburst, no shouting by those in attendance. From here and there an occasional whisper reached her ears, but that was the exception. Nearly everyone else—on both sides of the chamber—waited in stunned silence for the Eastland Speaker to continue.
He coughed softly to clear his throat, and took a sip from the water glass on the table. Niles sat impassively, staring at him. Salera glanced at him once as he set the glass down. “Within the next two days, all persons not citizens of Eastland must leave the—” He stopped, apparently realizing that the word he was about to use was incorrect. “Must leave our country.” It was clear to Adela that even though he had been prepared for this moment, the word still felt strange and unfamiliar to him. “I have given orders that no representative or citizen of Westland in the process of leaving is to be harassed or interfered with in any way. Anyone doing so will be dealt with severely. On this, you have my word.”
Adela and Woorunmarra watched the crowd and noted that the spectators in the upper galleries, unnoticed by those in the lower rows, were already being cleared from the chamber by the security personnel. Those in the Eastland section talked quietly among themselves, while on the Westland side the representatives looked back and forth to one another. There was no panic, no outcry, but rather an overwhelming air of subdued shock and confusion over what to do next. Most kept their attention on the dais, waiting for some direction from Speaker Niles.
“With utmost respect,” Salera concluded, “I must now ask that all citizens of Westland please leave this chamber.” He lay the gavel on the table and turned to Niles, extending his hand. “I’m sorry, Am.”
Niles stood slowly and, ignoring the Speaker’s hand, addressed the now-silent chamber.
“Members of the Ninety-second Dominion…” His voice was strong, and carried with it much more authority than had Salera’s. Adela’s respect for the man doubled at how well he handled himself in the face of defeat—a defeat for which he had been set up with no possible course of action he could have taken to stop it.
“More has happened here today than the dissolution of a governing body,” he began. “Today we divided a world. However, simply dissolving the governing bonds between us will not serve to make us a different people, as Speaker Salera might wish. Have we not, after all, always been a diverse world, with different ideals and goals, different lives and pleasures? Different pains and—different losses?” He paused, staring down at the gavel in his hands.
“Pallatin has always been a harsh, unforgiving place. Those who came first, who began the taming of our home, did so by beating the incredible odds working against them, and they did it as one world, with little help from any of the hundred others. But because of their unity of purpose, they succeeded in spite of the inattention of others. And it is with a similar attitude that many here now view outside intervention from those same Hundred Worlds in their time of need.
“It’s true that we in the west are a different people now from those here in the east. And now that you’ve had an opportunity to see the representatives from the Empire, I’m sure you realize just how vastly different we have become from those on other worlds. But we are still one people, with a common need that overshadows all else…” Niles paused again, leaned forward on the table, then resumed speaking in a tone much louder than before. “Pallatin is still a harsh world, and we need each other to control it, to keep the angry forces within her docile—to keep her a home. I am saddened that Speaker Salera and the representatives of the Eastland Congress, in their efforts to prevent outside interference from creeping into our way of life, have failed to realize that neither body can do it alone.”
He stopped and allowed his eyes to scan the assemblage before him, pausing so long that for a moment Adela thought he might be looking into the eyes of each individual member in turn. Finally he sighed deeply, his eyes lowered to the gavel in his hands once more. He turned it over in his hands as if studying it, then looked up to the assembly, addressing this time only one side of the large room.
“Members of the Westland Congress, we are no longer welcome here. Let us return home.” He took one last look at Salera, then dropped the gavel to the table. It clattered noisily across the polished surface before falling to the carpeted floor.
The Speaker immediately left the dais and neither looked back nor spoke to anyone as he made his way to the floor and walked briskly from the chamber.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The viewer in Speaker Niles’ office at the Westland capital was a flatscreen. Not that holographic technology was unavailable in Westland, it was; but the decision to install the more simple flatscreen display was apparently a matter of choice on the part of Niles himself. Simplicity seemed to be the way of life for the Speaker, just as it was for the Westlanders in general. Normally Adela would have missed being able to see the small nuances in facial expressions and body language afforded by a hologram, but she found that in this discussion the additional clues to mood, motive and inner thoughts were unnecessary: It was abundantly clear what was going through the mind of everyone taking part in this briefing session.
“Speaker Salera kept his word,” Montero was saying to Woorunmarra. “He contacted me about an hour ago, at about the same time you arrived there in Newcastle.”