Dawn (15 page)

“What are you trying to—”

Just as the middle-aged commodore was starting to yell at him again, Trünicht, at the podium, lowered his arms. He gestured lightly toward the crowd, both hands open, and as he did so, the level of excitement dropped off, and a quiet stillness began to smother all the noise. The people lowered their heads.

Even the middle-aged commodore who had been glaring at Yang took his seat, his thick, meaty cheeks trembling in discontent.

“Ladies and gentlemen?”

The defense committee chair opened his mouth again at the podium. Between his shouting and his long-winded speech, his mouth had dried out, leaving his melodious voice hoarse. After coughing once, he began to speak began.

“Our most powerful weapon is the unified will of all the people. With our free country and our democratically elected system of republican government, we cannot force on you any goal, no matter how noble. Every one of you has the freedom to oppose the state. But this much should be obvious to all conscientious people: true freedom means casting aside our petty egos, banding together, and advancing as one toward a common goal. Ladies and gentlemen …”

The reason that Trünicht closed his mouth at that point was not because of his dry mouth. It was because he had noticed a woman walking down the aisle toward the podium, alone. She was a young woman with light-brown hair, and pretty enough to probably turn the heads of half the men she passed on the street. From both sides of the aisle down which she strode, there arose low, suspicious stirrings of whispers, spreading outward through the crowd like ripples.

Who is that woman? What’s she doing?

Yang, like the other listeners, looked toward the woman as well, figuring anything was better than looking at Trünicht’s face, but when he saw her he couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows slightly. It was a face he remembered all too well.

“Defense Committee Chairman?” she said, calling toward the podium in a mezzo-soprano voice that had a nice, lingering ring. “My name is Jessica Edwards. I am—or, I was—the fiancée of Jean Robert Lappe, a staff officer in the Sixth Fleet, who died in the Battle of Astarte.”

“Why, that’s …” The eloquent “leader of the new generation” found himself at a loss for words. “… that’s a terrible shame, ma’am, but …”

His words going nowhere, the defense committee chairman looked meaninglessly around the vast assembly hall. The crowd of sixty thousand listeners reciprocated with sixty thousand silences. All of them were holding their breath as they stared at this young woman, bereaved of her fiancé.

“I don’t need your consolation, Chairman, because my fiancé died a noble death defending his country.”

Jessica quietly calmed the chairman’s discomfiture, and an unguarded expression of relief rose up on Trünicht’s face.

“Is that so? Well then, you should be considered a role model for all the young women on the home front. Such a laudable spirit is sure to be rewarded richly.”

At this point, Yang wanted to shut his eyes on that shameless man. All he could think was,
Nothing is impossible if you have no sense of shame
.

Jessica, on the other hand, appeared composed.

“Thank you very much. I came here today because there’s a question—just one question—I’d like to have the chairman answer.”

“Oh? What kind of question might that be? I hope it’s one I can answer …”

“Where are you now?”

Trünicht blinked his eyes. So did most of the onlookers, unable to grasp the question’s intent.

“Ah, what did you say?”

“My fiancé went to the battlefield to protect his country, and now he isn’t anywhere at all in this world. Chairman, where are you now? You, with your praise of death, where are you?”

“Young lady …” The defense committee chairman appeared to be flinching from everyone’s gaze.

“Where is your family?” Jessica continued relentlessly. “I offered up my fiancé as a sacrifice. You, who preach the need for sacrifice to the people, where is your family? I don’t deny a single word you’ve said here today. But are you living it yourself?”

“Security!” Trünicht called out, looking toward the right and then the left. “This young lady is very upset. Escort her to another room. Conductor, my speech is over. National anthem! Play the national anthem.”

Someone took hold of Jessica’s arm. She was about to try to shake it off when she saw the man’s face and gave it up.

“Let’s go,” Yang Wen-li said quietly. “I don’t think this is a place you need to be …”

Stirring music, abounding in a sense of exaltation, was beginning to fill the assembly hall. It was “Freedom’s Flag, Freedom’s People,” the national anthem of the Free Planets Alliance.

My friends, someday, the oppressor we’ll o’erthrow,

And on liberated worlds,

We’ll raise freedom’s flag.

Now, we fight for a shining future;

Today, we fight for a fruitful tomorrow.

Friends, let us sing; the soul of freedom praise.

Friends, let us sing; the soul of freedom show.

The crowd began to sing along with the music. Unlike the chaotic cries of just moments ago, this was a unified and rich melody.

From beyond the darkness of tyranny,

With our own hands, let’s bring freedom’s dawn.

Backs turned on the podium, Yang and Jessica walked up the aisle toward the exit. Attendees glanced at the two of them as they passed, then immediately turn their gazes back toward the podium and continued singing. When the door that had opened silently before them had closed on their backs, they heard the final line of the national anthem:

Oh, we are freedom’s people,

Through eternity unconquered …

The spaceport in Heinessenpolis was filled with hustle and bustle.

In its vast lobby, people of all sorts were crowded together. Those who had completed their journeys, those about to depart on them. Those who had come to see someone off, those who had come to pick someone up. Regular citizens wearing conventional suits, soldiers in black berets, technicians in their combination suits. Security officers standing still at strategic points and looking irate at the heavy crowds, overworked spaceport employees walking quickly, children running wild with excitement. Robot cars threaded their way like mice through gaps in the interposing walls of humans, carrying baggage.

“Yang,” Jessica Edwards said to the young man sitting by her side.

“Hmm?”

“You must have thought I was a horrible woman.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Most of those bereaved families were sitting there in silence, enduring their grief, but I went and caused a scene in front of all those people. It’s only natural you should take offense.”

There’s not a single example of things getting better thanks to silently enduring it,
Yang thought.
Somebody needs to criticize the leadership and hold them responsible
. But when he opened his mouth to speak, all he said was, “No, not at all.”

The two of them were sitting side by side on one of the sofas in the spaceport lobby.

Jessica had said she was heading back to Heinessen’s neighboring world of Terneuzen on a liner leaving in about an hour. There she worked as an elementary school music teacher. If Lieutenant Commander Jean Robert Lappe had survived, she had planned to quit that job upon her marriage.

“You’ve really come a long way, haven’t you, Yang?” said Jessica, staring as a family of three passed by in front of her.

Yang didn’t answer.

“I heard all about what you did at Astarte. And your achievements before that … Jean Robert was always impressed. You’re the pride of his graduating class, he’d say.”

Jean Robert Lappe was a good man. Jessica made a wise decision in choosing him
, Yang thought with just a touch of forlornness. Jessica Edwards: daughter of the Officers’ Academy purser, who had been attending music school. Now a music instructor who had lost her fiancé …

“Aside from you, the whole admiralty should be ashamed. Due to their incompetence, over a million people are dead from a single battle. Morally, too, they should be ashamed.”

That’s not quite right
, Yang thought. Acts of barbarism such as truce breaking and the slaughtering of noncombatants aside, there was no fundamentally high or low ground morally between a great general and a stupid one. When a foolish general got a million allies killed, a great general killed a million enemies. That was the only difference, and if viewed from the standpoint of absolute pacifism—the kind that said, “I will not kill, even if it means being killed myself”—there was no difference between the two. Both were mass murderers.

What the stupid general had to be ashamed of was his lack of ability; the issue was utterly divorced from the concept of morality. This, however, was something Jessica was unlikely to understand even if Yang explained it, nor did Yang think it was something for which understanding should be sought.

The spaceport’s boarding announcements pulled Jessica up from the sofa. The departure of the liner she was on was growing near.

“Goodbye, Yang, and thank you for seeing me off.”

“Take care.”

“Go as far as you can in the service, all right? And as far as Jean Robert could have gone, too.”

Yang watched intently as Jessica disappeared into the boarding gate.

Go far, eh? Wonder if she realizes that’s the same as telling me, “Go kill even more people.” Probably—no, definitely—not. That would also be the same as telling me to do to the empire’s women the same thing that was done to her. And when that happens, who will the empire’s women take out their sadness and anger on … ?

“Excuse me, but might you be Commodore Yang Wen-li?” said a voice. Yang slowly turned around, to find an elderly, refined-looking lady with a boy of five or six in tow.

“Um, that’s right, er …”

“Ah yes, I thought so. Here, Will, this man is the hero of Astarte. Say hello to him.”

Shyly, the boy hid behind the old lady’s back.

“I’m Mrs. Mayer. Both my husband and my son—my son was this boy’s father—were soldiers and died honorably in battle with the empire. I was very moved to hear of your exploits on the news, and to be able to meet you in a place like this is more than I could have hoped for.”

Yang had no idea what to say.

I wonder what in the world kind of look is on my face right now,
he thought.

“This child also says he wants to be a soldier. That he’s going to beat the empire and avenge his daddy … Commodore Yang, I know it’s an impudent thing to ask, but I wonder if you might let him shake the hand of a hero? I think that shaking hands with you would be an encouragement for him for the future.”

Yang couldn’t look at the old lady straight on.

Perhaps taking his lack of an answer for assent, the old woman tried to push her grandson to stand before the young admiral. The boy, however, clung tight to his grandmother’s dress and wouldn’t let go, although he was looking at Yang in the face.

“What’s the matter, Will? You think you can become a brave soldier acting like that?”

“Mrs. Mayer,” said Yang, mentally wiping away sweat. “When Will becomes an adult, it’s going to be peacetime. There’s not going to be any need to make himself become a soldier … Take care, kid.”

With a slight bow, Yang turned on his heel and got out of that place, walking rapidly. In short, he fled. This was one retreat in which he saw no dishonor.

Even so, the buildings and facilities could not necessarily be called new or luxurious. There was plenty of land and an abundance of green plants, but that was owing to a chronic lack of funds needed for new construction, additions, and renovation.

After getting off the low-speed sidewalk, Yang crossed a poorly kept common lawn. Creaking with complaints of overwork, the front gate, equipped with ID scanners, welcomed in the master of Officers’ Residence B-6.

It’s about time to have this thing replaced, even if I have to pay for it out of my own pocket
, Yang thought.
Even if I negotiated with Accounting, it wouldn’t get me anywhere.

“Welcome back, Commodore.” Young Julian Mintz came out to the porch to meet him. “I was wondering if you might not be coming back. Good thing you did, though. I’ve made that Irish stew you like.”

“Makes it worth coming home on an empty stomach. But why’d you think I wasn’t coming back?”

“Rear Admiral Caselnes contacted me,” the boy answered, taking Yang’s uniform beret. “ ‘That rascal ducked out in the middle of the ceremony hand in hand with a beautiful woman,’ he was saying.”

Yang grimaced as he stepped into the foyer. “Why, that son of a …”

Julian Mintz was fourteen years old and was Yang’s ward. He was of average height for his age, with flaxen hair, dark-brown eyes, and delicate features. Caselnes and others at times referred to him as “Yang’s page.”

Two years prior, Julian had come to live under Yang’s protection in accordance with the Law for Special Regulations Concerning Children of Soldiers. Commonly, this was called Travers’s Law, after the name of the statesman who had proposed it.

The Free Planets Alliance had been in a state of war with the Galactic Empire for a century and a half. This meant chronic generation of war dead and other victims of war. Travers’s Law had been conceived as one stone to kill the two birds of assisting war orphans with no next of kin and of procuring human resources.