were a pilgrimage of futility. Too late, again too late. In the two hours and forty minutes between the flash alert and Dryke’s Celestron touching down on the complex’s runway, both the primary and secondary reasons for that journey had evaporated.
The first, of locating Graham’s killer, disappeared when Rangers from the Beaumont post forced down a Ford Firefly a few kilometers short of the Louisiana border, arresting one Evan Eric Silverman. The second, of determining whether Silverman had known Graham’s status, vanished when he confessed—no, boasted—in his first interview that he had killed a colonist, calling Malena a “traitor” and himself a “martyr.”
On hearing the latter, Dryke’s fury was matched only by his feeling of impotence. It had been obvious for months that the pioneers were at risk from the more radical Homeworlders—if not, then why were their identities and movements so conscientiously concealed? Dryke had urged repeatedly that the training centers be made closed campuses. But he had been overruled by assorted management types, Sasaki included, for reasons which had nothing to do with security.
Better to make it unnecessary for them to leave than to forbid them, he was told. Better that they see the center as a refuge, not a prison—their fellows as friends, not inmates. Better that they choose to turn their back on a world that they’ve decided for themselves is unfriendly. Better for morale. Better for solidarity. Better for everyone.
Except Malena Graham.
By midmorning, when Dryke reached the Beaumont post, it was already clear that so far as Allied Transcon was concerned, the murder of Malena Graham was a public relations disaster.
Here was the grieving family standing in front of their home, a sobbing Mother Caroline declaring, “Our girl was stolen from us. We never wanted her to go,” and Father Jack bitterly denouncing Allied Transcon for negligence—as if Graham had been some sort of teenage overnight camper.
Here were the world media, suddenly interested in the “tensions” between Allied and the Houston community, broadcasting inflammatory interviews with Diaspora opponents, complete with footage of the compound fences, patrol boats, and watch towers. And here was clean-faced clear-spoken Evan Silverman, being interviewed from his cell by a grimly earnest Julian Minor. Dryke sat in his vehicle in the post parking lot and watched on the skylink for as long as he could stand.
“What do you mean, don’t cry for Malena Graham?” Minor asked. “This is a young woman, her life in front of her, a courageous physically challenged twenty-year-old. And you dragged her off to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and beat her to death.”
“I don’t think I want you as my defense attorney, Julian,” said a relaxed Silverman. “The truth is that Malena Graham was a thief and a traitor. She was a
“So you murdered her as a revolutionary statement.”
“I executed a criminal for her crimes.”
“Will that be your defense?”
“The courts are controlled by Allied’s bedmates. They won’t allow the truth to clutter up their rush to judgment. Which is why I’m talking to you.”
“But I’ve talked to you before, haven’t I?” asked Minor.
“What do you mean?”
“Aren’t you Jeremiah?”
Dryke sat forward, riveted.
“No,” said Silverman.
“You talk like the man who calls himself Jeremiah,” pressed Minor.
“Jeremiah is the prophet,” Silverman said, frowning slightly. “It shouldn’t be a surprise if you hear the same words from his disciple.”
“Is that what you call yourself? A disciple? Is this political or religious?”
“I’ll let you apply the labels as you choose,” Silverman said with a shrug.
“But you’re trying to say that what you did is part of something bigger.”
“It is.”
“Were you under orders to murder Malena Graham?”
“Execute,” corrected Silverman. “My hands are Jeremiah’s hands. I do his work.”
“Not any longer.”
“There are ten thousand for Tau Ceti—ten thousand minus one. There are ten billion Homeworlders standing for the Earth. How can they think that they’re safe from us? In that ten billion there are ten times ten times ten thousand who will gladly do what I’ve done.”
“The cost—”
“We are many, and they are few. In a war of attrition, one of us for one of them is a victory. We’ll cheerfully pay that price until the last of the ten thousand is gone.”
Julian Minor was scoffing with his eyes. “Do you seriously think that you can announce a plan for this kind of mass murder and still expect to carry it out?”
“Jeremiah’s soldiers are everywhere,” said Evan Silverman with easy confidence, looking directly into the camera. “There’s no place our enemies can go that we can’t reach them.”
Dryke had seen enough. “Log it for me. Kill the screen,” he said, and the skylink went dark. But he did not move to leave the flyer.
For, listening to the interview, Dryke had finally understood the weight of discouragement that had settled on him that morning, that had taken him under as he sat on the edge of his bed, the fading images of a disturbing dream cross-channeled with the jarring sounds and images of the flash alert.
Now the dream came back. The siege had gone on forever. Each morning he walked the ramparts, reviewing the defenses and looking out at the broad grassy meadows where the enemy’s campaign tents stood and campfires burned. Each morning Dryke found a post or two abandoned, a familiar face or two among the enemy, dead allies reborn as adversaries.
Then came a morning when he woke to find himself the last bowman on the ramparts. That was the morning the assault began in earnest—uncounted enemies attacking the fortress at a thousand points. And the last archer knew full well as he nocked his first arrow that neither will nor heart nor skill would count enough to carry the day.
Inside the post, Dryke was stopped at a security gatelock, then escorted to a Captain Norwood’s office. He knocked on the door, then pushed it open.
The office was no more than half a dozen paces in any dimension. At one end, a man in a brown uniform sat behind a small boomerang desk, beneath a Scale 3 wallscreen. “Captain Norwood,” Dryke said. “I’m Mikhail Dryke, Allied Transcon.”
“You’re late,” Norwood said curtly, pushing back his posture chair and rising. He gestured past where Dryke was standing. “I understand you know Lieutenant Alvarez.”
Stunned, Dryke turned to follow Norwood’s gesture. A woman with a vaguely familiar face was seated there on a cushion couch.
“Mr. Dryke,” said Eilise Alvarez. “I was just telling Captain Norwood about your personal contribution to the Martinez case.”
A dozen replies passed in review of Dryke’s wary censor before he finally spoke. “Then I’ll have to make a point of telling him my side of it sometime,” he said, looking back to Norwood. “I’m a bit confused. How are the Houston Transit Police involved in this?”
Norwood settled in his chair. “Lieutenant Alvarez is representing a special operations unit working on controlling civil unrest aimed at Allied Transcon and its personnel.”
“We’re also seeking transfer of the prisoner to our jurisdiction on commencement-of-crime.”
“Which probably won’t be granted,” Norwood said, nodding. “Anyway, you both asked for briefings on the
