You would elevate yourself to a deity?
Trystin wouldn’t have claimed that, and neither would I. We’re a species of toolmakers, and we grabbed and used the biggest hammer we could swing because nothing else had worked.
In your arrogance, you assume that a solution to your nature is possible.
That stopped Van for a moment, not only the words, but the cold certainty behind them.
In your arrogance, he finally replied, you assume that no solution is possible because you cannot envision it. Is it not better to try than to admit failure?
The Farhkan snorted the ironic laugh. You will have many, many years to try. More years and more lives than you would ever wish.
A cold chill ran through Van as he understood the import of the Farhkan’s words. How they would work it, he had no idea, but he understood fully that he would not be afforded the inadvertent option exercised by Trystin.
You may go. The Farhkan turned away, then stopped, and turned back to Van. Should you prove us wrong…your sentence will be in your hands.
Van blinked, and Jhare had vanished.
Should you prove us wrong…should you prove us wrong…
Van swallowed as he looked at the doorway that had opened in the wall, a doorway leading back to the Joyau…and exactly what he did not know, except that he had a debt to pay, and that it would take longer than he could possibly imagine.
For a moment, he swallowed, recalling Dad Almaviva, a powerful black man standing in the light, singing words Van had not understood then, and still did not, save that the character Almaviva had sung, Daland, had been a captain and a pilot, doomed to travel forever on his ship, until…until what?
That…Van feared he would discover, as had the ancient Holländer.
Chapter 98
Van had barely stepped out of the lift on his office floor of the IIS building in Cambria when Joe Sasaki and Laren appeared.
“Welcome back, ser,” Joe said. “It’s good to see you. We were worried.”
“You look good,” added Laren.
“Thank you. Thank you. We’ll meet a little later. I’d like to catch up on a few things…and I need to talk to Nynca.” He glanced around. “She said she’d be here.”
“I’m here,” said Nynca as she walked past the central liftshaft toward Van. She did not look directly at him.
Van did not look at her either, as the two walked down the corridor to Van’s office. He ignored the looks and the outright stares from the staff, although he would have to deal with them later. Once inside his office, Van closed the door behind them and, without Nynca’s asking, activated the privacy cone.
He said nothing, but sat down in one of the chairs before the old-style table desk.
Nynca sat in the other. “Three months,” she said. “Three months, and not a word, except a message from the Farhkans saying that you had been injured and were recovering. I thought you promised.”
“I promised not to try anything suicidal,” Van said. “I got attacked by three corvettes as I was leaving the Taran system. The energy scrambled me and the jump.”
“You know that there’s nothing left there. Whatever you did…it wasn’t just a superflare. It was close to a full nova. In fact, two of the nearer Republic systems will suffer damage in the next few years from the radiation. The underspace is still disrupted enough that no one can jump close to the system.”
Van nodded. What could he say?
“Aren’t you going to say anything? Doesn’t the death of two hundred million more people mean something? Two hundred million more.”
“It does. Enough that words don’t mean very much.”
“I find that hard to believe, when you saw what happened when Trystin…used…it…and then you just did the same thing.”
“That’s why I did,” Van said slowly. “Because of something that he said, because I felt he was right.”
“Right? How can killing seven hundred million people ever be right?”
The words burned forth from Van. “How about when it prevents killing millions more? Especially millions of innocents? Or when it stops injustice after injustice? Or when it stops a system of repression that will only grow across the Arm like a cancer? Or when it’s the only recourse, because those with the power to stop the injustices with fewer deaths won’t pay the price, because those being repressed and killed belong to other systems and other beliefs? And because they value the lives and freedoms of their own people above those of other people?”
Nynca sat stock-still.
“And remember this. Trystin was from the Coalition and attacked and killed the Coalition’s enemy. I addressed the evils of the society in which I was raised. I stopped those evils before the Republic could replicate the example of the Revenants—before hundreds of systems were either tyrannized or before the entire Arm was plunged into war.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t. What I do know is that Trystin saw more than I did, and he thought that he had done wrong to wait so long to act, and that no other powers would act. And they didn’t. What I know is that everyone looked the other way when the Republic massacred the survivors in the Keltyr fleets, and when the Republic closed off the Keltyr systems, and when the Republic massacred millions of its own people on Sulyn because they protested peacefully against tyranny. What I do know is that evil that is not confronted grows. What I know is that Trystin was right, that some trees are so misshapen and evil that they will never grow straight, and that it is better to topple them before they grow so large as to threaten all around them.”
“I
