Grail - By Elizabeth Bear Page 0,46

to the job and would serve them well. She would accept it, as Caitlin had accepted it before her.

As Nova had accepted the ghosts of Dust and Samael—and Rien—when she grew out of the shards of other things into an Angel. As Perceval has swallowed down Ariane and Alasdair and Gerald to become Captain.

It was how you learned and grew and internalized the knowledge of those who had gone before you. No matter how bitter, you gagged it down, and hoped you didn’t choke.

“I find,” Benedick said, “that such things generally are. Sometimes time to consider only makes the whole thing worse.”

There was too much work to do to sit here missing Caitlin. He laid his hands flat on the lip of the tank, pushing himself to his feet. More than anything, he wanted to be with Tristen, hunting down Caitlin’s murderer and making him pay in blood and heartache for the thing he had taken from Benedick—a thing so profound that Benedick could not yet even feel its loss.

But he was too close and it was too soon. The shock and silence that echoed through the collapsed caverns of his self meant that he was exactly the wrong person to run the investigation—or even to participate in it. A bitter truth, but one an old man had too much experience not to accept. All those rules about objectivity existed for a reason.

Vengeance was a dish best served by those with no vested interest in seeing it carried out.

Benedick tipped his head back so that his skull dropped almost to his shoulders, easing the pain and tightness across his neck that even his colony could not dull.

Damn it all to hell. He had his own work, and this was the time to be doing it. “Our next item of business is to consider Engine’s role in coming events.”

Jordan glanced at the others. Benedick could see her coming to the realization that these people—all her elders—were waiting for her to speak first.

This was, he thought, a test.

She must have realized that as well, because he saw her take a breath. And then she said, in a voice that hardly shook at all, “As I see it, there are three primary possibilities. Either we will need to break the world down for materials—in the event that we are permitted to stay; we will need to refit her for war—in the event that we choose to fight for a place here; or we will need to repair and rebuild her, to make her spaceworthy again. That last option is actually the most straightforward, as this system does offer access to a wealth of material in the form of asteroids, icy comets, and water-ice particles in the rings of two of the giant planets—”

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For the deed’s sake have I done the deed,

In uttermost obedience to the King.

—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, “Gareth and Lynette”

Before any final decision could be made, Danilaw and his cabinet had to take their deliberations to the people. Bad Landing was still a community small and tightly knit enough to manage nicely under government by direct democracy, and Danilaw secretly dreaded the day when that changed. The good news, he comforted himself, was that he was likely to be long in his grave—and certain to be long done with his stint as City Administrator—before the population reached a crisis point.

Unless they wound up having to assimilate a few hundred thousand genetically engineered space refugees. In that case, all bets were off.

Bad Landing’s infosphere was more than adequate to the task. Because of the strength of some of the opinions expressed, Danilaw made the executive decision not to release the entire tapes of the Cabinet session, but he did cause Captain Amanda’s objections to be summarized and appended, and he made the original broadcast from the Jacob’s Ladder available, as well as a translation prepared by Captain Amanda and vetted by himself—though neither would be available to anyone who did not first sit through Danilaw’s brief, trenchant, and carefully worded introductory speech. But sometimes listening to politicians blather was the price you paid for participating in the process of government.

He also got the remainder of his staff rousted out of bed and released from conflicting primary, secondary, and/or tertiary engagements so they could get started building an information bolus for packet-burst home to Earth. He’d probably have a course of action under way by the time the home government sent him an advisory note, but the newsfeeds would thank him for the consideration.

Danilaw