Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Pride

The two men in the middle glanced at each other, but aside from that there was no reaction. Quinn kept going, aiming for the gap in the middle; the four men responded by pulling closer together to block it. Quinn walked to within a meter of the group and stopped. "I wonder if my friend and I might pass," he said. "We have an appointment with a gentleman farther down the street."

"NorCoord," one of the men said, his English thickly accented. "That is right, is it not? You are NorCoord."

"Why do you ask?" Quinn countered.

One of the men spat on the ground. "You are NorCoord. Don't deny it."

"I'm not denying it," Quinn said. "I just want to know why you care."

Another of the men growled something in a fluid-sounding language. Aric eased a little to the side, not wanting to get too far away from Quinn but also not wanting to get in his way if this thing exploded. He glanced back at the three men still blocking their escape, hoping fervently that the Peacekeepers had found time to teach their elite Copperhead pilots something in the way of hand-to-hand fighting.

The four men stepped forward, hands bunched into fists. Quinn stood his guard, swiveling slightly on one foot to turn his right side toward the others. He lifted his hands into a loose ready position Aric had seen Kolchin use on the sparring mat—

"Savva!" a new voice barked.

Aric shifted his attention to the street behind the youths. A middle-aged man was standing there, a few meters back, his arms folded across his chest. "What do you do here?" he demanded.

One of the youths growled something over his shoulder. The middle-aged man growled something back, punctuating the comment with a jabbing finger. For a minute or two the debate went back and forth, with both sides sounding angrier with each exchange. But from the body language Aric could tell that the older man was winning; and even before the youth spat one final expletive and moved reluctantly out of the way, his heartbeat had returned more or less to normal. Together he and Quinn passed between the scowling faces and stepped up to the middle-aged man. "So," the man said, eying Quinn with an expression that seemed to be a mixture of curiosity, hospitality, and distaste. "You came. I wasn't really sure you would."

"My word that much in question these days?" Quinn asked.

The older man smiled wryly, and as he did so, the distaste seemed to fade away. "Perhaps it's merely Anders's opinion of your word that is in question. My apologies." His eyes flicked to Aric. "And this, I take it, is the other gentleman Anders spoke of?"

"Yes," Quinn nodded. "This is Aric Cavanagh, son of my employer. Mr. Cavanagh, I'd like you to meet Reserve Wing Commander Iniko Bokamba. My former commander in the Copperheads."

"So what do you think of Granparra's famous hospitality to strangers?" Bokamba asked as he poured a little honey into the steaming liquid in Aric's mug. "A bit disappointing, perhaps?"

Aric glanced at Quinn, but the other was staring meditatively into his own mug. "I've occasionally seen warmer welcomes," he conceded. "I get the impression it was more than just our nonresidency status they were objecting to."

For a brief moment Bokamba's eyes bored into his. "You're NorCoord," he said, turning away and setting the honey vase down on the side table. "The Granparri have a long and deep resentment against the NorCoord nations."

"NorCoord is just one member of the Commonwealth," Aric said. "The Granparri have an equal voice."

Bokamba smiled tightly. "And did the Granparri put a weapons platform above Earth and the NorCoord nations, as well?"

Aric frowned. "The Myrmidon Platform wasn't put there as a threat. It was put there to protect you."

"Was it?" Bokamba demanded. "Or was its purpose merely to exact vengeance when Granparra was destroyed?"

Quinn stirred in his seat. "We didn't come here to talk politics, Iniko."

"He needs to hear this, Adam," Bokamba insisted. "He is a son of privilege, with beliefs that have been created and nurtured by other sons of privilege."

"I'm not a son of privilege," Aric said. "My father wasn't given the title of lord until he left Parliament six years ago."

"I do not refer to titles or ranks," Bokamba said. "I refer to your citizenship in the Northern Coordinate Union. That is where your privileges arise from."

"The NorCoord people have worked hard for what we've achieved, Commander Bokamba," Aric said. "And those achievements have benefited all of the Commonwealth."

"Kindly do not lecture me on the obvious," Bokamba said coldly. "Despite the technological limitations which the Parra imposes on us, we are not ignorant savages. Certainly the people of the NorCoord nations have worked hard, and certainly they have accomplished great things. But their time has passed."

"I don't know how you can say that," Aric said. "Why shouldn't NorCoord have as much right to survive as, say, Centauri?"

"I do not speak of survival," Bokamba countered. "I speak rather of the unnatural extension of power. All empires have a fixed life span, Mr. Cavanagh, a time after which their part in history is over. The empire of Rome rose and fell; so too did the domination of the Mongolians, the British, the Soviets, and the Americans. The Japanese Hegemony and Pan-Arab Caliphate have both come and gone. Only the empire of NorCoord remains. And it should not."

"Except that it's not an empire," Aric insisted. "NorCoord has no more power than any other Commonwealth member."

Bokamba shook his head. "You see it from the inside, Mr. Cavanagh. No empire looks oppressive to those in power. On paper, perhaps, all Commonwealth states are equal. But in reality it is NorCoord who dominates all that is said and done. It is the NorCoord military who commands the Peacekeepers; it is the NorCoord Parliament who makes laws that all will eventually live by; it is the administration of the NorCoord chancellor which dictates how commerce and business will be done across the Commonwealth and even in the nonhuman worlds." He waved a hand, encompassing the room with the gesture. "You have seen how the Granparri live. Tell me why we are here."

Aric took a sip from his mug, trying to remember what he'd learned about minor-world Commonwealth history back in college. Granparra had been claimed by Mexico some fifty years ago after a few other nations had taken a look and decided not to bother with it. The Mexicans had planted a colony here on Puerto Simone Island, the one place on the planet where Parra vine domination had choked out most of the rest of the planet's lethal vegetation, a colony that had then struggled on for a few years before they finally gave up on it. The place had remained essentially abandoned for the next twenty years until the current population had arrived under a Commonwealth incentive program to provide some of the perpetually dispossessed peoples of Earth with land of their own. "Because you wanted a world of your own," he said. "And because you weren't willing to take anyone else's word that Granparra couldn't be conquered."

Bokamba smiled grimly. "Yes, that is the reason why many of us came. But that is not the reason why we were sent here."

"I don't understand."

"What happened twenty-five years ago?" Bokamba asked. "Out there, barely thirty light-years away?"

Aric grimaced. He could see where Bokamba was going with this now. "We ran into the Yycromae."

"Exactly," Bokamba nodded. "And NorCoord saw in them the greatest threat to humanity since the Pawoles. And so"—he waved his hand again—"they brought us here. To provide an excuse to station a Peacekeeper force over our world." A muscle in his cheek twitched. "And to provide a target the Yycromae couldn't ignore."

Aric looked at Quinn. The other shrugged. Apparently, he'd been over this territory before with Bokamba. "I guess it's a good thing the Yycromae were able to ignore it," he said. "I suggest that you might be reading a little more malice into the situation than really existed."