John Scalzi - Zoe`s Tale

General Gau said nothing for a moment. Then, "I am sorry you have all had to risk so much," he said.

"Then do my dad the honor of believing him," I said. "You're in danger, General. And that danger is closer than you think."

"Tell me, Zoë," Gau said, "what does Administrator Perry hope to get from telling me this? What does he want from me?"

"He wants you to stay alive," I said. "You promised him that as long as you were running the Conclave, you wouldn't attack Roanoke again. The longer you stay alive, the longer we stay alive."

"But there's the irony," Gau said. "Thanks to what happened at Roanoke, I'm not in as much control as I was. My time now is spent keeping others in line. And there are those who are looking at Roanoke as a way to take control from me. I'm sure you don't know about Nerbros Eser—"

"Sure I do," I said. "Your main opposition right now. He's trying to convince people to follow him. Wants to destroy the Colonial Union."

"I apologize," Gau said. "I forgot you're not just a messenger girl."

"It's all right," I said.

"Nerbros Eser is planning to attack Roanoke," Gau said. "I have been getting the Conclave back under my control—too slowly—but enough races support Eser that he has been able to fund an expedition to take Roanoke. He knows the Colonial Union is too weak to put up a defense of the colony, and he knows that at the moment I am in no position to stop him. If he can take Roanoke where I could not, more Conclave races could side with him. Enough that they would attack the Colonial Union directly."

"You can't help us, then," I said.

"Other than to tell you what I just have, no," Gau said. "Eser is going to attack Roanoke. But in part because Administrator Perry helped to destroy my fleet, there is no way I can do much to stop him now. And I doubt very much that your Colonial Union will do much to stop him."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Because you are here," General Gau said. "Make no mistake, Zoë, I do appreciate your family's warning. But Administrator Perry is not so kind that he would have warned me out of his own simple goodness. As you've noted, the cost is too high for that. You are here because you have nowhere else to turn."

"But you believe Dad," I said.

"Yes," Gau said. "Unfortunately. Someone in my position is always a target. But now of all times I know that even some of those who I've trusted with my life and friendship are calculating the costs and deciding that I'm worth more to them dead than alive. And it makes sense for someone to try for me before Eser attacks Roanoke. If I'm dead and Eser takes revenge on your colony, no one else will even try to challenge him for control of the Conclave. Administrator Perry isn't telling me anything I don't know. He's only confirming what I do know."

"Then I've been no use to you," I said. And you've been no use to me, I thought but did not say.

"I wouldn't say that," Gau said. "One of the reasons I am here now is so that I could hear what you had to say to me without anyone else involved. To find out what I could do with the information you might have. To see if it has use to me. To see if you are of use to me."

"You already knew what I told you," I said.

"This is true," Gau said. "However, no one else knows how much you know. Not here, in any event." He reached over and picked up the stone knife and looked at it again. "And the truth of the matter is that I'm getting tired of not knowing, of those whom I trust, which is planning to stab me in the heart. Whoever is planning to assassinate me is going to be in league with Nerbros Eser. They are likely to know when he plans to attack Roanoke, and with how large a force. And perhaps working together we can find out both of these things."

"How?" I asked.

General Gau looked at me again, and did that I-hope-it's-a-smile thing with his head. "By doing a bit of political theater. By making them think we know what they do. By making them act because of it."

I smiled back at Gau. "'The play is the thing in which I shall catch the conscience of the king,'" I said.

"Precisely," Gau said. "Although it will be a traitor we catch, not a king."

"In that quote he was both," I said.

"Interesting," Gau said. "I'm afraid I don't know the reference."

"It's from a play called Hamlet," I said. "I had a friend who liked the playwright."

"I like the quote," Gau said. "And your friend."

"Thanks," I said. "I do too."

"One of you in this chamber is a traitor," General Gau said. "And I know which one of you it is."

Wow, I thought. The general sure knows how to start a meeting.

We were in the general's official advisors' chamber, an ornate room, which, the general told me beforehand, he never used except to receive foreign dignitaries with some semblance of pomp and circumstance. Since he was technically receiving me for this particular meeting, I felt special. But more to the point, the room featured a small raised platform with steps, on which sat a large chair. Dignitaries, advisors and their staff all approached it like it was a throne. This was going to be useful for what General Gau had in mind for today.

In front of the platform, the room opened up into a semicircle. Around the perimeter stood a curving bar, largely of standing height for most sentient species in the Conclave. This is where advisors' and dignitaries' staff stood, calling up documents and data when needed and whispering (or whatever) into small microphones that fed into earpieces (or whatever) worn by their bosses.

Their bosses—the advisors and dignitaries—filed into the area between the bar and the platform. Usually, I was told, they would have benches or chairs (or whatever suited their body shape best) offered to them so they could rest as they did their business. Today, they were all standing.

As for me, I was standing to the left and just in front of the general, who was seated in his big chair. On the opposite side of the chair was a small table, on which lay the stone knife, which I had just (and for the second time) presented to the general. This time it was delivered in packaging more formal than a shirt. The general had taken it out of the box I had found, admired it, and set it on the table.

Back along with the staff stood Hickory and Dickory, who were not happy with the plan the general had come up with. With them were three of the general's security detail, who were likewise not very pleased at all.

Well, now that we were doing it, I'm not sure I was entirely thrilled with it either.

"I thought we were here to hear a request from this young human," said one of the advisors, a tall Lalan (that is, tall even for a Lalan) named Hafte Sorvalh. Her voice was translated by the earpiece I had been given by the Obin.

"It was a pretense," Gau said. "The human has no petition, but information pertaining to which one of you intends to assassinate me."

This naturally got a stir in the chamber. "It is a human!" said Wert Ninung, a Dwaer. "No disrespect, General, but the humans recently destroyed the entire Conclave fleet. Any information they would share with you should be regarded as highly suspect, to say the least."

"I agree with this entirely, Ninung," Gau said. "Which is why when it was provided to me I did what any sensible person would have done and had my security people check the information thoroughly. I regret to say that the information was good. And now I must deal with the fact that one of my advisors—someone who was privy to all my plans for the Conclave—has conspired against me."

"I don't understand," said a Ghlagh whose name, if I could remember correctly, was Lernin Il. I wasn't entirely sure, however; Gau's security people had given me dossiers on Gau's circle of advisors only a few hours before the meeting, and given everything else I needed to do to prepare, I had barely had time to skim.