“This is a policy decision. And policy decisions are difficult,” he said, “because there may not be a right answer. Put yourself in my place. Think about the larger picture. Not just now, not just here, but everywhere that humanity is going to spread. And forever. What is the wise course of action for me now?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and her voice sounded small, even to her.
He nodded. “That’s fair. Let me narrow the options. The rules of game theory are that when a ship fails to transit, we punish our opponents. That’s the basis of the policy I put in place. So in light of what happened, do we follow that now, or do we stop?”
“We stop,” Teresa said without hesitation. She saw the disappointment in her father’s eyes, but she didn’t understand it. It was the obvious answer. He took a deep breath and tapped his fingers against his lips for a moment before he said anything.
“Let me give you some context. There was an incident when you were young,” he said. “This was when your mother was still with us, so you were very young. Barely able to speak. You had a favorite toy. A carved wooden horse.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“That’s all right. There was a day when you needed to nap. You were very, very tired and very cranky. Your mother was trying to feed you, the way she did before you slept, but you were chewing on your horse. Your mouth was full. So your mother took the horse away, and you threw a tantrum. In that case, we had two options. We could keep the toy away from you so that you could do what needed to be done. Or we could hand it back, and teach you that throwing tantrums worked.”
The image of Elsa in her mother’s arms came to her like it was being projected on her brain. Had all that been a mistake? Had Elsa’s mother, by comforting her child, told her that it was okay to shout and flip over tables? It hadn’t seemed like that at the time.
“You think we should… You’re sending through a bomb ship?”
“Tit for tat,” he said. “It means keeping traffic out of the ring space for a time. It means not evacuating any more ships until we can make the experiment. But we can show the enemy that we are disciplined. Or we can show it that we aren’t.”
“Oh,” Teresa said. She didn’t know what else there was to say.
Her father tilted his head. His voice was still gentle. Almost coaxing. “This is why I want you with me. These are the decisions people like you and I have to make. Normal people don’t. This is the logic and the vision we have to apply. And we have to be ruthless about it. The stakes are too high for anything else.”
“It’s the only way we can win,” she said.
“I don’t know that we’ll win,” he said. “I’ve never known that. I’ve always known that we’d fight. From the moment the gates opened, I knew we’d go through them. That, and the chances were good that we would encounter whatever had killed the civilization that came before us.”
“Goths,” she said. “Goths and lead-lined water pipes.”
He chuckled. “Ilich has been talking about ancient Rome again. Yes, well. We can call them Goths if you like. As soon as we knew that there was something out there, we knew that we would come in conflict with it. The war was inevitable from the second we had an opponent. I don’t know whether we’ll defeat them. But I know that if we defeat them, it will be like this. With intelligence and ruthlessness and an unwavering purpose. Those are the only tools we have that matter.”
Teresa nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had the wrong answer.”
“I knew you might,” he said. “It’s why I asked you here. You will learn, over time, how to think the way I think. How to be the kind of leader that I’ve taught myself to be. Some of it will take effort. Some of it will happen naturally just because you get older. And some of it, I think, will happen as you… change.”
“Change?”
“Transform. Become immortal. I’ve spoken to Dr. Cortázar about beginning the process with you. It will take time, of course, but since I began the treatments, I’ve learned so much. Things I couldn’t know when I was just… just human, I suppose.”
He took her hand. The opalescence in his eyes and skin seemed to brighten for a moment. When he spoke, there was a depth to his voice like the room had gained an echo.
“There’s so much that I see now that I never saw before. You’ll see it too.”
Chapter Twenty-One: Elvi
Elvi could see Sagale steeling himself for her reaction. It was in the way he tightened his jaw and the flatness of his eyes. She had one foot tucked into a hold on the wall, her hand on another. She waited for the outrage or the vertigo or some physical sign in herself to match his expectations. What she found was a bleak disappointment.
When he’d called her to his office, she’d suspected it was bad news. Now that the rest of the crew had been decanted and brought up to speed, anything said on the bridge, no matter how softly, was common knowledge in minutes. Fear did that to people. Made them fast to share and gossip.
“If I object to this plan?” she said. “Because we both know I object to this plan.”
“I will pass it directly to High Consul Duarte,” Sagale said. “It is as important to him as it is to me that you understand how seriously we take your concerns.”
“Will it change anything?”
“Candidly?” Sagale said.
“For fuck’s sake. Another bomb ship? After…” She gestured toward the deck with her free hand, meaning the ring space, the missing gates, all of it. She’d had almo