"Half of writing history is hiding the truth. "October 10, 2518
11 Days after the Miranda broadwaveDavid Roth knew from the moment he woke up that he was going to have a bad day, and nothing that came later refuted the idea. The transport’s complimentary breakfast was cold, flavorless, and slightly chewy. The cab from the landing docks was hot and sticky, with an aroma of mildew. Roth’s stomach amused itself during the long ride by cramping painfully at regular intervals while the cab crawled through the traffic. Whether his discomfort was from the stale meal or his own dread was anyone’s guess.
Yet these nuisances did little to dull his horror at arriving late. Roth scrambled along the corridors of the monolithic compound as fast as his escorts’ would allow, wallowing in the certain shame that would haunt him for eternity. Late, to this of all meetings. Already he could hear the shrill voice of his mother, circa thirty years ago, abolishing him for his sin—tardiness, which was nearly on par with murder. The rational portion of his brain—what was left of it—kindly reminded Roth that his attitude had no bearing in reality, that the situation was not his fault, and everything was not as bad as he thought.
Then he went and made the situation worse by walking into the room with his shoes on. In his defense, the room was nothing like Roth expected. The walls appeared to be made of thick paper, more suited to a fine teahouse than a government building. A granite Buddha occupied the far corner, surrounded with ornamental plants. A small shrine sat adjacent against the wall, but was obviously erected for decoration rather than worship. A low table, round and no more than a foot off the ground, took up most of the room. Cushions surrounded the table’s perimeter, all occupied with stern and unhappy individuals dressed in everything from business suits and military uniforms to kimonos and saris. No one wore shoes.
No one acknowledged Roth’s presence as he shuffled out of his loafers and hunted for an empty cushion. Meanwhile, the meeting continued as if nothing more significant than a fly had entered the room.
“… eight cruisers, three hundred and forty nine fighters destroyed, five cruisers damaged, and one thousand and twenty eight men dead is not a ‘fiasco.’ It a goddamn disaster!” This, in Mandarin, from a red-faced man. Metals and pins covered so much of the surface of his chest that it was difficult to tell there was a military uniform under it all.
“We haven’t released those figures to the public yet, so in the eyes of the press, it’s a fiasco,” said a prim woman in a business suit.
“We’ll have to, Laurel,” said a second man, also in uniform. “Those soldiers had families and those ships will be missed. We could sweep one ship under the rug, but this is going to come out one way or another.”
Roth found his cushion, and then hesitated. He hadn’t announced himself, but interrupting might be the greater error. Was his supposed to bow, shake hands, or kowtow? He settled for awkwardly squeezing into the open seat, accidentally elbowing a Member of Parliament in the process. He murmured an apology in English, which he instantly second-guessed. Every word he heard since he had landed on Sihnon had been in Chinese. Did they consider English poor form here?
Roth glanced around the room, realizing to his dismay that he did not know a single person in the room, yet recognized every one of them. He may not get out of the lab often, but he did watch the news attentively. He just walked into a cabinet meeting. Late, no less.
“It already has come out, after a fashion,” said a woman Roth recognized Sandra Clarke, press secretary to the Prime Minister. “Ships are past due back to their bases and letters aren’t being written home. We’ve got so-called experts on the news outlets speculating that the Independents gathered a fleet and launched an attack on a military outpost, and people are repeating it all like it’s fact. Right now it’s only on the level of speculation and rumors, but we can hardly expect it to stay that way indefinitely.”
“And what the hell do you expect we should tell them?” snapped the red-faced general, whose face resembled nothing so much as a swollen pimple about to pop.
A new voice spoke up. “Encourage the rumors, quietly.”
The general deflated instantly. “What?”
The table was round, but there was no doubt who was sitting at its head. Shintaro would have been equally suited to Shakespearean theatre as to leadership, Roth thought. She had the presence for it, and that presence was lapping at room in gentle, but insistent waves, commanding attention. He had heard that the Prime Minister was a Companion before entering politics, and Roth did not doubt it.
“Encourage the rumors.” Shintaro rested her hands on the silk lap of her kimono. “The public needs an explanation for the missing fleet. They will have it, whether we provide one or not. The public can’t afford the truth. News that the Reavers can attack in fleets would cause panic and speculation that they’re organizing for a more massive attack. If, on the other hand, it was the Independents, then our men and women died heroes, fighting off an insurrection, instead of fighting to cover up a secret. Those soldiers deserve better than to have their names sullied by someone else’s mess.”
“You want me to lie?” asked Press Secretary Clarke.
“Not explicitly,” replied Shintaro, serenely. “Lies can be refuted, as I think the past few weeks have aptly demonstrated. Keep refusing to comment, but do so in such a way that the proper rumor-mongers feel they are on the right track.”
“That won’t take much,” the man next to Roth commented darkly. It was the MP he had elbowed earlier. Roth searched for his name. Preston, that was it. “The Independent Party’s been chomping at the bit ever since Miranda. Hell,
I’m inclined to believe the rumors.”
“The Independents would need money and resources to raise a standing army again,” said the general, “of which they have neither.”
“Yet,” someone at the table muttered. No one owned up to the comment, but several heads nodded.
“There’s a lot of minor corporations that aren’t happy about all the business they’ve lost since we’ve started granting Blue Sun all those exclusive contracts on the border worlds,” said MP Preston. “I think more than a few of them wouldn’t mind discreetly funding rebels if they thought it meant reclaiming some market share. And that’s not even getting to Wilkins.”
“He doesn’t have enough backers for a vote of no confidence,” said a woman in a sari.
“He might find them,” Preston shot back. “God knows, the public wants someone’s head on a platter. Parliament can risk the public’s wrath on Election Day, or serve them up a worthy sacrifice.”
Shintaro held up a hand for silence. “We have other problems, which is why I’ve taken the liberty of inviting our guest here with us today. This is Dr. David Roth, head of special projects for the Osiris branch of Blue Sun.”
Roth immediately missed his anonymity as two dozen hostile eyes turned their focus to him. He cleared his throat. “I have to say I was, uh, puzzled by the summons. I don’t know what else I could really add to all this…” He gestured weakly to indicate the table, but it came off as more of a flail for help. He realized too late he had spoken in English again.
“You’re head of the division that produced…” Shintaro flipped through some papers before her, looking up the name. “…River Tam.”
“Well, I was in the department at the time, but that was run by someone else until—” Roth chewed over his next words, trying not to say what he was thinking. “Until he died tragically a few weeks ago. I’m his replacement. I’m sure all of this was in the report your operative filed.”
The shift in mood around the table made Roth wonder if he was somehow the brunt of a joke he wasn’t aware of. Shintaro continued seamlessly. “It was in the report. What I’m interested is how your department managed to produce the single biggest leak of state secrets in Alliance history, and more importantly, how you suggest we prevent a repeat of the situation.”
Roth stared into his hands. “Without examining the subject, I can’t tell you what happened. What I can tell you is that we installed numerous programs and safeguards into River Tam, not all of which we were able to finish. Your operative, knowing full well she was unstable, activated the… Well, the best analogy is to say he pushed the panic button.”
“And that would be…?” asked Preston.
“It’s a self-destruct program,” Roth replied, “designed to dissolve whatever barriers we constructed to keep her stable, so she would dissolve into manic depressive episode, eventually ending in her death. Which obviously didn’t happen, but as I said before, we hadn’t finished the program. All of which I told your operative before he stole the codes and used them against our warnings. You can hardly blame Blue Sun for anything that happened as a result.”
“Want to bet?” muttered the general, as he chewed antacids he’d produced from an inner pocket of his coat.
“What General Takeshita wants to know,” Shintaro began with a pointed glare in the general’s direction, “is what we can expect next.”
Roth sighed. “As best I can tell from what you gave me, your operative stirred up all the fragmented bits of her brain, which brought an otherwise dormant memory—Miranda—to the surface. It could be that this is an isolated event, or it could be that she’s stabilized somehow. Once again, without examining her, I can’t tell you for sure. I can tell you from experience that her instability is directly related to the amount of stress she’s under. Pushing her to the limit again could result in more… unpleasant revelations rising to the surface.”
“You’re saying we should leave her alone?” asked Shintaro.
“I’m saying... every attempt to capture River on either our end or yours has ended in disaster. Blue Sun is on the edge of shutting down the project in its entirety. While the conditioning protocols work on nearly all our subjects, the subsequent psychological side effects make them too unstable for practical use. River Tam will never be useful to us if we reacquire her.” Roth took another look around the room, suddenly puzzled. “You know, I’m somewhat surprised I’m the only one here consulting on this. I would have thought the operative would have been here to add his own… erm… expertise.”
“He wasn’t able to make it,” said Preston.
“How come?”
Shintaro fished out a folder of black and white photographs, which she pushed in Roth’s direction. “He fell on his sword.”
