Free Empery by Michael P. Kube-McDowell Page B

personal level. He has a right-of-reply.”
    “Thank you, Chancellor,” Wells said without waiting for Denzell to acknowledge the point of order. “I am afraid the Observer is beyond persuasion, but I will address myself to his audience. Nearly all our people are already protected. What Prince Denzell asks is not reasonable—”
    Denzell reentered the debate with an emphatic interruption.“Before Comité Wells silences me again by consuming all my time, I must protest his lies. I ask only for fairness—that you place at least one Defender in each inhabited system. Nothing more than that.”
    “Do you understand the price?” Wells asked, his voice still calm. “To directly protect that last one half of one percent of the Affirmation’s human population will require an investment at least equal to that which we have already made. And we’ll have to give up the real security of the Triad Force at the same time. We’d be paying a very high price for very little.”
    “Someone must speak for those who are not here,” Ambassador Bree said, taking up Denzell’s theme. “The fact that more than ninety-nine percent of our kin live on five worlds is irrelevant. Those who call Liam-Won or Dzuba or Pai-Tem home value their lives as much as any on the five major worlds. Perhaps more importantly, each world still harbors a unique and irreplaceable expression of the human potential. I would not like to see us say as a matter of policy that a culture of seventy thousand is less valuable than one of seventy million.”
    Wells shook his head. “Ambassador, beginning work on Triad would say just the opposite. It would say that we are willing to fight for what is ours, that we will pursue every avenue to guarantee the security of the Affirmation.”
    At that point the lights on Berberon’s console told him that Wells was, for the first time, controlling his own time. It’s over, Berberon thought in Denzell’s direction. Watch as he lays you open so gracefully that you cannot help but admire the skill, even as you bleed.
    But first Wells let several moments of silence slip by as a means of collecting the full attention of the Committee. When he was satisfied, he resumed talking, this time with all suggestion of pleading removed from his voice.
    “Prince Denzell is not being realistic,” he said matter-of-factly. “That vulnerable half percent of our population is scattered over twenty-two different systems. Would he have us build twenty-two more Defenders when five Triad groups would provide far greater security and flexibility for half the cost or less?”
    “Prince Denzell is also not being honest. The human world that is most at risk is not Liam-Won but Feghr—Feghr, located not merely near the Perimeter but beyond it, virtually on the doorstep of the Mizari Cluster. The last of the First Colonization worlds—on our maps since the Revision, spiritually and genetically our kin but still ignorant of our presence, still prisoners within the restricted zone.
    “Why? Because we have been so weak, our fear of the Mizari so great, that we would rather sacrifice them than disturb the Mizari again. With Triad in place we need not be so timid. With Triad in place, we could restore Feghr to its birthright.
    “But the question of cost and the problem of Feghr are secondary issues. If this very moment we received notice from the Sentinels the Mizari were crossing the Perimeter—something that could happen, at any moment of any day—we would have only two options. To flee to the sanctuary of our Defender-protected worlds and prepare for a siege we cannot win—or to fall to our knees and submit to their will—whatever that may be.
    “Triad will create a third option—through which we will be able to preserve our several cultures, our beloved home-worlds, and our self-respect. Chancellor Erickson, in the name of our own survival, I ask for a poll of the Committee on this question.”
    “Seconded,” Loughridge said