After talking with Azzeed I buttonhole Governor Algers. But before I can say anything he asks, “Have you seen the latest?”
“On what?”
“Clearly not. Watch this.” He rolls a newscast video for me. The center of attention is clearly Jackov Martin. It starts out as a brief laudatory bio…
“He died?”
“Worse!” says the governor.
The video finally reaches last night’s events. We see Martin giving his speech but not my dropping in. In fact the tail end of what he says seems to be an epilog shot in a different location or at a different time. Perhaps shortly after my entrance and exit, because Martin is clearly a bit shaken. The epilog’s emphasis is on staying true to the cause and being prepared to sacrifice all for it. It’s a kind of Ka-sharma thinking taken to a violent extreme. I’m getting a little uneasy. This isn’t the kind of news story I’d hoped to see come from my performance.
“Holy mother of Mary!” I exclaim when I see the next scene.
In it, Martin is outside at the bond fire, and he jumps in!
I’m speechless. This I haven’t planned on. My humiliation sparked Martin to become a dyed-in-the-wool fanatic martyr. His sacrifice has undone all my efforts to bring rationality to this worldwide debate and released my carefully constructed pressure point. Harris and Smallet are now close to worthless as hostages.
“Crap!” is all I can think of to say.
“My first thoughts, too,” sighs the governor. “I had no idea…”
“OK, this will take some digesting. We have another problem to work on, too. Two of my people need to get off world in the next six to twelve hours. They have to defuse a crisis in the fleet that brought me. It’s still nearby and it could decide to come back.”
“The fleet could come back? You’re saying we don’t want that?” says the governor.
“The fleet will come back to extract vengeance. They’re embarrassed that the merc wave was abandoned. If they come they’ll come to hurt a lot of people, not to open this world up to commerce. Give me ten minutes on this while I show the team what Martin did.”
The governor backs off and I consider our new situation.