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Authors: David Weber
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He’d made certain of that when the stadium was last refurbished and he had the entire structure carefully and very, very unobtrusively checked on a regular basis to make sure things stayed that way. That didn’t mean mobile platforms couldn’t be watching it, however.
“What kind of idiot doesn’t understand the kind of resentment that putting over sixty unarmed students—some of them barely fourteen years old, for God’s sake!—into hospital and another eleven into the morgue is going to generate?!” he continued, his tone harsh with a bitter anger which burned only hotter because iron control kept it so low.
“That’s assuming he’s worried about resentment, Adam,” the other man pointed out, equally quietly. “Frankly, I don’t think he is.”
“Well he damned well ought to be!”
“You think that; I think that; and the kids who were in the square think that. I’m inclined to doubt Cabrnoch, Kápička, or Verner share our view. After all, there’re plenty of more Safeties where that crew came from if things should happen to flare up. And I don’t doubt Sabatino’s prepared to throw in enough kickbacks to pay for a few thousand—or a few hundred thousand—more if he has to.”
Adam Šiml muttered something unprintable under his breath and glared at his friend, but Zdeněk Vilušínský had known Šiml for the better part of a T-century. He knew what that glare was really directed at, so he only waited patiently for his boyhood friend to work his way through it.
Šiml turned away, staring back out across the football field while he did that working. He knew Vilušínský as well as Vilušínský knew him, which meant he also knew his old friend understood exactly what was going on in his brain at the moment. None of which did a great deal to slake his seething fury at what had happened in Náměstí Žlutých Růží.
“Plaza of Yellow Roses.” That was what the square’s name meant in the language of Chotěboř’s original settlers. That language had been largely supplanted by Standard English in everyday life in the three centuries since the founding, of course. For that matter, only about a third of the Kumang System’s initial colonists had been native Czech-speakers. It happened that the Šiml family had been part of that third. In fact, it “happened” that one of the leaders of that first wave of settlers, and one of the men who’d crafted the Chotěbořian Constitution, had also been named Adam Šiml.
Not that the current head of the family, such as it was and what remained of it, was in a position to say much about how that constitution had been shredded. Not if he wanted to stay out of Vězení Horský Vrchol, anyway, and he had far too many things to do for that, no matter how spectacular the view might be from its mountaintop perch.
Besides, it was far from certain he’d ever make it to the Safety Force’s main detention facility. In the last few T-years, prisoners had started quietly and tracelessly dropping off the lists of the incarcerated. They hadn’t been released, hadn’t died (officially at least), and they sure as hell hadn’t escaped. They’d simply…disappeared.
He reminded himself of that—firmly—as the rage flowed through him, but it wasn’t easy. Not when he thought about Náměstí Žlutých Růží.
The yellow rose in question was a native flower, not the Old Earth version, with blossoms the size of a large man’s hand, a gorgeous sapphire-blue throat, and brilliant yellow petals tipped in blood-red crimson. It was spectacular, and it had been chosen as the emblem of Chotěboř, as a symbol of renewal, freedom, and self-rule, by the original Adam Šiml and the friends, neighbors, and fellow employees of the Creswell Combine he’d helped convince to cash in their equity in the huge corporation and find a new home far, far away from the Calpurnia System and the growing power of the Solarian transstellars. To build a home those transstellars’
“What kind of idiot doesn’t understand the kind of resentment that putting over sixty unarmed students—some of them barely fourteen years old, for God’s sake!—into hospital and another eleven into the morgue is going to generate?!” he continued, his tone harsh with a bitter anger which burned only hotter because iron control kept it so low.
“That’s assuming he’s worried about resentment, Adam,” the other man pointed out, equally quietly. “Frankly, I don’t think he is.”
“Well he damned well ought to be!”
“You think that; I think that; and the kids who were in the square think that. I’m inclined to doubt Cabrnoch, Kápička, or Verner share our view. After all, there’re plenty of more Safeties where that crew came from if things should happen to flare up. And I don’t doubt Sabatino’s prepared to throw in enough kickbacks to pay for a few thousand—or a few hundred thousand—more if he has to.”
Adam Šiml muttered something unprintable under his breath and glared at his friend, but Zdeněk Vilušínský had known Šiml for the better part of a T-century. He knew what that glare was really directed at, so he only waited patiently for his boyhood friend to work his way through it.
Šiml turned away, staring back out across the football field while he did that working. He knew Vilušínský as well as Vilušínský knew him, which meant he also knew his old friend understood exactly what was going on in his brain at the moment. None of which did a great deal to slake his seething fury at what had happened in Náměstí Žlutých Růží.
“Plaza of Yellow Roses.” That was what the square’s name meant in the language of Chotěboř’s original settlers. That language had been largely supplanted by Standard English in everyday life in the three centuries since the founding, of course. For that matter, only about a third of the Kumang System’s initial colonists had been native Czech-speakers. It happened that the Šiml family had been part of that third. In fact, it “happened” that one of the leaders of that first wave of settlers, and one of the men who’d crafted the Chotěbořian Constitution, had also been named Adam Šiml.
Not that the current head of the family, such as it was and what remained of it, was in a position to say much about how that constitution had been shredded. Not if he wanted to stay out of Vězení Horský Vrchol, anyway, and he had far too many things to do for that, no matter how spectacular the view might be from its mountaintop perch.
Besides, it was far from certain he’d ever make it to the Safety Force’s main detention facility. In the last few T-years, prisoners had started quietly and tracelessly dropping off the lists of the incarcerated. They hadn’t been released, hadn’t died (officially at least), and they sure as hell hadn’t escaped. They’d simply…disappeared.
He reminded himself of that—firmly—as the rage flowed through him, but it wasn’t easy. Not when he thought about Náměstí Žlutých Růží.
The yellow rose in question was a native flower, not the Old Earth version, with blossoms the size of a large man’s hand, a gorgeous sapphire-blue throat, and brilliant yellow petals tipped in blood-red crimson. It was spectacular, and it had been chosen as the emblem of Chotěboř, as a symbol of renewal, freedom, and self-rule, by the original Adam Šiml and the friends, neighbors, and fellow employees of the Creswell Combine he’d helped convince to cash in their equity in the huge corporation and find a new home far, far away from the Calpurnia System and the growing power of the Solarian transstellars. To build a home those transstellars’
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