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.”Midnight of desperation, indeed! Adama thought.How quickly these oily politicians could reduce the circumstances of a tragedy to a clich�.Did Uri not remember the suffering, the panic, the Cylon fighters killing our people and reducing our cities to rubble? Did he not even remember the joy, however momentary, he must have felt when, safe in the plush compartments of his own luxury liner, he knew he was still alive, one of the few survivors? Or were men like Uri empty of all feeling, alive only to satisfy some instinctual greed or lust that moved them through their shabby existences like transistors inside a droid? Perhaps, Adama thought, he was just seeking rational excuses for what was in reality madness.“I propose,” Uri continued, with a significant glance toward Adama, “that, instead of rushing off on a doomed mythical quest, we now attempt to appeal for justice and mercy.”Adama could hold back his rage no longer.He rose to his feet, shouting:“Justice from the Cylons? Mercy? Did you actually say that?” Are you so far gone—”“Gently, my dear Adama, gently,” Uri said.His voice had dropped to almost a whisper.What really disturbed Adama was that the other councilors had appeared annoyed with him when he spoke and then had nodded at Uri’s soothing imprecation.“Commander, I know your opposition to us and I understand it.From the military point of view—the militaristic point of view, I might say—gestures toward peace almost always appear senseless.But you miss the total picture, I think.The spoils of enslaving us so far from their base of power hardly seems worth the effort for the Cylons.”“Enslaving? Base of power?” Adama, still unable to control the anger in his voice, shouted.“Gentlemen, it’s you who do not understand.The kind of reason you’re trying to employ might be sensible if we were dealing with other humans, with any species whose system of values was analogous to our own.But these are the Cylons.gentlemen! They said they would not stop until every human had been exterminated.Not even enslaved, exterminated.We have not even had the privilege of dealing with their leaders openly.All we know of them is by inference and observation.Why should they change their own methods? For that matter, why should they believe we are now willing to accept that which we always found unacceptable? To live under Cylon rule? We have always been just as adamant about that as they have been in their avowed desire to exterminate us.”Many of the brows around the council table gradually began to frown.Perhaps, Adama thought, he was getting through the muddle.“Commander,” Uri said, with an obvious sense of theatrical timing, “the Ovion queen Lotay has observed the Cylons up close, and in much more peaceable circumstances.Her race has been at peace with the Cylons for a millennium, and she assures me that victory is the Cylons’ only goal.It is a matter of satisfying their codes of order.If any individual enemy or group of enemies still roam the universe, then they feel it their duty to eradicate them—to wipe out the flaw in their sense of order, so to speak.By destroying our arms to prove we are willing to live in peace, the flaw would be removed and they wouldn’t—”“Destroy our only means of defense!”“Or attack.May I remind my brothers that we once were at peace with the Cylons.We didn’t have conflict with them until we intervened in their relations with other nations.”Adama struggled to keep from coming to blows with Uri.He wondered briefly whether, if Adama sprung upon him suddenly, the man would refuse to fight back.“Yes,” Adama said, “you are right.We didn’t come into conflict with the Cylons until we defended our neighbors whom the Cylons wished to enslave.And, until we helped the Hasaris to get back their nation, taken by force by the Cylons.”“Correct,” Uri said.“And you merely prove my point.If we mind our own business, there is every reason to believe the Cylons will leave us alone.”Again the other councilors, satisfied with Uri’s rhetorical flourish, murmured approval.Adama could see there was no point in trying to get through to them with anything resembling logic.He had made his contingency plans.It was now time to put them into effect.He addressed the council in a quiet but tense voice.“Gentlemen, if we have come to this table to turn our backs on the principles of human reason and compassion, the principles of our fathers and the Lords of Kobol, from whom all colonies evolved, you do so with my utter contempt.”He turned and strode quickly from the room.After he had left, many of the councilors squirmed in their seats.Uri turned to them and spoke.“Warriors are always the last to recognize the inevitability of change.The commander has always been fond of telling us we have no choice, which always means to endorse his ideas slavishly.Fortunately, we have a choice, life or death.”“I submit that an issue this grave should be decided by the people,” Councilor Lobe said.“The military will be difficult to convince,” Anton said.“How do you propose we present so delicate a matter?”After an uneasy pause, Uri said:“At a celebration.People are always easier to deal with at a celebration.I propose we hold a celebration to decorate those three brave young men who, at the risk of their lives, opened the Carillon minefield for us.Without them, we’d still be on the other side, starving.One of the pilots was Adama’s son, Captain Apollo, correct?”Some members of the council cheered their support of Uri, happy that some solution had been found.Others applauded, impressed at Uri’s clever stratagem of including Apollo in the celebration.“A brilliant suggestion, Uri,” Anton said, “just the tonic our people need at this moment.Some old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness heroes.”“Exactly what I was thinking,” Uri said, his smile a bit more malicious than usual.Starbuck had spent a great deal of time trying to convince the lead singer of the Tucana group that he could hurl them from this dinky little engagement in an outworld casino into a full-fledged, big-time career.The singer had not responded to Starbuck’s pleadings.She had merely sat nervously, a fat cigar in her lower mouth, looking around the casino as if she expected to see spies everywhere.Starbuck had gone as far as to offer them a seventy-thirty split, with him picking up transportation costs.But the singer had merely said she did not think it would work out, and that she couldn’t talk about it anyway.When he had tried to press her on the subject, she had only become more nervous.Leaving her dressing room, he noticed that her apparent fear of spies was justified.An Ovion jumped behind a nearby stage curtain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]