Chapter Ten #2
Brice couldn’t hesitate any longer. He said, “I understand your reasoning, Zana. And I agree with it to a point. The Association must appear to be pro-active about resolving the matter.” And that was quite true.
No matter what he thought about Zana as a person, he freely acknowledged she was a sharp politician.
“I want your agreement in full, Brice,” Zana shot back. “To a point isn’t good enough.”
Brice felt his jaw sag and caught it up by clamping his teeth together.
Zana rose from the chair, her long length unfolding. “If you do not put your full weight behind this, if you do not hound the Bridge every day, and publicly scream for justice, it isn’t just I who will come after you with edged weapons.”
His caution shifted to alarm. Brice got to his feet, too, wondering what was going on that he didn’t know. Something else was at play here that was driving Zana to threaten him.
Is she angling for my resignation? He wondered.
Is she sick of working with someone who doesn’t like her?
Except the portion of people who disliked Zana Magro ran into the high double digits.
She was used to it. So it wasn’t that. Maybe she was using this report to leverage his resignation for reasons he couldn’t begin to guess at.
Zana added, “The whole ship wants someone’s head for this. If you do not give it to them, they will crucify you.”
She is pushing me toward resigning! She knows I won’t sit still for this sort of extortion.
It was one of the points that he’d been careful to make when he’d accepted the job.
“I’m a tankball player, Zana. Not a politician.
You need my public image to make the Association popular once more.
And I don’t need your politics tripping me up. ”
She had agreed with barely a smile. That had been thirteen years ago. And now this. What had changed?
The chain of reasoning flashed through his mind in a short second, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Zana said, “And don’t even think about resigning, Brice.”
Bronson made a choking sound. He was as startled as Brice.
She held up a finger, levelling it at Brice.
“If you resign, I will trumpet to everyone who will listen, I will plaster it all over the Forum, that you refused to bring charges against the criminal who caused the tragedy, that you refused to publicly denounce them. The entire ship will hate your guts by the time I’m through with you.
You won’t find work anywhere on the ship.
You and everyone in your life will be shunned. I will make sure of it.”
“Whoa, Zana, isn’t that a bit extreme?” Bronson protested.
Brice mentally regrouped. He was sweating.
“It’s not even close to extreme,” Zana replied. She lectured at the three men about perception and appearances and the zeitgeist of public opinion, and saving tankball, while Brice’s mind raced.
He thought he understood what Zana was doing.
She was pushing him toward resignation…sort of.
She didn’t care if he resigned or not. Either scenario would work in her favor.
He could either push the charges, or resign and she would push the charges, while publicly eviscerating him.
His resignation would give her even more to rage against, and swing sympathy to her side.
He didn’t for a moment doubt that she would do exactly what she was threatening. By destroying him, she would be propping up the Association.
Shunning. Just the word itself was ladened with bleak history.
Centuries ago, criminals had not been imprisoned in the Bridge jail cells, where they were kept now.
They were left free. The entire ship was instructed to shun them.
No one spoke to them. They could not communicate on the Forum.
They could wander through a crowd, and no one would “see” them. They would be ignored.
The first person to be formally shunned had gone mad. Most of those who were shunned suicided within a year.
Even an informal social shunning, on the Endurance, would make a man’s life, well, unendurable.
Luciana…! If he resigned, she would suffer the fallout, too.
She was inescapably linked to him in the ship’s eyes, now.
Her business would evaporate overnight, and for Luciana, her business was everything.
Even though he knew there was more to her than the bottom line reported on her financial page on the Forum, she was still to learn that about herself.
No. He couldn’t resign. He wouldn’t do that to her.
Zana finished her lecture, while Lakewood and Penn nodded in agreement, and Bronson looked baffled.
Brice lifted his hands up a little. “There’s no need to threaten anyone, Zana.”
“I’m not threatening,” Zana said, her tone cool. “I’m promising.”
Agree to anything. Fix it later. Bronson’s often spoken advice when dealing with the board.
“I am promising, too,” Brice replied. “I’ll file the charges. I want this asshole locked up as much as anyone in the ship. More than anyone.”
“And who is the asshole, by the way?” Bronson said.
Zana told them.