“You know how it feels, then,” another girl said somberly.
“I think so. Not as bad as you. I got into the escape pod just before my ship was destroyed, and the survival sleep process immediately put me to sleep because the escape pod had been damaged and couldn’t keep me alive any other way. I thought it wouldn’t be long, but when I woke up…” He looked down as the old emotions flooded through him. “I’m sorry. I wish I could have saved everyone. I can’t. I’m just an ordinary man. I’m doing my best, but I can’t save everyone.”
“You saved us.”
He raised his head, meeting the gaze of another boy who had spoken.
“We won’t have to die in the war. Not like our parents did.” He pointed upward. “I want to explore. I can do that now.”
“How many Syndics have you killed?” another boy demanded. “Did you kill a whole lot?”
Another adult moved to intercept the boy with a haste Geary recognized. The boy was asking the wrong questions. “Hold it,” he said, then focused back on the boy. “I don’t know how many I killed. But I do know that I did not kill one more than I absolutely had to, and I hope that I never have to kill another even though I know the odds are very much against that.”
“They killed my family!”
“I can’t bring your family back by killing Syndics,” Geary said. “I can stop the Syndics from killing any more, but I can’t undo the harm that was done.”
“They all need to die!” the boy insisted, oblivious to the tears welling from his eyes and running down his face. “They need to know they can’t treat us that way, that our honor will not allow us to be hurt like that, and we will kill anyone who hurts us or… or… insults our honor! We—”
“Stop.” Geary saw the reactions of the children and adults, heard the sudden silence fall, and wondered just how forcefully he had said that one word. He stood up, looking around at the boys and girls surrounding him. “Honor? You think honor is about killing people? That’s not what your ancestors believed.”
“But—” someone began.
“He knows,” a girl cried. “He listens to the ancestors and he… he is one of them. He came back from the dead! Listen!”
Geary didn’t want to claim such a role, but he knew it was the strongest argument backing his words. “Honor isn’t about how others treat you. Honor is about how you treat others. The only way to gain true honor is to respect and honor other people. The only true way to defend your own honor is to defend the rights and persons of other people. Treat others as you would wish to be treated. Do they still teach that Truth? It’s easy to say. It can be very hard to do. But, if you don’t, if all you think about is your own self-interest, about killing to get what you want, then you’re just like the worst of the Syndics. Their leaders didn’t care how many might die in the war they started. All they cared about was what they personally might gain from it, and what they wanted, and what they could do. And we all paid for that.”
“We paid too much,” an older girl said, looking at him with the eyes of an adult. “We see the news, and it’s all about people arguing and complaining, just as if we hadn’t won the war. Everyone talks about the price we paid, and the debts, and how hard things are. Sometimes… sometimes I want to speak to my ancestors, and I can’t feel that anyone is there. It is very hard to believe. I know that you are here. I don’t know if you actually were somewhere else all this time, if you saw or heard things we can only imagine, but how can we fix everything that was broken? How can we bring back what was lost?”
She faltered, swallowing, then spoke in a very low voice. “How can we even know what our parents would have wanted? The answer used to be, don’t give up. Keep fighting. But the war is over. What is the answer now? Do you know… Black Jack?”
“I…” He had no idea what to say, then suddenly he did. “Listen.” It hadn’t been necessary to say that. They were all hanging on his every word though he himself didn’t understand where these words were coming from. “There is one thing I did learn on Old Earth that I can tell you right now. Something I was shown there. You have heard some of ancient history, haven’t you? A little about the old days, before humanity reached the stars, when we were confined to one small planet in one star system? Did you learn about the wars? The disasters? I never really understood that when I studied it in school. It was too far away, lost in the far past.”
Geary paused, looking around at the children. “But I saw it firsthand recently, saw what Old Earth and our oldest ancestors had endured, and I finally understood. Old Earth is covered with ruins and wreckage and remnants of the past. But not one of those ruins is the last word. Our ancestors on that one, small planet never gave up. They rose again from every war, every disaster, every loss, and they built again and they kept rising and they kept building until they reached the stars. That’s why we’re here. Because our ancestors never stopped trying, never gave up.
“There was a town we visited. An old, ruined town in a place called Kansas. It had been abandoned because of the wars and other things too awful for the people there to endure. But when I was there, the people with us from Old Earth said the town would live again. I asked before we left Sol Star System. Is it true? Will that town live again? And I was told that yes, it would, that people whose own ancestors had lived there, and had never forgotten it, had already begun preparations to rebuild. Just a small town. But even it would not be allowed to die, to be forgotten.”
He had to pause again, overcome by emotions. “If the people of Old Earth, our ancestors and their descendants today who remain there, could keep building, could keep trying, how can we do less? We are their children, and while we brought to the stars with us all the faults and problems and flaws of the past, we also brought the good things, the determination, and the willingness to help others, and the imagination to build things greater than every shortcoming humanity has ever known. We, all of us, will save the Alliance, will rebuild and carry on. Because it is not in us to quit. Our ancestors gave us that gift. And you and I and everyone else will use that gift to honor them and to give our children a better future than we once believed possible.”
It was only then that he realized many of the children and adults in the room had phones and other devices with which they were recording his words. Very likely those words had already left this building and were flying around the planet on wings of light, soon to leave even this star, carried inside ships to go everywhere the Alliance mattered.
And he wondered who or what had given him those words and if those words would be good enough to help save what some thought already unsaveable.
The older girl was crying. “My grandfather was on Merlon. Thank you for saving him.”
Somehow, she was hugging him, face buried in his chest, tears wetting the fabric of his uniform, Geary feeling incredibly awkward and fighting back tears himself as other children came close to touch him and laugh or cry.
He had considered avoiding talking to the press again, considered finding a back way out and fleeing to the privacy to be found in the confines of a battle cruiser, but not now. He would face the press and everyone else, and say what he could say to them because he couldn’t be any less brave than these kids.