Somehow she convinced me. There may not have been good in everyone, but there was definitely good in her.
I asked her out over a year after I'd met up with her again. I asked her to marry me almost three years after that. We were married the day of first contact with your people.
We never had children, and eight years later she was dead.
Resources were.... tight, very tight after we lost Earth. A good number of things had to be de-prioritised. Everything we could spare went on defence, and after that food and interstellar relations. Medical care for non-essential personnel was quite a way down. Vicky couldn't bear to see this and opened another of her underground clinics, treating people who weren't considered important enough to get treatment in the few hospitals that were open.
She didn't have enough medicine, or people, or time to treat everyone. She couldn't possibly. Not everyone saw it that way.
There were numerous gangs in the underworld in those days. Well, there still are. One of the many petty criminal gang members had been injured in a shoot-out with Security and went to Vicky's clinic for treatment. She'd run out of medicine for him, and couldn't do anything. Still, she tried. She did all she could, in circumstances where most people would have washed their hands and said 'there's no point'. She didn't. She tried, but failed. She'd done all she could.
His companions didn't see it quite that way, and they shot her, point-blank.
As she went, so went my soul. I didn't even bother hunting down the people responsible.... what would be the point? I didn't even take time off for the funeral. My work consumed me.
And bit by bit I watched any hint of ethics or morality fall away from me, until all that was left was despair, and the realisation that things would never get better, but that we would tear down all of Proxima before we let them get any worse.
"How are things out there?"
Corwin hesitated, truly unsure of how to answer. Very little about this meeting felt right, and the Captain.... the General.... John.... did not sound himself. Well, he sounded more like himself than he had in almost a year, but that was still not much. He had been insulated from the real world in his Dark Star for months, a ship built around an imprisoned and probably insane telepath.
Could he handle the truth? The way things really were?
"There's no need to think hard, David," the General said wryly. "I know how I must look, but.... I need to know. You're right. I've been insulated from the real world too long. I need to know."
Corwin started, his heart beating faster. He hadn't said those words aloud, had he? But the near exactness of phrasing.... He coughed, and tried to order his thoughts. He had known General John Sheridan for years, and been his best — sometimes only — friend for so long. If he could not trust him, whom could he trust?
(An unbidden image of Lyta crossed his mind.)
"They're bad," he said. "Possibly worse than I can ever remember."
"Exaggerating, surely? You do remember the years after Orion, don't you?"
Oh, yes, he remembered. The Orion colony destroyed in a single night by a Minbari war fleet. The death toll had been relatively low.... that night, even if the General's daughter had been among them.
But the months afterwards, that long and terrible winter. Corwin could see again the people starving in the streets of Proxima, the riots, the prison break-outs, the near-anarchy. But the thing he remembered most was the complete despair. Before Orion there had been a slow and steady increase in hope, a growing belief that humanity had seen the worst the universe could offer, and had survived. After Orion, there had been nothing.
He did not hesitate in replying. "Yes," he said, simply. "It's worse."
The General didn't say anything, and a heavy and uncomfortable silence fell across the room. Corwin shivered, seeing a momentary flash of light appear above the General's head. A halo.... or a chain?
Or just a figment of his imagination?
"At least then we all knew who the enemy was," he said finally, desperate to fill the silence, to explain his feelings, just to get some reaction from his oldest friend. "The Minbari were the enemies. We could see them, we could identify them. There was absolutely no doubt at all. But now...." He sighed.
"People are being told so many things. Strange as it sounds, they liked Clark. Really, really liked him. Most of them are saying that he wasn't responsible for the turning of the defence grid. Some say the Shadows were responsible, others that we were. And none of them like us. We're the humans who sold our race out to the aliens, remember. We're the people who swore to defend Proxima and then came back with an alien fleet and Minbari allies."
(An alien fleet built around enslaved telepaths, some of them human.) If he concentrated hard enough, Corwin could just about shut out their screaming.
"Nobody really knows who to believe out there. There's a lot of anger and fear and hate and.... I've never seen Proxima this bad. Never."
"There'll be free elections soon. We'll have a war crimes tribunal, put a few people on trial, reform the Senate. There'll be an elected Government by this time next year, if not sooner."
"And who are they going to vote for? Nobody is going to believe the elections are free anyway. I don't think we can put together twenty people in this whole planet who actually want to lead it at the moment."
"You could."
Corwin did not know what to say. He almost fell from his chair. "Me? But.... that's crazy. I'm a soldier, just a soldier. Why don't you...?"
"I couldn't.... not any more. Anyway, I'll be going back to Kazomi Seven once this war is over, going back there with...."
"With Delenn."
"Yes.... with Delenn." The General's eyes darkened, and he suddenly picked up the bottle and raised it to his lips. "Cheers," he said, taking a long draught.
"Cheers."
I did.... we did a lot of horrible things over the years. We had to, or at least that was what we told ourselves. The survival of the race mattered. All of humanity was resting on our shoulders. We had to be strong enough to bear that burden, to do what was necessary.
Me, Clark, President Crane, General Hague, Takashima.... a few others. We would go down in history as the saviours of humanity.... or as the final, pathetic lost: Oedipus twisting and turning to avoid his fate, Lear raging vainly against the storm.
We had to win. There was no other choice. We would do whatever was necessary. Sell out half our race to the Narns? If they'd protect the other half, then fine! Make deals with a man who saw us all as microbes and was relishing the chance to assert the superiority of his race over ours? If he'd help, then of course. Institute laws that all but banned freedom of speech, of assembly, that let criminals run free and the innocent suffer? If we had to.
Ally ourselves with an alien race of whom we knew nothing but that they wanted to help us? Did we even need to think about that one?
I was never on very good terms with any of them. Well, I was never on very good terms with anyone other than Vicky. When she was alive, I at least had something to focus on. A reason to want to save humanity. In her smile I saw something worth redeeming, worth saving. When she was gone.... there was no longer the dream of survival, only a game.
I didn't even hate the people who'd killed her. I caught them, eventually, and they were punished just as if they'd murdered anyone who wasn't my wife. I didn't glory in it, though. There was no sense of revenge. I doubt they even knew it was my wife they'd killed. What was the point in taking revenge on them? They were just like the rest of humanity, right?