Alquezar winced ever so slightly, and shook his head.
"I won't disagree with you, although I imagine the point could be argued either way, at least until we get a Constitution adopted that establishes exactly what is and is not legal on a Cluster-wide basis. But however accurate the term may be, there are certain political drawbacks to using it. One which springs immediately to mind is that throwing around terms like 'treason' and 'traitor' will actually help your opponents polarize public opinion."
Krietzmann glared, and Van Dort leaned forward to lay a hand on the younger man's forearm.
"Joachim is right, Henri," he said gently. "The people you're describing would love to provoke you into something-anything-they and their supporters can characterize as extremism."
Krietzmann glowered some more, then inhaled deeply and gave a choppy nod. His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, and he reached for his own glass-not a brandy snifter like Alquezar's or a wineglass like Van Dort's, but a tall, moisture-beaded tankard of beer. He drank deeply, then lowered his glass.
"All right," he half-growled. "Point taken. And I'll try to sit on myself in public. But," his eyes flashed, "that doesn't change the way I feel about these bastards in private."
"I don't think anyone would expect it to," Van Dort murmured.
Not if they have any sense at all, at any rate, he thought. Expect emotional detachment out of Henri Krietzmann on an issue like this? Ridiculous!
He felt a familiar twinge of guilt at the thought. Dresden was ruinously poor, even for the Verge. Unlike his own Rembrandt, or Alquezar's San Miguel, which had managed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to become fabulously wealthy-by Verge standards-Dresden's economy had never risen above the marginal level. The vast majority of Dresden's citizens, even today, were ill-educated, little more than unskilled labor, and modern industry had little use for the unskilled. The Dresden System's poverty had been so crushing for so long that only the most decrepit (or disreputable) of tramp freighters had called there, and no outside system— including Rembrandt , he admitted bleakly-had ever been attracted to invest there.
Which was why Dresden's medical capabilities had been as limited as its industrial capacity. Which was why Henri Krietzmann had seen his father and his mother die before they were sixty T-years old. Why two of his three siblings had died in early childhood. Why he himself was missing two fingers on his mangled left hand, the legacy of an industrial accident in an old-fashioned foundry on a planet without regen. And why Krietzmann had never received even the cheapest, simplest first-generation prolong therapies and could expect no more than another sixty to seventy years of life.
That was what fueled Henri Krietzmann's hatred of those attempting to derail the Constitutional Convention. It was what had driven him to educate himself, to claw his way out of the slums of the city of Oldenburg and into the rough and tumble of Dresden politics. The fire in his belly was his blinding hatred of the Solarian League, and of the Office of Frontier Security's pious platitudes about "uplifting the unfortunately retrograde" planets of the Verge. If OFS, or any of the Solly lobbying groups who claimed to be so concerned about the worlds it engulfed, had really cared, they could have brought modern medicine to Dresden over a century ago. For a fraction of what Frontier Security spent on its public relations budget in the Sol System alone, they could have provided Dresden with the sort of education system which would have permitted it to build up its own industrial and medical base.
Over the last twenty T-years, largely as a result of the efforts of men and women like Henri Krietzmann, that had begun to change. They had scratched and clawed their own way up out of the most abject poverty imaginable to an economy that was merely poor, no longer destitute. One which was finally beginning to provide something approaching decent health care-or something much closer to it-to its citizens. One whose school systems had managed, at ruinous expense, to import off-world teachers. One which had seen the possibilities for its own development when the Trade Union came calling and, instead of resisting "exploitation" by Rembrandt and its allies, had actually looked for ways to use it for its own advantage.
It had been a hard, bloody fight, and it had instilled a fiercely combative, fiercely independent spirit in the citizens of Dresden, matched with boundless contempt for the parasitic oligarchs of star systems like Split.
Oh, no. Detachment was not a quality much to be found in Dresden.
"Well," Alquezar's deliberately light tone told Van Dort his old friend had followed-and shared-his own reflections, "however Henri wants to describe them amongst ourselves, we still need to decide what to do about them."
"That's true enough," Van Dort agreed. "Although, I caution all of us-myself included-yet again that we must avoid creating an undue impression of collusion between us. More especially, between you and me, Joachim, and Henri."
"Oh, give it a break, Bernardus!" Krietzmann's grim expression was transfigured by a sudden grin, and he snorted a genuine laugh. "Every voter in the Cluster knows you and your Trade Union set up the annexation effort in the first part, unscrupulous and devious money grubbers that you are. Yes, and funded it, too! And I was the politician who led the effort on Dresden. And Joachim here is the head of the Constitutional Union Party-and just happens to be the senior Convention delegate from San Miguel, which just happens to be another member of the Trade Union... of which, he also happens to be a major shareholder. So just who, with the IQ of a felsenlarve , is going to believe we aren't in collusion whatever we do?"
"You're probably correct," Van Dort conceded with a slight smile of his own, "but there are still proprieties to observe. Particularly since you're currently the President of the Convention. It's perfectly reasonable and proper for you to consult with political leaders and backers, and you campaigned openly enough for the President's job on the basis of your determination to drive the annexation through. But it's still important to avoid the impression that we 'unscrupulous and devious money grubbers' have you in our vest pocket. If you're going to work effectively with all of the delegates to the Convention, that is."
"Probably something to that," Krietzmann agreed. "Still, I don't think someone like Tonkovic cherishes any illusions that I nurture warm and fuzzy feelings where she's concerned."
"Of course you don't," Alquezar agreed. "But let me be the one to lock horns with her openly. You need to remain above the fray. Practice polishing your disinterested statesman's halo and leave the down and dirty work to me." He grinned nastily. "Trust me, I'll be the one having all the fun."
"I'll avoid having myself tattooed into your lodge, Joachim," Krietzmann said. "But I'm not going to pretend I like Tonkovic."
"Actually, you know, Aleksandra isn't all that bad," Van Dort said mildly. The other two looked at him with varying degrees of incredulity, and he shrugged. "I don't say I like her-because I don't-but I worked quite closely with her during the annexation vote campaign, and at least she's less slimy than Yvernau and his friends on New Tuscany. The woman's at least as ambitious as any politician I've ever known, and she and her political allies are as self-centered and greedy as anyone I've ever met, but she worked very effectively to support the plebiscite. She wants a degree of local autonomy she's never going to get, but I don't believe she has any intention of risking the chance that the annexation might actually fail."
"Whatever her intentions, she's fiddling while the house burns down," Krietzmann said bluntly.
"Not to mention encouraging the kind of resistance movements we're all worried about," Alquezar added.
Van Dort considered pointing out that Alquezar's own CUP's agenda probably did some encouraging-or at least provoking-of its own, but decided against it. There was no real point. Besides, Joachim understood that perfectly well, whether he chose to say so or not.
"Well, that's really neither here nor there right this moment," he said instead. "The real question is how we respond to the emergence of organized 'resistance movements.'"
"The best solution would be to drive the Convention through to a conclusion before they have the opportunity to really get their feet under them," Krietzmann said, and both his guests nodded in agreement. "That's why I'm so pissed off at Tonkovic," the Convention President continued. "She knows perfectly well that she's not going to get anywhere close to everything she's asking for, but she's perfectly content to string out the negotiating process as long as possible. The longer she can tie us up, the more concessions she can expect to extort out of us as her price for finally bringing a draft Constitution to a vote."