To be sure, he reflected as they walked down a seat aisle to the level of the court, paranoia and stealth had their places, especially in an operation like this, but decisive moments required their own psychologies. If he brought this off tonight, it would be worth every risk he and Canning had run to establish the setting and mood to make that possible.
And if he didn't bring it off, of course, he and Canning would probably "disappear" very shortly.
He reached the court itself and crossed to the small table Canning had set up at its center. Seventy-odd men and women looked back at him from the rows of seats facing it, and each face carried its own, unique blend of anxiety and excitement. The twelve people in the front row looked particularly tense, for they were the sole members of the CRPs eighty-person Central Committee whom he'd trusted enough to invite.
Pierre seated himself in the waiting chair, Canning standing behind him, and folded his hands on the table-top. He sat silently, letting his eyes move slowly over all those faces, pausing briefly on each of them, until he reached the very end. Then he cleared his throat.
"Thank you for coming." His voice echoed in the huge chamber, and he smiled wryly. "I realize this isn't the most convenient possible spot, and I also recognize the risk in gathering all of us together in one place, yet I felt it was necessary. Some of you have never met before, but I assure you that I have met with each of the people you do not know. If I didn't trust them, they wouldn't be here. Of course, my judgment could be at fault, but—"
He shrugged, and one or two members of his audience managed to smile. But then he leaned forward, and all temptation to levity faded as his face hardened.
"The reason I invited you here tonight is simple. The time has come for us to stop talking about change and begin making it happen."
A soft sigh of indrawn breath answered him, and he nodded slowly.
"Each of us has his or her own reasons for being here. I warn you all now that not all of your fellows are motivated by altruism or principle—quite frankly, those qualities make poor revolutionaries." One or two people flinched at his choice of noun, and he smiled frostily. "To succeed at something like this requires an intense personal commitment. Principle is all very well, but something more is needed, and I've selected you because each of you has that something more. Whether it's personal outrage, anger over something done to you or yours, or simple ambition matters far less than that you have the strength of your motivation and the wit to make it effective. I believe all of you do."
He leaned back, hands still on the table, and let silence linger for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was cold and harsh.
"For the record, ladies and gentlemen, I won't pretend I felt noble or altruistic when I began my contacts with the CRP and CRU. Quite the contrary, in fact. I was looking to protect my own power base, and why shouldn't I have? I've spent sixty years securing my present position in the Quorum. It was only natural for me to look to my flanks, and I did.
"But that wasn't my entire motive. Anyone with eyes can see the PRH is in trouble. Our economy might as well not exist, our productivity's fallen steadily for over two T-centuries—we exist only as a parasite, drawing our sustenance from the star systems our 'government' conquers to fill the treasury. Yet the bigger we become, the more ramshackle we grow. The Legislaturalists are riddled by factions, each protecting its own little piece of turf, and the Navy is equally politicized. Our so-called 'leaders' are fighting over the choicest cuts of the pie while the Republic's infrastructure rots out from under them—like this very tower around us—and no one seems to care. Or, at least, no one seems to know how to stop it."
He fell silent, letting them listen to his words, then resumed in a quieter but somehow sharper voice.
"I'm older than most of you. I remember times when the government was accountable, at least to the People's Quorum. Now it isn't. I'm considered a power within the Quorum, and I tell you that it's become nothing more than a rubber stamp. We do what we're told, when we're told. In return, we get our own piece of the pie, and because we do, we let the Legislaturalists make plans and formulate policies shaped by their interests, not ours. Plans which are leading the entire Republic straight into disaster."
"Disaster, Mr. Pierre?"
He looked up at the question. It came from a petite, golden-haired woman in the first row of chairs. She wore the gaudy clothing of a Dolist, but there was something subtly less baroque than usual about its cut, and her face bore none of the exaggerated face paint currently in vogue.
"Disaster, Ms. Ransom," Pierre repeated quietly. "Look around you. As long as the government keeps the BLS ahead of inflation, people are happy, but look at the underlying structure. Buildings crumble, the utilities are less and less reliable, our education system is a shambles, gang violence is a daily fact of life in the Prole towers—and still the money goes to the BLS, public entertainments... and Internal Security. It goes into keeping us all fat and happy and the Legislaturalists in power, not into reinvestment and repair.
"But even aside from the civilian economy, look at the military. The Navy sucks up an enormous percentage of our total budget, and the admirals are just as corrupt and self-seeking as our political lords and masters. Worse, they're incompetent."
The last sentence came out harsh and grating, and several people looked at one another as his hands fisted. But Ransom wasn't quite done.
"Are you suggesting that the solution is to dismantle the entire system?" she asked, and he snorted.
"We can't," he said, and sensed a wave of relaxation in his audience. "No one can. This system took over two centuries to evolve. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't possibly disassemble it overnight. The BLS is a fact of life; it must remain one for the foreseeable future. The need to loot other planets—and let's be honest; that's precisely what we do—to keep something in the treasury will be with us for decades, whatever changes we initiate in our economy. If we try pulling out too many bricks too quickly, the whole structure will come crashing down on us. This planet can't even feed itself without outside food sources! What do you think would happen if we suddenly found ourselves without the foreign exchange to buy that food?"
Silence answered him, and he nodded grimly.
"Exactly. Those of us who want radical reform had better understand right now that accomplishing it is going to be a long and difficult task. And those of us who are less interested in reform and more in power—and there are people like that in this room right now," he added with a thin smile, "had better understand that without at least some reform, there won't be anything to hold power in within another ten years. Reformers need power to act; power-seekers need reform to survive. Remember that, all of you. The time to fight over policy decisions will come after the Legislaturalists are toppled, not before. Is that understood?"
He swept them with cold eyes, and nodding murmurs of agreement came back to him.
"Very well." He pinched the bridge of his nose, then went on speaking past his raised hand. "No doubt you're all wondering why I called you together to say these things to you now. Well," he lowered his hand, and his eyes were hard, "there's a reason. All of you have heard reports about incidents between us and the Manties, right?" Heads nodded once more, and he snorted bitterly. "Of course you have. Public Information is playing them for all they're worth, drumming up a sense of crisis to keep people quiet. But what Information isn't telling you is that the Manties aren't responsible for them. We're deliberately orchestrating those incidents as the preliminary to an all-out attack on the Manticoran Alliance."