requires first fruits of the new technology go to undersea cities to effect emergency repairs.
A two-thirds vote of quorum is necessary to pass this motion. Twenty-five of twenty-eight active members of the Council are
present—a two-thirds majority of that number is seventeen. Since no tie is possible, I will not vote.”
Rone had a sudden sense that there were things the Grand Master was leaving unsaid. He raised a finger. “Rone?” the Grand
Master asked.
“Might I ask how you would vote if you were voting?”
“No.” The Grand Master’s voice was neutral. His expression betrayed nothing. Rone could not tell if the acknowledged leader
of the Dragons thought the idea wonderful or terrible, or if he was not even thinking about it at all, but was instead considering
the state of his sterrits game, and how he might improve his opening moves. “And that question answered,” the Grand Master
said gently, “I now put before you for vote the question on the floor, reminding you only that you speak not just for this
day, but for the future.”
The members of the Council each withdrew from the drawer in the table directly in front of their seat three balls—one white,
one red, and one purple. White, the absence of color, stood for abstention with prejudice—a comment that the proposal put
before the Council was in itself flawed, and that while neither a yea vote nor a nay vote suited the voter, a restatement
of the question might. Red—the color of blood, war, and loss—signified a negative. And purple—the color of the Council’s flags
and pennants, the color of power and wealth, the color of abundance— signified a positive vote.
Each member of the Council took all three balls, so that no one might take a dissenting vote that he had left behind and throw
it into the black jar, thus throwing the results of the vote into doubt and requiring a revote.
A councilor could vote four ways: yea; simple abstention, in which the voter dropped all three balls into the discard container;
abstention with prejudice; and nay.
Rone palmed the purple ball in his right hand and the other two in his left, and moved into the line behind his fellows. He
heard the familiar shuffling of feet, sighing, the clicks as the balls dropped into the voting jar and the discard jar. No
one talked—discussion while the actual vote was in progress was absolutely forbidden. No one looked around much, either. Everyone
seemed nervous. Because of the makeup of the Council, Rone expected the vote would be close. He wished the Grand Master had
not excused himself—Rone could think of more than eight Council members who had in the past exhibited the same lack of logic
and foresight that had suddenly erupted from Chrissa, though they rarely had the courage or the integrity to make their preferences
clear in the way that Chrissa made hers clear. They were cowards, to his way of thinking—people who voted against progress
but would never have the backbone to stand up and
say
they had voted against progress.
Rone dropped his purple ball in the vote container, discarded the red and white ones, and then returned to his seat.
He waited. A few councilors stood over the vote jar, pondering even in the instants before they dropped their votes, and he
could just see it. A handful of whites that would invalidate the current question, but might bring up some alternative to
the question, a handful of purples from people like him who understood expedient need, who knew that emergencies and disasters
could only be prevented by taking whatever steps were required, but in a timely manner—
not
when the city was ready to implode around them all—and a handful of reds from the idiots who had never seen one of those
Warren monstrosities, who insisted on thinking of them as people, and who would refuse to acknowledge their debt as councilors
to the real humans of the Empire and their needs.
He glanced at each
A two-thirds vote of quorum is necessary to pass this motion. Twenty-five of twenty-eight active members of the Council are
present—a two-thirds majority of that number is seventeen. Since no tie is possible, I will not vote.”
Rone had a sudden sense that there were things the Grand Master was leaving unsaid. He raised a finger. “Rone?” the Grand
Master asked.
“Might I ask how you would vote if you were voting?”
“No.” The Grand Master’s voice was neutral. His expression betrayed nothing. Rone could not tell if the acknowledged leader
of the Dragons thought the idea wonderful or terrible, or if he was not even thinking about it at all, but was instead considering
the state of his sterrits game, and how he might improve his opening moves. “And that question answered,” the Grand Master
said gently, “I now put before you for vote the question on the floor, reminding you only that you speak not just for this
day, but for the future.”
The members of the Council each withdrew from the drawer in the table directly in front of their seat three balls—one white,
one red, and one purple. White, the absence of color, stood for abstention with prejudice—a comment that the proposal put
before the Council was in itself flawed, and that while neither a yea vote nor a nay vote suited the voter, a restatement
of the question might. Red—the color of blood, war, and loss—signified a negative. And purple—the color of the Council’s flags
and pennants, the color of power and wealth, the color of abundance— signified a positive vote.
Each member of the Council took all three balls, so that no one might take a dissenting vote that he had left behind and throw
it into the black jar, thus throwing the results of the vote into doubt and requiring a revote.
A councilor could vote four ways: yea; simple abstention, in which the voter dropped all three balls into the discard container;
abstention with prejudice; and nay.
Rone palmed the purple ball in his right hand and the other two in his left, and moved into the line behind his fellows. He
heard the familiar shuffling of feet, sighing, the clicks as the balls dropped into the voting jar and the discard jar. No
one talked—discussion while the actual vote was in progress was absolutely forbidden. No one looked around much, either. Everyone
seemed nervous. Because of the makeup of the Council, Rone expected the vote would be close. He wished the Grand Master had
not excused himself—Rone could think of more than eight Council members who had in the past exhibited the same lack of logic
and foresight that had suddenly erupted from Chrissa, though they rarely had the courage or the integrity to make their preferences
clear in the way that Chrissa made hers clear. They were cowards, to his way of thinking—people who voted against progress
but would never have the backbone to stand up and
say
they had voted against progress.
Rone dropped his purple ball in the vote container, discarded the red and white ones, and then returned to his seat.
He waited. A few councilors stood over the vote jar, pondering even in the instants before they dropped their votes, and he
could just see it. A handful of whites that would invalidate the current question, but might bring up some alternative to
the question, a handful of purples from people like him who understood expedient need, who knew that emergencies and disasters
could only be prevented by taking whatever steps were required, but in a timely manner—
not
when the city was ready to implode around them all—and a handful of reds from the idiots who had never seen one of those
Warren monstrosities, who insisted on thinking of them as people, and who would refuse to acknowledge their debt as councilors
to the real humans of the Empire and their needs.
He glanced at each
Similar Books
