Zai seem surprised, but not offended. He nodded his head slightly, eyes narrowing as if thinking through her points. Was he mocking her?
But sarcasm didn't seem to be in the man. Perhaps these were simply new ideas for him. His entire life had been spent among the grayest of the gray. Oxham wondered if he'd ever heard the "Dhantu Liberation" called an occupation before. Or ever heard anyone seriously question the will of the Risen Emperor.
His next question confirmed his naivet .
"Senator, is it true you have rejected elevation?"
"It's true. That's what Secularists do."
"I've heard that they often rescind in the end, though. There's always the possibility of a deathbed conversion."
Oxham shook her head. The persistence of this piece of propaganda was amazing. It showed how easily the truth was manipulated. It showed how threatened grays were by the Vow of Death.
"That's a story that the Political Apparatus likes to perpetuate," she said.
"But of almost five hundred Secularist senators elected over the last thousand years, only seventeen have accepted elevation in the end."
"Seventeen broke their vows?" he said.
For moment, she nodded her head in triumph. Then she realized that Zai was not impressed. He seemed to think that few percent damningly high. For gray Laurent Zai, a vow was a vow.
Damn him.
"But to answer your question," she finished. "Yes, I will die."
He reached out, placed one hand lightly on her arm.
"Why?" he asked with genuine concern. "For politics?" "No. For progress."
He shook his head in incomprehension.
Nara Oxham sighed internally. She had debated this point in street encounters, in public houses and the Vasthold Diet floor, on live media feeds with planetary audiences. She had written slogans and speeches and essays on this issue. And before her was Laurent Zai, a man who had probably never experienced a real political debate in his entire life. It was too easy, in a way.
But he had asked for it.
"Have you heard of the geocentric theory, Lieutenant-Commander?"
"No, Excellency."
"On Earth Prime, a few centuries before spaceflight, it was widely believed that the sun went around the planet."
"They must have thought Earth Prime to be very massive," Zai said.
"In a way, yes. They thought the entire universe went around their world. On a daily basis, mind you. They had severe scaling problems."
"Indeed."
"Observational data mounted against the geocentric theory for a long time. New models were created, sun-centered models that were far more elegant and logical."
"I would think so. I can't imagine what the math for a planet-centric theory would have looked like."
"It was hideously complex and convoluted. Looking at it now, it's obviously a retrofit to uphold the superstitions of an earlier era. But something rather odd happened when the sun-centered theory, with all its elegance and clarity, was devised."
Zai waited, his champagne forgotten in his hand.
"Almost no one believed it," she said. "The new theory was debated for a while, gained a few supporters, but then it was suppressed and almost entirely dropped."
Zai narrowed his eyes in disbelief. "But eventually people must have realized. Otherwise, we wouldn't be standing here, two thousand light-years from Earth."
Oxham shook her head. "They didn't realize. Very few ever changed their minds. Those scientists who grew up with the old theory stuck to it overwhelmingly."
"But then how--"
"They died, Lieutenant-Commander."
She drank the last of her champagne. The old arguments still moved her, still made her mouth dry.
"Or rather, they did their descendants the favor of dying," she said. "They left their children the world. And thus the new ideas--the new shape of that world--became real. But only through death."
Zai shook his head. "But surely they would have eventually figured out--"
"If the old ones lived forever? Possessed all the wealth, controlled the military, and brooked no disagreement? We'd still be living there, stuck on that lonely fringe of Orion, thinking ourselves at the center of the universe.
"But the old ones, the ones who were wrong, died," she finished.
The man nodded slowly.
"I'd always heard that you pinks were pro-death. But I'd thought that an exaggeration."
"It's no exaggeration. Death is a central evolutionary development. Death is change. Death is progress. And immortality is a civilization-killing idea."
Zai smiled, his eyes roaming to take in the grandeur of the palace around them. "We don't seem to be a dead civilization yet."
"Seventeen hundred years ago, the Eighty Worlds were the most advanced technological power in this arm," she said. "Now look at us. The Rix, the Tungai, the Fahstuns have all surpassed us."
Zai's eyes widened. It was a fact seldom spoken aloud, even by Secularists. But Laurent Zai, a military man, must know that it was true. Every war grew more difficult as the Risen Empire continued to be outpaced by its neighbors.
"But seventeen hundred years ago we were no empire," he argued. "Merely a rabble of worlds, like the Rix, but far more divided. We were unstable, in competition amongst ourselves. We're stronger now, even with our technical ... disadvantages. And besides, we have the only technology truly worth having. We can beat death."
" 'The Old Enemy,'" Oxham quoted. That was what the Political Apparatus called it. The Old Enemy whom the Risen Emperor had dared and vanquished.
"Yes. We have beaten death, and yet the living still progress," Zai continued. "We have the Senate, the markets."
She smiled ruefully. "But the weight of the dead is choking us. Slowly but surely, they accrue more wealth every year, more power, and a greater hold upon the minds of the living."
"Minds like mine?" Zai asked.
Oxham shrugged. "I don't presume to know your mind, Lieutenant-Commander. Despite what they say about my abilities."
"You think the Empire is dead already?" he asked.
"No, not yet. But change will eventually come, and when it does, the Empire will snap like a bough strung with too many corpses."
Laurent Zai's mouth gaped; he was appalled at the image. Finally, she had managed to shock the man. Nara remembered when she had first used that simile in a speech on Vasthold. The audience had recoiled, empathically pushing back against her words, filling her throat with bile. But she had seen new thoughts swarming in to fill the spaces that horror made. The image was powerful enough to change minds.