The Human Division #7: The Dog King Read Online Free Page B

giving the hard-liners on both sides a new pointless excuse to go after each other.”
    “We don’t know that will be the outcome,” Abumwe said. “You had confidence in the process before. At the end of the day, the Icheloe still want their peace.”
    “But will they still want it with us ?” Waverly said, looking over. “Now that we’ve unnecessarily disrupted their peace process and added complications to it? That’s the question. I hope you’re right, Ode. I really do. But I have my doubts.” She turned her gaze back to Wilson. “And do you have any thoughts on this subject, Lieutenant Wilson?”
    Wilson glanced over to Abumwe, whose face was neutral, and at Schmidt, who had preemptively gone pale. “I’m sorry I unnecessarily disrupted your process, Ambassador,” he said. “I apologize.” In his peripheral vision, Wilson could see Schmidt’s eyes widen. Hart clearly wasn’t expecting deference from his friend.
    “You apologize,” Waverly said, walking over to him. “You’re sorry. That’s all you have to say.”
    “Yes, I think so, ma’am,” Wilson said. “Unless you think there’s something else I should add.”
    “I think your resignation would be in order,” Waverly said.
    Wilson smiled at this. “The Colonial Defense Forces isn’t generally keen on resignations, Ambassador Waverly.”
    “And that’s your final comment on the matter,” Waverly said, persisting.
    Wilson glanced very briefly at Abumwe and caught her almost imperceptible shrug. “Well, except to say that I know what to do the next time something like this happens,” he said.
    “And what is that?” Waverly said.
    “Let the plant keep the dog,” Wilson said.
    Praetor Gunztar opened the door to the room before Waverly had a chance to explode at Wilson. She whirled toward Gunztar instead with such sudden ferocity that even the praetor, who was no great reader of human emotion, could not miss it. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
    “Of course, Praetor Gunztar,” Waverly said, tightly.
    “Very good,” Gunztar said, barreling through before Waverly could launch into anything further. “I have news. Some of it is good. Some of it is less so.”
    “All right,” Waverly said.
    “The good news—the great news—is that leaders of both factions agree that no one was responsible for the killing of the king, except for the king himself,” Gunztar said. “It was well-known the king was a heavy drinker and that he would often stroll in his private garden at night. The most obvious explanation is that the king was drunk, collapsed into the kingsflower planter, and the plant pulled him under. When he awoke, he tried to escape and followed the tunnel to his death. The garden was part of his private residence and he was a bachelor; no one looked for him until his staff went to wake him in the morning.”
    “Didn’t anyone at the time think to look inside the plant?” Abumwe asked.
    “They did, of course,” Gunztar said. “But it was not until much later, when more obvious places were searched. And by that time, there was no trace of the king. It seems that he may have wandered down the tunnel by that time and was either dead or too injured by the fall into the cave to call for help. The bones show his spine was shattered in several places, consistent with a fall.”
    Wilson, who remembered Tuffy chewing on at least a couple of other bones aside from the rib, kept quiet.
    “This is good news because one continual sticking point between the factions has been finding some way to finesse the disappearance of the king,” Gunztar said. “The question of blame and responsibility are still sore subjects. Or were. Now they no longer are. During our discussions, the head of the pro-king faction provisionally apologized for blaming the agitators for killing the king. The head for the agitator faction provisionally expressed sorrow at the death of the king. As long as it sticks, the job here has become substantially