Articles of the Federation - Keith R. A. DeCandido [91]
Normally, Karin didn’t mind listening to Superintendent McTigue speak. Tall, elegant, and well spoken, he had a dry wit, friendly demeanor, and sharp mind.
But Karin had been listening to McTigue since his appointment three years ago. Today, in addition to throwing off the title of cadet in favor of ensign, she and the rest of the class of ‘80 were going to have their commencement address delivered by none other than President Nan Bacco herself.
Karin had grown up on several different Federation worlds, with most of her teen years being spent on CestusIII. While there, she had gone to one of then-Governor Bacco’s town meetings as part of a class assignment. She had gone in there a bored thirteen-year-old hoping just to stay awake for the whole thing; she’d come out with a tremendous respect for Nan Bacco and a desire to grow up to be just like her.
That ambition had tempered as she’d gotten older and realized that it was Starfleet, rather than politics, that was her true calling, but her admiration for Bacco had never flagged, and Karin had actually done a little bit of campaigning for her-as much as had been possible, what with her studies-when she’d run against Fel Pagro for president. It had been difficult, since most of her classmates had actually been for Pagro, though some had changed their tune when Admiral Ross had come out for Bacco.
Now, Karin failed in her attempt not to fidget as she waited for McTigue to shut the hell up and let President Bacco talk.
At last, the superintendent said, “And now, cadets-who will not be cadets much longer-I am especially proud to present to you all your commencement speaker, President Nanietta Bacco.”
Thunderous applause echoed off the surrounding trees of the park as the small-but-impressive-looking white-haired woman approached the podium. She shook McTigue’s hand, then turned to look out at the throng of Karin’s class. Karin thought, oddly, that she looked smaller than she had nine years earlier, though that was probably due to her being farther away. The town hall used for her gubernatorial town meetings was much smaller than a San Francisco park, after all.
” ‘Ex astris, scientia.’ Those words are on that flag over there.” The president pointed at the Academy flag, which hung on a pole right next to the other pole that had the Federation flag. “It’s from an old human language called Latin. Nobody’s spoken it conversationally for several hundred years, mind you, but we like to trot it out every once in a while to make ourselves sound more interesting. It means, ‘From the stars, knowledge.’ Which makes it kind of a funny motto for a place that has you spending the bulk of your time right here on Earth.”
Karin smiled. She remembered some of her friends from the class of ‘79, all of whom had been dreading the commencement speech, which had been given by the novelist H’jn Sowell, a great writer but an awful public speaker. The year before that, it had been some ship captain or other, who had been even more boring. We lucked out in that department.
“The thing about the stars is that they do provide knowledge-but that comes with a concomitant risk. Nothing underlines that risk more than the fact that you are the first Academy class in quite a while to have gone through your entire tenure at the Academy when the Federation wasn’t at war. And that, my friends, is something to be celebrated, because the classes before yours either came as first-years when we were at war, or were cadets when the war was declared, or joined when they thought war was pretty damn likely. But you all are the first to come through without that particular Damoclean sword hanging over your collective heads.”
Two of the cadets-neither of them human-gave each other confused looks, only to have the cadets on either side of them explain about the Sword of Damocles.
“There’s an old human saying-not in Latin, you’ll be happy to know-that says that knowledge is power, and another one that says that power corrupts. Since its founding two hundred and nineteen