The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [74]
Katowa walked slowly toward the pool table as he responded to his son’s question. “It is the only option that does not require our meek acceptance of whatever mere scraps others deign to hand to us, Qaletaqu my son.”
“Right on!” Ahota called out. “We’ve been on Mars long enough! Time to pull up stakes and move on!”
Ahota’s wife shushed him with a swift elbow to the ribs.
“With respect, Ahota,” Qaletaqu said, “we still have much work ahead of us here in remaking this world into something the spirits of our ancestors would recognize.”
Katowa came to a stop at the pool table’s edge, his hands clasped before him as he gazed up at Qaletaqu, dark eyes as patient as the ages, and yet filled with an awful urgency.
“The Romulans may not allow that, my son,” the chief said as he carefully stepped up onto the pool table’s surface via a chair placed beside him by the sheriff. “The conflict that is coming is a sign from the spirit world that the time has come once again for the tribe to seek a new home.”
Qaletaqu spread his hands before him in a placating gesture. “We already have a home, father. It is the Valles Marineris.”
“Mars has never been more than a temporary camp site,” Katowa said with a slow shake of his gray-maned head. “The galaxy abounds with new worlds that the spirits of our ancestors would recognize far more readily than they would this one, Qaletaqu. Worlds that need not be remade from scratch. Worlds upon which our tribe might at long last establish a permanent home among rivers and trees and living things, where the very skies do not conspire to kill us.”
Well, running away is certainly one way of dealing with the Romulans, Brooks thought. But out in the wide wicked galaxy, that tactic will work about as well as it would on the local playground bully.
Unfortunately, a whole lot more people, both on Earth and off, were all but certain to embrace this wrong-headed idea, so long as opinion makers like Keisha Naquase—not to mention Chief Katowa—insisted on promoting it.
But Qaletaqu appeared to see this issue the same way Brooks did.
“The tribe has lived here for less than half a century, as measured in the years of our ancestors,” he said. “Frankly, that’s little more than a rounding error compared to the way they reckoned time. They used to consider the future ramifications of their every decision out to seven generations.”
“Had the Romulans menaced our ancestors,” the old man said, “their progeny might never have made it all the way to the present generation.”
“The Great Spirit has never granted us guarantees, Father, only opportunities.”
“Agreed. We should seize the best possible opportunity for the tribe’s continued survival.”
Qaletaqu looked disappointed, but not deterred. “Wouldn’t a decision to leave now, rather than to stay and help all the other tribes of humanity to fight the war that’s coming, merely be capitulation to yet another conqueror? I think the spirit of Popé would not be pleased.”
Katowa stood in silence, facing his son, apparently absorbing and considering his sharp words. Brooks thought those words had cut him deeply, judging from the moisture she saw gleaming in the old man’s eyes.
“I stand by my recommendation,” the old chief said at length. “But I will defer to the wisdom of the vote of the Canyontown Commission.”
Which meant, so far as Brooks understood it, the adult population of this tavern’s game room. She already knew that Katowa’s opinion carried tremendous weight with Canyontown’s rank-and-file citizenry.
What she didn’t know and wouldn’t discover, at least not before what looked to be a very close vote was counted and