Read Deliberations: A Foreigner Short Story for Free Online

for twenty-two years.
    She smiled. “There are phones, now. Call me if you cannot find a file.”
    “Maddening woman!”
    “So your grandfather used to say. Shall we relieve everyone and announce an agreement?”
    He nodded. “One would be glad of that... if you mean it.”
    “This modern world! In the old days, understand, it needed nearly half a year for your grandfather’s proposal to reach me. But things change. We surprised the world— when we two turned up in Shejidan overnight. No one expected us. Let us end this the same way. Let us go down to the audience hall. Let us have these television cameras. Wake them up. Let us have us on television, side by side, in every township gathering-place, all day tomorrow. Let us surprise them again, shall we?”
    He took a moment to think about it. “Television.”
    “It lacks elegance,” she agreed. “But it is efficient. It is very useful— in preventing rumors.”
    “Or creating them,” he said.
    “Let us make a few.” She advanced a step, caught her tall, handsome grandson by the elbow, knowing the bodyguards would see it, knowing they would all twitch, though never show it. She steered him toward the door, and their waiting guards. “Let us do something different than our predecessors have done. Let us confound our enemies, and our allies— who are, between the two of us, one and the same. Let them wonder what to do next. Let Mospheira wonder about Wilson’s reports. They will regret I still exist. —And our enemies so richly deserve it.”