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So, thought Qing-jao, you knew exactly how ambitious you were being when you set out to become his daughter's maid.
"I meant no disrespect, nor did they. But isn't it true that if Starways Congress wanted to, they could order Path to send your father to another world to stand trial?"
"They would never--"
"But could they?" insisted Wang-mu.
"Path is a colony," said Qing-jao. "The law allows it, but Starways Congress would never--"
"But if they did it to Lusitania, why wouldn't they do it to Path?"
"Because the xenologers on Lusitania were guilty of crimes that--"
"The people of Lusitania didn't think so. Their government refused to send them off for trial."
"That's the worst part. How can a planetary government dare to think they know better than Congress?"
"But they knew everything," said Wang-mu, as if this idea were so natural that everyone must know it. "They knew those people, those xenologers. If Starways Congress ordered Path to send Han Fei-tzu to go stand trial on another world for a crime we know he didn't commit, don't you think we would also rebel rather than send such a great man? And then they would send a fleet against us."
"Starways Congress is the source of all justice in the Hundred Worlds." Qing-jao spoke with finality. The discussion was over.
Impudently, Wang-mu didn't fall silent. "But Path isn't one of the Hundred Worlds yet, is it?" she said. "We're just a colony. They can do what they want, and that's not right."
Wang-mu nodded her head at the end, as if she thought she had utterly prevailed. Qing-jao almost laughed. She would have laughed, in fact, if she hadn't been so angry. Partly she was angry because Wang-mu had interrupted her many times and had even contradicted her, something that her teachers had always been very careful not to do. Still, Wang-mu's audacity was probably a good thing, and Qing-jao's anger was a sign that she had become too used to the undeserved respect people showed to her ideas simply because they fell from the lips of the godspoken. Wang-mu must be encouraged to speak to her like this. That part of Qing-jao's anger was wrong, and she must get rid of it.
But much of Qing-jao's anger was because of the way Wang-mu had spoken about Starways Congress. It was as if Wang-mu didn't think of Congress as the supreme authority over all of humanity; as if Wang-mu imagined that Path was more important than the collective will of all the worlds. Even if the inconceivable happened and Han Fei-tzu were ordered to stand trial on a world