"There, Your Majesty," Khane said. "You see how much respect for
authority this hooligan has!"
On Aditya, such would be unthinkable; on Aditya, everybody respects
authority. Whether it's respectable or not.
Count Tammsan laughed, and he realized that he must have spoken aloud.
Nobody else seemed to have gotten the joke.
"Well, how about the riot, now?" he asked. "Who started that?"
"Colonel Handrosan made an investigation on the spot," Prince Travann
said. "May I suggest that we hear his report?"
"Yes indeed. Colonel?"
Handrosan rose and stood with his hands behind his back, looking fixedly
at the wall behind the desk.
[Illustration]
"Your Majesty, the students of Professor Faress' advanced subnuclear
physics class, postgraduate students, all of them, were told of
Professor Faress' dismissal by a faculty member who had taken over the
class this morning. They all got up and walked out in a body, and
gathered outdoors on the campus to discuss the matter. At the next class
break, they were joined by other science students, and they went into
the stadium, where they were joined, half an hour later, by more
students who had learned of the dismissal in the meantime. At no time
was the gathering disorderly. The stadium is covered by a viewscreen
pickup which is fitted with a recording device; there is a complete
audio-visual of the whole thing, including the attack on them by the
campus police.
"This attack was ordered by Chancellor Khane, at about 1100; the chief
of the campus police was told to clear the stadium, and when he asked if
he was to use force, Chancellor Khane told him to use anything he wanted
to."
"I did not! I told him to get the students out of the stadium, but----"
"The chief of campus police carries a personal wire recorder," Handrosan
said, in his flat monotone. "He has a recording of the order, in
Chancellor Khane's own voice. I heard it myself. The police," he
continued, "first tried to use gas, but the wind was against them. They
then tried to use sono-stunners, but the students rushed them and
overwhelmed them. If Your Majesty will permit a personal opinion, while
I do not sympathize with their subsequent attack on the Administration
Center, they were entirely within their rights in defending themselves
in the stadium, and it's hard enough to stop trained and disciplined
troops when they are winning. After defeating the police, they simply
went on by what might be called the momentum of victory."
"Then you'd say that it's positively established that the students were
behaving in a peacable and orderly manner in the stadium when they were
attacked, and that Chancellor Khane ordered the attack personally?"
"I would, emphatically, Your Majesty."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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