NORTHWORLD

Haven-registered ship passing through the junction regardless of destination or

normal diplomatic immunity, must submit to boarding and search before she
would be allowed passage. Moreover, no Havenite warship would be permitted
transit under any circumstances. There had been no negotiation on those points;
Haven could take it or leave it... and add months to every cruise their freighters
made. The Republic had accepted the deliberate, calculated humiliation, for
refusal would have driven even their own cargoes into freighters which could use
the junction, with disastrous effects upon their carrying trade. But because there
was no proof, Haven had still been able to protest its innocence and scream to
galactic public opinion over the Kingdom's "highhanded discrimination" and the
lengths to which Manticore had gone to smear its good name. No Manticoran
believed them, of course, just as no one in the Kingdom believed their violent
protests about one Commander Harrington's unprovoked attack upon an unarmed
merchantman and her callous murder of its entire crew. It wasn't as f they'd had
much choice about protesting, unless they wanted to admit what they'd actually
been up to, but they'd gone so far as to demand Honor's extradition to stand trial
for murder in a Havenite court. she'd been amused by that, until one of the
government's foreign affairs experts explained the propaganda theory of the "big
lie' to her. She found it difficult to credit, even now, that anyone, anywhere, could
possibly believe the nonsense being spouted by the Haven Information Ministry, but
the expert had only shaken his head and sighed. The bigger the lie, apparently,
the more likely the uninformed were to accept it, simply because they couldn't
believe any government would tell such an absurd story unless it were true. And,
she supposed, the fact that Haven had tried her in absentia (legal under what
passed for Havenite law when Manticore refused to extradite her), found her
guilty, and condemned her to death, had been the frosting on the cake. But the
Kingdom had responded to Haven's claims in unambiguous fashion. Honor smiled