"Of course we do," Masterman said patiently, "but we've carefully not assigned any to this system. And, unlike Manticore—which probably didn't have any choice, given that their head of state is a woman—we haven't told the locals we even have any. We haven't told them we don't, either, but their sexism cuts so deep they're ready to assume that unless we prove differently. So at the moment, they're thinking of us as a good, old-fashioned patriarchal society. Our foreign policy makes them nervous, but our social policies are much less threatening than Manticore's."

"All right, I can see that," Michaels agreed. "It hadn't occurred to me that they might assume we don't have any female personnel—I thought they'd just assume we were being tactful—but I see what you're driving at."

"Good. But you may not realize just how vulnerable Harrington really is. Bad enough she's a woman in a man's role, but she's also a convicted murderer," the ambassador said, and Michaels blinked in astonishment.

"Sir, with all due respect, no one's going to believe that. Hell, I don't like her a bit, but I know damned well that was pure propaganda."

"Of course you do, and so do I, but the Graysons don't. I'm quite aware the entire thing was a show trial purely for foreign consumption, and to be perfectly honest, I don't like it. But it's done, so we may as well use it. All any Grayson knows is that a Haven court found Captain Harrington guilty of the murder of an entire freighter's crew. Of course Manticore insists the `freighter' was actually a Q-ship caught red-handed in an act of war—what else can they say?—but the fact that a court pronounced her guilty will predispose a certain percentage of people to believe she must have been guilty, particularly since she's a woman. All we have to do is point out her `proven guilt' more in sorrow than in anger, as the natural result of the sort of catastrophe which results when you put someone with all of a woman's frailties in command of a ship of war."

Michaels nodded slowly. He felt a twinge of guilt, which surprised him, but Masterman was right, and the locals' prejudices would make them far more likely to accept a story no civilized planet would believe for a moment.

"You see, Captain?" Masterman said quietly. "This will let us change the entire focus of the internal Grayson debate over Manticore's overtures from a cold-blooded consideration of advantages to an emotional rejection based on their own bigotry. And if I've learned one thing over the years, it's that when it comes down to raw emotion against reason, emotion wins."

" ... and this is our combat information center, gentlemen." Andreas Venizelos was short by Manticoran standards, but he stood centimeters taller than the Grayson officers in the compartment as he gestured about himself at the shining efficiency.

Admiral Yanakov managed not to gawk, but his palms itched as he took in the superb instrumentation. The holo tank was over three meters across, and the flat-screen displays around him showed every ship within ten light-minutes of Grayson. Not with single, annotated light codes for groups of vessels, but as individual units with graphic representations of mass and vector.

He stepped closer to one of the ratings and peered over his shoulder. The young—or, young-looking, anyway—man didn't even twitch at his presence, and Yanakov turned back to Venizelos.

"Could you bring up the holo tank, Commander?"

Venizelos regarded him for a moment, then looked past him.

"Captain?"

Yanakov felt his expression try to freeze, then turned. Captain Harrington stood behind him, her strongly carved face showing no emotion at all, and he made himself meet her eyes. The sense of the alien grew greater, not less, every time he saw her uniform, and he suspected she'd delegated the task of spokesman to her executive officer because she felt it, too.

"Would you object to our observing the holo display in operation ... Captain?" Yanakov's voice sounded strained even in his own ears, and he cursed himself for the slight hesitation he gave her title.

"Of course not, Admiral." Her musical soprano only increased his feeling of unreality. It sounded almost exactly like his third wife's, and the thought of Anna in uniform appalled him.

"Bring up the tank, please, Chief Waters," she said.

"Aye, aye, Ma'am," a petty officer responded with a crispness that seemed odd addressed to a woman. But, Yanakov thought almost despairingly, it didn't sound a bit odd addressed to an officer. Damn it, the very concept of a female officer was an oxymoron!

The holo tank blinked to life, extending its upper edge almost to the deckhead, and the clustered Grayson officers made a soft noise of approval and delight. Small light codes drifted beside every dot: arrows denoting headings, dotted lines projecting vectors, numerals and letters defining drive strength, acceleration, and active sensor emissions. It was how God Himself must see the stars, and pure envy for this ship's capabilities tingled in Yanakov's brain.

"As you can see, Admiral," Harrington raised a hand to gesture gracefully at the holo, "we proj—"

She broke off as Commander Harris, Yanakov's operations officer, stepped between her and the tank in search of a closer look at one of the symbols. Her hand hovered a moment, and then her lips firmed.

"Excuse me, Commander," she said, her tone devoid of all emotion, "I was just about to point something out to Admiral Yanakov."

Harris turned, and Yanakov flushed at his cold-eyed, contemptuous expression. Yanakov was having trouble enough with the concept of a senior female officer, but Harris was a hardline conservative. He started to open his mouth, then snapped it shut at a tiny gesture from his admiral. His lips tightened further, but he stepped back, every line of his body a silent expression of resentment, for Harrington to proceed.

"As you can see, Admiral," she continued in that same, even voice, "we project the probable weapons range for each warship. Of course, a display with this much detail can be a liability for actual tactical control, so we use smaller ones on the bridge to avoid information overflow. CIC, however, is responsible for deciding which threats we need to see, and—"

Her voice went on, showing no sign of anger at Harris' insulting behavior, and Yanakov listened attentively even while he wondered if he should have dressed Harris down. Certainly he'd have to have a long talk with him in private, but should he have made the point now? It would have humiliated his ops officer in front of his fellows, but how would the Manticorans react to his own restraint?

He glanced up and caught Andreas Venizelos unawares, and the anger in the Manticoran officer's eyes answered his question.

"I know they're different, Bernard, but we just have to make allowances." Benjamin Mayhew IX, Planetary Protector of Grayson, snipped another rose and laid it in the servant's basket, then turned to regard his naval commander in chief sternly. "You knew they had women in uniform. Surely you realized we'd have to deal with that sooner or later."

"Of course I did!" Admiral Yanakov glowered at the basket, not bothering to hide his conviction that flower arrangement wasn't precisely the most manly art his head of state might have pursued. He was one of the few who made no secret of his feelings, but then, he was also Protector Benjamin's fifth cousin, with very clear memories of an infant who'd still been making puddles on the palace carpet when he himself was already in uniform.

"Then I don't quite understand your vehemence." Mayhew gestured, and the servant withdrew. "It's not like you to carry on this way."

"I'm not speaking for myself," Yanakov said a bit stiffly. "All I said was that my officers don't like it, and they don't. In fact, `don't like' is putting it far too mildly, Ben. They hate it, and there are some ugly rumors about her competence."