Sydon was a cobra, every bit Taliaferro's equal. And then he remembered his drugged insult to Fionna. Was his damned prejudice speaking again?

But, no, there was no comparison between Fionna and Amanda Sydon. They both happened to be women, but Fionna had also happened to be human.

"You know what I'm talking about, if you'd care to accept the truth, Amanda," he said quietly.

"The truth," she sneered, "is that the Fringe won't even know what hit it for at least ten yearsff they manage to figure it out then! With our majority, we'll control the post-amalgamation reapportionment.

We'll gut them, and they'll stay gutted for fifty years!" "Fifty?" Dieter allowed himself a chuckle.

"Amanda, you obviously don't know as much about the demographics as you think." He felt spines stiffen as he threw his challenge into her teeth, filled with a courage based for a change on conviction rather than convenience. "It won't be fifty years, dear; if the Fringe population curves hold steady and the borders continue to expand, it'll be more like a hundred and fifty years." He glanced at Taliaferro amid a hiss of indrawn breaths as the others heard the true figures for the first time, and the fury burning behind the fixed joviality amused him. So Simon hadn't wanted his minions to know the full extent of his ambition? Was he afraid even they might see the result?

"Dear me, Amanda-didn't Simon mention that?" Dieter's voice was harsh in the semi-silence.

"He should have, because the Fringers have waited two hundred years for their representation to match ours; they'll certainly run a worst-case projection and realize they're facing at least another century of powerlessness. How do you think they'll react to that?" "How can they react?" Taliaferro scoffed.

"They won't have the votes to stop it." "Precisely," Dieter said flatly. He drew a deep breath and rose, his gaze burning over the faces around him. Guilt over Fionna's death and over the part he had played--intentionally and unintentionally--in bringing the Federation to this pass supported him. It wasn't enough that he'd only played the game. Games were for children; adulthood carried the duties of adulthood. Angry self-loathing gave him a sort of visionary strength, and he suddenly knew how Cassandra must have felt, yet he had to try, ff only to prove to himself that once he'd had the right to sit in the same chamber as Fionna MacTaggart.

"Listen to me, all of you," he said softly. "We can do it. We can use Skjorning to break the Fringe and then ram reapportiomnent through whatever opposition is left, but are you all too blind to see what will happen then?"

"Tell us, Oskar; sifice you seem so prescient," Taliaferro sneered, no longer hiding his contempt.

"TII tell you, Simon," Dieter said, his voice sad. "War." "War!" Taliaferro's laugh was harsh. "With whom, Oskar? That penniless bunch of ragged-assed barbarians? Hell, man, the Taliaferro Yards alone can build more hulls than all the Fringe Worlds put together! Not even Fringers could be stupid enough to buck that much firepower!" "Can't they? Simon, I chair Military Oversight. I know what I'm talking about. They can fight, and they will.

It'll be a cold sober appreciation of whsttt adding that many non-Terran voters will do to their representation." "So what?" Taliaferro shot back. "Let some of them try to secede! We'll squash them like bugs, and it'll prove they're barbarians! The Heart Worlds'Il be as eager as we are to expel them from the Assembly -comfor good!" Cold shock knifed through Dieter. Not surprise, really; perhaps he'd guessed Taliaferro's real intent all along and simply chosen not to face it.

"My God," he said softly. "You want a war." "Nonsense!" The denial was just a bit too quick, a touch too offhand. Some of the others were clearly shaken by Dieter's charge, and Taliaferro made himself smile. "It won't come to a war, no matter what you think. The absolute worst may be a police action or two, and we've had those before, haven't we, Hector?" He winked at the Christophon delegate, and the reminder of the food riots on Christophon, three hundred years past, woke a rumble of nervous laughter. "But nobody's left the Federation after a police action," Taliaferro went on persuasively, "and that's all it can be. The Fringers don't have a fleet or the means to build one; we have both.

All I'm saying is that if they're that stupid, it'll only strengthen our position in the long run." Dieter saw Taliaferro's words sink home.

They were the words his allies wanted to hear, the ones that told them everything was fine, that they still controlled "the game." He'd jolted them, but not enough to break Taliaferro's hold. They would follow him despite anything a political has-been said, and Dieter swallowed an angry rebuttal.

"You're wrong, Simon," he said. "Even assuming all we get is a "police action or two," the damage will be done. You've all forgotten that the Federation exists only because its citizens want it to exist. When enough of them stop wanting it to live, it will die." He shook his head, feeling their disbelief and rejection.

"No doubt you'll all do exactly as you wish," he said heavily, "but I warn you now--I'll oppose you, both here and on the floor." The tension in the room suddenly doubled.

"Go ahead!" Taliaferro snarled, his face dark with rage.

"If not for your stupidity, we'd already have carried the amalgamation vote! So go on, damn youl We'll still be here when you're a memory--and you know it!" "Perhaps so, Simon," Dieter said sadly across the im- mense breach between them. "And you're probably right about whether or not I can stop you. But when you turn the Federation into armed camps which can never live in peace agaire--was his eyes were live coals as they swept the silent room his-comremember I told you it would happen. And' when it does, I'll be able to say I tried to stop it... What will you be able to say?" "You're almost as eloquent as Skjorning," Taliaferro sneered.

"No, Simon," Dieter's quiet voice sliced back through the silence, "I'm nowhere near as eloquent as he is--but I'm just as accurate." Taliaferro made a contemptuous gesture, but even un- der his anger there might have been just a trace of uncertainty. Dieter didn't know, but ff Taliaferro did feel any lack of confidence, it wasn't enough. Dieter looked at the stony faces and knew he'd failed. He'd tried to convince them, but they refused to hear; now he could only fight them.

He closed the door gently behind him, and the corridor was as empty as his futnre as he walked slowly to the elevators. He felt the approaching defeat in his bones, but he'd forfeited his career the night he insulted Fionna and discovered he was not the ,nan he'd thought himself to be, and the floor fight would be his Gethsemane. His self-destruction could never expiate his guilt, but perhaps it would let him face Fionna's memorv with a sense of having done his best. With a sense of l left-brace aving stood up on his hind legs and said "I am a man -comwitha man's duties and a man's right to destroy myself for what I know is right." Oskar Dieter stepped out into the night of Old Terra under a blanket of stars--a man who held his chin high again at last.

CHANGE OF ORDERS Captain Li Han, commanding officer of TFNS Longbow, shrugged as her tunic's seams slid back off the points of her shoulders and the dragonhead flash of her planet dipped low. She should have stood over that tailor with a club! He wasn't used to dealing with officers who massed less than forty kilos, and it showed.

The intraship car slowed and Han banished her frown, squaring her cap on her sleek black hair. The trick, they'd explained at the Academy, was never to notice that anything was wrong. If you didn't, they didn't. Assuming, of course, that the Protocol Procedures profs were correct.- The door hissed open on the boatbay, and Han watched the side party snap to attention beside her cutter as the electronic bosun's pipe shrilled. There were few non-Oriental faces in Longbow; she was homeported on the Fringe World of Hangchow and her crew reflected her ethnicity, and even those few were from other Fringe Worlds. There was not a single Innerworlder in Longbow's complement, and Han sometimes wondered ff any of her personnel ever guessed just how and why that had come to pass.