“We’re go.”

“We’ll handle communication with our own people at Fargone. There’s a freighter going out on the twenty‑fourth.”

“Skip the freighter. No Alliance transport.” Freighters were that, Alliance merchanters, plying the routes between Union stations. “We have a courier. It can leave after the vote tomorrow.”

Low mass, big engines, faster by a classified number of days–especially if the courier was ready to launch. And no Alliance snoopery, though if they black‑boxed it, there was no likelihood Alliance would snoop at all. Yanni nodded. “If speed is an issue. We have the appropriate orders ready. We can make your schedule.”

“You were that convinced she’d do it,” Spurlin said.

“I thought she would, yes,” Yanni said. “A research scientist, with a life’s‑work project backed up on hold for decades? I was very sure she’d do it.”

“Her Paxer constituency really isn’t going to like her taking a Reseune post. Domestic security had better take hold and look sharp when that news breaks.”

The Paxers, the peace party, had fallen on hard times after the War. They weren’t the threat they had been. They’d had a spate of bombings. A certain number of their intellectuals showed up at Patil’s public lectures. So, shadier and more violent, did a few of the Rocher Party, the Abolitionists. But it was a public forum, the Franklin Lecture Series, sponsored by a Centrist‑leaning agricultural processing consortium, and as much as Patil’s speeches usually generated web chatter, she didn’t participate in the fringe‑element chat. She more or less politely dealt with everyone who actually showed up; but she had a sharp manner when asked a stupid question, and only the intellectuals tended to ask her questions, not the subway‑bombing lunatic fringe–they probably lived in terror of her. So did the tea‑sipping social set who’d attend any function on the library circuit.

“ReseuneSec is going on alert when Patil’s acceptance of a post goes public,” Yanni said.

“My office will be on it,” Spurlin said. Spurlin’s specific office was system defense. He was a post‑war admiral, never in combat. Khalid had that advantage, that he had fought against the Mazianni, the former Earth Company Fleet. “But this is supposing it goes through. Corain’s not entirely a surety yet. It could all fall apart.”

“I’m pretty confident he’ll go with us on this,” Yanni said. “Lao’s with us.” That was no news. Lao of Information was battling rejuv failure herself, another election they were going to suffer, but she was at the session, holding out on painkillers, Reseune’s old friend. “I’m scheduled to talk with Corain this evening. But don’t give any interviews until after the vote. It’ll look bad.”

Spurlin had no sense of humor. At all. “Your man at Fargone. The azi…”

“CIT,” Yanni corrected him.

“Ex‑azi. Emory’s man. Is he up to handling the security aspects of this? And what will he be telling the girl?”

“I have less doubt of Ollie Strassen than I do of anyone else involved in this undertaking, ser. And he doesn’t communicate with young Emory, never has. We have very efficient management out there. Check your records.”

“So now you have a program.”

“We will have a program.” Yanni gave a small shrug. He wasn’t really comfortable with Spurlin. The privacy screen made his sinuses ache. And he was anxious to have the meeting done, in token of which he drank half the very expensive cup of coffee at one go. “Patil will be drawing her own complement from Beta Station, perfectly current with the research. So you’ll have plenty of sources who’ll talk to you very nicely, I’m sure.”

A brow lifted. Spurlin looked marginally happier with that thought: the military fairly well ran Beta, and that was insystem, definitely familiar territory, familiar channels. “So you get your new lab.”

“And you get a planet,” Yanni said wryly.

“ Humanitygets a planet,” Spurlin said. That was the theory. Humanity couldn’t live on Pell without supplementals, and the fungi were lethal over time. Humanity couldn’t actually live on Cyteen–if the weather‑makers and the precip towers ever failed, they were all dead in a day. Humanity did toodamned well at surviving on Gehenna, and if all of them could turn up dead in a day, it would make everybody sleep easier at night. They hoped eventually to do better at Eversnow–a viable planet, one they could entirely terraform and render completely habitable, right down to the oxygen balance– andwhere people could come and go without turning themselves into such deeply acculturated specialists they couldn’t integrate with spacefaring society.

And not the only such planet, hereafter: once they’d proven the case and established the precedent for terraforming a marginal world, once they’d gotten past the emotional nonsense that bacteria counted as life on a world, young Emory wouldsee the benefit.

That meant activation of the Arks, a use for the stored genetics. A new Eden.

A reserve Earth, in case the unthinkable ever happened.

“I have Patil’s name on the contract,” Yanni said. “But first out there and setting up at Fargone Station…will be ReseuneSec.”

That didn’t make Spurlin happy, but Yanni said it anyway: “ReseuneSec, for a Reseune installation. We’ll establish connections, set up the labs. Our setup won’t bother your military ‘hospital’ there in the least. But where it regards our tech and birthlabs, we don’t admit anybody but Reseune personnel. That never changes.”

“I wouldn’t expect it to,” Spurlin said, and, as if the admission were physically painful, added: “Good. We’re happy We can back this.”

If we’re elected, was the unspoken context. And Science was backing him as far as it dared. “Thank you, ser,” Yanni said.

“I take it you’re going to call on Jacques, upstairs. Give him my regards. And Khalid.”

There it was. The direct challenge.

“I’ll of course send the proposal up to station,” Yanni said. “And of course present it to Councillor Jacques. But I’m very glad to have this particular discussion face to face.”

Meaning Jacques was all but an afterthought, and the face to face he’d chosen had been with Spurlin, not Khalid. That had to please Spurlin.

“Good luck in the vote,” Yanni said. He didn’t mention the name Emory. “Will of the people. Civilized understandings. We’ll hope to keep in touch, however things turn out.”

There was a little flicker from Spurlin’s eyes, a little consideration of that point, in the long‑term realities of Union politics, that Councillors could be challenged every two years, and narrowly rejected candidates often came back repeatedly–if not this time, then next. Yanni’s bet, personally, was on Spurlin–who, whatever his lack of combat experience, was the better politician. And the polls were running that way.

“Pleasure,” Spurlin said.

“Mutual,” Yanni said, and rose and shook hands.

No trail of documents–no outside witnesses. There would be a vid record, to be sure–Defense was rife with bugs–but he now had to go upstairs and explain to Jacques, who would actually cast the vote, that there was an understanding, and thank you so much for your help getting this far. Jacques’ permanent retirement was a few months away, resignation from the military–given a sinecure of a corporate position. That had taken a little maneuvering, but Khalid would have beaten Jacques hands down, and no few people had moved to see Jacques step down fast and first, to make Spurlin look as attractive as possible.

Subordinates would work out the details from this point on, and settle such things as a launch time for the military courier, bearing orders for Ollie Strassen, but not, of course, anticipating the formal vote in Council.

Those orders, on a datastrip, he did leave with Spurlin, in a sealed envelope. The envelope, that old‑fashioned precaution, wouldn’t in the least stop Spurlin’s people from getting into it, but it would occasion them just a little hesitation–a point of satisfaction, just to tweak their sensibilities–and they wouldn’t learn a damned thing once they did. What he’d told Ollie Strassen in that message, he’d told Ollie in plain words, because Ollie had his training, had gone CIT, and, canny old Reseune hand that Ollie was, from the inmost circles, he knew exactly what to make of the message: