It was a moment before Corain felt in command of his breathing. He looked at Lu, at Gorodin, suddenly trying to remember how Lu had maneuvered him into this meeting, suspecting these two dark eminences among the Nine, who played behind a screen of secrecies.

"You should go into politics," he said to Warrick then, and suddenly remembered to his disturbance who he was talking to: that this was a Reseune psychmaster, and that this mind was one of those twelve Union considered too precious to lose.

"Psych is my field," Warrick said, with a disturbing directness to his gaze, which no longer seemed ordinary, or harmless, or average. "I only want to practice it without harassment. I'm fully aware of politics, Councillor. I assure you it never leaves us, at Reseune. Nor we, it. Help me and I'll help you. It's that simple."

"It's not simple," Corain objected, but to Warrick it was. Whoever had drawn him into this meeting—be it Lu, be it Gorodin—be it Warrick—

He was not sure, suddenly, that it was not Emory. A man could grow insane, dealing with the potential in the Specials, especially those Specials who dealt with perception itself.

One had to trust someone sometime. Or nothing got done.

iii

"The first bill on the agenda is number 2405, for the Bureau of Science. Ariane Emory sole sponsor, regarding the regular appropriations for the Bureau of Science, under the provisions of Union Statute 2595, section 2. . . ."

Emory looked Corain's way. Well? that half-lidded stare said. Will you defy me, over something so routine?

Corain smiled. And let the bitch worry.

The gavel hammered down, again early: "We are in recess," Bogdanovitch said. The murmuring in the Council chamber was subdued.

Ariane Emory drew a whole breath, finally. The first stage was passed. Rubin had his status, barring a veto from the Council of Worlds, and there would be none. Corain might orchestrate a double-cross, but he would save it for something important. Something Corainconsidered important. The Hope Station project could serve as a decoy until then. DeFranco might want to abstain. But she would not, when the heat came on.

Aides surged doorward, accompanying their Councillors. The press was, thank God, held downstairs, away from the chamber as long as there was no adjournment. A two-hour lunch and consideration of the dispensation of the rest of the Science permissions afterward, a tedious long list of permissions which, in the way of a good many things in a government which had started small and cozy and grown into an administrative monster within a single lifespan, the executive Nine were supposed to clear, but which in fact had devolved to the Secretarial level and which had become routine approval.

Still, she would not breathe easy until that clearance was given—until the obfuscated facts of permission to use a geneset from a living Special went through in the list of Reseune projects that required routine permissions.

There had been, each year, an attempt to cancel the whole Science permissions grant from the floor of General Council. Every year the Abolitionists or some other lunatic group got up a proposal to outlaw azi and to outlaw human experimentation. Every year the Council of Worlds sensibly voted it down. But there was that lunatic element, which the Centrists could in some attempt to exert leverage against the Hope project—use against the Science bill. If the fringes and the Centrists didcombine on an issue in that body, it came dangerously close to a plurality against the Expansionist party.

She was worried. She had worried ever since her informers told her that the Centrists were talking walk-out. Corain's sudden willingness to deal bothered her.

And if it would not have raised the issue of an unseemly haste, she would gladly have urged the chair to put the Science bill up before noon. As it was, obstacles were falling too fast, things were going too well, everything was sliding on oil. What had looked to be a lengthy session would end in a record three days, sending the Nine back to their civilian lives for at least another six months.

It had been intended as a means to speed up government, that the Nine would meet and pass all measures that impacted their various spheres of interest, then leave the staff of the Bureaus and the elected representatives of the Council of Worlds and the various senates and councils to handle the routine and the ordinary administrative detail.

In fact, the Nine, being top professionals, were very efficient. They met briefly, did their job, and went away again to be what they were—but some of them exerted an enormous control over the Bureaus they oversaw, wielding Power that the framers of the constitution had not entirely foreseen, no more than they had foreseen Reseune's work inthe war, or the fact that population would become what it was, or the defection of Pell from both Sol and Union, and the developments that had entrained. The Bureau of State had been conceived as carefully controlled by professionals in diplomatic service; but distances pushed it into greater and greater dependency on the Defense Bureau's accurate reporting of situations it was not there to see.

The Bureau of Science, considering the discovery of alien life at more than Pell's Star, had to take on diplomatic functions and train potential contact specialists.

The Bureau of Citizens had become a disproportionately large electorate, and it had elected an able and dangerous man, a man who had still the sense to know when he was trapped.

Possibly Corain did not know that deFranco was solidly hers. That would explain his willingness to risk his political life on a walk-out. Surely he did not think he had any hope of swinging the Pan-paris trade loop, which Lao dominated. He could do nothing but cost the government money, with which other interests would not be patient. It was certainly not likely that he would create any objection on the Science bill.

Surely.

"Dr. Emory." Despite her aides and her bodyguards a touch reached her arm, and Catlin was there too, instantly, her body tense and her expression baffled, because the one who had touched her was no one's aide, it was Adm. Gorodin himself who had just brushed by Catlin's defense. "A word with you."

"I'm on a tight schedule." She had no desire to talk to this man, who, already with an enormous share of the budget at his disposal, with sybaritic waste in his own department, argued with her about the diversion of ten ships to the Hope project; andsided with Corain. She had other contacts inside Defense, and used them: a good section of Intelligence and most of Special Services was on her side, and a new election inside the military might unseat both Gorodin and Lu: let Corain consider thatif he wanted a fight.

"I'll walk with you," Gorodin said, refusing to be shaken, his aides mingling with hers.

"One moment," Catlin said, "ser." Florian had moved in. They were not armed. The military were. But it did not prevent them: they were azi, and they answered to her, not to logic.

"It's all right," Ariane said, lifting a hand in a signal that confirmed what she said.

"An inside source tells me," Gorodin began, "you've got the votes on the Hope project."

Damn.Her heart raced. But aloud, with a stolid calm: "Well, then, your source might be right. But I don't take it for granted."

"Corain's upset. He's going to lose face with this."

What in hell is he up to?

"You know we can stall this off," Gorodin said.

"Likely you can. It won't win you anything. If you're right."

"We have a source on deFranco's staff, Dr. Emory. We are right. We also have a source inside Andrus Company; and inside Hayes Industries. Damn good stock buy. Are they finally going to get that deep-space construction?"