The unarmed air car approached the agreed upon meeting site at exactly the agreed upon time.

Stephen Westman stood leaning against a tree, arms folded across his chest, and watched it come. It had taken two full days of cautious contacts and secret negotiation to arrange this meeting, and there was a certain fitting irony, though he'd be unable to share it with his "guests," to the location he'd chosen. The last off-worlder he'd met here had been the man called "Firebrand," whose objectives had been somewhat different from these off-worlders'. He wondered if Van Dort and the Manties in the air car would find the scenery as spectacular as Firebrand had.

The air car circled the site once, then settled to a neat landing the better part of seventy meters from Westman. The turbines whined as they spooled down, and Westman straightened, letting his arms fall to his side. Luis Palacios had wanted to be here, but Westman had turned him down. Although the MIM leader had complete faith in Chief Marshal Bannister's integrity, he had somewhat less confidence in Bernardus Van Dort's. And he'd never met any Manticoran-aside, he corrected himself with a snort of amusement, from those Manty surveyors he'd encountered on the banks of the Schuyler River. For all he knew, Manties might be almost as treacherous as Sollies.

The passenger side hatch opened, and Trevor Bannister climbed out. The strength of the pang Westman felt as he saw his old friend for the first time in months surprised him. He wondered if Trevor felt the same way, but no expression crossed the Chief Marshal's face as he made a quick but thorough survey of the surroundings, then turned and walked slowly to his waiting "host."

"Afternoon, Trevor," Westman said.

"Steve." Bannister nodded, then shoved his Stetson well back on his head and gazed out over the New Missouri Gorge. "Nice scenery."

"Seemed appropriate."

The two men looked at one another for a moment, then Westman smiled.

"Don't see any desperate ambushers?"

"Didn't expect to." Bannister took off his hat and ran his fingers through his grizzled red hair. "You might want to think about the fact that the people in this air car also took your word that they had safe conduct," he said. Westman looked surprised, and the Chief Marshal snorted. "These aren't Montanans, Steve. Matter of fact, they're senior representatives of those antichrists you've been campaigning against. But they still took your word. You might want to consider what that says about whether or not you can trust what they say."

"Point taken." Westman nodded. "All the same, a dishonest man can trust an honest man to stay honest. Doesn't necessarily work the other way 'round."

"Reckon there's something in that," Bannister conceded. Then put his hat back on, turned, and waved to the passengers still in the air car.

Westman watched them disembark. Van Dort was easy to recognize, even at this distance, thanks to his height. Besides, Westman had met the Rembrandter personally. The thought was like an under-ripe persimmon, and his mouth twisted briefly before his eyes moved on to the other new arrivals.

The bearded man beside Van Dort also had blond hair and blue eyes. In fact, Westman thought with a certain inner amusement, the meeting site seemed to be crowded with tallish, blond-haired men. But the amusement faded as the off-worlders got closer and he looked into Aivars Terekhov's blue eyes. This wasn't a man to take lightly, he realized.

His concentration on the two men had held his attention until they were almost up to him. He looked past them then, at the final person to climb out of the air car, and the last flicker of amusement disappeared. He'd been told Van Dort and Captain Terekhov would be accompanied by a single aide, a Manticoran midshipwoman. Some sort of very junior lieutenant, Bannister's messenger had told him. But no one had warned him what she looked like, and despite all his own formidable self-control, his eyes darted to Trevor Bannister's face.

The Chief Marshal looked back at him, once again expressionless as a sphinx, and Westman winced mentally. It must have been like a punch in the belly when he saw that dark-haired, dark-eyed, solidly muscled young woman. Especially when he saw her standing with Bernardus Van Dort.

"Steve," Bannister said in a professionally detached tone, "I don't have to introduce you to Mr. Van Dort, I know, but this," he gestured at the Manticoran captain, "is Captain Aivars Terekhov, commanding officer of HMS Hexapuma . And this," he gestured at the young woman standing respectfully behind Van Dort and Terekhov, and his voice never even wavered, "is Midshipwoman Helen Zilwicki."

"Welcome," Westman said, shaking aside his own reaction to the young woman. "Wish I could say it's a pleasure to see you gentlemen, but I never was much good at polite lies. Nothing personal, but seeing you two on Montanan soil under any circumstances doesn't exactly make me want to do handsprings of delight."

"Chief Marshal Bannister reminded me that you're a blunt-spoken man," Van Dort said with a smile of what looked like genuine amusement. "I can work with that. In fact, I've been accused of being just a little too blunt-spoken myself, upon occasion."

"Hope you won't take this wrongly," Westman said, "but that's not the only thing you've been accused of. Especially not here on Montana."

"I'm sure it isn't," the Rembrandter conceded. "As a matter of fact, if I were a Montanan, I'd probably harbor quite a bit of-ill-will, shall we say?-where Rembrandt and the Trade Union were concerned."

One of Westman's eyebrows quirked at the admission. Of course, he reminded himself, words cost nothing. And even if Van Dort's statement was completely accurate, it didn't mean a thing about the Rembrandter's ultimate objectives.

"As I'm sure you've noticed," he said, "I've had my people put up a tent over there, under the trees. It's quite a nice tent, -actually-used to belong to some Manticoran surveyors, I believe-and it's air-conditioned. I thought we might all like to get out of the sun and sit down someplace cool for this little talk you gentlemen wanted."

Helen was confused. There was something going on between Westman, Van Dort, and-of all people-Chief Marshal Bannister. She didn't have a clue what it was, but somehow she felt certain she was mixed up in it somehow. Which was preposterous, of course, except for the fact that she knew it was the truth.

She followed the four men to the waiting tent. Its side still carried the rampant manticore of the Star Kingdom's coat of arms, and she felt a flicker of amused respect for Westman's audacity. He was making a none-too-subtle point by flaunting his trophy, but it also provided a comfortable place for the representatives of the various sides to sit down and talk.

All four men found seats around the camp table inside the tent. There was a fifth chair, but Helen chose to stand, hands clasped loosely behind her, at Van Dort's shoulder. She felt Westman's eyes flicker over her again, once more with that odd expression of almost-recognition. He looked as if he were about to insist that she sit down, which would have been in keeping with the elaborate Montanan social code. But he glanced at Van Dort and Bannister, then visibly changed his mind.

"All right," he said after a moment. "This meeting was your idea, I understand, Mr. Van Dort. That being the case, I reckon it's only fair to give you the floor first."

"Thank you," Van Dort said, but he didn't seem in any great hurry. He sat for a moment, his hands lightly folded on the camp table while he gazed out through the window-configured tent wall across the magnificent sweep of the New Missouri River Gorge. He sat that way for several seconds before he brought his gaze back inside and focused on Westman.

"I'm here," he said, "not as a representative of Rembrandt, but as the personal representative of Baroness Medusa, Queen Elizabeth's Provisional Governor for the Talbott Cluster. I don't expect you to forget I'm a Rembrandter. Nor do I expect you to forget all the reasons you have for disliking me personally, or for distrusting and detesting Rembrandt and the Trade Union. If you wish to discuss our past policies and how we went about implementing them, I'm quite prepared to do so. However, I'd like to request that you allow me to speak as Baroness Medusa's envoy first. I suspect," he allowed himself a crooked smile, "that if we get into debating Montana-Rembrandt relations, we'll be here for the next several days. At least."

Westman's mouth twitched. It looked, Helen thought, as if the Montanan had felt a sudden urge to smile back at Van Dort. If he had, he managed to suppress it quite handily, though.

"Speaking as Baroness Medusa's representative, then," Van Dort continued, "I've been instructed to ask you to set forth your exact objections to the annexation of the Montana System, at the freely voted upon request of its citizens, by the Star Kingdom of Manticore. I realize you've published your manifesto, and knowing Montanans, I have no doubt that it honestly represents your convictions. What Baroness Medusa would like to do is to give you the opportunity to expand upon your manifesto's statements. She hopes, frankly, to open a direct dialogue. To give you a channel through which both of you may straightforwardly set forth your views and opinions. Whether or not this ultimately achieves anything is, of course, impossible to predict. But Baroness Medusa feels, and I believe with reason, that without such a dialogue, there's no hope at all of arriving at a negotiated resolution of the current situation."

"I see," Westman said after frowning for several seconds. Then he shook his head-not in rejection, but to indicate a certain dubiousness, Helen thought.

"That all sounds very reasonable," the guerrilla leader went on. "But I'm just a mite skeptical. And, truth be told, it's a mite difficult for me to forget who you are. You just mentioned freely voted upon requests, but everybody in the Cluster knows the entire annexation plebiscite came out of Rembrandt. And that you personally were the driving force behind it, at least at first. I hope you won't take this wrongly, but that tends to taint the whole notion in my eyes."

"I don't blame you," Van Dort said calmly. "As I said, I'd prefer not to debate all of the past strains and tensions between Montana and the RTU. I will acknowledge freely, however, that the RTU's policies were part of a carefully planned strategy to build the economic power of the RTU's member systems as rapidly as possible. In pursuit of those policies, we did some things which, quite frankly, were one-sided and unfair to other systems. Montana was such a system, and, as such, you have every right to resent and dislike us.