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from McKae. She seemed somehow to see that as an indication of a kind of moral ascendancy on Bley s' part. Since that time, McKae had largely been acquiescent in whatever Bleys had planned.
    Darrel McKae, Bleys reminded himself now, had not gotten to his position by being a weakling. And for all that he might have become overly fond, of late, of both wine and his office—and even been repelled, or frightened, by something he had been able to see in Bleys—the fact was that in large part he had not opposed Bleys because he was smart enough to know he had very little to gain by getting into a public spat with the First Elder he himself had appointed .. . but that implied truce would work only so long as nothing happened to upset the Eldest.
    "Not yet," Bleys told Toni now. "But we'll clear it with his office anyway. He won't object. Could you have the Office of the First Elder draft an official communication to the Eldest's Office?"
    "I will," she said. "And may I suggest we ask both Offices for suggestions for one or two diplomatic missions you could undertake while on Ceta? It would add weight to the official purpose of the trip—"
    "You're right," he said, interrupting her. "Having a second level of reasons for doing something always tends to deflect observers."
    "—and also provides justification if you find you have to move about Ceta, to places where there are no Friendly troops to visit; or if you're noticed to have been moving about in secret."
    "Thank you," he said. "I hadn't thought of that."
    "You're not yet used to thinking of yourself as a public officer," she said.
    "I know," he said, a little ruefully. "To tell the truth, I'm uncomfortable with having the extra position. It's a drag on me, holding me down from being free to go when and where I want."
    "It's one of the prices you have to pay to carry out your own mission," she said. He knew she was thinking of the plan he had made his life's task, which only she—and to a much more limited extent, Dahno—knew: to gather the worthwhile elements of the human race back together on Old Earth, shutting the Mother World away from space travel and forcing the race to give up its reckless adventuring until it grew up ... a plan he knew would result in the slow deaths of all of the Younger Worlds, and likely the faster deaths of a lot of their people.
    The alternative was to let the undisciplined, immature people who made up the human race con tinue to be distracted from the need to grow up by shiny dreams of future adventures—to let them continue to feel no concern for the hurts they did to others, or for the dangers that surely lay out there among the stars.
    After a brief pause, she continued in a much lighter tone: "You'd have thought of it yourself. You just haven't had time to get down to the details yet."
    She smiled at him.
    "Shall I begin?" She uncrossed her black-trousered legs in anticipation of his response.
    "Yes," he said. "No, wait—we also need to arrange transportation. Can you find out the status of both Favored of God and Burning Bush”
    "I can, of course," she said, looking slightly puzzled. "It's standing orders that one of them's always available to go on eight hours' notice—are you concerned it won't be ready? Or is it that you want a particular ship?"
    "I want both ships," he said.
    "Both?"
    "Yes," he said. "I want to travel, officially and openly, in one of them. But I want whichever one is able to get off first to precede us under a false name and papers, to be in place already on the ground, and in no way associated with us, before we ourselves get to Ceta."
    "Are you expecting that much trouble? You have diplomatic immunity now, you know."
    "I had immunity when we went to Newton," he pointed out, "and it didn't stop the Council from attacking me. While I'm certainly a much more important figure now, politically, the fact is I simply don't know what to expect. I don't know who those people we'll be looking for are, or what their