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favor.”
    “Felithe! Why?”
    He shrugged at her expression of dismay. “You know that Wells has many friends, friends who are in a position to cause the Terran Council a great deal of grief.”
    “It seemed to me that the Nines have been quiet lately. Are they still a problem?”
    “The Nines will be a problem until they grow up or die off,” Berberon said with uncommon depth of feeling. “They are arrogant, self-important elitists who’ve decided they will only tolerate sharing Earth with their inferiors if they themselves are in charge.” Checking his outburst, he smiled sheepishly. “Forgive me. You did not ask me here to listen to me carry on about matters that are outside your concern.”
    “Yet it seems that your problems with the Nines affect us here.”
    “They affect my public posture only. I cast no vote in Committee. It’s your Directors who will decide whether Wells gets what he is asking for, and you after them.”
    “I’d hoped to enlist you to speak against him. Or at least to offer him no support.”
    Berberon lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness.“How can I? My charge is to befriend him, to assist him in obtaining what he wants. Thus the Council hopes to buy off the Nines and focus their attention elsewhere. And there are other considerations as well. Thirty percent of Earth’s industrial product is related to Defense expenditures. Wells’s buildup has helped us considerably.”
    “So to keep the money flowing and the workers busy, you would give a man who feels as Wells does that kind of power—”
    “Alone he is not a threat to our interests,” Berberon said softly. “Collectively the Nines are.”
    Erickson pressed her body back into the cushions and stared out the window, as though seeking to withdraw from him. “I invited Felithe Berberon to my apartment, but it seems I got the Terran Observer to the Committee instead. Can you never speak for yourself?”
    Sighing, Berberon drained his glass and set it aside. “My own thoughts are irrelevant. I’ve survived here this long because I obediently advocate what I am told to advocate.”
    “Even when you disagree?”
    Berberon cocked an eyebrow and shrugged. “If my wisdom were better thought of, I would be on the World Council, not representing it.”
    “Felithe, please—am I wrong to mistrust Wells? To want this weapon never to come into existence?” There was honest anguish in her voice.
    It was Berberon’s turn to stare out the window as he carefully composed an answer. “I am convinced that Wells is sincerely interested in the security of the Unified Worlds. If I may revive .an archaic word, he is a patriot. That is both his strength and his weakness. As for Triad—perhaps it is my age that makes me so fearless. I hope the Mizari are gone, extinct thousands of years ago. But if they are not, I would like to know that we will fare better against them the second time.”
    “Then your own beliefs are not so far from official policy as you might have wanted me to think.“Berberon’s smile was rueful. “In this instance, perhaps not, after all.”
    Eyes downcast, Blythe drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. “I suppose I’ve known this has been coming since he joined the Committee.” She raised her head and met Berberon’s gaze. “Thank you for coming by, Ambassador. You can see yourself out?”
    She seemed lonely; perhaps that was inevitable for one in her position. If he were a younger man, or a different kind of man, he might have stayed and tried to fill that need. But it was not the kind of thing Felithe Berberon did, not the kind of relationship he formed. He had learned that lesson decades ago: that as expediency demanded, he could find himself tomorrow lining up against a friend made today. Knowing that, he had kept his distance and been rewarded for his discipline. Through the years Chancellors and Directors alike came and went, while Berberon carried on just the same, his tenure