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straw men.”
    “Berberon? How did he find out about the test?”
    “That’s a separate problem. The point is, he wasn’t impressed.” Wells leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. “Teo, my predecessor in this office made a career out of underestimating the Mizari. I wouldn’t like to see you repeating his error.”
    Farlad took a seat across from Wells. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand your thinking. If you’re convinced the Defenders can’t fulfill their mission, why did you continue the program? Why did you accelerate deployment if you don’t believe there’s any strategic value?”
    “Not all strategies are directed against the enemy,” Wells said quietly. With a sideways glance he scanned the columns of numbers that had appeared on the display. “I think perhaps we can carry this off, Berberon notwithstanding.”
    Comprehension dawned on Farlad’s face. “The Committee—”
    “If I were to have come in four years ago and scrapped the Defenders, telling the Committee that they were useless, we would have been forced to spend the next twenty years building something to replace them.”
    “I still don’t see the value—”
    “Consider the deployment of the Defenders. Three for Earth., Two for Journa. One each for Ba’ar Tell and Maranit and Rena-Kiri.”
    “Protecting the five most populous Worlds,” Farlad said slowly. “All of which are represented by Observers. And if the Observers believe that their home worlds are safe—”
    Smiling faintly, Wells interrupted. “Only when they feel safe will they allow us to focus on building a weapons system that would allow us to carry the fight to the Mizari.”
    “Triad.” Farlad shook his head. “I always thought it was a little crazy to base a Defender at Ba’ar Tell, way out in one of the safe octants, before we placed one at Liam-Won, practically in the Mizari’s backyard. Now I see—Liam-Won has sixty-one million inhabitants, while Ba’ar Tell has well over a billion.”
    “That was one consideration,” Wells said, nodding. “Another is that while Ambassador Ka’in is well liked and respected, Prince Denzell is an obnoxious prig who has even alienated Comité Vandekar, his planet-kin.”
    “So while on the one hand we assure enough votes to approve Triad,” Farlad mused, “at the same time we make clear that it’s good to be our friend.”
    “Just so.”
    “The only thing that puzzles me is that Triad can’t have any deterrent value unless we reestablish contact with the Mizari. And even if we do reestablish contact, we don’t know what level of threat would be a deterrent to them.”
    “We can be sure the Defenders would not be,” Wells said, then paused. “But you’re right—we simply have to learn more about the Mizari. We can’t be confident that we’re secure until we do.”
    “Director Lycom was considering a proposal to send drift probes into the quarantine zone—”
    “And then cower behind the Sentinel line for another two hundred years, waiting for them to reach Mizar-Alcor? That might have been fine for Lycom but not for me. Don’t trouble yourself to mention it again.” Wells’s answer was reflexive rather than angry; he was staring past Farlad with an unfocused gaze, most of his attention elsewhere.
    “No, sir,” Farlad said. “Comité, have you read Jiadur’s Wake yet?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Thackery’s book. I told you about it yesterday.”
    “No.”
    “I really urge you to take a look at it soon. There are some perspectives in it we haven’t seen anywhere else in the record—”
    “Suggestion noted,” Wells said, returning from his reverie and straightening up in his chair. “When will the video abstract of the Ba’ar Tell exercise be ready for prescreening?”
    “It’s being edited now. Should be no more than another hour or so.”
    “I’ll want to see it as soon as possible. We need to make it easy for the Committee to say yes to Triad.”
    “I’ll go down and