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whose presence here was nevertheless slightly unsettling. The three of them eyed Abumwe coolly; she returned the favor. No one was paying attention to Schmidt, and he was fine with that.
    “We’re here,” Egan said, to Abumwe. “You have five minutes before you and Ambassador Rodabaugh have to get back to it. So tell us why you so urgently needed to see us all.”
    “You haven’t been entirely forthcoming with me about this wildcat colony on Wantji,” Abumwe said. Schmidt noted the clipped tone that Abumwe’s voice took on when she was especially irritated; he wondered if it was noticeable to anyone else at the table.
    “In what way?” Egan asked.
    “In that it’s not a wildcat colony at all, it’s an under-the-radar Colonial Defense Forces outpost,” Abumwe said.
    This received about ten seconds of silence, with Rodabaugh, Egan and Rigney studiously not looking at one another. “I’m not entirely sure why you think that is,” Egan said.
    “Are we going to waste the next five minutes with this sort of bullshit, Colonel?” Abumwe said. “Or are we actually going to talk about how this is going to affect our negotiations?”
    “It’s not going to affect the negotiations at all—,” Rodabaugh said.
    “Really,” Abumwe said, cutting her off. Schmidt noted the chagrin on Rodabaugh’s face at this, but she and Abumwe were technically of the same diplomatic rank, so there was little she could do about it. “Because, Anissa, I have a Bula sub-ambassador I’ve been talking to for the last day who I am almost entirely certain knows more about this so-called colony than I do. I think as a result I’m being led down a very short pier. I think when I get pushed off, the entire negotiation is going to go down with me. If I fail at a negotiation because of my own failures, I accept that. If I fail because I’m being screwed by my own side, that I will not accept.”
    Colonel Rigney, who had been silent to this point, turned to Schmidt. “Your friend Harry Wilson’s on the Tubingen, ” he said, to Schmidt. “I just checked through my BrainPal. He’s the one who’s feeding you information.”
    Schmidt opened his mouth, but Abumwe reached out to touch Schmidt on the shoulder. This as much as anything else shocked Schmidt into silence; he couldn’t remember another time Abumwe had physically touched him before. “If Hart or Harry Wilson have done anything, it’s been on my orders,” she said.
    “You ordered him and Wilson to essentially spy on a Colonial Defense Forces mission,” Rigney said.
    “I reminded them of their obligation to help me achieve our goals as diplomats,” Abumwe said.
    “By spying on the Colonial Defense Forces mission,” Rigney repeated.
    “I appreciate the attempt to run out the clock by distracting me into a side discussion, Colonel Rigney, but let’s not,” Abumwe said. “I repeat: We have a military mission on a Bula world. I’m almost certain the Bula we are negotiating with are aware of it.”
    “What’s your proof of that?” Rodabaugh asked.
    “Nothing hard,” Abumwe said. “But I know when people aren’t negotiating in good faith.”
    “That’s it?” Rodabaugh said. “You have a feeling ? You’re dealing with an alien species, for Christ’s sake. Their whole psychology is entirely different.”
    “And that doesn’t matter at all, because in fact we have an illegal military outpost on this alien species’ planet,” Abumwe said. “If I am wrong, then we lose nothing. If I am right, however, then we risk the failure of the entire process.”
    “What do you want from us, Ambassador?” Egan asked Abumwe.
    “I want to know what’s really going on,” Abumwe said. “It’s bad enough that I went into negotiations having to deal with the possibility that the Bula would discover we snuck a military ship into their territory to remove an attacked wildcat colony, but at least I could spin that if I had to. There is no way to spin a CDF ship coming to the