"Precisely," Trevayne agreed, "and as for my . . . classified knowledge," he added, knowing they all took his meaning, "I'm not a technician, and no hard information could be got out of me. Besides, we have no reason to think they know there's any to get."
He changed the subject before any cautious souls like de Parma could spot the gaping holes in his rationalization.
"Now, about security. Obviously, this jaunt can't be a matter of public knowledge." They all nodded, knowing how their people would react to the news that the Provisional Government was having any dealings whatsoever with the Tabbies. "Officially, I'll be on exercises with the Fleet, and all transfer operations will be in the hands of people I can trust."
"What if you're gone an unusually long time?" De Parma looked glum. "What if questions come up for debate in the Assembly?"
"Don't let them," Trevayne replied cheerfully. "You're here because together you can control the Assembly. As a countryman of mine named Disraeli, who had some small experience in these matters, once said, 'A majority is the best repartee.' "
Miriam gave him a glare beneath which a smile flickered. "You and your quotes! No one out here can ever be sure you're not making them up!"
He smiled at her. "Would that I were so creative!"
Trevayne came back to the present as the cutter's hatch opened. A proudly overconscientious young Cub of the Khan, whiskers almost visibly atwitch with curiosity, led him to what would have been called the wardroom in a human capital ship, but no military courtesies were exchanged. The wardroom was under heavy guard, but when Trevayne entered only two individuals rose to greet him. He recognized Leornak at once, and the human beside him looked vaguely familiar. Trevayne felt he ought to recognize the man, but he couldn't quite place him.
"Welcome to Szolkir, Admiral," Leornak greeted him.
"Thank you, Governor."
Trevayne watched Leornak's tufted ear twitch as his computer translated the Standard English into Orion. It was an impressive performance, but the Orions had always been exceptionally good with computers and cybernetics-not that they had all the answers. Like the Federation, they'd been persistently thwarted in their efforts to create an artificial intelligence which didn't go promptly insane on them. Still, they made much more use of voice-coded software, even aboard warships, than Terrans did.
Of course, their language and vocal apparatus gave them a considerable advantage there. There were no Orion homonyms, and Orion voice patterns were even more readily identifiable than human patterns, which made computer authentication much simpler. More importantly, perhaps, Orions tended to express strong emotions-like excitement and fear-with visual cues, not voice cues. To date, the Federation had been unable to devise a voice-coded software package which could cope with human stress patterns without requiring a prohibitive amount of storage space. Trevayne himself had been a gunnery officer aboard the superdreadnought Ranter the last time BuShips had tried to introduce voice-cuing into Fleet use, and he still shuddered at the memory of that fiasco.
Leornak reclaimed his attention with a graceful gesture at his human guest. "Allow me to present an old colleague and sometime opponent, Mister Kevin Sanders, representing the Prime Minister of the Terran Federation."
Of course! Trevayne shook hands with the tallish, slender man, whose sharp features and gray Vandyke gave him a foxy look. He was well over 120, Trevayne remembered; in an age before longevity treatments, he might have been a sprightly and well-preserved sixty. Like Trevayne, he wore conservative civilian clothing.
"Good to see you back on the active list, Admiral Sanders," Trevayne said after the initial greetings. "Last I heard, you were still engaged in ruining the image of retired officers."
Sanders' merry blue eyes twinkled upward into Trevayne's somber dark-brown ones, and he chuckled.
"Strictly speaking, I'm no longer an 'admiral.' True, I was dusted off and brought back to ONI after the insurrection-for some reason, there were quite a lot of early retirements about then. But I resigned my commission last year to become a minister without portfolio in the Dieter Government-a liaison of sorts between the Cabinet and the intelligence community."
He noted Trevayne's raised eyebrows at the words the Dieter Government, but he said nothing. Privately, he was impressed by how well Trevayne had controlled the surprise he must have felt.
"But," he concluded, "that's more than enough about me. It's a privilege to meet you, Admiral, and also a pleasure. For one thing, I once had the privilege of serving under your great-grandmother, when she was head of ONI. And for another, we're both members of a rare breed out here: I'm also from Old Terra."
"Yes," Trevayne said. "I know."
"Oh?" Sanders' gaze grew a trifle sharper. "How?"
Trevayne indulged himself. "I've always been fascinated by the variations with which we native English-speakers still manage to enliven what's become a universal trade language," he said with a professorial air Miriam would instantly have recognized. "You, sir, are a North American-from either the old Canadian Maritime Provinces or the Tidewater area of the old American states of Virginia and Maryland, I'd say. The two dialects are almost identical, you know."
Sanders managed to keep his aplomb, saying only, "The latter is correct." He wasn't at his best dealing with people as clever as himself, a deficiency he ascribed to lack of opportunity for practice.
Leornak's grin grew and his whiskers quivered slightly as he regarded the two humans. "Kevin," he said to Sanders, "I had a feeling this meeting would be a salutary experience for you. Unfortunately, I have duties to attend to and I must leave, as much as I am enjoying this. And you gentlemen doubtless need a degree of privacy-but I shall expect you for dinner afterwards."
Trevayne felt a momentary uneasiness at the invitation. Terran and Orion biochemistries were close enough to make such shared social events practical, but humans found some Orion culinary practices . . . disturbing. His queasiness died quickly as Leornak's slit-pupiled eyes laughed at him. Of course-a confirmed old cosmopolite like Leornak could be expected to defer to his guests' sensibilities by avoiding such customs as munching live specimens of that species which had always reminded Trevayne of hairless mice.
After the door closed behind Leornak, the Terrans sat at a low table on the cushions which served Orions in lieu of chairs, and Sanders poured from the bottle he and Leornak had been sampling. Bourbon, Trevayne thought dourly, had become so popular among upper-crust Orions that it was one of the Federation's major export items. Why the bloody hell hadn't the Tabbies had the common decency to take a liking to fine, malt Scotch?
He raised the glass, returning Sanders' brief salute, and drank. Then, somewhat fortified, he asked the question he had not cared to ask in Leornak's presence.
"Ah . . . correct me if I'm wrong, but did I understand you to refer to the Dieter government?"
"Why, yes," Sanders answered with a look of bland innocence. "I noticed you seemed surprised," he added. Damn the man!
"Well," Trevayne said carefully, "my last news from the Innerworlds was just before the mutinies. You must admit, at that time Mister Dieter's political star wasn't exactly in the ascendant." The single time he'd met Dieter, the man had struck him as a typical, blindly avaricious Corporate World political hack. "It's just seems a trifle . . . odd, from my perspective out here."