"Do you think that- "

Silence.

"Hey! I was watching that!"

Lagg rolled all six eyes at her husband's words. "You were asleep."

His tentacles flapping in denial, Rakos said, "I was not asleep, I was just resting my eyes. Put it back on."

Sitting down in the acid pool, Lagg said, "I could hear you snoring."

"I was just muttering about the weak commentary."

"You don't even know what they were talking about," Lagg said with a laugh.

Rakos's tongue slithered out of his mouth. "They were talking about that baseball team the president likes."

"Wrong. They were talking about aid to Carda.s.sia. Some Trill reporter was babbling on."

Frowning with both mouths, Rakos said, "Really? Hm. I guess I did fall asleep."

"Come join me in the pool, dear, your skin is looking too smooth."

Rakos clambered out of the seating dish and slithered over to the acid pool. "Yes, dear."

Chapter Nineteen.

DOGAYN 418 WALKED OUT of hir fourteenth-floor office into the warp core, to see Eduardo de la Vega standing at the desk of hir a.s.sistant, Mikhail Okha.

Eduardo gave Dogayn a pleading expression. "Doh, will you explain to this crazy man that I'm an old friend of yours, please?"

Mikhail turned and said, "Dogayn, this man claims to be a friend of yours."

"So I've heard." Dogayn smiled. "Do you have any proof of this, whoever you are?"

Rolling his eyes, Eduardo said, "Oh come on, Doh, will you just for once stop this c.r.a.p?"

Laughing, Dogayn said, "It's all right, Mikhail-we used to be in the trenches together. Eddie here is an aide to Councillor Huang."

Turning a withering gaze, which Dogayn had already learned to fear, onto Eduardo, Mikhail said, "You could've said you worked for Councillor Huang in the first place."

"Sorry," Eduardo said in a small voice.

Mikhail turned back to Dogayn. "You have the transportation meeting in twenty minutes."

"I know. Are the latest stats on my padd?"

"How should I know, it's your padd."

"Of course." Dogayn resisted the urge to say something snide. Having once been an a.s.sistant hirself many moons ago, s/he knew better than most how important it was not to antagonize one's a.s.sistant, as one's life depended on that person more than most. Mikhail had not been Dogayn's choices/he'd inherited him from hir predecessor as deputy chief of staff, Xeldara Trask-but s/he wasn't about to complain. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and the young Hermat wasn't about to make waves by complaining about hir a.s.sistant.

At least now I know why Trask didn't take this guy with her back to Tiburon, s/he thought with a grin as s/he invited Eduardo back into hir office.

"Actually," Eduardo said, "I was wondering if you wanted to have lunch."

Dogayn tried to remember the last time s/he had had time for a lunch that wasn't a lunch meeting. S/he failed. "Eddie, honest, I can't. You just heard, I have a meeting in half an hour- "

"Twenty minutes!" Mikhail cried with a long-suffering tone.

"Those things never start on time anyhow," s/he said to hir a.s.sistant, then turned back to Eduardo. "Anyhow, I've got a meeting with the arts commission after that, then I have to do prep for the Trinni/ek visit tomorrow, and then something on fifteen that I don't even remember what it is."

Without missing a beat, Mikhail said, "The president wishes to discuss tomorrow's council session with you and Ashante."

"There you go. That's a late-afternoon meeting with the president, it's guaranteed to start at least half an hour late and go on two hours longer than scheduled. I'm sorry, man."

"That's a lot of meetings."

"It's normal, apparently. When Esperanza Piniero sold me on this job, she didn't warn me about how many more meetings there'd be." Dogayn smiled. To hir surprise, Eduardo didn't. Something's obviously on Eddie's mind. Dogayn wondered what it was. They'd known each other since their early days in the world of politics, Eduardo as an aide to the councillor for Alpha Centauri, Dogayn in a like role for Councillor Saltroni 815 of Hermat. They'd both moved up to senior positions on the staffs of their respective councillors, Dogayn as Saltroni's chief of staff, Eduardo as Huang's primary legislator.

"Some other time?" s/he asked.

"I kinda need to talk to you about something right now."

Dogayn shrugged and moved back toward hir office. "Fine, let's talk here. I have a door that closes all by itself and everything."

"The thing is- "

As Dogayn approached it, the door to hir office opened three-quarters of the way, hesitated, then opened the rest of the way. "Of course, whether or not it ever opens again is, you'll pardon the pun, an open question. Mikhail, have you- ?"

"Maintenance looked at the door this morning before you came in."

"And?"

"They said it was fine."

Dogayn rolled hir eyes. "It isn't 'fine.' Doors that are 'fine' don't open partway, take a coffee break, and then open the rest of the way."

"If you feel it's necessary, I'll call maintenance again."

"I feel it's necessary."

"Very well."

Turning back to Eduardo, s/he said, "Anyhow, I've got twenty minutes- "

"Fifteen now," Mikhail put in.

Ignoring him, Dogayn went on. "- so let's talk now."

Eduardo hesitated. "Thing is- "

"What?"

"I don't want to talk about this here. You and I have a closed-door meeting, people will notice."

Dogayn frowned. "Eddie, we're not having a closed-door meeting. We've known each other for ten years, we've worked together on a dozen pieces of legislation over the years, and you've just come up to see how I'm enjoying my cushy-tushy new job."

Eduardo just stared at hir.

"What?"

" 'Cushy-tushy'? What does that mean?"

"It means my job is finally better than yours. Now will you please get in here?"

Letting out a very long breath, Eduardo finally said, "Fine, we'll talk here."

Dogayn entered hir cramped office. The office was a quarter of a circle in the center of the fourteenth floor of the Palais, matching those of the other three deputy chiefs of staff, with smaller offices and desks surrounding them, where their a.s.sistants and staff sat. It was smaller than hir previous office with the rest of Saltroni's staff on the eighth floor, but it was also better by virtue of hir not having to share it with anyone.

Offering Eduardo a seat on the only one of hir three guest chairs that wasn't piled with padds, s/he said, "So what's so urgent?"

"Carda.s.sia."

Dogayn shrugged, a.s.suming Eduardo was talking about the renewal of aid to Carda.s.sia that was to be voted on the following day, and not the planet itself. "It'll pa.s.s in a walk, why?"

"It won't, Doh."

That got Dogayn's attention. "What?"

"It won't."

"How can it not pa.s.s?"

"Well," Eduardo said dryly, "the usual method is to not get enough votes."

"Very funny," Dogayn said, though that was the first sign s/he'd seen that Eduardo had regained his sense of humor. "Who's left the Neutral Zone?"

"I'm not sure."

Glaring at hir old friend, Dogayn said, "If you're not sure, then how- "

"All I know for sure is that Huang's voting against it."

That brought Dogayn up short. "What?"

"She's voting against it-and before you ask, I don't know why. All I know is that she told me not to bother drafting a decision on Carda.s.sia."

"Which she wouldn't do unless she was voting against."

"Yup."

"d.a.m.n."

"This is why I didn't want to tell you this in a meeting in your office."

Dogayn still didn't get this. "Why the h.e.l.l not?"

"Because I don't want Huang thinking I'm going behind her back to Bacco."

"Eddie, you are going behind her back to Bacco."

"Yeah, but I don't want it to look like that."

"Fine." Dogayn sighed. "If anyone asks, you just came here to set up lunch."

"I hope that works." Eduardo got up.

Dogayn did likewise. "Eddie?"

"Yeah?"

"Why did you go behind her back?"

Eduardo hesitated. "Remember that trip to Carda.s.sia a few years back, after Ghemor was elected?"

Dogayn nodded. S/he hadn't taken that trip because Saltroni hadn't, but Huang had, and she'd taken her top aides, as part of a goodwill trip that several councillors had taken in order to help lend legitimacy to Alon Ghemor's rather fragile government.

"When I was out there, I met this reporter from FNS. She took me out to where they weren't letting the councillors go. We had to sneak through some checkpoints, and I swear to you, Doh, I thought for sure we were gonna get killed. And what she showed me..." Eduardo shivered.

In over a decade of working together, Dogayn had never seen Eduardo look like this.

"Children, Doh. Little children, who were skinnier than my finger. They were gathering stones from the rubble of bombed-out buildings in order to make some kind of shelter for themselves. The reporter told me about three kids who died when their shelter collapsed in a storm, crushing them to death and giving them their own grave, all in one shot. And things have gotten worse since then. We can't just stop helping them."

Dogayn didn't say anything for several seconds. Then, finally, in a weak whisper, s/he said, "Thanks, Eddie."

"Just do what you can, okay?"

With that, Eduardo got up and left.

Moments later, s/he activated hir intercom. "Mikhail, I need the next five minutes Esperanza has."

William Ross sat across from Esperanza Piniero as the latter read over the report on the padd the admiral had given her.