The frog’s golden eye flicked over to his companion. “We shouldn’t…”

“We should. You should,” Cocomama insisted.

Babel knew then: she saw the way Curare glanced toward President Fujimori, saw the muscles tighten under his slick, glossy body. Babel shifted the pattern on her power, still allowing the others to talk among themselves, but putting a wall around herself, Curare, and Cocomama. “Curare is right. You can’t do that,” she told Cocomama, as heads around the table, puzzled by the nonsense words they heard her speaking, turned toward them. “That’s not a solution.”

Cocomama’s face twisted in a sneer. “We’ve given away too much,” Curare told Barbara in a croaking, cartoon-figure voice. Barbara knew the words were likely more Cocomama’s than his own—or perhaps those of the Messenger In Black. His tongue flicked out, as if tasting the air, and translucent eyelids slid over the globes of his eyes. “This isn’t all we wanted. We asked for so much more. We needed much more.”

“I understand that,” she answered. “But diplomacy is the art of compromise, and you can have a portion of what you wanted now, gained with nothing more than your signature. You’ll have a voice in the government, to which everyone will be required to listen. You and the New Shining Path will have immediate legitimacy.”

They were all watching the three of them now, quizzical and unable to understand what they were saying. Jayewardene stared at Babel, puzzled but with a quizzical smile, his hands clasped before him as if they could hold him in his seat. Lohengrin did stand, a winged helm now covering his face, and Barbara saw his hands flexing on the greatsword as he glared at the New Shining Path aces through the eye slits. Cameras flashed all around them, everyone sensing that there was a problem. Barbara shook her head slightly to Klaus and Jayewardene as she continued to speak to Curare and Cocomama.

“If you falter now, if your great courage in taking this step fails,” she told them, knowing that they too were seeing Lohengrin’s growing impatience and anger, and must feel the tension increasing around the table, “if you choose revenge over compromise, you both lose everything. Believe me, I understand this situation better than you might think. Isn’t it wiser to eat the meal offered to you than to shove it away and go entirely hungry? This way, you have the energy and the opportunity to gain all you wanted another day; the other, you will inevitably starve and die.”

She realized that she understood Cocomama’s feelings quite well. She understood wanting more. All the times you have been the one with the negotiated solution, the diplomatic and correct answer, yet Klaus or Jayewardene was given the credit. All the times you were in the background of the picture, never the one on which the cameras were focused …

“We should listen to her, Lorra,” Curare croaked urgently. Curare’s long tongue flicked out, then back. The sticky pads of his fingers touched the paper and pen in front of him as he stared hard at Cocomama.