Edith had chosen to wear a clinging knee-length dress of bright red, accented with gold bracelets and necklace to compliment her sunshine yellow hair. Once it had been truly that happy color; for years now she had helped it along with tint.

Faure had let her wait for almost ten minutes before he showed up, a dapper little man in a precisely-cut suit of elegant dark blue set off perfectly by a necktie of deep maroon.

He took her hand so daintily that Edith thought he was going to kiss it. Instead, Faure led her to one of the plush armchairs and sat in the one facing hers. As she sat down, Edith looked past Faure's smiling figure to the ceiling-high windows that faced uptown, northward, along the East River. She could see the Fifty-ninth Street bridge and well past it, all the way up to the Triboro and beyond.

"What a sparkling day," she said.

Faure took it as a personal compliment. "You see how the electric automobile has already improved the air quality," he said, beaming. It made his tiny eyes almost disappear.

Edith wasn't willing to let him take all the credit. "I thought the electric cars were mandated by the U.S. government. The Environmental Protection Agency, wasn't it?"

"Ah yes," said Faure quickly. "But only after our own efforts had proven successful in reducing the pollution in Tokyo and Mexico City. Now all the major cities are following our lead.' Again the smile that almost swallowed his eyes.

Edith wondered silently, Is he using the editorial 'we' or the imperial?

But she smiled back at the secretary-general and said sweetly, "You know that a big chunk of the American public doesn't agree with what you're doing to Moonbase."

Faure's expression turned hard for a moment, then he shrugged and put on a sad face. "Yes, I know. It is very unfortunate. But one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs, can one?"

Now he's saying 'one' instead of 'we', Edith realized.

"Most of the inhabitants of Moonbase are Americans," she said.

"They are violating the treaty that Americans themselves drafted. The very treaty that the American delegation originally proposed to the General Assembly and fought so hard to have passed."

"Still," Edith said, leaning back in the comfortable armchair and crossing her legs at the ankles, "many Americans sympathize with the people in Moonbase."

Faure made a what-can-I-do shrug.

"They would feel better about it," Edith continued, "if an American reporter went with the Peacekeepers and sent back on-the-spot reports."

The secretary-general began to shake his head.

"The American media would feel much better about it if a reporter were allowed to go along," Edith added.

"You mean those who control and direct the news media, no?"

"Yes. The top brass."

Faure sighed heavily. "Frankly, Miss Elgin, the American news media have not always been kind to me."

Edith kept herself from grinning. In most countries the government could muzzle the media pretty effectively. But the First Amendment was still in force in the US. So far.