“The Bula pulled out these parts of the negotiations specifically for more detailed attention,” Abumwe said. “This suggests they are not trivial to the Bula. The Bula also aren’t known for being pushovers in negotiations. I don’t think they’d put a poor negotiator in charge of this part of the process.”

“Do we know anything about Ting?” Schmidt asked.

“Nothing Hillary could find,” Abumwe said. “The Colonial Union files on diplomatic missions focus on the primary diplomats, not the secondary ones. I have her looking for more, but I don’t expect to find too much. In the meantime, what are your suggestions?”

Schmidt took a small moment to internally register surprise that Abumwe was indeed asking for options from him, and then said, “Keep doing what we’re doing. We are getting what we want from her. The thing we have to worry about at this point is getting them too soon, and getting done before the Tubingen finishes her mission.”

“I can come up with some reason to suspend negotiations until tomorrow,” Abumwe said. “I can ask for some more time to research some particular point. That won’t be difficult to do.”

“All right,” Schmidt said.

“On the subject of the Tubingen, any news from your friend?” Abumwe asked.

“I sent him an encrypted note on the next skip drone to the ship,” Schmidt said.

“You shouldn’t trust our encryption,” Abumwe said.

“I don’t,” Schmidt assured her. “But I think it would have been suspicious for me to send him an unencrypted note, considering the mission. The note itself is innocuous blather, which contains a line that says, ‘It was like that time on Phoenix Station.’”

“What does that mean?” Abumwe said.

“Basically it means ‘Tell me if something interesting is going on,’” Schmidt said. “He’ll understand it.”

“Do you want to explain to me how it is the two of you have your own little secret code?” Abumwe said. “Did you make it up together when you were six?”

“Uh,” Schmidt said, uncomfortable. “It just sort of came about.”

“Really,” Abumwe said.

“Harry would see you pissed at me during some negotiation or another and came up with it as a way to let me know he was interested in knowing the details later,” Schmidt said, quickly. He looked away as he said it.

“Are you actually that scared of me, Schmidt?” Abumwe said, after a second.

“I wouldn’t say ‘scared,’” Schmidt said. “I would say I have a healthy respect for your working methods.”

“Yes, well,” Abumwe said. “For the moment, at least, your terrified obsequiousness is not going to be useful to me. So stop it.”

“I’ll try,” Schmidt said.