“I’ve decided I like her, too,” Honor confessed. “I never thought I’d say that about any member of the Liberal Party, either. Of course, aside from the Liberals’ anti-genetic slavery stance, I don’t know how much she really has in common with the rest of ‘her’ party.” Honor’s tone remained almost serene, but her eyes narrowed dangerously. Her bred-in-the-bone hatred for the genetic slave trade was as implacable as a Sphinx winter, probably because of her mother. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone else express herself so, um… eloquently on the topic,” she added.

“She does have a way with words, and I’d certainly agree that she suffers from a certain tunnel vision on that particular topic,” Henke allowed with a smile. “Not to mention a pronounced need to kick the Establishment in the teeth just on general principles. One of my cousins is married to Cathy’s brother-in-law George Larabee, Lord Altamont, and she tells me Lady Altamont, George’s mother, is absolutely livid over the way Cathy is openly ‘living in sin’ with a mere commoner. And not just any commoner! A Gryphon highlander who’s on half-pay for his offenses against military discipline!”

Henke chuckled, then sobered.

“This time, though, I thought she had the bastards nailed. God knows how she got her hands on those records—and, personally, I’ll be just as happy if He never gets around to explaining it all to me. But from what Mom said, and from everything I read in the ’faxes, it certainly sounded like there wasn’t much question that they were genuine.”

“No question at all.” Honor, who, unlike Henke, had a very good notion of how the Countess of the Tor had come into possession of the damning documentation, agreed. For a moment, she considered explaining her suspicions about Captain Zilwicki and his role in the mysterious intelligence windfall to her friend, then decided against it. They weren’t really something Mike needed to know… just as she didn’t need to know some of the other things Andrew LaFollet had discovered about Anton Zilwicki. Like exactly what it was that the half-pay captain’s new private security firm was doing with some of the information which the Countess had not turned over to the authorities.

“Unfortunately,” she went on instead, “the individuals who were specifically named were all relatively small fish. Socially prominent in some cases, perhaps, and politically important enough to be highly visible in others, but not close enough to the seats of power to be really crippling. The fact that so many of them had connections to the Conservatives and—especially!—to certain members of the Liberal Party, as well, was certainly embarrassing. For that matter, the Ministry of Justice has put a couple of dozen of them away for a long, long time. But there were just enough of them in the other parties or among the Independents—even two among the Centrists, I’m sorry to say—for the apologists to argue that ‘everyone did it’ and keep any one party from being singled out for blame. And the fact that there were no direct links to the party leaders let the Government defuse the worst possible repercussions by shouting louder than anyone else for the prosecution of the individuals who were named. Like Hendricks, when they recalled him from Old Terra and sent out a new ambassador.”