She looked around the conference table and saw nothing but agreement. Indeed, the secretaries who’d most strongly backed her against Giancola from the beginning seemed even angrier than the Secretary of State’s supporters. She wondered how much of that was genuine exasperation with the Manties, and how much of it was frustration at seeing Giancola’s predictions of the Star Kingdom’s intransigence being borne out.

She made herself pause for a few seconds to acknowledge the danger of so much anger. Angry people didn’t think clearly. They were vulnerable to the making of overly hasty decisions.

“On the other hand,” she made herself say, “Tom and Denis are right to point out that there’s at least a potential opening in their question about Trevor’s Star. So I propose that we send them a reply specifically and definitively ceding sovereignty over that single system to them.”

Several of Giancola’s longest term supporters looked rebellious, but the Secretary of State himself nodded with every appearance of approval.

“What about their closing section?” LePic asked. “Should we take some notice of it and express our own desire to break this ‘logjam’ of theirs?”

“I’d advise against that, actually,” Giancola said thoughtfully. LePic looked at him suspiciously, and the Secretary of State shrugged. “I don’t know that it would be a bad idea, Denis; I’m just not sure it would be a good one. We’ve been to some lengths to establish our impatience with the way they’ve been fobbing us off for so long. If we send them a very brief note, possibly one which responds only to a single point from this one,” he tapped his own hardcopy of the Descroix note, “and does so in a way which makes it obvious that we’re attempting to address their legitimate concerns—their legitimate concerns, Denis—but ignoring what Tony just called ‘eyewash,’ then we make it clear we’re willing to be reasonable but not to retreat from our insistence that they negotiate seriously. In fact, the briefer the note, the more likely it is to make those points for us, particularly after how lengthy our previous notes have grown.”

Pritchart regarded him with carefully concealed surprise. Much as she might distrust his ultimate ambitions, she couldn’t fault his logic at the moment.

“I think it might be wiser to make at least some acknowledgment of their comments,” LePic argued. “I don’t see any harm in making an explicit connection between our assurances about Trevor’s Star and their expressed desire to find some way to move forward.”

“I understand your position, Denis,” Giancola assured him. “You may well even be right. I just think we’ve used up so many millions of words talking to these people that it might be time to resort to a certain brutal brevity to make our point. Especially when the one we’re making is our willingness to concede one of their demands. At the very least, the change of pace should be like letting a breath of fresh air into the negotiations.”

“I think Arnold may have a point, Denis,” Pritchart said. LePic looked at her for a moment, then shrugged.