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“You switched sides, Doh,” Je’er said without looking up from her workstation.

Throwing up hir hands, Dogayn cried, “No, dammit, I didn’t ‘switch’ anything. We’re on the same side, I’m just on a different part of it. This isn’t about ‘sides,’ anyhow-it’s not a game, it’s government. We’re supposed to serve the people, not- “

Now Je’er looked up. “The people of Bre’el IV would be best served by allowing the Falric Institute to study demiurgical phenomena.”

“I gotta tell you, Je’er-I don’t even know what that means.”

“Then you’ve got no business calling it insane. Now get out of my office, please, I have real work to do.”

Dogayn stared at a woman s/he would have counted as a friend not a day earlier. Hell, not an hour earlier.

Shaking hir head, s/he departed the office without a word.

“It’s not gonna work.”

At Dogayn’s words, Esperanza looked up in annoyance at hir and Ashante. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We couldn’t turn enough people,” Ashante said. “We’ve committed to Nea’s infrastructure bill, but it wasn’t enough.”

Appalled, Esperanza said, “Tell me that wasn’t all you offered?”

“That’s all anyone took,” Ashante said. “A couple people bought a general plea of sanity without concessions.”

“Nice to know common sense occasionally prevails.” Esperanza got up and walked over to her replicator to get an iced tea. “You guys want anything?”

Ashante shook her head, but Dogayn said, “A frimlike, if you could.”

“Tea, raspberry, iced, and a frimlike, mildly heated.”

Dogayn smiled as the replicator glowed, hummed, and provided the two drinks; the Hermat seemed suitably impressed that hir boss knew how s/he preferred hir frimlike. Then hir expression grew more serious. “We made plenty of offers, but several people wouldn’t budge.”

“Or they asked for crazy stuff,” Ashante added.

“Like what?” Esperanza asked as she handed Dogayn hir drink.

Shuddering slightly, Dogayn said, “You don’t wanna know.”

Esperanza closed her eyes and blew out a breath. “Nitram wanted the demiurgical study?”

Dogayn nodded.

“And Gleer’s called in a lot of markers,” Ashante said. “He’s made this even more his personal mission than Enaren has. I told Strovos we’d lift the tariffs on zenite, and he still wouldn’t go for it.”

Esperanza sat back down at her desk and sipped her iced tea. “That’s been Strovos’s pet cause since he got elected.”

“It’s been every Ardanan councillor’s pet cause for the last hundred years,” Ashante said. “I don’t know what Gleer has on Strovos, but it must be pretty good. And he’s not the only one Gleer’s got in a headlock.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Ashante folded her arms. “Assuming Ontail continues to not show up-and five’ll get you ten they’d vote no anyhow-we’ve only got seventy.”

Slamming a fist on her desk hard enough to almost spill her iced tea, Esperanza said, “Dammit! Where are we gonna get seven more votes?”

“Well, I’ve got a crazy idea,” Ashante said, now unfolding her arms.

Grasping at straws, Esperanza said, “Shoot.”

“I was able to convince zh’Faila and C29 Green, and Dogayn was able to turn Govrin, just by the argument that voting no would be bad for the Federation.”

Not sure where Ashante was going with this, Esperanza said, “Right.”

“So why not try that trick on Enaren? He’s always been fairly reasonable. Maybe he can be convinced.”

Esperanza considered the matter. “Yeah, okay, go talk to- “

“It shouldn’t be either of us-or you,” Ashante said. “It has to be the president.”

“No,” Esperanza said emphatically. “It’ll be me, but the president doesn’t hear about this. Not with Trinni/ek and the Romulans and the Klingons and the Pioneers losing today.”

Dogayn frowned. “What does baseball have to do with it?”

“In a perfect world, baseball’s the president’s safety valve-it’s what she uses to distract herself when the nonsense threatens to overwhelm her.”

“The problem,” Ashante said, “is that there’s too much nonsense there, too. Her favorite team’s screwing up.”

Dogayn smirked. “Maybe she should find a different