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“I love you too, dear.” He frowned. “Where was I?”

“Warp five.”

“Right. There’s a whole mess of couriers in the Rigel system that have ships of their own design that were about fifty years old when this new regulation got handed down. They haven’t made the upgrades because they would take too long with the design they’ve got. Since most of their work is within the Rigel system, they don’t go to warp that often, and they almost never reach warp five when they do, so it isn’t really much of an issue.”

“So why’re we- ?”

“Their ships are now sixty years old. They need maintenance, and it has to be done with parts that don’t exist anymore because their engine type is against the law. They need to upgrade, and they need to do it now before their crappy, ill-maintained engines suffer a warp-core breach.”

“So the president is going to Rigel to convince them to do it?”

“Yeah.”

Ashante looked baffled and angry at the same time, a look that always worried Fred when he was on the receiving end of it, though the consequences usually didn’t manifest until they got home and she announced that he only thought he was sleeping in the bedroom.

“Fred, this is off the president’s sensor screen. Send the technology secretary.”

“That’s a great idea!” Fred hit his forehead with the heel of his palm. “Of course, why didn’t I think of that? Send Secretary Forzrat! What a brilliant notion!”

Ashante knew him well enough to sense the sarcasm. Indeed, Fred was laying it on sufficiently thick that one need never have met Fred to be aware of it. “She already went?”

“Twice. No soap. The next step is to forbid them from flying with their ships, which will grind stellar commerce throughout the Rigel colonies to a screeching halt. The couriers are saying that the short-term falloff in usable ships while they upgrade will ruin them, but that’s nothing compared to what’ll happen if we shut them down.”

“But shutting them down makes us look bad-especially since they don’t actually go warp five, so what’s the big deal?”

“The president needs to convince them that it’s better to take the short-term problem for long-term gain, instead of getting short-term gain and the long-term problem of a ship exploding when it’s full of people because they couldn’t- “

“All right, all right, I got it. You sound like you swallowed a position paper.”

“Didn’t need to.” He grinned. “I wrote it.”

“Of course you did.” Ashante groaned, then held up her hand before Fred could say anything else. “Never mind, we’ll talk about that later.”

Fred didn’t like the sound of that.

“What else is on that trip?”

“Andor-the genetics council-and Sirius and Kharzh’ulla. She’s- “

“No, that’s it-Andor. Can you work in something about the judiciary council and Artrin’s record into the opening remarks?”

“Uh- ” Fred thought about it a moment. Judiciary did oversee some of the allocations for the research being done on Andor-mostly to make sure it conformed to ethical and legal research guidelines. “Yeah, I can probably swing that. I’m working on that speech right now, actually.”

“Trying to find the right adjectives?”

“Not at all.” Fred tried to sound wounded at the very notion and knew he was failing miserably.

Z4 said, “Thanks, Fred. Meanwhile, I’m going to have a conversation with the travel office.”

“Have fun,” Fred said.

After Z4 left Ashante’s office, the latter gave her husband a penetrating stare.

“Don’t give me that look, darling,” he said in return.

“Don’t ‘darling’ me, cupcake-why the hell do you have the president- “

“She wanted to do it, Ashante. She came to me after Forzrat came back the second time and said she wanted to put in an appearance. It’s not like she’s going out of her way-Rigel’s between Vulcan and Andor, and it fits into the schedule, since FTC ends four days before the genetics council meeting begins.”

Ashante let out a long breath. “Fine. Add in some stuff about Artrin.”

“Will do,” he said as she reached for the control to terminate the call. Before she could, he said, “Hey!”

She hesitated.