“You were given a crash course on some of their customs from what I understand, however,” the man responded dryly. “You at least have some slight understanding of the culture we’re dealing with. We’ve already enlisted the aid of Drs. Kushbu and Rains, and also Mr. Powell… formerly Major Powell.”

    Sybil felt the blood leave her face. She hadn’t heard that Powell had been discharged, but she wasn’t really surprised. Spencer had had his revenge, though god only knew why he’d targeted any of them when they were just as much captives as he was.

    She was afraid to ask if she was pending discharge herself. “As I said, I don’t have any objections. Despite the circumstances, the impression I gained from my time with them was that they were far more interested in developing their colony than warring with us.”

    “I’ve read over the debriefing.”

    Sybil felt her face heat up.

    “You’ll report for duty at Congressman Webb’s office at oh six hundred tomorrow then Lieutenant. We have a lot of preparations to make and not much time. You’re dismissed.”

    Sybil surged to her feet, saluted the commander, and marched from the meeting room. Her shoulders slumped slightly when she was clear. In something of a daze, she headed back to her quarters, struggling with the hope/fear that Anka might be a part of the Sumpturian enclave.

    By the time she’d reached her quarters she realized that was doubtful. Very likely the political leaders would be escorted by the military, but Anka was the commander of the Venus facility. She could think of no logical reason, at all, why he would lead the escort and a lot of very good reasons why he should stay as far away as possible.

    Right up until that moment she’d managed to convince herself that she was dealing very well with the unavoidable fact that she was never going to set eyes on him again. The surge of hope was worse than simply accepting, though. When she fell, she fell hard.

* * * *

    The message was clear. Sybil had a chance of redemption if she performed satisfactorily as a liaison. Unfortunately, the job wasn’t exactly what she’d expected it to be. It became clear within a few hours after presenting herself to the Congressman that, regardless of the job title, she would not be doing much actual interacting with the Sumpturians. They would be spied on from the time they arrived until they left and her job was to try to interpret every word, expression, and gesture for her government.

    Dismay didn’t adequately describe her feelings on the subject. Depression was closer and still didn’t cover it. She completely agreed with the Congressman that it was critical not to misinterpret anything-for good or ill-but it wasn’t as if she knew and understood the culture and thinking of the Sumpturians. She hadn’t even been able to figure Anka out and she’d had far more ‘interaction’ with him than any of the others. The Sumpturians arriving for the talks would be complete strangers.

    How the hell was she supposed to understand what ‘made them tick’ from the minute lesson about their courting process that she’d gotten from Anka? Maybe she would’ve had something to contribute if she hadn’t already supplied what she knew during her debriefing, but since she had

    The others didn’t seem to mind guessing wildly. A good bit of what they did was to listen to Anka’s transmissions over and over and argue among themselves about ‘undertones’ and ‘between the lines’. When they weren’t doing that, she spent hours going over ‘background’ noises they’d picked up and amplified and trying to figure out what they were based upon her one and only, brief, experience in their communications center.

    She was pretty sure her job was enough to have made her completely miserable even if she hadn’t already been. She was so on edge by the day the Sumpturians arrived she was nearly witless. Despite every effort to convince herself that Anka wouldn’t be among them, she plowed through the spectators until she found a reasonably good observation point and struggled for a look at the military escort of the dignitaries. Unfortunately, due to the conditions, it was nearly impossible to get a very good look at any of the Sumpturians-or even to tell which of them were the dignitaries and which the soldiers. All of them were wearing suits similar to the one the science department had confiscated from her.

    Giving up in disappointment as they began to disappear into the hastily erected conference center constructed nearly a hundred yards from their base of operations, she returned to her quarters to mope and wait for the call to review the Intel collected. The call wasn’t long in coming. She was summoned a little over an hour later with the rest of the liaison team to study the images captured of the dignitaries and determine if any of them looked familiar.

    As doubtful as she was that she had ever seen any of them, she studied them.

    “They all look alike,” Kushbu muttered after about an hour of ‘flipping’ through the images on his viewer.

    Anger flickered through Sybil, but she refrained from voicing her opinion of his opinion.

    “They don’t!” Holly snapped. “They’re as different as we are.”

    Kushbu sent her a sour look. “Well, they all look the same to me… and I’m convinced they could’ve been at the base.”

    “I didn’t see any of them,” Sybil said coolly.

    “You’re certain?” the congressman’s aid, Phil Meachum, demanded.

    “I’m sure.”

    “I don’t see how you could be sure,” Powell said doubtfully. “Maybe it is bigotry, but they all look alike to me, too.”

    “The one you spent the night with looked like them?” Phil asked curiously.

    Powell glared at him. “The one I spent the night with was a female,” he growled.

    “But you wouldn’t be able to pick her out if she was among them?”

    Powell reddened. “The males all look alike… and so do the females. The main difference is the plumbing.”

    Sybil empathized with Powell’s discomfort, but his determination that they all looked alike only meant to her that he hadn’t really looked at them. “These are older men,” she said pointedly. “All of the Sumpturians at the Venus base were younger-as you’d expect given that they were militia.”

    “Rils.”

    Sybil glanced at the man blankly. “What?”

    “Not men-rils. That’s their word for adult males.”

    Discomfort wafted through Sybil. “Rils, then.”

    The aid studied the images himself. “I see what you mean. They do appear to be older. You’re sure none of them were at the Venus base?”

    “No. I said I didn’t see them. We don’t know how many Sumpturians were there that we didn’t see. We were confined most of the time to quarters. We were invited to dine with them at their festival, but Ank… Commander l’Kartay explained that it was a courting festival. The elder rils might not have had an interest in attending. Or, they might not have gone because they knew we would be there. Does it matter?”

    He stared at her pointedly. “Everything matters. Anything could be important.”

    There was some reason they were particularly interested in where the dignitaries were located, however, and it made Sybil damned uneasy. “My guess is that most of the civilians and political figures either reside on their base on Pluto or in their ships.”

    “You know for a fact that they’ve terra-formed Pluto and colonized it?” he asked sharply.

    “No. I’m guessing.”

    She had a blinding headache by the time they were dismissed. It took all she could do to drag herself back to her quarters and order a dine-in meal. Popping a couple of painkillers for her head, she went in to her private bath to take a hot shower. She was lucky to have a private bath, but it was a long way from ‘luxurious’. The toilet and lavatory were actually inside the shower. She supposed it would’ve been more accurate to say it was a small shower squeezed beside the toilet and lavatory, but the entire room was about the size of a small shower and when she turned on the shower head, the spray covered the room as if she was standing in a dishwasher. She thought it would’ve been more comfortable to wear goggles, but the hot water on her face was welcome for a change, even if she did have to sift air through her teeth to breathe without inhaling water.