She shook her head, actually taking her hands off the keyboards to gesture in frustration. "There's that whole thing about stories that cross the dimensions, right? Stories get distorted, they get retold, they get rewritten. For all I know, the story she has is from a dimension where I really am a great diplomat, all by myself without assistance." Her tongue only stumbled a little on that last word.

"I don't see the purpose in our failure either," she confessed. "We fail and - what? Does it strengthen anyone on that planet to defeat three visitors? They would what, get one shuttle and one load of slop, maybe three prisoners (although good luck holding Zouichi for any length of time) and nothing else. I doubt our presence would bias them one way or the other in the war against the Ohm. No, maybe it was a pass/fail test of us, but if so Epicurea was just a situation meant to put us under stress. It worked," she said, seething only a little. And her head still had little spots where the hair was frizzled from the hat-clamps.