"Of course there isn't," he sighed. "There isn't anything that excludes women from the governorship, either, but you'll notice that there aren't very many women who make it to that office. It's a matter of tradition."

"Whose tradition?" Jin countered. "Neither of those unspoken rules started with the Cobra Worlds. We inherited them from the Old Dominion of Man."

"Sure," he nodded. "But these things take time to change. You have to remember that we're barely two generations removed from the Dominion and its influence."

"It took less than one generation for us to give the Cobras their double vote," she pointed out.

"That was different. Tors Challinor's attempted rebellion forced an immediate political acknowledgment of the Cobras' physical power. Your case, unfortunately, doesn't have that kind of urgency to it."

For a long moment Jin just looked at him. "You're not going to fight the Council for me on this, are you?" she asked at last.

He spread his hands helplessly. "It's not a matter of fighting them, Jin. The whole weight of military history is against you. Women just haven't as a rule been welcomed into special military forces. Not official military forces, anyway," he corrected himself. "There've always been women rebels and guerrilla fighters, but I don't think that argument'll go over very well on either the

Council or the Academy."

"You have a lot of influence, though. The Moreau name alone-"

"May still have some force out among Aventine's people," he grunted, "but the aura doesn't carry over into the upper echelons. It never did, really-in many ways your grandfather was a more popular figure than I am, and even in his time we had to fight and scrap and trade for everything we got."