Tall. Strong. Amazonian. Beautifully proportioned, but with muscles like a giant panther. She wore the gold uniform of a commander in the navy’s Diplomatic Corps, plus three nonregulation diamond-stud pierce-bars mounting the bridge of her nose — a perfect example of the privileged thoroughbreds who pranced their way through the Outward Fleet’s DipCor. For centuries, our military diplomats had made themselves rich through bribe-taking, blackmail, and investments based on confidential information. Then they’d established diplomatic dynasties, bringing their offspring into the corps and speedily promoting them to lucrative posts. (Nobody my age could have earned the rank of commander.) Over the years, DipCor had become a family-run business, full of intermarried bluebloods with inflated egos and bank accounts: the last people you’d trust to work out vital treaties. These hereditary princes and princesses didn’t just live in the pleasure palace — they owned it. The woman in front of me turned in my direction, then quickly looked away… unaccustomed to sullying her eyes with beautyless things.

The other diplomat was a fortyish man, a civilian well tailored and well fed. He smelled of alcohol and his eyes were bloodshot. When he opened his mouth to yawn, his tongue was practically white, coated with the telltale signs of hangover. Or perhaps with gold dust from Tut. Unlike the female diplomat, this man didn’t avert his eyes when he saw me. He glared with utter disgust, not only despising my blemished cheek but my face as a whole, the cells in my body, and everything down to the subatomic level. In his mind, I was obviously made from the wrong kind of quarks.

"You took long enough!" he growled. His voice suggested he was the sort of diplomat who eagerly volunteered for missions where he got to make threats.

"Youn Suu took a mere forty-three seconds from the time I first called her to the moment she appeared on the bridge." Those words came from the one person I knew in the room, Captain Abraham Cohen. In a low voice, he added, "Thought I should get the exact time… in case one of these schmuck diplomats decided to kvetch."