“Irony? Yes, that is one of the words I might apply to the situation-one of the politer words,” Atvar said. He went back to his desk and prodded the control again. The Tosevite warrior vanished. He wished he could make all the Tosevites vanish that easily, but no such luck. He replaced the warrior’s image with a map of the surface of Tosev 3.

By his standards, it was a chilly world, with too much water and not enough land. Of what land there was, the Race did not rule enough. Only the southern half of the lesser continental mass, the southwest and south of the main continental mass, and the island continent to the southeast of the main continental mass were reassuringly red on the map. The not-empires of the Americans, the Russkis, and the Deutsche all remained independent, and needed colors of their own. So did the island empires of Britain and Nippon, though both of them were shrunken remnants of what they had been when the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3.

Kirel also turned one eye toward the map, while keeping the other on Atvar. “Truly, Exalted Fleetlord, it could be worse.”

“So it could,” Atvar said with another sigh. “But it could also be a great deal better. It would be a great deal better if these areas here on the eastern part of the main continental mass, especially this one called China, acknowledged our rule as they should.”

“I have long since concluded that the Big Uglies never do things as they should,” Kirel said.

“I agree completely,” the fleetlord replied. His little tailstump twitched in agitation. “But how are we to convince the fleetlord of the colonization fleet that this is the case?”

Now Kirel sighed. “I do not know. He lacks our experience with this world. Once he acquires it, he will, I am sure, come round to our way of thinking. But we must expect him to be rigid for a time.”