Tara Broadhurst shook her head.  “Use tax dollars to cover private investment losses?  That’s one of the things that got us the Interregnum. They’ll squeal like stuck pigs, then refuse.”

“But then they’ve refused to put up the money,” Chelan said, “as we can point out.  However, we own that chunk of land in Colorado.  We might consider starting the application process for building a spaceyard and graving dock there.”

“Useless,” Tara said.  “I checked. There are at least twenty endangered species in the general area.  We can’t build without a huge permitting process, which will cost a fortune.” 

“What a shame,” Chelan answered.  “We have applied to build a new graving dock, and are awaiting legal clearances, and we invoked our right to have the American government pay for the endangered species survey.”

“Victor! The Federal survey waiting list is fifty years long…oh,” Broadhurst answered.  “That’s truly mean.”

“Meanwhile, we have space in North California that we can consider preparing while the rubes are looking at the shiny objects,” Victor said.  “Also, we need to go through the motions of starting to prepare the large object fabrication facilities.”

“That does lead to a question, though,” Charles asked.  “How did De Witt get her elegant hands on that correspondence?”

“An interesting question,” Tara Broadhurst said.  “But there is an official answer.  Diplomatic correspondence is processed by clerks.  Every day, a clerk would pester, err, politely ask, Drummond-McLaren about whether a few messages should be in the public files. The clerk said ‘the list today is quite long’, and Drummond-McLaren answered ‘I can’t be bothered with this.  Messages from Mogado?  Just make them all public.”  The First Minister was doubtless referring to the day’s messages, but that’s not what he said.  So the clerk did as he was told, made the entire trade negotiations file public-access.  And someone noticed.”