That was all of the second notebook.
The two notebooks, plus my conversation with Ghopal, Klüng and Natalenko, completed my briefing for my new post.
I slid off my shoes and pulled on a pair of boots. They fitted perfectly. Evidently I had been tapped for this job as soon as word of Silas Cumshaw's death had reached Luna and there must have been some fantastic hurrying to get my outfit ready.
I didn't like that any too well, and I liked the order to carry the pistols even less. Not that I had any objection to carrying weapons, per se: I had been born and raised on Theta Virgo IV, where the children aren't allowed outside the house unattended until they've learned to shoot.
But I did have strenuous objections to being sent, virtually ignorant of local customs, on a mission where I was ordered to commit deliberate provocation of the local government, immediately on the heels of my predecessor's violent death.
The author of Probable Future Courses of Solar League Diplomacy had recommended the use of provocation to justify conquest. If the New Texans murdered two Solar League Ambassadors in a row, nobody would blame the League for moving in with a space-fleet and an army....
I was beginning to understand how Doctor Guillotin must have felt while his neck was being shoved into his own invention.
I looked again at the notebooks, each marked in red: Familiarize yourself with contents and burn or disintegrate.
I'd have to do that, of course. There were a few non-humans and a lot of non-League people aboard this ship. I couldn't let any of them find out what we considered a full briefing for a new Ambassador.
So I wrapped them in the original package and went down to the lower passenger zone, where I found the ship's third officer. I told him that I had some secret diplomatic matter to be destroyed and he took me to the engine room. I shoved the package into one of the mass-energy convertors and watched it resolve itself into its constituent protons, neutrons and electrons.