"She is! I was actually planning to go and ask her what I can say after this conversation but you asking her yourself would work just as well."

"I'll go do that and come back."

She goes.

Lucien does not like having to be careful about sharing information and this whole thing is very awk-ward and Alleluia never actually told him not to tell anyone about the ship - just to not ask questions. But also that seems like a thing that she maybe meant to imply those she wasn't clear on exactly what was secret. 

Also it occurs to Lucien that in fact Alleluia wasn't the one who invited Isabella - Linus did that and he has no idea if Alleluia even knew. This could have really difficult political implications and -.

At this point Lucien catches himself trying to think up difficult and complicated scenarios before they actually happen and instead he will decide to not do that. He will outline irrigation plans for Samaria on his datapad instead. He is aware Samaria doesn't actually need new irrigation but it's relaxing to take a break and diagram plans about it regardless.

Isabella sweeps in - she flares out her wings more than other angels do while she's walking - and sits back down.

Alleluia comes in and closes the door behind them.

"I need to know," says Alleluia, "if you're going to work with Isabella as the Samarian - ambassador, or what have you."

"If she's the one visiting us her being the Samarian ambassador would make sense?"

"Yes, the question is whether you in fact get along with her well enough for that to work out or if you're going to want the next candidate."

"Well, I generally do my best to get along with everyone but I don't ex-actly know Isabella yet?"

"Well. Let me know. In the meantime I don't think being interviewed for the role qualifies her for any sensitive information."

"Okay."

He can interview Isabella then! Um. What would she say her strengths are? 

"I'm analytical, responsible, and reflective. Generally quick with new concepts."

Those certainly are useful strengths for someone to have given that what he wants them to do is verify that in fact they should be helping against the Borg.

"Do you have any examples of sit-uations where you those strengths came into play?"

"Well, of course most of my work is answering petitions, but I'm good at figuring out efficient routes between a few of them given what the weather is and what the petitions will do to change it, and I've been offered assignments with multiple stops since I was fifteen, usually they don't let younger angels do that till they're older because they'll get sidetracked or drunk or lost or forget what they're supposed to be doing. In the Eyrie I've sometimes handled petitions that didn't involve flying out somewhere to pray too - I'm often the first to catch that some proposed solution to some problem would let people get away with, say, fencing Edori out of their usual haunts, or hassling citizens about compliance with some point of law to the point that it'd constitute a punishment even of the innocent, that sort of thing."

"Could you say more about the Edori thing?"

"The Edori are a usually-nomadic minority. Before the Archangel Gabriel outlawed it they were sometimes kidnapped and enslaved; they still don't reliably get along with stationary peoples - cultural differences, competing needs. So, let's see, last summer I was presented with a proposal to let the city of Semorrah charge an entry fee to travelers - not per head, but per family. I think this is a bad idea for a variety of reasons and Linus did ultimately reject it but one thing that I flagged first was that they'd defined family to require marriage, and Edori don't marry. So if they'd had a pair of lovers and their four children coming through - visiting a settled-down loved one or visiting the market or what have you - they'd have been able to charge them as six separate people. They hadn't even worded it to let the mother and her children be one family and the lover be another."

This sure does sound like someone who can notice things that others wouldn't and who can adapt to different situations.

"How do you expect you'll cope with being away from Samaria for an extended prior of time?"

"Well, I'll miss it. Especially since I suspect there isn't room to fly on spaceships. But it seems like it's important, and at least I don't have children or a husband or anything."

"There'd be some places with room to fly - though not on my ship which you'll be on for much of the time I expect."

"How trustworthy do others find you? I'm asking because a lot of the point of you being an ambassador would be for you to be able to report back based on your experiences and for you to have sway among other Samarians while doing so."

"Well, I'm not them, so I can't say definitively. I do think that they'll expect me to be honest in my reports and sincere in my judgments."

"Uh. Would they expect you to be misled?"

Probably Linus would not have selected her if so but he is trying to be careful since this seems like an important decision.

"I don't think they will expect me to be misled in such a way that sending someone else would have improved matters, but I don't know how much they trust you not to lie to people.'

"Mhm, I do my best to be as legibly honest as I can be but it's a hard thing to signal."

"Do you think you'd be able to deal well with situations where we make diff-icult decisions that you might disagree with?"

"Well, that sort of depends on what you mean."

"If someone commits a crime we'd expect you to let our justice system handle it - though it wouldn't apply to you beyond making the decision to return you to your home planet."

"Also we are generally willing to contact, trade, and ally ourselves with most people. This includes giving tech to pre-spacefaring places, providing asylum for genetically modified people, and trading with very nearly anyone. We'd expect you to allow us to do these things without interference if it ever comes up."

"We do attack Borg ships, including pre-emptively, and would expect your non-interference with this. This could come up given that understanding the Borg is a major thing why we'd like of an ambassador from Samaria. I expect we'll avoid conflict significantly more than usual but it's still a substantial risk given how combative the Borg are."

"I don't have a problem with gifts or asylum or trade. It's understandable if you are in a war that this involves all of the standard horrors of war such as attacking your enemies but if you kill all the Borg you run into I will never meet any and will not have very well-founded beliefs about their character. Particularly if you have this policy then I can't derive any information from it if they attack you preemptively; that's just symmetrical."

"Yeah, I expect I'll refrain from any combat that isn't necessary to avoid clear to me imminent danger."

"It's actually quite difficult to find situations where it's at all safe to be around them but I have some ideas - you meeting Borgs is important. We don't have an official policy of preemptively attacking them on sight, but in practice virtually the only situation in which they notice us and don't attack is one where they think they will lose and go and get backup instead. Also preemptively attack them is technically illegal for Amaliens, but in practice we don't enforce any sentence or repr-ecussion for doing so."