Good Diplomats Are Hard To Find ( Torin Tlo'Cloon )

[Tiberius Anar]

Remus Omak was Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the professional head of the Foreign and Diplomatic Service. He was known throughout the Service as a shrewd diplomatic technician, highly knowledgeable and capable of analysing almost any foreign power. He could discern the motives of any foreign negotiator, and decipher the most complex of formal language, yet he could not understand this.

In front of him was a personnel file for a member of the Diplomatic Service due for promotion to a senior grade. At the lower grades the Deputy Secretary for Personnel dealt this with promotions on his own, but once it reached a certain level the Secretary had to be consulted. How did he get this far?

He decided to go to the source itself for the answer. He keyed the intercomm, “Barker, get Torin Tlo'Cloon over here at his earliest convenience."

[Torin Tlo'Cloon]

It had been a long day for Torin. Not only had files been placed in the wrong data sheets but the office was upside down from back to front and it was up to the Junior diplomat to put them in the correct order, which took hours of laboring over.

' Bloody bastard, gitfaced twerp!' Cursed Torin, smacking the trainee diplomat out the way so he could get to the last file and finish sorting it all out. ' If your to be at Junior grade you need to frelling well learn alpherbetical order you snot nosed frack!'

' Torin!...' Torin turned to view a man, Barker. 'Get your Kel'Dor butt over to Omaks office, he wants a word....' As you can see the words within the Diplomatic office was quite informal.

' What does that crack want now?...' Said Torin in a distored tone through his breathing aperatus. he was so annoyed at having to rework the data file he was cursing everything that moved, thankfully his vocabliary was creative...

Dropping the files for the trainee he walked with Barker to the office of Omak, knocked on the door and entered, he hoped to frell the man didn't hear what he said only 15 feet away from his office.

' Mr. Omak...' Bowed in respect and nodded.

The Kel'Dor was fuming with anger, but superiors were supriors.

[Tiberius Anar]

Omak looked at the Kel'Dor,, his impassive expression masking the thoughts traveling through his mind. He was analysing, assessing, apraising Tlo'Cloon with clinical detachment.

Confident stride. Knows where respect is due. Good.

All of his observations woudl be committed to the computer as soon as the alien left, for now they would rest in his trained diplomat's mind.

"Please have a seat," he said gesturing to the two chairs placed in front of his desk for visitors. Once Torin had taken his seat Omak continued, "Mister Tlo'Cloon, you have been brought to my attention by the Deputy Secretary for Personnel here at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You are in line for promotion to Senior Diplomatic Officer, grade D. I wish to ask you a number of questions before I make my recommendation."