The office was sparsely furnished and drab.  President Robyn Drexler had got as far as removing the military honours, the plaques commemorating famous victories, the pictures depicting those victories and the swords and weapons of honour.  But, where the trappings of the previous government had been withdrawn, there was as yet nothing to replace them.  Nothing save a small holoprint of her husband in a silver frame on the desk beside the calendar.

She waited for the door to close behind the last of the delegation, paused a moment, then pressed the intercom button set into the desk surface.

'Yes, Madam President?'  The voice was tinny, muted and distorted by the small speaker concealed in the desk.

'Send Phillips in, would you?'

A slight pause.  'Er, he's not here, madam.  He's escorting your guests out of the palace.'

'They weren't my guests,' Drexler hissed barely above her breath.  Then louder, `Well send him in as soon as he's back..'

'Yes m-'

Drexler cut the connection and leaned back.  She rubbed her tired eyes with the heels of her palms and yawned.  She could not get rid of Phillips, not yet.  It was too soon to make such radical changes.  She needed to keep some of the old regime in place if only to mollify the members of the military junta who still commanded the armed forces.  Getting an election held was a major triumph.  Winning it and not having the results declared invalid was something of a miracle - an. indication of just how far public opinion had moved on in since the war.

Which made it all the more incredible that the delegation from UPF - the United Planetary Front - had been granted time on her schedule.  Why her chief of staff, General Browning Phillips, had assumed she would have anything to say to them - or they to her - of import or relevance, she had no idea.  But she would ask him.  And he had better have a good answer.

But she looked again at the picture of her husband.  He smiled back at her, his face vital, young, handsome.  It was an old picture, captured during one of his early militant speeches, just as their struggle was beginning.  She smiled at the paradox - how he looked so much younger since the picture was so old.  She lifted the frame from the desk, holding it up so she could see the detail.

He was in his late middle age now, just as she was.  Where there were the lines of a smile in the picture there were now the lines of age.  Where his hair was dark and straight it was now grey, thinning and wispy.  The picture had been captured twenty years ago, just as they started their struggle, their mission to restore Battrul to democracy.  How far they had come since then.  How much they had won.

And lost.  There were no pictures of children beside the framed husband.  That was one sacrifice of their struggle.  To her, perhaps the greatest.  Her husband's sacrifices had been in many ways harder - his reputation and academic standing.  They were things he had possessed before - tangible assets stripped away by the protest marches, the speeches, the outspoken interviews and the spell in jail.  But now they were restored.  He was exonerated by events.