When the Aurora returned, the Saudi army had been pushed out of Qatif and the Saudi-Qatif fighting was winding down, but not the diplomatic fallout. Diplomatic fallout that kept Senator Ferguson rather busy, so he did not pay much attention to Sheila and the Message Committee.
Then Saudi Arabia had spectacular news. Its king abdicated and fled to Turkey, and some army officers took over. He had been forced out for having kept the civil war going for too long, trying to recover "lost" territories. The officers then renamed their nation the Republic of Nejd, after considering names like the Central Arabian Republic and the Republic of Yamama.
The House of Saud was now completely fallen, and it joined such fallen royal families as the Bourbons and the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs. All over some goo that Kalna liked to explain as "It's like what you get if you do a hydrocarbon-synthesis run for too long." Goo that Kalna saw being pumped out of the ground in Los Angeles. Goo that many Earthers were dependent on to power their vehicles and other such things. Goo that the SSC was offering assistance in becoming independent of.
That issue kept Senator Ferguson and other US-Congress anti-espionagers very busy, something that kept their attention from Sheila and the Message Committee. Sheila gradually returned to a more public profile with the Friends of the SSC, and her friends noted that she seemed less defeated and more confident. The anti-espionagers also noted that, and they asked "What did the mall rats do to her? She's become their lackey again."
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