by Diane Duane
"Another carrot, yes," said Ambassador Delvecchio. "Nice, wasn't it, that it seemed to come from somewhere besides us? But then came the stick. The negotiations themselves. And there the representatives dug in their heels and made it plain they could never deal with one another, never give in to one another's demands."
"You'd think that after such a long time they'd be willing to compromise a little, for the sake of all the benefits that would follow," said another of the Star Force commanders down the table. "Well, for one thing," Delvecchio said, "compromise isn't a word we could ever have used in a negotiation like this. To people arguing over territory or economic advantage, the word 'compromise' coming from a third party is code for 'We're going to help the other side get the better of you.' You can try to produce the symptoms of compromise: a settlement in which each of the participating parties goes away secretly feeling that they've given up too much and the other side has given up hardly anything. But the word itself must never be mentioned. Nor must you allow any situation to arise in which one side starts looking too satisfied. The other side will immediately suspect betrayal-or even worse, that the side opposite is going to get more of what it wants than your own side might. In these long hate cases, that's tantamount to winning. There must never be a winner in a negotiation. Or at least, there must never be a perception that there is a winner on either side."
Major T'teka was shaking his slender dark head. "Ambassador, their behavior simply doesn't seem rational."
She smiled, a thin tired look. "Of course not, Major. If they were being rational about this, any of them, we wouldn't have had to come Space knows how many starfalls and half a million kilometers past that to stop this old war. If you treat the various sides in a given negotiation as essentially crazy as bedbugs, you'll do a lot better... and this one is no different."
Captain Dareyev blinked at that. "Excuse me, Ambassador, but what's a bedbug?"
Delvecchio put her eyebrows up then laughed. "You know, I have no idea! It's something my mother used to say. I assume it's some kind of bug that gets in bed with you, a nasty enough prospect. Makes me itch just thinking of it. At any rate," Delvecchio said, "matters have been deteriorating over the last six months. Various power blocs in the governments of both planets have been pressing for either quick results, in terms of a massive investment package from outside-the-Verge interests, or a walkout and the end of the negotiations, followed by an immediate return to war." "Old habits," Gabriel said softly, "die hard."
"Yes," the ambassador said. "And planetary elections are due shortly on Ino. The politicians there are quite aware of the galvanizing effect of a good war on the populace. They intend to use this to consolidate their own position and then come back to the negotiating table stronger than the other side." She looked wry. "At the same time, they are aware that if they break the present truce or if I catch them stalling, I will dissolve the negotiations, leave, and tell the Concord Administrator that this particular disagreement is to be classified as 'intractable' with further intervention to be attempted no sooner than seventy-five years from now."
The faces around the table went very quiet. "You mean, after everyone presently negotiating is dead," said Gabriel.
"That is language that must not leave this room," Delvecchio said. "But you're correct. If war breaks out, there will be no action except to keep it quarantined here. If the two parties wish to continue in that vein, they will be allowed to do so, and in seventy-five years my distant successor will come back and try again with the next generation. The rest of the Verge will have gone ahead with its own military and economic development, of course, with the Concord's assistance, and Phorcys and Ino will not have. You may imagine the results. I assure you, the delegations will have been doing so. That is, if the more intelligent members of the delegations have gotten a whiff of the Concord's intentions." "Which you will have seen to it that they have," Captain Dareyev said.
Delvecchio threw her an expression of utter innocence. "Well," she said, "in a roundabout sort of way. In our non-joint sessions four days ago, I let each side know that I had been authorized to make them both offers that far surpassed earlier levels of assistance that had been mooted. Both sides were amazed and understandably suspicious as to why this had happened just now. Neither of them knew, nor was I about to tell them, that I had been authorized to make offers at these levels nearly a year ago. At that time, though, had I made such offers, they would have either been too easily accepted with no promise of change forthcoming, or they would have been rejected in a bid to improve either party's negotiating position.
"Now both parties have gone off with the new offers in hand. Many members of both governments have turned right around in their skins and are hot to accept these offers, even though it means much closer cooperation with the other side than they would normally ever have been willing to admit. But both negotiating teams, for differing sets of largely personal reasons, are intent on rejecting the offers. Their problem is that the offer is too good to reject. The pressure on both planets for acceptance has been rising. If I have judged the situation correctly, each side will arrive here tomorrow with the covert intention of sabotaging not the other side's deal, but its own-by revelation of elements of improper behavior, or behavior that can be construed as improper, from the side hostile to them. This then will give them an excuse to cry 'bad faith' and break off negotiations. And then, in the fullness of time, they will go back to war."
Someone down the table swore under her breath. Someone else said, "Ambassador, don't they even care about their own people?"
"Oh, absolutely they do," Delvecchio said dryly. "They care about them enough to see them dead rather than allow them to betray their principles. Their masters' principles, at least." An uncomfortable silence fell all around. "No matter," Ambassador Delvecchio said. "If what I have planned works out, none of this will come to pass. And if it does, it won't be for lack of our trying to stop them. Here is the order of business." She touched the table again. The holographs vanished, to be replaced by a scrolling list of political points to be handled.
Gabriel leaned over and said to Captain Dareyev, "What are the odds at the moment?"
Elinke gave him one of those sidelong, potential-bloody-stump looks. "Lieutenant," she said under her breath, "you know regulations strictly forbid betting of any kind aboard ship."
"I heard seven to four against the ambassador last night."
Elinke made a very demure and nearly inaudible snort down her perfect nose. "If you were such an idiot as to lay money down before the odds lengthened," she breathed, not taking her eyes off the text scrolling up into the air from the tabletop, "I'd gladly take it off you, and then chuck you into stir. It was nine to five against after breakfast, which you would doubtless know if you had been there. You need to stop skiving off. People are beginning to notice. Not officially yet, lucky for you. Now pay attention." Gabriel did, though not entirely to the text. He had read it all last night, anyway. "Here," Delvecchio was saying, indicating one subsection of the text. "Here is what I'm counting on to set it off. Rallet, the head of the Phorcyn delegation, is furious about the potential Eraklion heavy metal allotments. He thinks they give Ino much too much potential to get their breeder program into high production-especially the secret one, the 'dirty breeder' that neither we or Phorcys are supposed to know about. So Rallet will blow the secret program's cover. On the Inoan side, once this happens, their own senior negotiator, ErDaishan, will riposte by informing us of Phorcys's sabotage and destruction of the Eraklian open-cast heavy metal workings at Ordinen." She shot a quick glance at Elinke.
Captain Dareyev nodded, just once. "Which has been successfully averted," Delvecchio said. "And without loss of life- congratulations, Captain, and please pass the congratulations to Captain Devereaux on Callirhoe. The Phorcyn delegation is presently in a state of shock. They will be looking for some other way to respond, but they won't be able to find anything in time, by my reckoning. And I shall remove the possibil
ity of any such intervention by confronting them with the information about both these matters, immediately, up front. Both sets of actions are in direct contravention to both parties' agreements with us as 'honest brokers,' and that contravention will derail the negotiation process immediately without either the Phorcyn or Inoan delegations gaining the pleasure or the political advantage of having caused it themselves. Instead they will have mutually pulled the roof right down on their own heads, and they will beg us to get them out of the situation." Delvecchio smiled, ever so gently. "And, of course, we will."
There was a somewhat breathless silence. Finally Commander T'teka said, "Ambassador, how do you find all these things out?"
She looked very calm. "I have my sources," Delvecchio said, "and it might surprise you where they are. 'Discovery' on that can wait a few years-at least until the people involved are out of office-or it otherwise doesn't matter any more. What matters now is that tomorrow afternoon the Inoan and Phorcyn delegations will arrive here prepared to destroy these talks. They will instead find themselves engaging in what will be the first of many unpleasant but useful rapprochements: a genuine agreement, a treaty, to which they are both going to have to sign their names. It will take most of the day and the night. There will be a lot of noise. There may be violence." "Not on my ship," said Captain Dareyev."Attempted violence, I should say," said the ambassador, nodding at the captain in courteous acknowledgment. "But neither side will be willing to leave without bringing some kind of resolution about because neither trusts the other as far as any of them can spit. Trust." She looked rueful. "It will be decades before we see that from these people. But a settlement, yes, by quite late tomorrow night, I'd say. And if not, we return the delegations, break orbit, and make starfall back to Corrivale where reports will be filed for the various authorities involved, and where informal quarantine will be invoked on the Thalaassa system. After that . . ." she shrugged. "Further business will be in the hands of the local Concord Administrator. Any questions?"
Falada's protocol chief, Lieutenant Ferdinand, had some queries about the setup of the formal meeting room for the next day, which Delvecchio handled. Then she looked down the table again and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your help. I know you will all do your best to forward this process without revealing any details to non-cleared personnel." "Especially the negotiating teams," said Captain Dareyev.
Delvecchio gave her a particularly dry smile. "Especially. They will be brought to different docking bays, as usual, and all precautions should be taken to have them avoid seeing one another even at a distance until they actually enter the meeting room. All right? Then thank you, all. And wish us luck." All stood as the Ambassador did. Slowly people began to head out. Elinke, standing up and stretching, looked around her casually, then glanced over at Gabriel and said, very softly, "Fourteen to one, at best." "Think so?" Gabriel said and gave her what was meant to be a noncommittal look. She flashed him a grin and left, heading back up to her Bridge. Gabriel let the room empty in front of him, then drifted up to Delvecchio. She looked at him, still wearing that dry smile. "Disappointed?" she said. "You'd really like it if the warring parties turned on us, wouldn't you?" "I'm a marine," Gabriel said. "Whichever answer I give you in this context could be the wrong one. But-" "Don't be concerned," the ambassador said. "I understand you. But I don't think we have to worry about them threatening us. There are much worse problems to avoid."
Gabriel nodded. After a moment, he said, "Do you really think you can pull all this off?" "Oh, I know I can," Delvecchio said, looking down at the paperwork and the datacarts. "My part of it, anyway. Everything now rests with the two negotiating teams. As long as human nature doesn't change before tomorrow afternoon, and they don't stop hating each other before then, we'll be just fine." Gabriel shook his head in bemusement at the sheer cheerfulness of her cynicism. And she thinks I might be good at this kind of work? I think I've got a long way to go. "And will they stop hating each other after that?" he said.
Delvecchio looked up at him mildly as she gathered up her papers. "/ won't live long enough to find out," she said, "but that's hardly an issue. I'll see you in the morning."
She went out, and a few moments later Gabriel went after her, suddenly very eager indeed to see the "bloodshed" begin the next afternoon.
Chapter Three
THE REST OF the day's schedule went haywire, which gave Gabriel the hint he needed that things were indeed in the air. For one thing, many marine staff under Hal's supervision were pulled back from other duties to be run over to Callirhoe to assist in maintenance work secondary to the mission she had just completed. The swearing started in earnest when word spread among Falada's marine complement of the action that the other ship had seen not six hours ago. It had not been hand-to-hand work-just shipboard stuff, the Star Force ship going in low to preempt the little Phorcys-based raiders who had attacked Ordinen, Eraklion's biggest open-cast mine-but the marines assigned to Callirhoe managed to make it sound like the Second Galactic War when they came aboard that night for the usual "two-ships" social. All this meant that Gabriel's spatball team's meeting had to be postponed, and the idea of doing any further reading of transcripts that night went right out the airlock. Suit drill, though conducted as professionally as always-after all, there was no treating casually the only thing that stood between you and space-had more than the usual buzz about it. Crew morale was always a major concern for Star Force. They knew what made their ships effective-not machines, but people. So any time two Concord Star Force vessels met for the first time in a system, especially when they were carrying complements of marines, there would be a social get-together as soon as circumstances permitted it. The two captains, having conferred at some length, were fairly certain that there would be no further antics from the local system-based ships-especially with one Star Force vessel in orbit around each of the two "offending" planets keeping an eye on them and (via a few clandestinely sown surveillance satellites) on Eraklion as well.
By 2000, the temporary walls separating the main briefing room from its twin next door had been opened out so that one big space was available. By 2030, alternating panels of white-silver and midnight- velvet curtains had been hung up to soften the feel of the place, the lights had been lowered, and the room was full of tables and chairs and food. Lots of food. If there was anything anyone knew about marines, it was that they ate their weight in protein every day, just to prove they could. The other thing that everyone knew about marines-that they could talk the tusks off a weren-was also being proven all over the room.
"You shoulda seen it," someone was saying to Hal as Gabriel came up beside him. "It was just like a dirg's nest when you knock it down off the rocks. They came in real low over Eraklion's spaceward side. The Phorcyns thought they were under the radar, and maybe they were, of the ground-based stuff... but not ours. There were maybe two hundred of them-little ships, not even military, some of them-just hoppers, just private craft with guns. Are these people crazy? What kind of line are their bosses selling them that they'll go up against a cruiser with nothing but the family in-system flitter with a couple of grenade cannons strapped to it?"
"Phorcyn fanatics," someone said. Laughter rippled through the group as they caught the play on words. The guy who was talking, a tall thin red-haired man, shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I'll tell you this: fanatic or not, they knew how to fly, that bunch. We were watching them on the repeaters in the landing craft, and they were right down and dirty with the mountain chain around that place. Thought they were going to do themselves permanent damage, some of them. But they seemed to know those mountains pretty well."
"A little too well," said another of the marines nearby, a slender little dark-haired woman with big dark brown eyes. "If they'd gotten down there to take the attack to a second stage, we would have had to root them out, and that would have been entertaining."
The man who had been talking first shrugged. "It didn't happen," he said, "and our weapons
were clean, anyway, if it had. I would've given a lot to see their faces, though, when they came in close on the mine and saw the ship rising up out of that big ol' hole in the ground with all her guns hot. Never tell me that Captain Devereaux can't make her boat sit up and beg! And as for all those little ships-" He broke out laughing. "Just like a dirg's nest. They went scattering in every direction that God sent and took themselves away before something a lot worse than they were expecting happened to them." "Meaning us," said the dark-haired woman, grinning.
"Yeah, well, every now and then you have to sit one out," said the marine who had been speaking. "We'll get the next dance, somewhere else. Hey, look-"
Noisy whistles and shrieks went up as two shapely forms walked in, in full Star Force dress black, everything from the full-length skirts to the wound sashes to the optional rakish hats. Captain Dareyev and Captain Devereaux, the latter looking somewhat abashed by the deafening welcome. She looked over at Elinke. Elinke shrugged and led her over to the first refreshment table to get her a glass of wine, but they never had a chance, being well mobbed by every nearby marine before more than a few steps had been taken. The marines always appreciated their captains even when they weren't women. A sharp set of reflexes in the center seat could save your life and those of all your teammates. But female captains had a special mystique-not entirely, Gabriel thought, having anything to do with their superior reflexes.
Even more marines arrived to congratulate the captains, and the two women smiled and let them get on with it, glancing at each other resignedly. Gabriel smiled a little too and turned back to the marine who had been talking, the one from Callirhoe. He was still talking to the brown-eyed marine, but he was slowing down somewhat. Not exactly running out of steam, perhaps, but he and a lot of his buddies, to Gabriel's eye, had that about-to-fall-over look that he had seen more than enough times in his career so far. Men who had been sitting in their shuttles, suited up, ready to be delivered to some godforsaken spot that they had never seen before, ready to take it and hold it as if it were their own, as if they would shed their last drop of blood for it-and indeed they would. Waiting for that to happen for hours on end, sometimes days. The men and women who went through that on a regular basis showed changes in their faces that Gabriel had learned to recognize without being able to describe. Tonight it looked most like weariness to him. And fear, too. But that was not something you would say out loud to a marine, not until you knew him or her very well indeed. For the meantime, these were brothers and sisters, but not yet brothers in blood, except in the abstract. Sooner or later, it might happen . . . probably would. But you didn't force the pace.