The Star Road

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “What about it, Mack?”

  “Sir, apparently he escaped from the Jhan’s ship—”

  “Not that. I know that. Did you find out who he is? What he is?” Whin glanced at the fugitive who was chewing hungrily on something grayish-brown that Whin recognized as a Morah product. One of the eatables supplied for the lunch meeting with the Jhan that would be starting any moment now. Whin grimaced.

  “We tried him on our own food,” said Stigh. “He wouldn’t eat it. They may have played games with his digestive system, too. No, sir, we haven’t found out anything. There’ve been a few undercover people sent into Morah territory in the past twenty years. He could be one of them. We’ve got a records search going on. Of course, chances are his record wouldn’t be in our files, anyway.”

  “Stinking Morah,” muttered a voice from among the officers standing around. Whin looked up quickly, and a new silence fell.

  “Records search. All right,” Whin said, turning back to Stigh, “that’s good. What did the Morah say when what’s-his-name—that officer on duty down at the docks—wouldn’t give him up?”

  “Captain—?” Stigh turned and picked out a young officer with his eyes. The young officer stepped forward.

  “Captain Gene McKussic, Marshal,” he introduced himself.

  “You were the one on the docks?” Whin asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did the Morah say?”

  “Just—that he wasn’t human, sir,” said McKussic. “That he was one of their own experimental pets, made out of one of their own people—just to look human.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s all, Marshal.”

  “And you didn’t believe them?”

  “Look at him, sir—” McKussic pointed at the fugitive, who by this time had finished his food and was watching them with bright but timid eyes. “He hasn’t got a hair on him, except where a man’d have it. Look at his face. And the shape of his head’s human. Look at his fingernails, even—”

  “Yes—” said Whin slowly, gazing at the fugitive. Then he raised his eyes and looked around at the other officers. “But none of you thought to get a doctor in here to check?” “Sir,” said Stigh, “we thought we should contact you, first—” “All right. But get a doctor now! Get two of them!” said Whin. One of the other officers turned to a desk nearby and spoke into an intercom. “You know what we’re up against, don’t you—all of you?” Whin’s eyes stabbed around the room. “This is just the thing to blow Ambassador Dormu’s talk with the Morah Jhan sky high. Now, all of you, except General Stigh, get out of here. Go back to your quarters and stay on tap until you’re given other orders. And keep your mouths shut.” “Marshal,” it was the young Military Police captain, McKussic, “we aren’t going to give him back to the Morah, no matter what, are we, sir . .

  He trailed off. Whin merely looked at him.

  “Get to your quarters, Captain!” said Stigh, roughly.

  The room cleared. When they were left alone with the fugitive, Stigh’s gaze went slowly to Whin.

  “So,” said Whin, “you’re wondering that too, are you, Mack?”

  “No, sir,” said Stigh. “But word of this is probably spreading

  through the men like wildfire, by this time. There’ll be no stopping it. And if it comes to the point of our turning back to the Morah a man who’s been treated the way this man has-”

  “They’re soldiers!” said Whin, harshly. “They’ll obey orders.” He pointed at the fugitive. “That’s a soldier.”

  “Not necessarily, Marshal,” said Stigh. “He could have been one of the civilian agents—”

  “For my purposes, he’s a soldier!” snarled Whin. He took a couple of angry paces up and down the room in each direction, but always wheeling back to confront the fugitive. “Where are those doctors? I’ve got to get back to the Jhan and Dormu!”

  “About Ambassador Dormu,” Stigh said. “If he hears something about this and asks us—”

  “Tell him nothing!” said Whin. “It’s my responsibility! I’m not sure he’s got the guts—never mind. The longer it is before the little squirt knows—”

  The sound of the office door opening brought both men around.

  “The little squirt already knows,” said a dry voice from the doorway. Ambassador Alan Dormu came into the room. He was a slight, bent man, of less than average height. His fading blond hair was combed carefully forward over a balding forehead; and his face had deep, narrow lines that testified to even more years than hair and forehead.

  “Who told you?” Whin gave him a mechanical grin.

  “We diplomats always respect the privacy of our sources,” said Dormu. “What difference does it make—as long as I found out? Because you’re wrong, you know, Marshal. I’m the one who’s responsible. I’m the one who’ll have to answer the Jhan when he asks about this at lunch.”

  “Mack,” said Whin, continuing to grin and with his eyes still fixed on Dormu, “see you later.”

  “Yes, Marshal.”

  Stigh went toward the door of the office. But before he reached it, it opened and two officers came in; a major and a lieutenant colonel, both wearing the caduceus. Stigh stopped and turned back.

  “Here’re the doctors, sir.”

  “Fine. Come here, come here, gentlemen,” said Whin. “Take a look at this.”

  The two medical officers came up to the fugitive, sitting in the chair. They maintained poker faces. One reached for a wrist of the fugitive and felt for a pulse. The other went around back and ran his fingers lightly over the upper back with its misshapen and misplaced shoulder sockets.

  “Well?” demanded Whin, after a restless minute. “What about it? Is he a man, all right?”

  The two medical officers looked up. Oddly, it was the junior in rank, the major, who answered.

  “We’ll have to make tests—a good number of tests, sir,” he said.

  “You’ve no idea—now?” Whin demanded.

  “Now,” spoke up the lieutenant colonel, “he could be either Morah or human. The Morah are very, very, good at this sort of thing. The way those arms—We’ll need samples of his blood, skin, bone marrow—”

  “All right. All right,” said Whin. “Take the time you need. But not one second more. We’re all on the spot here, gentlemen. Mack—” he turned to Stigh, “I’ve changed my mind. You stick with the doctors and stand by to keep me informed.”

  He turned back to Dormu.

  “We’d better be getting back upstairs, Mr. Ambassador,” he said.

  “Yes,” answered Dormu, quietly.

  They went out, paced down the corridor and entered the lift tube in silence.

  “You know, of course, how this complicates things, Marshal,” said Dormu, finally, as they began to rise up the tube together. Whin started like a man woken out of deep thought.

  “What? You don’t have to ask me that,” he said. His voice took on an edge. “I suppose you’d expect my men to just stand around and watch, when something like that came running out of a Morah ship?”

  “I might have,” said Dormu. “In their shoes.”

  “Don’t doubt it.” Whin gave a single, small grunt of a laugh, without humor.

  “I don’t think you follow me,” said Dormu. “I didn’t bring up the subject to assign blame. I was just leading into the fact the damage done is going to have to be repaired, at any cost; and I’m counting on your immediate—note the word, Marshal —immediate cooperation, if and when I call for it.”

  The lift had carried them to the upper floor that was their destination. They got off together. Whin gave another humorless little grunt of laughter.

  “You’re thinking of handing him back, then?” Whin said.

  “Wouldn’t you?” asked Dormu.

  “Not if he’s human. No,” said Whin. They walked on down a corridor and into a small room with another door. From beyond that other door came the faint smell of something like incense—it was, in fact, a neutral odor,
tolerable to human and Morah alike and designed to hide the differing odors of one race from another. Also, from beyond the door, came the sound of three musical notes, steadily repeated; two notes exactly the same, and then a third, a half-note higher.

  Tonk, tonky TINK! . . .

  “It’s establishing a solid position for confrontation with the Jhan that’s important right now,” said Dormu, as they approached the other door. “He’s got us over a barrel on the subject of this talk anyway, even without that business downstairs coming up. So it’s the confrontation that counts. Nothing else.”

  They opened the door and went in.

  Within was a rectangular, windowless room. Two tables had been set up. One for Dormu and Whin; and one for the

  Jhan, placed at right angles to the other table but not quite touching it. Both tables had been furnished and served with food; and the Jhan was already seated at his. To his right and left, each at about five feet of distance from him, flamed two purely symbolic torches in floor standards. Behind him stood three ordinary Morah—two servers, and a musician whose surgically-created, enormous forefinger tapped steadily at the bars of something like a small metal xylophone, hanging vertically on his chest.

  The forefinger tapped in time to the three notes Whin and Dormu had heard in the room outside but without really touching the xylophone bars. The three notes actually sounded from a speaker overhead, broadcast throughout the station wherever the Jhan might be, along with the neutral perfume. They were a courtesy of the human hosts.

  “Good to see you again, gentlemen,” said the Jhan, through the mechanical interpreter at his throat. “I was about to start without you.”

  He sat, like the other Morah in the room, unclothed to the waist, below which he wore, though hidden now by the table, a simple kilt, or skirt, of dark red, feltlike cloth. The visible skin of his body, arms and face was a reddish brown in color, but there was only a limited amount of it to be seen. His upper chest, back, arms, neck and head-excluding his face—was covered by a mat of closely-trimmed, thick, gray hair, so noticeable in contrast to his hairless areas, that it looked more like a garment—a cowled half-jacket—than any natural growth upon him.

  The face that looked out of the cowl-part was humanoid, but with wide jawbones, rounded chin and eyes set far apart over a flat nose. So that, although no one feature suggested it, his face as a whole had a faintly feline look.

  “Our apologies,” said Dormu, leading the way forward. “The marshal just received an urgent message for me from Earth, in a new code. And only I had the key to it.”

  “No need to apologize,” said the Jhan. “We’ve had our musician here to entertain us while we waited.”

  Dormu and Whin sat down at the opposite ends of their table, facing each other and at right angles to the Jhan. The Jhan had already begun to eat. Whin stared deliberately at the foods on the Jhan’s table, to make it plain that he was not avoiding looking at them, and then turned back to his own plate. He picked up a roll and buttered it.

  “Your young men are remarkable in their agility,” the Jhan said to Dormu. “We hope you will convey them our praise—” They talked of the athletic show; and the meal progressed. As it was drawing to a close, the Jhan came around to the topic that had brought him to this meeting with Dormu.

  “. . . It’s unfortunate we have to meet under such necessities,” he said.

  “My own thought,” replied Dormu. “You must come to Earth some time on a simple vacation.”

  “We would like to come to Earth—in peace,” said the Jhan. “We would hope not to welcome you any other way,” said Dormu.

  “No doubt,” said the Jhan. “That is why it puzzles me, that when you humans can have peace for the asking—by simply refraining from creating problems—you continue to cause incidents, to trouble us and threaten our sovereignty over our own territory of space.”

  Dormu frowned.

  “Incidents?” he echoed. “I don’t recall any incidents. Perhaps the Jhan has been misinformed?”

  “We are not misinformed,” said the Jhan. “I refer to your human settlements on the fourth and fifth worlds of the star you refer to as 27J93; but which we call by a name of our own. Rightfully so because it is in our territory.”

  Tonk, tonk, TINK . . . went the three notes of the Morah music.

  “It seems to me—if my memory is correct,” murmured Dormu, “that the Treaty Survey made by our two races jointly, twelve years ago, left Sun 27J93 in unclaimed territory outside both our spatial areas.”

  “Quite right,” said the Jhan. “But the Survey was later amended to include this and several other solar systems in our territory.”

  “Not by us, I’m afraid,” said Dormu. “I’m sorry, but my people can’t consider themselves automatically bound by whatever unilateral action you choose to take without consulting us.”

  “The action was not unilateral,” said the Jhan, calmly. “We have since consulted with our brother Emperors—the Morah Selig, the Morah Ben, the Morah Yarra and the Morah Ness. All have concurred in recognizing the solar systems in question as being in our territory.”

  “But surely the Morah Jhan understands,” said Dormu, “that an agreement only between the various political segments of one race can’t be considered binding upon a people of another race entirely?”

  “We of the Morah,” said the Jhan, “reject your attitude that race is the basis for division between Empires. Territory is the only basis upon which Empires may be differentiated. Distinction between the races refers only to differences in shape or color; and as you know we do not regard any particular shape or color as sacredly, among ourselves, as you do; since we make many individuals over into what shape it pleases us, for our own use, or amusement.”

  He tilted his head toward the musician with the enormous, steadily jerking, forefinger.

  “Nonetheless,” said Dormu, “the Morah Jhan will not deny his kinship with the Morah of the other Morah Empires.”

  “Of course not. But what of it?” said the Jhan calmly. “In our eyes, your empire and those of our brothers, are in all ways similar. In essence you are only another group possessing a territory that is not ours. We make no difference between you and the empires of the other Morah.”

  “But if it came to an armed dispute between you and us,” said Dormu, “would your brother Emperors remain neutral?”

  “We hardly expect so,” said the Morah Jhan, idly, pushing aside the last container of food that remained on the table before him. A server took it away. “But that would only be because, since right would be on our side, naturally they would rally to assist us.”

  “I see,” said Dormu.

  Tonk, tonky TINK . . . went the sound of the Morah music.

  “But why must we talk about such large and problematical issues?” said the Jhan. “Why not listen, instead, to the very simple and generous disposition we suggest for this matter of your settlements under 27J93? You will probably find our solution so agreeable that no more need be said on the subject.”

  “I’d be happy to hear it,” said Dormu.

  The Jhan leaned back in his seat at the table.

  “In spite of the fact that our territory has been intruded upon,” he said, “we ask only that you remove your people from their settlements and promise to avoid that area in future, recognizing these and the other solar systems I mentioned earlier as being in our territory. We will not even ask for ordinary reparations beyond the purely technical matter of your agreement to recognize what we Morah have already recognized, that the division of peoples is by territory, and not by race.”

  He paused. Dormu opened his mouth to speak.

  “Of course,” added the Jhan, “there is one additional, trivial concession we insist on. A token reparation—so that no precedent of not asking for reparations be set. That token concession is that you allow us corridors of transit across your spatial territory, through which our ships may pass without inspection between our empire and the empires of our
brother Morah.”

  Dormu’s mouth closed. The Jhan sat waiting. After a moment, Dormu spoke.

  “I can only say,” said Dormu, “that I am stunned and overwhelmed at these demands of the Morah Jhan. I was sent to this meeting only to explain to him that our settlements under Sun number 27J93 were entirely peaceful ones, constituting no human threat to his empire. I have no authority to treat with the conditions and terms just mentioned. I will have to contact my superiors back on Earth for instructions—and that will take several hours.”

  “Indeed?” said the Morah Jhan. ‘Tm surprised to hear you were sent all the way here to meet me with no more instructions than that. That represents such a limited authority that I almost begin to doubt the good will of you and your people in agreeing to this meeting.”

  “On our good will, of course,” said Dormu, “the Morah Jhan can always depend.”

  “Can I?” The wide-spaced eyes narrowed suddenly in the catlike face. “Things seem to conspire to make me doubt it. Just before you gentlemen joined me I was informed of a most curious fact by my officers. It seems some of your Military Police have kidnapped one of my Morah and are holding him prisoner.”

  “Oh?” said Dormu. His face registered polite astonishment. “I don’t see how anything like that could have happened.” He turned to Whin. “Marshal, did you hear about anything like that taking place?”

  Whin grinned his mechanical grin at the Morah Jhan.

  “I heard somebody had been picked up down at the docks,” he said. “But I understood he was human. One of our people who’d been missing for some time—a deserter, maybe. A purely routine matter. It’s being checked out, now.”

  “I would suggest that the marshal look more closely into the matter,” said the Jhan. His eyes were still slitted. “I promise him he will find the individual is a Morah; and of course, I expect the prisoner’s immediate return.”