"No," Sigrid said.
"You positive?"
"Yes. Surely. Remember, I vas concerned in the pan-European project. I saw shipyards myself, read the journals, heard the gossip. Maybe some very small ships vas being made secretly, but something big enough to take many people to another planet, no. Not at the time ve left. And I don't think there vas time aftervard to build much, before the end came."
"No. There wasn't." Donnan shook himself. "Okay," he said quickly, "that's clue number two you've given me. However fine it would be to have more people alive, I admit I was hoping for the answer you gave. How I was hoping!
"You see, on Katkinu I was shown a film made by the Monwaingi intelligence service. An interview with a trader from Xo, who admitted his combine had sold the Balkan and the Arab alliances something that military theorists once labeled a doomsday weapon. The ultimate deterrent." His voice grew saw-edged. "A set of disruption bombs, able to sterilize the planet. Armed to go off automatically in the event of an attack on the countries possessing same. Got the idea? The Monwaingi believe Earth was not murdered. They think Earth committed suicide."
Sigrid sagged in her chair. A dry little sound came from her, nothing else was possible. Donnan slammed the desk with his fist. "You see?" he almost shouted. "That's what I didn't want to share. Monwaing was willing to keep the secret. Why shouldn't I? Why let my friends wonder too what race of monsters they belong to? Wonder what's the use of keeping alive, then force themselves to go through the motions anyway—you see?"
He checked himself and went on more quietly: "I've tried to investigate further. Couldn't get any positive information one way or the other from Xo, in spite of some very expensive espionage. Well, naturally, they'd burn their own records of such a transaction. If you sold someone a gun and he turned out to be a homicidal maniac, even if you hadn't known he was, you wouldn't want to admit your part. Would you? Who'd ever come to your gunshop again?
"How do we explain those Kandemirian missiles? Well, Monwaing thinks Kandemir did plant those, but only after the deed was done. To stake a claim. The Solar System is strategically located: outflanks the Monwaingi stars. And when Earth has cooled, it'll be colonized with less difficulty than many other planets would give. As for why the missiles are so inefficient, they are intended as a warning rather than an absolute death trap.
"Please note that Kandemir has never denied doing this much. Nor affirmed it, to be sure. But they did announce in their arrogant way that come the proper time, they would exercise rights of salvage; and meanwhile they wouldn't be responsible for accidents to anyone entering the Solar System."
Donnan rose. His chair clattered to the floor. He ignored it, strode around to Sigrid, hunkered down before her and took her hands. "Okay," he said, suddenly gentle. "You know the worst. I think we three, here and now, have got all the clues anyone will ever have for certain. Maybe we can figure out who the enemy is. Or was. Buck up, kid. We've got to try."
XV
I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
—Chesterton
As if thrusting away an attacker, she sprang to her feet. Donnan went over on his rear. "Oh," she exclaimed. "I'm so sorry." She bent to help him rise. He didn't require her assistance but used it anyway. Their faces came close. He saw her lips stir. Suddenly his own quirked upward.
"We needed some comic relief," he said. His arm slid down to her waist, lingered there a moment; she laid her head on his shoulder as fleetingly; they separated, but he continued to feel where they had touched. Not quite steadily, he went back to his desk, took his pipe and rekindled it.
"I think now I can stand any answer we may find," he said low.
Color came and went beneath her skin. But she spoke crisply: "Let us list the possibilities. Ve have Kandemir and Earth herself as suspects. But who else? Vorlak? I do not vant to slander an ally, but could . . . v'at you call him . . . Draga Hlott, for some reason—"
"No," Donnan said. He explained about the treaty with Russia. "Besides," he added, "as the war developed, I got more and more pipelines into the Vorlakka government. Ger Nenna, one of their scholar-administrator class, was particularly helpful. They, the Dragar, aren't any good at double-dealing. Not only had they no reason to attack Earth—contrariwise—but if they ever did, they wouldn't have operated under cover. And if by some chance they had pulled a sneak assault, they wouldn't have been able to maintain the secret. No, I cleared them long ago."
"Similar considerations apply to the lesser spacefaring worlds, like Yann and Unya," Ramri said. "They all feared Kandemir. While the Soviet-Vorlakka agreement was not publicized, everyone knew Earth was as natural a prey for the nomads as any other planet and, if the war lasted, would inevitably become involved on the allied side to some degree. Even were they able, no one would have eliminated a potential helper."
"I checked them out pretty thoroughly with espionage just the same," Donnan said bluntly. "They're clean. The only alternatives are Kandemir and suicide."
Sigrid twisted her hands together. "But suicide does not make sense," she objected. "It is not only that I do not vant to believe it. In some vays it vould be more comfortable to."
"Huh?" Both Donnan and Ramri stared.
"Ja, v'y not? Then ve vould know Earth's killers are dead and cannot threaten us any more."
Donnan raised his shoulders and spread his hands. "I'd forgotten women are the cold-blooded, practical sex," he muttered.
"No, but look, Carl. Let us suppose the doomsday veapon vas actually installed. Then v'y did no country try to plant some people off Earth? Even if, let us say, vuns she had this last resort . . . even if Yugoslavia expected no vun vould dare attack her—still, Yugoslavia vould have been in a better bargaining position yet vith people on other planets. For then they could say, v'atever happened, a part of them would survive. And any other government notified about the veapon vould have tried to take out similar insurance. Insurance against accident, if nothing else. Or against . . . oh . . . blackmail, in case Yugoslavia ever got a nihilist dictator like Hitler vas in his day. So there vould have been some emigration from Earth. But ve know for sure there vas not. Even if the emigrants left this cluster, spacemen like Monvaingi vould have noticed it and you vould have heard them talk about it."
Donnan yanked his attention from her to her words. They made sense. He'd speculated along some such lines himself, but had been too shaken emotionally to put his ideas in her cool terms, and too busy making war to straighten out those private horrors that inhibited his reasoning about the subject.
"One possibility," he said. "If Kandemir got wind of the doomsday weapon, Kandemir might'a seized the opportunity, since the destruction of Earth would then be like shooting fish in a barrel. Yugoslavia and the rest might never have had time to organize colonization schemes."
The fair head shook. "I think not," she answered. "Maybe they vere angry men governing Earth's nations, but they vere shrewd too. They had to be. Countries, especially little countries, did not last long in this century if they had stupid leaders. The Balkan and Arab politicians vould have foreseen just the chance of attack you mention. Not only Kandemir, but any planet—any pirate fleet, even, if somebody got vun—anybody could blackmail Earth. No? So I do not think they vould have bought a doomsday veapon unless lots of spaceships vere included in the package."
An eerie tingle moved up Donnan's spine. He smote one fist into the other palm, soundlessly, again and again. "By God, yes," he whispered. "You've hit the point that Monwaing and I both missed. The Monwaingi couldn't be expected to know our psychology that well, I reckon, but I should have seen it. The whole concept of the weapon was lunacy. But lunatics are at least logical thinkers."
Sigrid threw back her shoulders. The lilting voice lifted till it filled the room: "Carl, I do not believe there ever vas any such veapon sold. It just does not figure. Most
'specially not in galactic terms. See, yes, there still vere countries that did not like each other. But those old grudges vere becoming less and less important all the time. There vas still some fighting, but the big atomic var never happened, in spite of almost every country having means to fight it. Does that not show the situation vas stable? That there never vould have been a var? At least, not the var everybody vas vorrying about.
"Earth vas turning outvard. The old issues vere stopping to matter. Vat vas the use of a doomsday veapon? It vould have been a Chinese vall, built against an enemy that no more existed. For the same price, buying spaceships, buying modern education for the young people, a country could have gained ten times the power . . . and achievement . . . and safety. I tell you, the suicide story is not true."
For a moment neither of the others spoke. They couldn't. Ramri's feathers rose. He swelled his throat pouch and expostulated, "But we know! Our intelligence made that Xoan admit—"
"He lied," Sigrid interrupted. "Is your intelligence alvays correct?"
"Why? Why?" Ramri paced, not as a man does, but in great leaps back and forth between the walls. "What could Xo gain from such a lie? No conceivable advantage! Even the individual who finally confessed, he got nothing but clearance for his ship to leave Monwaing. Absurd!"
Donnan gazed long at his friend before he said, "I think you'd better own up, Ramri: your general staff was had. Let's go on from there."
The end of his nightmare had not eased the wire tautness in him. He bent over the sheet of paper on his desk as if it were an oracular wall. The unhuman symbols seemed to intertwine like snakes before his eyes. He focused, instead, on the Roman analogues which had been written in parallel columns.
A B C D E F G H I J K AL
M N O P Q MR
BA : NQ
ABIJ : MOQMP
Transliteration of some Delphic language—No, no, don't be silly. A through AL simply stands for the first twelve numbers of the duodecimal Kandemirian system, with L the sign for zero. So—
It was like a knife stab. For an instant his heartbeat ceased. He felt a sense of falling. The pulse resumed, crazily, with a roaring in his ears.
As if over immense distances, he heard Ramri say, making an effort at calm:
"By elimination, then, Kandemir does seem to be the murderer planet. Possibly they engineered this Xoan matter as a red herring. And yet I have never felt their guilt was very plausible. That is one reason why I was so quick, however unwilling, to suppose Earth had indeed committed suicide."
"Vell," said the girl, "I am not so familiar vith local situations, but I understand the Kandemirians are—or vere, before you broke their power—merciless conquerors. Earth vas still another planet to conquer. And then the Russians actively helped Vorlak."
"Yes, but Tarkamat himself denied to Carl—contemptuously—that the Soviet assistance was significant. Which does sound reasonable. What indeed could a few shiploads of small arms and a handful of student officers amount to, on the scale of interstellar war? If necessary, Kandemir could have lodged a protest with the Soviet government, and made it stick by a threat of punitive action. The Russians would have backed down for certain. Because even a mild raid from Kandemir would have left them so brutally beaten that they would be helpless in the face of their Western rivals. In fact, Tarkamat proved very knowledgeable about Terrestrial politics. He remarked to Carl that if and when he decided to overrun Earth, he would have used native allies more than his own troops. Divide et impera, you know. Yet for all the strength and information he had, Tarkamat never even bothered to announce that he knew about the Soviet action.
"Why should he lay Earth waste? Its biochemistry was similar to that of Kandemir. Which made the living planet a far more valuable prize than the present lump of rock, which can only be reseeded with life at great difficulty and expense, over a period of God knows how long. The nomads are ruthless, but not stupid. Their sole conceivable motive for sterilizing Earth would have been as a terrible object lesson to their enemies. And then they would have boasted of what they did, not denied it."
Donnan forced himself to take the paper in his hand and punch some keys on his desk calculator. He had never done harder work in his life.
"Yes, yes, you speak sensible," Sigrid was agreeing. "Also, as ve have said, if they vere going to interdict the Solar System, they could have done the job better than vith obsolescent missiles badly programmed. For that matter, Mr. Ramri, v'y should they patrol the System at all? They could have taken it over as part of the general settlement after they von the var, as they expected to vin. Until then, just an occasional visit to make sure nobody vas using it against them vould have been enough."
The calculator chattered. Donnan's brain felt like a lump of ice.
"Do you imply that Kandemir never even placed those missiles there?" Ramri asked. "But who did?"
Numbers appeared on the calculator dial. The equation balanced.
Donnan turned around. His voice was flat and empty. "I know who."
"What? Hvad?" They stepped closer, saw his expression, and grew still.
An immense, emotionless steadiness descended on the man. He pointed. "These notes scribbled inside that one missile," he said. "What they were should have been obvious all along. The women failed to see it because they had too much else to think about. They dismissed the whole question as unimportant. But I should have realized the moment I looked. You too, Ramri. I suppose we didn't want to realize."
The golden eyes were level upon him. "Yes? What are those symbols, then, Carl?"
"A conversion table. Jotted down by some technician used to thinking in terms of one number system, who had to adjust instruments and controls calibrated in another system.
"The Kandemirians use a twelve-based arithmetic. These other numerals are based on six."
The girl bit her lip and frowned, puzzled why Donnan was so white. Ramri stood as if carved until, slowly, he spread out his two three-fingered hands.
"It checks," Donnan said. "The initial notation alone, giving the numbers from one to six in parallel rows, is a giveaway. But here are the conversions of some other figures, to which I reckon this or that dial had to be set. The squiggle in between, that Sigrid represented by a colon, has to be an equality sign. BA is 25 in Kandemirian; so is NQ in the other system. ABIJ and MOQMP both represent 2134. And so on. No doubt about it."
Ramri made a croaking noise. "A subject race," he managed to articulate. "I, I, I think the Lenyar of Druon . . . the nomads conquered them a long time ago . . . they did formerly employ—"
Donnan shook his head. "Nope," he told them. "Won't do. You yourself just listed the reasons for calling Kandemir innocent of this particular crime."
Understanding came upon Sigrid. She edged away from Ramri, lifting her hands to fend him off. "Monvaing?" she breathed.
"Yes," said Donnan.
"No!" Ramri yelled. "I give you my soul in pawn, it is not true!"
"I never said you were party to the deed yourself," Donnan answered. A dim part of him wanted to take Ramri in his arms, as he had done the day they first saw murdered Earth. But his feet seemed nailed to the floor.
His voice proceeded, oddly echoing within his skull: "Once we grant Monwaing did this, the pieces fall into place. The only objections I can see are that Monwaing wouldn't destroy a good market and a potential ally, and in any event would be too decent to do such a thing.
"But Ramri, Monwaing isn't a single civilization. You didn't recognize these numerals here. Nobody on your planet uses them. However, there are Monwaingi planets you've never seen. And some of the civilizations developed by your race are very hardboiled. The biotechnic orientation. If it's okay to manipulate life in any way convenient, then it's okay to destroy life on any scale convenient. Tantha wouldn't do so; but Laothaung, say, might. And the central government is dominated by Laothaung and similarly minded Societies.
"Those cultures aren't traders, either. Earth as a market meant little to them. What d
id concern them was Earth as a keg of dynamite. Remember, Resident Wandwai admitted we were too poor and backward as yet to be of military help; and he admitted knowing about that provocative treaty between Russia and Vorlak. Laothaung might well have feared that Kandemir would seize the excuse to invade Earth—thereby spreading the war to Monwaing's most vulnerable flank.
"Oh, they didn't hate humans. I'm sure we survivors would have been well treated, had we stayed in their sectors. But neither did they love us. We, like any living creatures, were just phenomena, to be dealt with as suited their own ends. If they destroyed Earth, they could pin the blame on Kandemir by such methods as planting captured Kandemirian missiles in orbit . . . but not making the missiles too damned effective. That was quite a sound calculation, too. Anger against Kandemir helped out the war effort no end.
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