Whether any of it would be of any use in keeping the next round of the Suicide Wars from breaking out was another matter. Maybe the Great Ones would admire some of the sculptures produced by a planet-bound Foitani race with which Odern traded, but that would not keep them from hating the artists as so many vodranet. Maybe the Foitani from Odern made marvelously compact and clever holovid scanners, but that would not keep them from loathing kwopillot or, if the claims of the old imperial Foitani got loose among them—as was very likely—from despising themselves as altered versions of the original Foitani plan they had been trying for so long to emulate.
Frustrated by her complete inability to find anything that might stop big, bluish aliens from massacring one another, Jennifer gave up and went back to the crew compartment. "Any luck?" Greenberg asked when she came out of the lift.
"None. Maybe a little less." She ran her hands through her hair, making tugging motions at it the way Greenberg did. "I should have known better. We don't have a writer stowing away a deus ex machina for us. We're going to have to do this ourselves, with our brains."
"Which haven't done us a whole lot of good so far."
"Isn't that the sad and sorry truth?"
Negotiations resumed the next day. The representatives of the Great Ones started things off by declaring in unison, "We have the solution to this problem."
"You and all your perverts are going to go and commit suicide so you don't bother decent Foitani any more?" Voskop W Wurd asked. From a human or an alien of different character, that would have been sarcasm. Jennifer thought the odds favored Voskop W Wurd's meaning every word of what he said.
Pawasar Pawasar Ras said, "Despite contemplation, I have not come upon anything that so much as approaches such a solution. I would be willing to hear one from any source, even a source as unreliable as kwopillot."
"Yes, tell us," Greenberg urged. "Jennifer and I haven't found anything that looks like an answer, either."
"Very well." Solut Mek Kem spoke for the old-time Foitani now. "The solution is classic in its simplicity. You have seen that vodranet are an unnatural alteration of the true Foitani way of being. Is this so, or not?"
"We see that the Great Ones appear to have been kwopillot, yes," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "Nevertheless, since the Suicide Wars we have built our own reality."
"What you say, though, kwopil, appears to remain in essence true, if bitter," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "If we are to have emulation of the Great Ones as our goal, we must bear this unpalatable fact in mind."
"Excellent," Solut Mek Kem said. "Then to solve the problem of strife between vodranet and proper Foitani, all modern Foitani must abandon their present distorted way of life and become as we are. As you have seen for yourselves, turning a vodran into a proper Foitan is easy—and no wonder, given that you are poor modifications of the true form. In a generation's time, the race can be whole again, and as it always should have been."
"I like the way I am just fine, and if any stinking kwopil has the brass to tell me my get or I would do better as perverts, we'll see how well he does radioactive," Voskop W Wurd said. Great Ones, Foitani from Odern, and Rof Golani had all installed weapons checks outside the Harold Meeker. Had it been otherwise, Jennifer was sure the blue-gray Foitan would have blazed away with everything he had.
Pawasar Pawasar Ras, as was the way of the Oderna, was more restrained but no less certain. "I fail to see how this proposal in any way benefits the Foitani now living within our sphere. We gain nothing from it save the commitment of the kwopillot not to attack. Buying safety with capitulation is always a poor bargain."
"On the contrary: you vodranet gain a great deal. Being as you are, you have lost the possibility for lifelong relationships between the sexes, the cornerstone of Foitani society since time immemorial," Solut Mek Kem said.
"He has something there," Jennifer whispered to Greenberg. Greenberg nodded. Maybe stable home life would be more likely to lead to a stable existence for the species than the serial relationships in which modern Foitani perforce engaged. On the other hand, the Great Ones, while stable among themselves, had wreaked unmitigated havoc on every other race they met. Human notions of right and wrong were anything but universal outside humanity.
Aissur Aissur Rus said, "Perhaps, kwopil, we lack the characteristic you extol. Yet can your kind claim to understand our race's whole nature, as we do? We give birth and sire, nurture and conquer, all of us together. Why should we give that up? If you put the proposition to our species on any surviving world of the sphere, few would choose it."
"Then as I believed from the outset, there is no point to these talks," Solut Mek Kem said. "We will have war."
IX
For all his ringing proclamation, for all his departing from the Harold Meeker and flying up to the Vengeance, Solut Mek Kem did not commence battle at once. Jennifer took that for a hopeful sign—with how much justification, she did not know. Trying to provide more justification, for herself and everyone else, she called the Great One. There was, she knew, a real chance the Foitan would not deign to speak to her, she being, after all, a mere alien. In that case, though, she—and everyone else—would be no worse off than if she had not called.
As far as she could interpret Foitani expressions—which wasn't far—Solut Mek Kem was anything but delighted to get on the screen with her. But the Great One did not refuse. Again, she took that for a hopeful sign. "Thank you for being willing to listen to me," she said, wanting him to know she realized the concession was unusual.
"It is no inherent merit on your part, let me assure you." Like most Foitani, Solut Mek Kem did not waste politeness on beings outside his kin-group. "My willingness, as you call it, is purely pragmatic. I am forced to recognize that the situation in which I find myself is not that which I anticipated on returning to awareness. You are part of this new situation. I will learn what I can, then act."
From a Foitan, that was a miracle of moderation; had Jennifer had to devise a motto for the Foitani, she would have come up with something like, Shoot first, then question the corpse. She said, "I have two things I want to discuss with you. One, obviously, is the prospect of a second round of Suicide Wars."
"This, again obviously, has my interest, though many aboard Vengeance feel it would be worthwhile if it meant exterminating all vodranet."
"But isn't it as likely to result in getting rid of all you kwopillot, or maybe all of your species?"
"This prospect is all that has stayed our hands thus far."
"Wonderful." The Great Ones used little in the way of subterfuge. They'd had scant need of it; whatever they wanted, they'd simply taken. Jennifer could have done with more socially lubricating hypocrisy—facing up to such straightforward self-interest was daunting. She said, "The other matter has to do with the humans you hold in your data storage system."
"Here we may have room for discussion, assuming it can be completed before fighting commences. As I told you before, I am indifferent to their fate," Solut Mek Kem said. "I asked you once if you wanted live copies produced for you."
"I don't think of them as copies. I think of them as humans," Jennifer answered. "I don't like the idea of their being in your hands; they aren't experimental animals."
Bernard Greenberg came up beside her. "That's right. What would you do if some other race held Foitani just to find out how they worked?"
"Destroy that race," Solut Mek Kem answered at once, his own voice as flat as the Spanglish words that came from the translator. "It has happened before. With the contemptible popguns in your vessel, however, you do not enjoy that option. You exist here on sufferance, not through strength. Remember it."
"We're here because Foitani thought we could solve a problem that baffled them, and the Harold Meeker is only a trading vessel, not a warship. I suggest you remember that, if you ever go into human space. We're better able to protect ourselves now than when you kidnapped those primitive ancestors of ours," Greenberg said.
Jennifer clapped
her hands. From all she'd seen, matching the Foitani arrogance for arrogance was the best way to make them act in a humanly reasonable fashion. They could be made to respect power. Weakness they simply trampled.
Solut Mek Kem said, "I repeat, this matter is subject to discussion."
"Then let us come up to Vengeance and discuss it," Greenberg said. "I might point out that if it hadn't been for us, your ship would still be a tower and you would still be sleeping and impotent inside it." And the war on Gilver would have only two sides, not a good potential for three, Jennifer thought.
"A race that relies on the gratitude of others to cause them to act on its behalf is well on the way to extinction," Solut Mek Kem observed. "Nevertheless, you may come—in your own ship, not one furnished by either race of vodranet with which we have had the misfortune to become acquainted. Make note that I do this from considerations of my own advantage, not out of sentimentality." The screen blanked.
Greenberg called the research base. "I presume you were monitoring our call to the Great Ones' ship. They've given us permission. If you start shooting at us, it might annoy them. You don't want that, do you?" To Jennifer, he muttered under his breath, "I know damn well I don't."
The Foitani needed a couple of minutes to reply. Finally, a translated voice came back to the Harold Meeker. "You have our consent to undertake this mission, but you shall not under any circumstances enter into agreements binding up Odern in any way."
"We won't, Thegun Thegun Nug," Greenberg promised.
Another pause. "One day I must learn how I am so readily identifiable."
"It's your charming personality, Thegun Thegun Nug," Greenberg said. "What else could it possibly be?"
"Undoubtedly you are correct," Thegun Thegun Nug said. "Out." Jennifer and Greenberg tried to hold it in, but they both started laughing at the same time.
Greenberg began talking with the Harold Meeker's computer, making sure the ship was ready for space. Jennifer waited for a furious call from Voskop W Wurd. The Rof Golani knew how to delegate authority, however, for the furious call that came was from his aide Yulvot L Real, accusing her and Greenberg of selling out to the perfidious kwopillot and threatening to shoot them down if they took off.
"If you do that, you risk starting the war with the Great Ones again," Jennifer pointed out. "Not only that, you might antagonize the Foitani from Odern. Besides, we're just humans, remember? Do you expect any self-respecting Foitani to take seriously anything we say?"
"Probably not," Yulvot L Reat admitted, "nor do you deserve serious regard."
"Thank you so much, Yulvot L Reat," Jennifer said. "Out."
"You're getting to be able to handle them pretty well," Greenberg said.
"Bernard, I don't think that's necessarily a compliment. I just want to get into space again."
"Me, too. Stuck on the surface of Gilver like this, I've felt like a bug with a shoe poised over it. Once I'm flying on my own power, at least I'll have the illusion of being a free agent again, even if I'll still be under the guns of Vengeance."
The Harold Meeker lifted off a few minutes later. Jennifer watched the Foitani research base fall away. The screen's view expanded to pick up the Great Unknown. The precinct looked strange and incomplete without the central tower, as if all roads led, not to Rome, but to nowhere.
The sky quickly darkened toward black. Stars came out. Jennifer looked at the radar pickup. On the way in to Gilver, it had shown a hideously jumbled swarm of ships and missiles, their tracks and signals jammed to provide them the greatest possible protection. Now only one artificial object swung in space near Gilver: the Vengeance. On radar, it was only the palest of flickering ghosts.
"I'm just glad to see it at all," Greenberg said when Jennifer remarked on that. "If we couldn't pick it up, that would be bad news for human space."
A Great One sent a peremptory signal. "Approach slowly and directly, or you will be destroyed without further warning."
Jennifer acknowledged, then shut down the communicator and sighed. "They're such a charming race. I don't know what those CroMagnon people will do once we get them back, but we have to do it. The more I think, the more it looks like I couldn't live with myself if I just left them there in that Foitani database."
"I know what you mean," Greenberg answered. "At first, I didn't worry too much about it—they were in storage and weren't aware of anything that happened around them. But if the Foitani can call them up again and again, do what they want with them every time—test them to destruction if they've a mind to, which they probably do—I think we have to get a live copy back, and get the Great Ones to wipe the files so they can't make any more."
"Sounds good to me," Jennifer agreed. She didn't know what sort of deal they would have to make with the Great Ones to accomplish that. Whatever it was, that price needed paying. Sometimes profit didn't count for everything.
The Vengeance might have been more or less invisible to radar, but before long it showed up visually in the Harold Meeker's forward screen. It looked even bigger alone in space than attached to a planet . . . and no wonder. It wasn't the size of a spacecraft. It was the size of a baby asteroid—maybe even a toddler asteroid. It also bristled with weapons emplacements that hadn't been visible while it slept away the centuries on Gilver.
What worried Jennifer most was that the Vengeance was an artifact from the side that had lost the Suicide Wars. What sort of craft had the winners used? Whatever the answer, those ships were gone now, either destroyed in the war or turned on one another afterward. The Vengeance remained, huge and deadly and all alone, as if a last Tyrannosaurus rex had somehow been raised from the grave and turned loose in the jungle parks of modern Earth.
The abrupt voice came out of the speaker again. "Berth your vessel at the lock with the flashing amber light, non-Foitani."
Jennifer looked in the screen. The flashing amber light seemed bright enough to be visible down on Gilver, let alone from just a couple of kilometers away. She said, "They aren't crediting us with a whole lot of brains."
"We aren't Foitani. How could we have brains?" Greenberg answered. "They're giving us more credit than they think we deserve just by talking with us. For that matter, how smart are we? Here we are, going to dicker for specimens from our own race and for a way to keep the Suicide Wars from starting over, and what can we offer? What do we have that the Great Ones might want?"
It was a good question. As with a good many others lately, Jennifer would have admired it more had she had a good answer for it. She rocked back and forth in her seat, not so much concentrating as trying to relax and let her subconscious come up with one. In SF novels, inspiration was usually enough to let the hero make the story come out right.
Inspiration did not come. In any case, inspiration looked puny when set in the balance against the kilometers of deadliness of the Vengeance. A mammal in the jungle park might be more inspired than any Tyrannosaurus rex ever hatched, but that wouldn't keep it from getting eaten if the dinosaur decided to open his mouth and gulp.
A human in the jungle park, of course, would think about a weapon to use against a monster dinosaur. Put a character from a Don A. Stuart novel in that park and he would think of a weapon one day, build it the next, and eat Tyrannosaurus steak the day after that. The spacegoing Tyrannosaurus engulfing the Harold Meeker, unfortunately, had already thought of more weapons than any Don A. Stuart character ever born. The Foitani, whether ancient or modern, put a lot of effort into destructive capacity. If only they'd expended even a little more on learning how to get along with one another, they would have been much nicer people . . . and Jennifer wouldn't be coming aboard a spacecraft called Vengeance.
"If only . . ." Jennifer sighed. That was one of the ways old-time SF writers had gone about building a story. She wished it had more bearing in the real world.
The communicator spoke. "You may now exit your ship. You will find atmospheric pressure and temperature maintained at a level suitable for your species; at least,
the specimens of your kind in our data store take no harm of it."
Jennifer's hands curled into fists. Those poor cave people were getting the guinea-pig treatment again, and then being—what? Killed? Just erased? She thought of the explorer in Rogue Moon, who died again and again as he worked his way through the alien artifact on the moon. She wondered if, like him, the CroMagnons in the Foitani data banks remembered each brief incarnation, each death. She hoped not.
"Atmospheric analysis," Greenberg told the Harold Meeker's computer. It, too, reported that the air was good. Greenberg said, "I don't trust the Foitani any further than I have to." He cocked a wry eyebrow. "If they do want to kill us, I guess they could manage it a lot more directly than lying about the air outside."
"I don't blame you for not trusting them," Jennifer said. "I don't, either. And they have something we want, too. I only wish we had something they needed."
"A way for them to live in peace no matter whom they go to bed with would be nice. You don't happen to have one anywhere concealed about your person, do you?"
"Let me look." Jennifer checked a pocket in her coveralls, then mournfully shook her head. Greenberg snorted. Jennifer said, "Shall we go see if we can get our own remote ancestors out of their clutches—and maybe even ourselves, too?"
"That would be nice," Greenberg said. He and Jennifer went through the air lock one after the other. They peered around. The Vengeance was so big that Jennifer didn't feel as if she were on a spacecraft; it was more as if the Harold Meeker had inadvertently landed in the middle of a good-sized town.
A green-blue Foitan with a hand weapon stood waiting for them. Jennifer was tired of aliens ordering her around with jerks of a gun barrel. It didn't stop happening just because she was tired of it. The Great One led her and Greenberg to a blank metal wall. He rapped on it. A door into a small chamber opened. He chivvied the two humans inside, then rapped on the wall again. The door disappeared, in the way Foitani doors had a habit of doing.
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