Operation R.S.V.P.

by H. Beam Piper

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:This etext was produced from Amazing Stories January 1951. Extensiveresearch did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on thispublication was renewed.

  ]

  OPERATION R.S.V.P.

  By

  H. Beam Piper

  _Vladmir N. Dzhoubinsky, Foreign Minister, Union of East EuropeanSoviet Republics, to Wu Fung Tung, Foreign Minister, United Peoples'Republics of East Asia_:

  15 Jan. 1984

  Honored Sir:

  Pursuant to our well known policy of exchanging military andscientific information with the Government, of friendly Powers, myGovernment takes great pleasure in announcing the completelysuccessful final tests of our new nuclear-rocket guided missile_Marxist Victory_. The test launching was made from a position southof Lake Balkash; the target was located in the East Siberian Sea.

  In order to assist you in appreciating the range of the new guidedmissile _Marxist Victory_, let me point out that the distance fromlaunching-site to target is somewhat over 50 percent greater than thedistance from launching-site to your capital, Nanking.

  My Government is still hopeful that your Government will revise itspresent intransigeant position on the Khakum River dispute.

  I have the honor, etc., etc., etc.,

  V. N. Dzhoubinsky

  ]

  _Wu Fung Tung, to Vladmir N. Dzhoubinsky_:

  7 Feb., 1984

  Estimable Sir:

  My Government was most delighted to learn of the splendid triumph ofyour Government in developing the new guided missile _MarxistVictory_, and at the same time deeply relieved. We had, of course,detected the release of nuclear energy incident to the test, andinasmuch as it had obviously originated in the disintegration of aquantity of Uranium 235, we had feared that an explosion had occurredat your Government's secret uranium plant at Khatanga. We have longknown of the lax security measures in effect at this plant, and have,as a consequence, been expecting some disaster there.

  I am therefore sure that your Government will be equally gratified tolearn of the perfection, by my Government, of our own new guidedmissile _Celestial Destroyer_, which embodies, in greatly improvedform, many of the features of your own Government's guided missile_Marxist Victory_. Naturally, your own scientific warfare specialistshave detected the release of energy incident to the explosion of ourown improved thorium-hafnium interaction bomb; this bomb was explodedover the North Polar ice cap, about two hundred miles south of thePole, on about 35 degrees East Longitude, almost due north of yourcapital city of Moscow. The launching was made from a site in Thibet.

  Naturally, my Government cannot deviate from our present just andreasonable attitude in the Khakum River question. Trusting that yourGovernment will realize this, I have the honor to be,

  Your obedient and respectful servant,

  Wu Fung Tung

  _From N. Y. TIMES, Feb. 20, 1984:_

  AFGHAN RULER FETED AT NANKING

  Ameer Shere Ali Abdallah Confers

  With

  UPREA Pres. Sung Li-Yin

  _UEESR Foreign Minister Dzhoubinsky to Maxim G. Krylenkoff, Ambassadorat Nanking:_

  3 March, 1984

  Comrade Ambassador:

  It is desired that you make immediate secret and confidential repeatsecret and confidential inquiry as to the whereabouts of Dr. DimitriO. Voronoff, the noted Soviet rocket expert, designer of the newguided missile _Marxist Victory_, who vanished a week ago from theJosef Vissarionovitch Djugashvli Reaction-Propulsion Laboratories atMolotovgorod. It is feared in Government circles that this notedscientist has been abducted by agents of the United Peoples' Republicsof East Asia, possibly to extract from him, under torture, informationof a secret technical nature.

  As you know, this is but the latest of a series of suchdisappearances, beginning about five years ago, when the Khakum Riverquestion first arose.

  Your utmost activity in this matter is required.

  Dzhoubinsky

  _Ambassador Krylenkoff to Foreign Minister Dzhoubinsky:_

  9 March, 1984

  Comrade Foreign Minister:

  Since receipt of yours of 3/3/'84, I have been utilizing all resourcesat my disposal in the matter of the noted scientist D. O. Voronoff,and availing myself of all sources of information, e.g., spies, secretagents, disaffected elements of the local population, and includingtwo UPREA Cabinet Ministers on my payroll. I regret to report thatresults of this investigation have been entirely negative. No one hereappears to know anything of the whereabouts of Dr. Voronoff.

  At the same time, there is considerable concern in UPREA Governmentcircles over the disappearances of certain prominent East Asianscientists, e.g.. Dr. Hong Foo, the nuclear physicist; Dr. HinYang-Woo, the great theoretical mathematician; Dr. Mong Shing, theelectronics expert. I am informed that UPREA Government sources areattributing these disappearances to us.

  I can only say that I am sincerely sorry that this is not the case.

  Krylenkoff

  _Wu Fung Tung to Vladmir N. Dzhoubinsky:_

  21 April, 1984

  Estimable Sir:

  In accordance with our established policy of free exchange withfriendly Powers of scientific information, permit me to inform yourGovernment that a new mutated disease-virus has been developed in ourbiological laboratories, causing a highly contagious disease similarin symptoms to bubonic plague, but responding to none of thetreatments for this latter disease. This new virus strain wasaccidentally produced in the course of some experiments withradioactivity.

  In spite of the greatest care, it is feared that this virus has spreadbeyond the laboratory in which it was developed. We warn you mosturgently of the danger that it may have spread to the UEESR; enclosedare a list of symptoms, etc.

  My Government instructs me to advise your Government that the attitudeof your Government in the Khakum River question is utterlyunacceptable, and will require considerable revision before myGovernment can even consider negotiation with your Government on thesubject. Your obedient and respectful servant,

  Wu Fung Tung

  _From N. Y. Times, May 12, 1984:_

  AFGHAN RULER FETED AT

  MOSCOW

  Ameer sees Red Square Troop Review;

  Confers with Premier-President Mouzorgin

  _Sing Yat, UPREA Ambassador at Moscow, to Wu Fung Tung:_

  26 June, 1984

  Venerable and Honored Sir:

  I regret humbly that I can learn nothing whatever about the fate ofthe learned scholars of science of whom you inquire, namely: Hong Foo,Hin Yang-Woo, Mong Shing, Yee Ho Li, Wong Fat, and Bao Hu-Shin. Thisinability may be in part due to incompetence of my unworthy self, butnone of my many sources of information, including Soviet Minister ofPolice Morgodoff, who is on my payroll, can furnish any useful datawhatever. I am informed, however, that the UEESR Government is deeplyconcerned about similar disappearances of some of the foremost oftheir own scientists, including Voronoff, Jirnikov, Kagorinoff,Bakhorin, Himmelfarber and Pavlovinsky, all of whose dossiers are onfile with our Bureau of Foreign Intelligence. I am further informedthat the Government of the UEESR ascribes these disappearances to ourown activities.

  Ah, Venerable and Honored Sir, if this were only true!

  Kindly condescend to accept compliments of,

  Sing Yat

  _Dzhoubinsky to Wu Fung Tung:_

  6 October, 1984

  Honored Sir:

  Pursuant to our well known policy of exchanging scientific informationwith the Governments of friendly P
owers, my Government takes thegreatest pleasure in announcing a scientific discovery of inestimablevalue to the entire world. I refer to nothing less than a positivetechnique for liquidating rats as a species.

  This technique involves treatment of male rats with certain types ofhard radiations, which not only renders them reproductively sterilebut leaves the rodents so treated in full possession of all othersexual functions and impulses. Furthermore, this condition ofsterility is venereally contagious, so that one male rat so treatedwill sterilize all female rats with which it comes in contact, andthese, in turn, will sterilize all male rats coming in contact withthem. Our mathematicians estimate that under even moderately favorablecircumstances, the entire rat population of the world could besterilized from one male rat in approximately two hundred years.

  Rats so treated have already been liberated in the granaries atOdessa; in three months, rat-trappings there have fallen by 26.4percent, and grain-losses to rats by 32.09 percent.

  We are shipping you six dozen sterilized male rats, which you can usefor sterilization stock, and, by so augmenting their numbers, mayduplicate our own successes.

  Curiously enough, this effect of venereally contagious sterility wasdiscovered quite accidentally, in connection with the use of hardradiations for human sterilization (criminals, mental defectives,etc.). Knowing the disastrous possible effects of an epidemic ofcontagious human sterility, all persons so sterilized were liquidatedas soon as the contagious nature of their sterility had beendiscovered, with the exception of a dozen or so convicts, who had beenreleased before this discovery was made. It is believed that at leastsome of them have made their way over the border and into theterritory of the United Peoples' Republics of East Asia. I mustcaution your Government to be on the lookout of them. Among a peoplestill practicing ancestor-worship, an epidemic of sterility would be adisaster indeed.

  My Government must insist that your Government take some definite steptoward the solution of the Khakum River question; the present positionof the Government of the United Peoples' Republics of East Asia onthis subject is utterly unacceptable to the Government of the Union ofEast European Soviet Republics, and must be revised very considerably.

  I have the honor, etc., etc.,

  Vladmir N. Dzhoubinsky

  _Coded radiogram, Dzhoubinsky to Krylenkoff:_

  25 OCTOBER, 1984

  ASCERTAIN IMMEDIATELY CAUSE OF RELEASE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY VICINITY OFNOVA ZEMBLA THIS AM

  DZHOUBINSKY

  _Coded radiogram, Wu Fung Tung to Sing Yat:_

  25 OCTOBER, 1984

  ASCERTAIN IMMEDIATELY CAUSE OF RELEASE OF NUCLEAR ENERGY VICINITY OFNOVA ZEMBLA THIS AM

  WU

  _Letter from the Ameer of Afghanistan to UEESR Premier-PresidentMouzorgin and UPREA President Sung Li-Yin:_

  26 October, 1984

  SHERE ALI ABDALLAH, Ameer of Afghanistan, Master of Kabul, Lord ofHerat and Kandahar, Keeper of Khyber Pass, Defender of the True Faith,Servant of the Most High and Sword-Hand of the Prophet; Ph.D.(Princeton); Sc.B. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); M.A.(Oxford): to their Excellencies A.A. Mouzorgin, Premier-President ofthe Union of East European Soviet Republics, and Sung Li-Yin,President of the United Peoples' Republics of East Asia,

  Greetings, in the name of Allah!

  For the past five years, I have watched, with growing concern, theincreasing tensions between your Excellencies' respective Governments,allegedly arising out of the so-called Khakum River question. It is myconviction that this Khakum River dispute is the utterly fraudulentdevice by which both Governments hope to create a pretext for theinvasion of India, each ostensibly to rescue that unhappy country fromthe rapacity of the other. Your Excellencies must surely realize thatthis is a contingency which the Government of the Kingdom ofAfghanistan cannot and will not permit; it would mean nothing short ofthe national extinction of the Kingdom of Afghanistan, and theenslavement of the Afghan people.

  Your Excellencies will recall that I discussed this matter mosturgently on the occasions of my visits to your respective capitals ofMoscow and Nanking, and your respective attitudes, on those occasions,has firmly convinced me that neither of your Excellencies is by naturecapable of adopting a rational or civilized attitude toward thisquestion. It appears that neither of your Excellencies has anyintention of abandoning your present war of mutual threats andblackmail until forced to do so by some overt act on the part of oneor the other of your Excellencies' Governments, which would result inphysical war of pan-Asiatic scope and magnitude. I am furtherconvinced that this deplorable situation arises out of themegalomaniac ambitions of the Federal Governments of the UEESR and theUPREA, respectively, and that the different peoples of what youunblushingly call your "autonomous" republics have no ambitionsexcept, on a rapidly diminishing order of probability, to live outtheir natural span of years in peace. Therefore:

  _In the name of ALLAH, the Merciful, the Compassionate: We, Shere Ali Abdallah, Ameer of Afghanistan, etc., do decree and command that the political entities known as the Union of East European Soviet Republics and the United Peoples' Republics of East Asia respectively are herewith abolished and dissolved into their constituent autonomous republics, each one of which shall hereafter enjoy complete sovereignty within its own borders as is right and proper._

  Now, in case either of you gentlemen feel inclined to laugh this off,let me remind you of the series of mysterious disappearances of someof the most noted scientists of both the UEESR and the UPREA, and letme advise your Excellencies that these scientists are now residentsand subjects of the Kingdom of Afghanistan, and are here engaged inresearch and development work for my Government. These gentlemen werenot abducted, as you gentlemen seem to believe; they came here oftheir own free will, and ask nothing better than to remain here, wherethey are treated with dignity and honor, given materialrewards--riches, palaces, harems, retinues of servants, etc.--and arealso free from the intellectual and ideological restraints which makelife so intolerable in your respective countries to any man above theorder of intelligence of a cretin. In return for these benefactions,these eminent scientists have developed, for my Government, certainweapons. For example:

  1.) A nuclear-rocket guided missile, officially designated as the_Sword of Islam_, vastly superior to your Excellencies' respectiveguided missiles _Marxist Victory_ and _Celestial Destroyer_. It shouldbe; it was the product of the joint efforts of Dr. Voronoff and Dr.Bao Hu-Shin, whom your Excellencies know.

  2.) A new type of radar-radio-electronic defense screen, which can notonly detect the approach of a guided missile, at any velocitywhatever, but will automatically capture and redirect same. In caseeither of your Excellencies doubt this statement, you are invited toaim a rocket at some target in Afghanistan and see what happens.

  3.) Both the UPREA mutated virus and the UEESR contagious sterility,with positive vaccines against the former and means of instrumentaldetection of the latter.

  4.) A technique for initiating and controlling the Bethecarbon-hydrogen cycle. We are now using this as a source of heat forindustrial and even domestic purposes, and we also have acarbon-hydrogen cycle bomb. Such a bomb, delivered by one of our_Sword of Islam_ Mark IV's, was activated yesterday over the Northerntip of Nova Zembla, at an altitude of four miles. I am enclosingphotographic reproductions of views of this test, televised to Kabulby an accompanying _Sword of Islam_ Mark V observation rocket. I aminformed that expeditions have been sent by both the UEESR and theUPREA to investigate; they should find some very interestingconditions. For one thing, they won't need their climbing equipment toget over the Nova Zembla Glacier; the Nova Zembla Glacier isn't there,any more.

  5.) A lithium bomb. This has not been tested, yet. A lithium bomb isnothing for a country the size of Afghanistan to let off inside itsown borders. We intend making a test with it within the next ten days,however If your Excellencies will designate a target, which must be atthe center of an uninhabited area at least five hundred miles square,the te
st can be made in perfect safety. If not, I cannot answer theresults; that will be in the hands of Allah, Who has ordained allthings. No doubt Allah has ordained the destruction of either Moscowor Nanking; whichever city Allah has elected to erase, I will make itmy personal responsibility to see to it that the other isn't slighted,either.

  However, if your Excellencies decide to accede to my modest andreasonable demands, not later than one week from today, thistest-launching will be cancelled as unnecessary. Of course, that wouldleave unsettled a bet I have made with Dr. Hong Foo--a star sapphireagainst his favorite Persian concubine--that the explosion of alithium bomb will not initiate a chain reaction in the Earth's crustand so disintegrate this planet. This, of course, is a minorconsideration, unworthy of Your notice.

  Of course, I am aware that both your Excellencies have, in the past,fomented mutual jealousies and suspicions among the several"autonomous" republics under your respective jurisdictions, as aninstrument of policy. If these peoples were, at this time, to receivefull independence, the present inevitability of a pan-Asiatic war on agrand scale would be replaced only by the inevitability of apan-Asiatic war by detail. Obviously, some single supra-nationalsovereignty is needed to maintain peace, and such a sovereignty shouldbe established under some leadership not hitherto associated witheither the former UEESR or the former UPREA. I humbly offer myself asPresident of such a supra-national organization, counting as a matterof course upon the whole-hearted support and co-operation of both yourExcellencies. It might be well if both your Excellencies were to comehere to Kabul to confer with me on this subject at your very earliestconvenience.