by Roger Elwood
worthies, can easily grasp what is entailed.”
He cleared his throat. “A major question, obviously, is: With whom shall our people work most closely? They have no desire to discriminate. Everyone will be consulted within the sphere of his time-honored prerogatives. Everyone will be aided, as far as possible. Yet, plain to see, a committee of the whole would be impossibly large and diverse. For setting overall policy, our people require a small, unified Merseian council whom they can get to know really well and with whom they can develop effective decision-making procedures.
“Furthermore, the resources of this entire system must be used in a coordinated way. For example, Country One cannot be allowed to hoard minerals which Country Two needs. Shipping must be free to go from any point to any other. And all available shipping must be pressed into service. We can furnish radiation screens for your vessels, but we cannot furnish the vessels themselves in the numbers that are needed. Yet at the same time, a certain amount of ordinary activity must continue. People will still have to eat, for instance. So— how do we make a fair allocation of resources and establish a fair system of priorities?
“I think these considerations make it obvious to you, worthies, that an international organization is absolutely essential, one which can impartially supply information, advice, and coordination. If it has facilities and workers of its own, so much the better.
“Would that such an organization had legal existence! But it does not, and I doubt there is time to form one. If you will pardon me for saying so, worthies, Merseia is burdened with too many old hatreds and jealousies to join overnight in brotherhood. In fact, the international group must be watched carefully, lest it try to aggrandize itself or diminish others. We galactics can do this with one organization. We cannot with a hundred.
“So.” Falkayn longed for his pipe. Sweat prickled his skin. “I have no plenipotentiary writ. My team is merely supposed to make recommendations. But the matter is so urgent that whatever scheme we propose will likely be adopted, for the sake of getting on with the job. And we have found one group which transcends the rest. It pays no attention to barriers between people and people. It is large, powerful, rich, disciplined, efficient. It is not exactly what my civilization would prefer as its chief instrument for the deliverance of Merseia. We would honestly rather it went down the drain, instead of becoming yet more firmly entrenched. But we have a saying that necessity knows no law.”
He could feel the tension gather, like a thunderstorm boiling up; he said fast, before the explosion came: “I refer to the Gethfennu.”
What followed was indescribable.
But he was, after all, only warning of what his report would be. He could point out that he bore a grudge of his own and was setting it aside for the common good. He could even, with considerable enjoyment, throw some imaginative remarks about ancestry and habits in the direction of Haguan—who grinned and looked smug. In the end, hours later, the assembly agreed to take the proposal under advisement. Falkayn knew what the upshot would be. Merseia had no choice.
The screens blanked.
Wet, shaking, exhausted, he looked across a stillness into the face of Morruchan Long-Ax. The Hand loomed over him. Fingers twitched longingly near a pistol butt. Morruchan said, biting off each word: “I trust you realize what you are doing. You’re not just perpetuating that gang. You’re conferring legitimacy on them. They will be able to claim they are now a part of recognized society.”
“Won’t they, then, have to conform to its laws?” Falkayn’s larynx hurt, his voice was husky.
“Not them!” Morruchan stood brooding a moment. “But a reckoning will come. The Vachs will prepare one, if nobody else does. And afterward—are you going to teach us how to build stargoing ships?”
“Not if I have any say in the matter,” Falkayn replied.
“Another score. Not important in the long run. We’re bound to leam a great deal else, and on that basis … well, galactic, our grandchildren will see.”
“Is ordinary gratitude beneath your dignity?”
“No. There’ll be enough soft-souled dreambuilders, also among my race, for an orgy of sentimentalism. But then you’ll go home again. I will abide.”
Falkayn was too tired to argue. He made his formal farewells and called the ship to come get him.
Later, hurtling through the interstellar night, he listened to Chee’s tirade: “. .. I still have to get back at those greasepaws. They’ll be sorry they ever touched me.”
“You don’t aim to return, do you?” Falkayn asked.
“Pox, no!” she said. “But the engineers on Merseia will need recreation. The Gethfennu will supply some of it, gambling, especially, I imagine. Now if I suggest our lads carry certain miniaturized gadgets which can, for instance, control a wheel—”
Adzel sighed. “In this splendid and terrible cosmos,” he said, “why must we living creatures be forever perverse?”
A smile tugged at Falkayn’s mouth. tcWe wouldn’t have so much fun otherwise,” he said.
§
Men and not-men were still at work when the supernova wave front reached Merseia.
Suddenly the star filled the southern night, a third as brilliant as Korych, too savage for the naked eye to look at. Blue white radiance flooded the land, shadows were etched sharp, trees and hills stood as if illuminated by lightning. Wings beat upward from forests, animals cried through the troubled air, drums pulsed, and prayers lifted in villages which once had feared the dark for which they now longed. The day that followed was lurid and furious.
Over the months, the star faded, until it became a knife-keen point and scarcely visible when the sun was aloft. But it waxed in beauty, for its radiance excited the gas around it, so that it gleamed amidst a whiteness which deepened at the edge to blue violet and a nebular lacework which shone with a hundred faerie hues. Thence also, in Merseia’s heaven, streamed huge shuddering banners of aurora whose whisper was heard even on the ground. An odor of storm was blown on every wind.
Then the nuclear rain began. And nothing was funny any longer.
