3xT

by Harry Turtledove

  "Peace with vodranet? Never," Solut Mek Kem said.

  "Talk with kwopillot? I'd sooner claw my own belly open," Voskop W Wurd said.

  Jennifer glumly waited for whatever bellicose ranting Pawasar Pawasar Ras chose. But before the honored kin-group leader could get a rant in edgewise, Aissur Aissur Rus said, "Save over communicators, how can we talk with those on board the Vengeance?" Again, he had sense enough to keep to himself the slurs he was no doubt thinking. "If we and they come into the same room, their smell will make us want only to kill, and ours no doubt the same with them."

  Jennifer felt like kissing him, no matter how repugnant he might find it. How could be solved; never left little room for negotiation. She said, "If you wanted to meet face-to-face, as I can see you might, do you have nose filters to keep your two sides from smelling each other?"

  "We would still know they were kwopillot," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said.

  Voskop W Wurd put it more pungently. "I'd smell that perverts' reek if you cut off my nose."

  Solut Mek Kem seemed no more enthusiastic. The kwopil said, "Better to exterminate all vodranet and begin to populate the sphere anew with Foitani who have not been altered to the point of degeneracy and decay."

  "You are the altered ones, you kwopillot," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said.

  Jennifer filed that away for further consideration; she had more pressing business now. She said, "Don't you think, kwopillot and vodranet, both sides have done enough exterminating here? Aissur Aissur Rus, call up those maps of how your sphere looked in the days of the Great Ones and how it is now."

  Aissur Aissur Rus did as she asked. The few points of light that still glowed in what had been a great shining globe told their own story. Another round of war at that intensity might leave no Foitani of any sexual persuasion alive anywhere. The projection was plain enough for even the big aliens to get outside their ideologies and notice it.

  Pawasar Pawasar Ras saw. He said, "You can destroy us here on Gilver, kwopillot, but I doubt you can destroy all our worlds without being slain yourselves in the attempt."

  "Let's fight them now," Voskop W Wurd said. "The more damage we do to them, the easier a time the attackers who come after us will have." Some people, Jennifer thought, did not want to get the message. But even one of Voskop W Wurd's subordinates took the warleader aside and spoke urgently to him.

  Solut Mek Kem said, "What a dolorous choice: the galaxy without Foitani or full of accursed vodranet. We shall have to consult among ourselves as to which alternative appears preferable." He disappeared from the screen.

  "Talking with kwopillot!" Pawasar Pawasar Ras shook his head in a very human gesture of bewilderment and dismay. "Who would have supposed it would come to that?"

  "You know, one of the things Foitani really need to learn, if you'll forgive my telling you, is diplomacy," Bernard Greenberg said. "The Great Ones never seemed to have used it—they were always one people themselves, and other races were just there to be exploited or massacred. Then when they had this split into kwopillot and vodranet, the only thing they knew how to do with beings who were different was kill them. There are other choices. You Foitani from Odern and Rof Golan—and I suppose your other starfaring races—are starting to get the idea, because you have to deal with each other, and I suppose also because you have the old-time Suicide Wars as a horrible example. But none of you is what you'd call good at dealing with anybody from outside your own immediate group."

  "He's right," Jennifer said. "Now you're all in a place where you can see that a big war isn't the right answer, but you don't have any other weapons—you should pardon the expression—handy with which to attack the problem."

  "War is simple and direct. Its answers are clear-cut," Voskop W Wurd said.

  "A writer of my species once said that, for any problem, there is always a solution that is simple, obvious—and wrong," Jennifer answered. Voskop W Wurd started to snarl at her, then stopped, looking as thoughtful as any Rof Golani Foitan she'd ever seen. She suddenly laughed. Here she was, doing exactly what the Foitani from Odern had kidnapped her to do—using her knowledge of human literature—even if not science fiction this time—to help them deal with the problem of the Great Ones.

  Solut Mek Kem, who personified the problem of the Great Ones, came back onto the screen in front of Pawasar Pawasar Ras. The kwopil said, "We will speak with you, unless you would rather fight." By the way that came out in the Spanglish, and by the way he let his teeth show, Jennifer guessed he was half hoping for a battle.

  "We will talk with you," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "War is the obvious solution; but for every question, there is an answer that is obvious, simple, and wrong."

  "An interesting point of view," Solut Mek Kem said. Jennifer didn't know whether to be angry at Pawasar Pawasar Ras for taking her thought without giving her credit or glad he had listened to her. She got little time to think it over, for Solut Mek Kem went on, "In any case, we will also talk, I suppose. Do you possess nose filters such as the yellow-haired creature suggested? They might keep our two sides from fighting whether we so intend or not. The odor of vodranet cannot help but inflame us."

  "I will put our technical staff to work fabricating filters," Pawasar Pawasar Ras answered. "We are similarly aroused—and not in any sexual sense, I assure you—by the way kwopillot smell. As for these non-Foitani, they are without a doubt ugly, but they have their uses."

  From a Foitan, Jennifer knew, that was about as good a recommendation as she was likely to get.

  Just when all seemed sweetness and light—or as close to sweetness and light as was practicable after ground and space combat between two groups each of which wished extinction upon the other—Voskop W Wurd reminded everyone that there were in fact not two groups involved, but three: "Nose filters? I don't give a putrescent fart about nose filters. I don't have to smell kwopillot to know they stink, either. Let them come after Rof Golan if they've the stomachs for it. We'll blast them into incandescent gas, and better than they deserve, too."

  "Oh, shut up, you hotheaded fool," Aissur Aissur Rus said—hardly diplomatic language, but the most direct statement Jennifer had yet heard out of a Foitan from Odern.

  Greenberg added, "Voskop W Wurd, think about this: Suppose they blast your people on Rof Golan into incandescent gas instead? That sort of thing happened all the time during the Suicide Wars. Wouldn't you rather talk first and then fight, given the chance? Think of it in terms of tactics if you don't understand diplomacy. Before you start a war, you ought to learn about your enemies."

  "I know they are kwopillot. What more do I need?"

  "You might remember they're also Great Ones," Jennifer said. "And remember how many ships you just lost. You might even remember that if the Foitani from Odern do talk with them and you don't, they might make common cause and leave you out in the cold."

  "We would not do that," Pawasar Pawasar Ras and Aissur Aissur Rus protested in the same breath, so perfectly in chorus that the translator turned the two sets of identical words into a single sentence. Were less riding on this ticklish situation, it might have been funny.

  However pious their protest, the two Foitani from Odern failed to convince Voskop W Wurd. "Of course you would, if you saw any advantage to it," he said. "You Oderna are like that, and what's more, you know it perfectly well. But if you think you'll make a deal with the perverts behind my back, think again. This creature has given me a good reason to enter into these talks: to keep you as honest as may be."

  "Congratulations," Greenberg told Jennifer. "You've just made this a problem with three sides instead of two. Now the Rof Golani are ready to take on the Foitani from Odern again."

  "Maybe there are three sides, but they're all going to talk," Jennifer answered. "When there were just two, they weren't talking. Sometimes even going backward is progress."

  "I'm sure the Foitani from Odern would have agreed with you, the way they blindly loved the Great Ones till they found this batch of kwopillot."


  Before Jennifer could answer, Solut Mek Kem said, "If we are to enter into these distasteful discussions, vodranet, let us begin. We will send down a flier to bring your representatives back here to the Vengeance."

  "Come up into your lair?" Voskop W Wurd exclaimed. "Do you take me for a male altogether bereft of his senses? Treating with the Oderna is quite bad enough. Why should I tamely walk in and let you do as you would with me?"

  "The wiser course would be for your envoys to come down to this research station," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said.

  "That will not happen," Solut Mek Kem said at once. "We have already seen how you treat our kind when we approach this research base of yours. You merely seek the opportunity to dispose of our representatives quietly."

  "Your behavior toward the Rof Golani in the precinct of the Great Unknown and toward the fliers of both sides in our recent dispute naturally leaves us suspicious of your good intentions," Aissur Aissur Rus said.

  "We will not meet with you inside your station," Solut Mek Kem said.

  "We will not meet with you inside your spaceship," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said.

  "I wouldn't want to meet you kwopillot squatting over a waste-disposal hole," Voskop W Wurd added.

  "These talks aren't off to what the diplomats call a constructive start," Greenberg observed.

  Jennifer could only reply with a mournful shake of her head. If the parties allegedly negotiating couldn't even agree on where they would allegedly negotiate, the alleged negotiations looked anything but promising.

  Then she said, "If the one side won't come down here and the other won't go up there, why don't you all come to the human ship, the Harold Meeker?"

  "Yes, why not?" Greenberg chimed in. Under his breath, he added for her ears alone, "Anything to start this moving and give us a chance to get out of here." Jennifer let out a small, silent sigh of relief; it was his ship, after all, that she'd just proposed as a negotiation site.

  "Come aboard the human ship for these discussions?" Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "I would almost prefer bearding the kwopillot in their den." Jennifer blinked and wondered what the literal Foitani version was of the phrase the translator had rendered in that fashion.

  "Go aboard a ship constructed by creatures?" Solut Mek Kem said. "We do not treat with creatures; we destroy them."

  "You wouldn't be treating with us. You'd be treating with Pawasar Pawasar Ras and Voskop W Wurd," Greenberg said. "I might add, just so you know, we humans range across as much space as you Foitani did when your empire was at its height."

  "You are telling me you are widespread and dangerous vermin," Solut Mek Kem said.

  "I'm telling you we're widespread and dangerous, yes," Greenberg answered, "But to us, you are the vermin. You'd better bear it in mind."

  Solut Mek Kem snarled at that. So did Voskop W Wurd. So did Pawasar Pawasar Ras, but not as loudly. Aissur Aissur Rus said, "Unlike others here, I have been into human space. They lack our race's straightforward character, but are not to be taken lightly. Success is the best measure of a species' true attributes; by that standard, their attributes are formidable indeed."

  "They are small and weak and ugly." This time Solut Mek Kem and Voskop W Wurd said the same thing together. Neither looked happy at agreeing with the other.

  Well, you Foitani are big and fuzzy and vicious, Jennifer thought. She kept it to herself. Studied insult of the sort Greenberg had given was one way of breaking through the arrogant contempt with which the Foitani viewed those who were not of their kind. Indulged in too often, though, it degenerated into name-calling of the sort five-year-olds used when they argued over toys.

  "Just remember, the Harold Meeker is neutral ground," Greenberg said. Now he sounded calm and reasonable and persuasive: downright diplomatic, Jennifer thought—too bad the translator would wash all tone from his words. He went on, "Neither of you trusts the other's stronghold. If you can't trust my ship, at least all of you can distrust it equally."

  "You are in the company of vodranet, creature," Solut Mek Kem said. "Before we would hazard ourselves, we demand the right to examine the proposed chamber for booby traps. Vodran treachery is notorious and despicable."

  "Inspect all you like," Greenberg agreed cheerfully.

  "We will have monitors present when the putative inspectors board your ship, human Bernard," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "Who knows what kwopillot might install under the pretext of removal?"

  "That's fine, too," Greenberg said. "If both kinds of Foitani are going to be on the Harold Meeker at the same time, though, everything had better wait until you get those nose filters designed. I don't want anybody blowing holes in my cargo bay because he doesn't like the way someone else smells."

  "One other thing," Jennifer added. "Everyone should remember that ships from Gilver are on their way to Odern and to Rof Golan. They'll probably bring big warfleets back with them. It would be nice to have some sort of agreement by the time those fleets get here. If we don't, I think another round of Suicide Wars starts right here. Is this fight worth your whole species?"

  After she asked the question, she realized all flavors of Foitani could be intransigent enough to answer yes. When no one—not even Voskop W Wurd—said anything, she counted that a victory. The modern Foitani still lived in the long horrid shadow of the Suicide Wars; they knew too well what another round of such insensate frenzy would do to their surviving worlds. As for the newly revived Great Ones, perhaps they were still in shock from learning what the rest of their race had done to itself while they lay dormant through the millennia.

  Greenberg prodded everyone along. "Have we decided, then, to meet in the cargo hold of the Harold Meeker as soon as nose filters make it possible?"

  Again, none of the Foitani said anything. Again, Jennifer counted that a victory.

  * * *

  Being back in the Harold Meeker was almost as good as being home on Saugus, at least when the alternative was the Foitani research base. The lighting felt right to human eyes, the plumbing fixtures were as they should be, the chairs were made for human fundaments—and, best of all, the Foitani kept out of the crew compartment.

  They were and stayed busy down in the cargo bay. They moved around boxes and bales to create a clear space on the floor where they installed their own furniture and computer gear. The Great Ones cleared out bugs set by the Foitani from Odern. The Foitani from Odern, in turn, cleared bugs set by the Great Ones. The Foitani from Rof Golan took a turn clearing everyone else's bugs, and, presumably, planting a few of their own.

  All the Foitani of whatever race who entered the cargo bay wore a little silvery button in each nostril—"The better not to smell you, my dear," as Jennifer said to Greenberg. The nose filters seemed to work; at least, no fights broke out between kwopillot and vodranet. Greenberg manufactured a little silvery button of his own and left it on an out-of-the-way box. A suspicious Foitan from Rof Golan found it and took it away, either to destroy it or to glean from it what he could of human electronics.

  "Good luck to him," Greenberg said when he discovered his little bait had been taken. "It's filled with talcum powder."

  He and Jennifer got Foitani electronics to study: they persuaded Aissur Aissur Rus to give them each a translator. "I'm bloody tired of having Foitani talking all around me without the slightest idea of what they're saying," she said.

  "True enough," Greenberg said, "but now that we are supposed to understand them all the time, they'll ask more from us. You'll see."

  That hardly struck Jennifer as requiring the mantic gift to predict. Greenberg was proved right soon enough, too. All Foitani factions distrusted the humans and affected to despise the Harold Meeker. All of them, however, distrusted their furry fellows even more and actively feared the headquarters of those fellows. Thus Jennifer and Greenberg spent a good deal of their time keeping the Foitani from one another's throats. When the actual discussions started, all factions insisted that the two of them sit in as mediators.

  To keep potential carna
ge to a minimum, only two representatives from each group went inside the trading ship's cargo bay. Pawasar Pawasar Ras and Aissur Aissur Rus spoke for the Foitani from Odern, Solut Mek Kem and a colleague named Nogal Ryn Nyr for the Great Ones, and Voskop W Wurd and his chief aide Yulvot L Reat for the Foitani from Rof Golan.

  At the first uneasy meeting, all three sets of purported diplomats spent the first several minutes standing around and glaring. Voskop W Wurd let out a series of ostentatious sniffs. His nose filters must have been working, though, or he would not have been so restrained. Since the Great Ones and the Foitani from Odern seemed willing to ignore him, Jennifer did the same.

  She said, "Let's start this off with an issue that I hope we can easily deal with. It doesn't involve any quarrel between the newly revived Foitani and their modern relatives. In fact, it concerns us humans. Solut Mek Kem, do you really have specimen humans aboard your ship"—she almost said, your tower—"or are they just images in your data storage system?"

  "The distinction is not as clear as you made it, ignorant alien creature," Solut Mek Kem answered. "They are at present potential, but could be realized in actuality. Do you seek live copies?"

  Jennifer gulped. She looked at Greenberg. He seemed shaken, too. Taking a pair of genuine Paleolithic people back to human space would set every anthropologist's pulse racing, and likely would be worth millions. But would it be fair to the poor CroMagnons themselves? Could they ever be anything more than specimens? How could they possibly adjust to twenty-eight millennia of changes?

  "Do you seek live copies?" Solut Mek Kem repeated.

  "Let us think about that. It's not something we have to decide right now," Jennifer answered. If the cave humans had been frozen so long in Foitani data storage, a little longer wouldn't hurt anything. She went on, "Tell me the meaning of a term you use, one our translator does not interpret: vodran."