by Timothy Zahn
"And when such ambition threatens the Kailthaermil, we must offer it the means to destroy itself."
I looked over at the other warriors still cutting their trench. "Convocant Devaro said war with you is inevitable. Is that what you mean?"
"No," the Kailth said. "We have no desire for war with the UnEthHu. You do not subjugate the other beings within your boundaries, but treat them with justice.
Nor are there fundamental human interests or needs which demand conflict with the Kailthaermil. War will come only if individual humans choose to create it for their own purposes."
I glanced up at the volcano. "Men like Devaro."
Tawni's grip tightened on my arm. "I do not wish war with your people, Stane," she said quietly.
"I don't want it either, Tawni," I said, looking at the Kailth warrior again.
"But it seems to me that the war may have already begun. Whether or not Devaro did this of his own free will, the fact remains that it was the Kailth who provided the calix that tempted him down that path."
"You are correct," the Kailth said. "The war has indeed begun."
Reaching into his armor, he pulled out the pistol he'd taken from me. I caught my breath, feeling Tawni shrink against my side. "But it is not a war against humans," the Kailth continued. "It is a war against meaningless and unnecessary war."
He held up the pistol. "This is such a war, Stane Markand, the war Convocant Devaro sought to create against the Kailthaermil Empire for his own purposes.
It may be stopped thus—"
He grasped the barrel with his other hand, and with a sharp crack of broken gunplastic snapped the weapon in half. A squeeze with the armored hand, and the barrel shattered into splinters.
"Or it may be stopped thus." Reaching into the shattered frame with two fingers, he gave a sharp tug and pulled out the firing pin. "It is a war that must be fought, or many innocent lives will be lost," he said quietly, handing me the pin and what was left of the ruined gun. "Which way would you choose for us to fight it?"
I looked at Tawni. She was gazing back up at me, the skin of her face tight with quiet anxiety. Waiting to see how I would react to all this.
Perhaps waiting to see if she had lost a friend.
"What about Tawni's people?" I asked the Kailth. "Devaro gave his calices away to others. If any of them tries to use them the same way he wanted to, they may come here to get more."
"The Kailthaermil freed us when we had no hope," Tawni said quietly. "To help them free others, we willingly accept the danger."
"Perhaps," the Kailth said, "you can help make them safer."
I looked down the slope, toward the villages below. "Yes," I said. "Perhaps I can."
And with a lot of help, I did. Ten months later, in a precedent-shattering treaty, Quibsh became joint colonial territory of the Kailth and UnEthHu.
Three years after that, convention was again shattered as the humans of Quibsh and Sagtt'a were granted full joint citizenship between the two races. Over those three years, six SkyForce officers and five more Convocants figured out Devaro's brainscan trick and attempted to use the calices to amass power. All of them either died in the attempt or were politically destroyed.
And in the midst of it all, in the greatest miracle of all, Tawni became my wife. And later, of course, your mother.
And so, as we stand here on the eve of the Fifth Joint Kailthaermil-UnEthHu Expedition into the unknown areas of the galaxy, I wanted you to know how my Year of YouthJourneying came out. It was the year I learned about politics and war, about ambition and selflessness, about art and death and love.
The year I grew up.
Our hopes and blessings go with you, my son, as you leave with the expedition tomorrow. May your nineteenth year be as blessed as mine.
With love, Dad.
The Play's the Thing
The whole trouble started when the Fuzhtian ambassador announced that he wanted to see a Broadway play.
Though I suppose you could equally well say the trouble started when those first silent Fuzhtian probes snuggled coyly up behind our geosynchronous TV
satellites and began shipping the signals back home. You might even go back further and say that it all started when Marconi's first radio went on-line and began spewing electromagnetic radiation out into space for everyone to hear.
Oh, well, hell, let's be honest. All of it really started with whoever the bunch of trouble-making Sumerians were who sat around on a rainy Sunday afternoon and invented entertainment.
Because that's really what started the trouble: our vast entertainment industry, and the Fuzhties' maniacal love for it. For a simple example—and this isn't supposed to be noised about—when the Fuzhtian ship landed outside the White House, the "Greetings and Joy to Humankind" line that will be going into the history books were actually his second words to the Secretary-General. His actual first words were an expression of disappointment from his government that Johnny Carson was no longer hosting the "Tonight Show." For those of you who'd always wondered why Carson suddenly came out of retirement right after that to do a one-month stint as guest-host, now you know.
I suppose it could have been worse. No, strike that—it could have been a lot worse. You've heard all the similes: a walking barn door with gorilla arms, a four-hundred-pound bag of blubbery muscle with pinfeathers; a cross between a bull and Doberman on steroids. Even without the kind of technology we know they had, the Fuzhties could have stomped the planet flat as Florida if they'd taken a mind to do so.
Which is why everyone had been falling all over themselves trying to satisfy the ambassador's slightest whim. Partly it was residual fear that he might suddenly stop being congenial and start behaving the way any self-respecting B-movie creature his size ought to; but mainly it was because every national leader on the planet was visibly salivating over the prospect of getting their hands on Fuzhtian technology.
Anyway, at the time the ambassador made his Broadway request he'd been on Earth about six months, getting everything he wanted. And I mean everything. He had the top two floors of an exclusive Washington hotel, specially commissioned airplanes and cars, and three of the premier chefs in Europe. Along the way he'd also collected an astonishingly eclectic entourage, consisting of top US
government officials, a smattering of foreign representatives whose countries had somehow caught his interest—we still don't know how or why he picked the ones he did—and a few oddballs like me. I'd been up on a ladder doing some woodwork repair in the White House when the ambassador apparently expressed some sort of vague approval of me. The next thing I knew I'd been hauled down, poured into a suit and handed a briefcase, and tossed in among the smiling State Department wonks whose job it was to dog the ambassador's size-28 footsteps.
Long afterward I learned that what had captured the ambassador's attention was not me but rather the hammer I'd been using. But by then I'd overheard enough under-the-breath comments about my relative usefulness to the group that sheer native orneriness required me to keep quiet about the error.
Besides, the briefcase they'd handed me that first day had contained a presidential plea for my cooperation and about two bucketfuls of money, both of which I was far too patriotic to walk away from.
But for whatever reason, I was in that elite group. And I'd been with them for about five weeks when, from out of the blue, the ambassador made his request.
We still don't know what prompted him to bring it up at that particular time.
For that matter, we're not even sure how he knew about Broadway, unless he'd picked up a reference from one of those pirate transmissions their probes had been making. But however it happened, there it was, plain as day, that morning on the RebuScope: "Are you sure that's what it means?" Dwight Fogerty, a senior State Department wonk and head of our little group, asked as he peered back and forth between the RebuScope and the tentative translation.
"I don't see what else it could be, sir," chief translator Angus MacLeod said.
> He'd been loaned to us by MI6 because he was both a whiz at cryptanalysis and a
huge "Concentration" fan. Angus always called Fogerty "sir" because he was polite, not because Fogerty deserved it. "It's clearly 'eye w-ant two cee a br-rod-weigh' something. What else but play?"
"Well, who says that scale thing is 'weigh?' " Fogerty countered. "Maybe it's
'Broadscale' something."
"There's no such word as Broadscale," someone pointed out. "Or place, either."
"There's a Broad Sound, though," someone else said, punching keys on a laptop.
"It's near Rockhampton in Australia, near the Great Barrier Reef. Maybe that's a
radio or stereo speaker, not a scale."
"And what, that last picture is us and him throwing a beach ball back and forth?" Fogerty scoffed.
"Well, then, maybe it's supposed to be 'Broadsword,' " one of the other wonks said. "The damn RebuScope's screwed up before. Maybe he wants to see some sword demos from one of those Medieval-nutcake groups."
"It's 'I want to see a Broadway play,' " Angus said firmly. "I'm sure of it."
Fogerty muttered something vicious-sounding under his breath. Why the ambassador had chosen to use a gadget as ridiculously hard to understand as the RebuScope for his messages to us was a mystery, but most of us had gradually developed a
sort of resigned acceptance for the procedure. Fogerty, who dealt with the gadget more than anyone except Angus, roundly hated the thing, and seemed to be running systematically through his vast repertoire of multilingual curses in regards to it. "All right, fine," he said. "We'll take him to a Broadway play.
Smith, get on the horn and find out who the hell we talk to about doing that."
I cleared my throat. "You don't need to call the White House, Mr. Fogerty," I said. "I know some people on Broadway."
"We're not interested in pretzel venders, thank you," Fogerty said tartly, gesturing at Smith. "We need a producer or theater manager or—"
"I know all of them."
Fogerty stopped, his gesturing hand still poised in midair, and turned his head to look at me. "You what?" he asked.
"I know all of them," I repeated. "Up until a year ago I was working with one of the top set designers on Broadway."
It was, and I'll admit it, an immensely soul-satisfying moment. The whole bunch of them just stood there, professionals and wonks alike, staring at me like something that had just crawled out of the primordial ooze and asked whether the Metro Blue line stopped here. All except Angus, that is, who had a faint but knowing smile on his face. Obviously, he was the only one in the group who'd bothered to read the FBI's rundown on me after I was booted aboard.
Fogerty recovered first, in typical Fogerty fashion. "Well, don't just stand there, Lebowitz," he said, waving Smith forward with his phone. "Let's get to it."
The first step, I decided, would be to figure out which Broadway offering would be the best one to take the ambassador to see. I put in a call to Tony Capello, theater critic, and we spent fifteen minutes discussing the current crop of plays and musicals in town.
Actually, the first twelve of those minutes were spent talking over the old times when I was a lowly carpenter and Tony was chief gopher for a succession of minor choreographers. I would have cut off the reminiscences earlier, except that the delay so obviously irritated Fogerty. When I finally got Tony down to business, his advice was instant and unequivocal: "And Whirred When It Stood Still," currently in previews at the St. James.
"So what's the play about?" Fogerty asked when I relayed the recommendation.
"According to Tony, it's pleasantly harmless froth," I assured him. "Nothing that'll confuse the ambassador or put human beings in a bad light. At least, not in any worse light than plays typically do."
"Assuming he understands it at all," Fogerty growled, gesturing to his overworked secretary. "Lee, better have someone vet it anyway, just to be on the safe side. All right, what about this St. James Theater? It's on Broadway?"
"Well, actually, it's on West 44th Street," I said. "But it's—"
"West 44th Street?" Fogerty echoed. "He wants a Broadway play."
"It is a Broadway play," I told him stiffly. "The St. James is in the theater district, half a block off Broadway itself. It counts. Trust me."
He glowered, but apparently decided he'd shown enough ignorance for one conversation. "Fine," he grunted. "Let's just hope it counts with the ambassador." The manager at the St. James, Jerry Zachs, was less than enthusiastic about the whole thing. "You must be joking," he said, looking back and forth between Fogerty and me. "Bring that behemoth into my theater? Who's going to pay for the fifty seats it's going to cost me?"
"Oh, do try not to go off the deep end here, Mr. Zachs," Fogerty said, his voice hovering between imperious and condescending. "We won't have to remove more than nine seats at the most to fit him in."
"Sure—to fit him in," Jerry shot back. "What about these seats in front of him you want left empty?"
"That's only another twelve seats," Fogerty told him. "Four rows by three seats—"
"I can multiply, thank you," Jerry growled. "I can also multiply by ticket prices and see I'm already out about a grand and a half. And what about all the seats right behind him where no one's going to be able to see? Huh?"
Fogerty shrugged. "Fine. We'll put his entourage there."
"At full price?" Fogerty lifted his eyebrows. "Don't be silly. They won't be able to see the show from there. How do you expect to charge full price?"
Jerry's complexion was edging into a soft pink, which from my experience with him was a dangerous sign. "I'm sure we can work something out," I jumped in before he could say anything. Fogerty had a virtually unlimited budget to work with, but he could go all chintzy at the oddest moments. "What's important is that the ambassador be treated like the VIP he is."
"That's right," Fogerty said, apparently believing I was on his side here.
"The Fuzhties have a great deal to offer humanity, Mr. Zachs, and the more favors he owes us, the sooner he'll start coming across with some of this magic technology of theirs. This is just one of those favors."
" 'The play's the thing,' " I said in my best soliloquy voice, " 'Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.' "
Fogerty frowned at me. "What?"
"Hamlet," I said.
"Shakespeare," Jerry added acidly. "He's done some plays and poems and stuff."
"Thank you," Fogerty said, matching Jerry's acid pH for pH. "I have heard of the man. The point is that I can requisition your theater, no questions asked, like it or lump it. So you might as well like it. Anyway, you should be honored to have their first ambassador in your theater."
"Besides, think of the great publicity," I reminded him. "You'll be able to use photos of the ambassador in all your future ads and—"
"Wait a minute," Fogerty cut me off, his face suddenly stricken. "He can't use the ambassador as a cheap come-on. This is a serious diplomatic mission."
"Oh, I don't know," Jerry mused, picking up the cue and running with it.
"When the King of Sweden came here, he let us use his name in some of our promotionals. I don't see how this is any different."
"Of course it's different," Fogerty snapped. "And if you even think about trying to take advantage of him that way—"
"Taking advantage?" Jerry asked mildly. "You mean like a six-hundred pound government gorilla trying to gouge a poor innocent theater manager on ticket prices?"
Fogerty glared daggers at both of us. But he didn't have time for a fight, and we all knew it. "Fine," he bit out. "Full ticket prices for the whole entourage."
"And full payment for the crew handling the alterations?" Jerry asked.
"We'll be doing it all ourselves," Fogerty gritted. "My people are already downstairs, waiting for the green light."
"Well, then, I guess I'd better give it to them," Jerry said, reaching for his phone. "A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Fogerty."
The alterations took only a few hours, about the same time it took to get the ambassador and the rest of the entourage up from Washington and settled into a
hotel a couple of blocks from the St. James. We headed out that evening for the theater in the ambassador's special car, which would have been a major challenge to drive in midtown Manhattan if the police hadn't cordoned off the area for us.
I'm sure that stunt made us lots of friends among the local drivers. Probably just as well we couldn't hear what the cabbies were saying.
The theater goers at the St. James, to my mild surprise, seemed to take the whole thing pretty much in stride. There'd been some hassles at Jerry's end, knew, sorting out the people who'd already bought the seats Fogerty had appropriated, but they'd all been moved or paid off or otherwise placated, and by the time we walked in with the ambassador everyone was feeling cordial enough to give him a round of polite applause. I presume he understood—there'd certainly been enough applause on the TV programs the Fuzhties had pilfered—but if he was either pleased or annoyed he didn't show it. Fogerty showed him to his chair—which had indeed required the removal of a square block of nine seats—and the rest of us filled in behind him. The house lights dimmed, the curtain went up, and the play started. In the reflected light from the stage I saw Fogerty lean back in his seat and cross his legs, the tired but smug image of a man who has faced yet another political brush fire and successfully stomped it out.
He got to be smug for exactly three minutes.
I had given up trying to see anything around the ambassador's bulk when, without warning, he heaved himself to his feet. Someone behind me gasped—the Trinidadian representative, I think—and I remember having the fleeting, irrational thought that the ambassador had realized I couldn't see and was courteously getting out of my way. An instant after that I realized how absurd that thought was, and my second thought was that he must have to go to the bathroom or stretch his legs or something.
