Charles DeVett & Katherine MacLean

by Cosmic Checkmate

  “You have your six months.” Trobt was still not through with me, personally. “On the exact day that period ends I will expect your return to Velda. We will see if you have any honor left.”

  “I will be back,” I said.

  Before I made my return to Earth known I bought a small farm near the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan’s upper peninsula—under an assumed name. Before too long I would be regarded as a traitor here; as a live coward when I might better have been a dead hero.

  I had just enough influence with the politicos—and they had enough curiosity—to arrange a meeting with delegates from our sector of the Worlds. I presented them with what I had learned, and recommended unconditional surrender.

  They laughed at me. These men were all descendants of pioneer stock, their nature was tp fight—until it had been proven to them, incontrovertibly, that they could not win. Words would never do it.

  However, I had expected as much. I gave them all the arguments I had, then moved on to the other Worlds and presented them with the same message.

  The reaction was identical everywhere. No surrender. They were only convinced that they must make hasty preparations to fight. Still I continued my mission. Wherever possible I induced them to telecast our talks, so that as many people as possible could learn what I had to say. I covered as much territory as I was physically able in the first five months.

  The last month I saved for the Jason’s Fleece sector. They were the Worlds nearest the Veldians, and would be first to bleed in the coming conflict. They evidenced the greatest unease—a few delegates vacillated—but in the end all refused to take my recommendations at face value.

  The last day I returned to Velda.

  Two days later Velda’s Council acted. They were going to give the Humans no more time to organize counteraction. I went in the same spaceship that carried Trobt. I intended to give him any advice he needed about the Worlds. I asked only that his first stop be at the Jason’s Fleece fringe.

  Beside us sailed a mighty armada of warships, spaced in a long line that would encompass the entire portion of the galaxy occupied by the Ten Thousand Worlds. For an hour we moved ponderously forward, then the stars about us winked out for an instant. The nest moment a group of Worlds became visible on the ship’s vision screen. I recognized them as Jason’s Fleece.

  One world expanded until it was the size of a baseball. “Quagman,” Trobt said.

  Quagman, the trouble spot of the Ten Thousand Worlds. Dominated by an unscrupulous clique that ruled by vendetta, it had been the source of much trouble and vexation to the other Worlds. Its leaders were considered little better than brigands. They had received me with much apparent courtesy. In the end they had even agreed to surrender to the Veldians—when and if they appeared. I had accepted their easy concurrence uneasily, but they were my main hope.

  Two Veldians left the ship in a scooter. We waited. Few words were spoken. Trobt played idly with the “Child’s Ring” on his belt. It was a favorite ornament of the Veldians, a carry-back to the time of the dleeth. In their flights from the beast a tiring child could cling to the ring in the father’s belt and be helped along.

  At the end of ten long, tense hours word came from the Quagmans themselves. The Veldians were being held captive. They would be released upon the delivery of two billion dollars—in the currency of any recognized World—and the promise of immunity.

  The fools!

  Trobt’s face remained impassive as he received the message.

  We waited several more hours. Both Trobt and I watched the green mottled baseball on the vision screen. It was Trobt who first pointed out a small, barely discernible, black spot on the upper left hand comer of Quagman.

  As the hours passed, and the black spot swung slowly to the right as the planet revolved, it grew almost imperceptibly larger. When it disappeared over the edge of the world we slept.

  In the morning the spot appeared again, and now it covered half the face of the planet. Another ten hours and the entire planet became a blackened cinder.

  Quagman was dead.

  The ship moved next to Mican.

  Mican was a sparsely populated prison planet. Criminals were usually sent to newly discovered Worlds on the edge of Human expansion, and allowed to make their own adjustments toward achieving a stable government. Men with restless natures that made them criminals on their own highly civilized Worlds often made excellent pioneers. However it always took them several generations to work their way up from anarchy to a co-operative government. Mican had not yet had that time. I had done my best in the week I spent with them to convince them to organize, and to be prepared to accept any terms the Veldians might offer. The gesture, I feared, was useless but I had given all the arguments I knew.

  A second scooter left with two Veldian representatives. When it returned Trobt left the control room to speak with them.

  He returned, and shook his head. I knew it was useless to argue.

  Mican died.

  At my request Trobt agreed to give the remaining Jason’s Fleece Worlds a week to consider—on the condition that they made no offensive forays. I wanted them to have time to fully assess what had happened to the other two Worlds— to realize that that same stubbornness would result in the same disaster for them.

  At the end of the third twenty-four hour period the Jason’s Fleece Worlds surrendered—unconditionally. They had tasted blood; and recognized futility when faced with it. That had been the best I had been able to hope for, earlier.

  Each sector held off surrendering until the one immediately ahead had given in. But the capitulation was complete at the finish. No more blood had had to be shed.

  The Veldians’ terms left the Worlds definitely subservient, but they were neither unnecessarily harsh, nor humiliating. Velda demanded specific limitations on weapons and war-making potentials; the obligation of reporting all technological and scientific progress, and colonial expansion only by prior consent.

  There was little actual occupation of Federation Worlds, but the Veldians retained the right to inspect any and all functions of the various governments. Other aspects of social and economic methods would be subject only to occasional checks and investigation. Projects considered questionable would be supervised by the Veldians at their own disretion.

  The one provision that caused any vigorous protest from the Worlds was the Veldian demand for Human women. But even this was a purely emotional reaction, and died as soon as it was more fully understood. The Veldians were not barbarians. They used no coercion to obtain our women. They only demanded the same right to woo them as the citizens of the Worlds had. No woman would be taken without her free choice. There could be no valid protest to that.

  In practice it worked quite well. On nearly all the Worlds there were more women than men, so that few men had to go without mates because of the Veldians’ inroads. And—by Human standards—they seldom took our most desirable women. Because the acquiring of weight was corollary with the Veldian women becoming sexually attractive, their men had an almost universal preference for fleshy women. As a result many of our women who would have had difficulty securing Human husbands found themselves much in demand as mates of the Veldians.

  Eight years passed after the Worlds’ surrender before I saw Kalin Trobt again.

  The pact between the Veldians and the Federation had ‘worked out well, for both sides. The demands of the Veldians involved little sacrifice by the Federation, and the necessity of reporting to a superior authority made for less wrangling and jockeying for advantageous position among the Worlds themselves.

  The fact that the Veldians had taken more than twenty million of our women—it was the custom for each Veldian male to take a Human woman for one mate—caused little dislocation or discontent. The number lost did less than balance the ratio of the sexes.

  For the Veldians the pact solved the warrior-set frustrations, and the unrest and sexual starvation of their males. Those men who demanded action and adventure
were given supervisory posts on the Worlds as an outlet for their drives. All could now obtain mates; mates whose biological make-up did not necessitate an eight to one ratio.

  Each year it was easier for the Humans to understand the Veldians and to meet them on common grounds socially. Their natures became less rigid, and they laughed more-even at themselves, when the occasion demanded.

  This was especially noticeable among the younger Veldians, just reaching an adult status. In later years when the majority would have a mixture of Human blood, the differences between us would become even less pronounced.

  How Trobt found me I did not learn. I was still living under my assumed name. The rancor that had accompanied the mention of Robert O. Lang through the early years of the peace had almost died out now. However, I had come to enjoy my isolation in the Porcupine Mountains, and I made no effort to return to my old friends and society.

  Trobt made his appearance as I was weeding my garden. He had changed very little during those eight years. His hair had grayed some at the temples, and his movements were a bit less supple, but he looked well. Much of the intensity had left his aquiline features, and he too seemed content.

  We shook hands with very real pleasure. I led him to chairs under the shade of a nearby tree and brought drinks.

  Yasi heard him from the kitchen and came out and they embraced warmly. “I see that there will be two springs this year,” he quipped, referring to the embryo evidence of the coming of her second fertile period. It was the first time I had heard the semblance of a conscious joke from him.

  Yasi inquired as to the health of Yondtl, and was told that he was very happy with his new limbs, and could speak as well now as any Veldian. Human surgical techniques had been very welcome there.

  She left us a short time later and Trobt said, “I want to apologize for having thought you a coward. I know now I was very wrong. I did not realize for years, however, just what had happened.” He gave his wry smile. “You know what I mean, I presume?”

  I looked at him inquiringly.

  “There was more to your decision to capitulate than was revealed. When you played the Game your forte was finding the weakness of an opponent. And winning the second game. You made no attempt to win the first. I see now, that as on the boards, your surrender represented only the conclusion of the first game. You were keeping our fatal weakness to yourself, convinced that there would be a second game. And that your Ten Thousand Worlds would win it. As you have.”

  “What would you say your fatal weakness was?” By now I suspected he knew everything, but I wanted to be certain.

  “Our desire and need for Human women, of course.”

  There was no need to dissemble further. “The solution came to me first,” I explained, “when I remembered a formerly independent Earth country called China. They lost most of their wars, but in the end they always won.”

  “Through their women?”

  “Indirectly. Actually it was done by absorbing their conquerors. The situation was similar between Velda and the Ten Thousand Worlds. Velda won the war, but in a thousand years there will be no Veldians, racially.”

  “That was my first realization,” Trobt said. “I saw immediately then how you had us hopelessly trapped. The marriage of our men to your women will blend our bloods until—with your vastly greater numbers—in a dozen generations there will be only traces of our race left.

  “And what can we do about it?” Trobt continued. “We can’t kill our beloved wives—and our children. We can’t stop further acquisition of Hump women without disrupting our society. Each generation the tie between us will become closer, our blood thinner, yours more dominant, as the intermingling continues. We cannot even declare war against the people who are doing this to us. How do you fight an enemy that has surrendered unconditionally?”

  “You do understand that for your side this was the only solution to the imminent chaos that faced you?” I asked.

  “Yes.” I watched Trobt’s swift mind go through its reasoning. I was certain he saw that Velda was losing only an arbitrary distinction of race, very much like the absorbing of the early clans of Velda into the family of the Danlee. Their dislike of that was very definitely only an emotional consideration. The blending of our bloods would benefit both; the resultant new race would be better and stronger because of that blending.

  With a small smile Trobt raised his glass. “We will drink to the union of two great races,” he said. “And to you—the winner of the Second Game!”