The screen that had shown Solut Mek Kem went blank. Aissur Aissur Rus said, "Well done, human Jennifer. You have made the wicked pervert pause and examine assumptions, something we did not succeed in accomplishing."
Bernard Greenberg said, "You ought to think about examining your own assumptions, Aissur Aissur Rus. Since when is someone who differs sexually from you necessarily a pervert?or necessarily wicked, for that matter?"
"Kwopillot are wicked perverts," Aissur Aissur Rus said.
Jennifer felt like banging her head against a wall; Aissur Aissur Rus not only wasn't examining his assumptions, he hadn't even noticed them. She asked, "What's a vodran?"
"We do not know this word, either," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "It is a piece of offal the kwopillot have appended to the pure and beautiful speech of the Great Ones, nothing more."
Just then, Solut Mek Kem reappeared in the holovid screen. "I will converse with the sub-Foitani creature," he announced.
"We call ourselves humans," Jennifer said pointedly.
The Great Ones, whether perverted or not, had all the arrogance of their descendants and then some. Solut Mek Kem said, "I care nothing for what you call yourself, creature. I have some concern, however, over your statements. It appears true that Foitani encountered your kind in the past. You were noted as being uncommonly brutish and scheduled for extermination. Why this failed to take place is a matter of some puzzlement to me."
Jennifer opened her mouth, then closed it again. Hearing that her species was going to have been killed off was not something she could take in at once. Into her silence, Aissur Aissur Rus said, "No doubt the Suicide Wars intervened and prevented the Foitani of that distant time from completing the protocol they envisioned."
"Suicide Wars?" It was Solut Mek Kem's turn to pause. Not even a Foitan could care for the sound of that.
"Suicide Wars," Aissur Aissur Rus repeated. He spoke to the command center's computer system. A holovid star map appeared in front of him. "This is the area the Foitani once inhabited, not so?"
"No. Wait. Yes, it appears to be," Solut Mek Kem said. "We customarily oriented our maps with the other direction to the top, thus my brief confusion."
"One more thing about the Great Ones of which we were ignorant," Aissur Aissur Rus observed before returning to the business at hand. "These are the known Foitani worlds now." The few points of light Dargnil Dargnil Lin had shown Jennifer back on Odern now sparkled in front of her. Aissur Aissur Rus said, "All other worlds within the sphere are devoid of our kind, or even of intelligent sub-Foitani life forms."
"More vodran lies, fabrications to confuse me," Solut Mek Kem said.
"If you will arrange a data link with us, we will supply you with documentation sufficient to change your mind," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "We could not have prepared this volume of information in advance to trick you, you will realize, because we had no idea we would discover you alive in the tower, and still less that you would prove to be kwopillot." More flexible than most of his kind, Aissur Aissur Rus managed not to affix a malodorous epithet to the term.
"Send your data," Solut Mek Kem said. "The Vengeance will refrain from destroying you until they are evaluated?you are no spacecraft, and cannot run. But woe betide you if we detect falsehood. It will only make your fate the harsher."
How could any fate be worse than destruction? Jennifer wondered. She did not speak her thought aloud. The Foitani might have answers to questions like that.
"Did you notice the name of the ship?" Bernard Greenberg said. "The old-time Foitani who set up the Great Unknown must have figured their side might not win the war. I wonder if they figured no one would win it."
Jennifer thought about the map Aissur Aissur Rus had shown to Solut Mek Kem. She thought about the sphere the Foitani had once ruled, about the handful of worlds they still inhabited. She thought about how many other species the imperial Foitani must have destroyed, about the calm way Solut Mek Kem remarked that humanity was on their list. Softly, she said, "Maybe that's just as well."
"Maybe it is," Greenberg agreed.
The Foitani in the command center seemed to have forgotten about the humans again, now that Jennifer had bought them some time. That was typical of them, she thought, but she could not make herself angry. She only wished they'd never heard of her in the first place.
Solut Mek Kem came back on the screen after perhaps half an hour. He said, "Our computers have been analyzing and summarizing the information you are presenting to us. The problem does seem rather more complex than we may have envisioned."
From a Foitan, even so small an admission had to spring from profound shock. Jennifer realized that at once. She wondered if Pawasar Pawasar Ras or Voskop W Wurd would see it. To them, it might be taken as only a sign of weakness. Before either of them could speak, she climbed on the plastic box and said loudly, "Then you agree it's wiser to talk, Solut Mek Kem, than to try to fight off every starship from every Foitani world that still knows about spaceflight?"
Pawasar Pawasar Ras growled at her. Voskop W Wurd snarled at her and took a step in her direction. His clawed hands stretched greedily toward her. She felt like Miles Vorkosigan?much too small and extremely breakable. How would the Middle English SF hero have handled this particular mess? Audacity, that was his only way. She went on quickly, not giving any Foitan a chance to talk: "A peace conference seems the appropriate solution, don't you all think? None of the modern Foitani are likely to get any of the technology of the Great Ones without peace, unless the Vengeance shoots it at them. And you Foitani from long ago will only be hounded all through this sphere unless you come to some kind of terms with your modern relatives."
"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."