"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.