Frustrated by her complete inability to find anything that might stop big, bluish aliens from massacring one another, Jennifer gave up and went back to the crew compartment. "Any luck?" Greenberg asked when she came out of the lift.
"None. Maybe a little less." She ran her hands through her hair, making tugging motions at it the way Greenberg did. "I should have known better. We don't have a writer stowing away a deus ex machina for us. We're going to have to do this ourselves, with our brains."
"Which haven't done us a whole lot of good so far."
"Isn't that the sad and sorry truth?"
Negotiations resumed the next day. The representatives of the Great Ones started things off by declaring in unison, "We have the solution to this problem."
"You and all your perverts are going to go and commit suicide so you don't bother decent Foitani any more?" Voskop W Wurd asked. From a human or an alien of different character, that would have been sarcasm. Jennifer thought the odds favored Voskop W Wurd's meaning every word of what he said.
Pawasar Pawasar Ras said, "Despite contemplation, I have not come upon anything that so much as approaches such a solution. I would be willing to hear one from any source, even a source as unreliable as kwopillot."
"Yes, tell us," Greenberg urged. "Jennifer and I haven't found anything that looks like an answer, either."
"Very well." Solut Mek Kem spoke for the old-time Foitani now. "The solution is classic in its simplicity. You have seen that vodranet are an unnatural alteration of the true Foitani way of being. Is this so, or not?"
"We see that the Great Ones appear to have been kwopillot, yes," Aissur Aissur Rus said. "Nevertheless, since the Suicide Wars we have built our own reality."
"What you say, though, kwopil, appears to remain in essence true, if bitter," Pawasar Pawasar Ras said. "If we are to have emulation of the Great Ones as our goal, we must bear this unpalatable fact in mind."
"Excellent," Solut Mek Kem said. "Then to solve the problem of strife between vodranet and proper Foitani, all modern Foitani must abandon their present distorted way of life and become as we are. As you have seen for yourselves, turning a vodran into a proper Foitan is easy?and no wonder, given that you are poor modifications of the true form. In a generation's time, the race can be whole again, and as it always should have been."
"I like the way I am just fine, and if any stinking kwopil has the brass to tell me my get or I would do better as perverts, we'll see how well he does radioactive," Voskop W Wurd said. Great Ones, Foitani from Odern, and Rof Golani had all installed weapons checks outside the Harold Meeker. Had it been otherwise, Jennifer was sure the blue-gray Foitan would have blazed away with everything he had.
Pawasar Pawasar Ras, as was the way of the Oderna, was more restrained but no less certain. "I fail to see how this proposal in any way benefits the Foitani now living within our sphere. We gain nothing from it save the commitment of the kwopillot not to attack. Buying safety with capitulation is always a poor bargain."
"On the contrary: you vodranet gain a great deal. Being as you are, you have lost the possibility for lifelong relationships between the sexes, the cornerstone of Foitani society since time immemorial," Solut Mek Kem said.
"He has something there," Jennifer whispered to Greenberg. Greenberg nodded. Maybe stable home life would be more likely to lead to a stable existence for the species than the serial relationships in which modern Foitani perforce engaged. On the other hand, the Great Ones, while stable among themselves, had wreaked unmitigated havoc on every other race they met. Human notions of right and wrong were anything but universal outside humanity.
Aissur Aissur Rus said, "Perhaps, kwopil, we lack the characteristic you extol. Yet can your kind claim to understand our race's whole nature, as we do? We give birth and sire, nurture and conquer, all of us together. Why should we give that up? If you put the proposition to our species on any surviving world of the sphere, few would choose it."
"Then as I believed from the outset, there is no point to these talks," Solut Mek Kem said. "We will have war."
IX
For all his ringing proclamation, for all his departing from the Harold Meeker and flying up to the Vengeance, Solut Mek Kem did not commence battle at once. Jennifer took that for a hopeful sign?with how much justification, she did not know. Trying to provide more justification, for herself and everyone else, she called the Great One. There was, she knew, a real chance the Foitan would not deign to speak to her, she being, after all, a mere alien. In that case, though, she?and everyone else?would be no worse off than if she had not called.
As far as she could interpret Foitani expressions?which wasn't far?Solut Mek Kem was anything but delighted to get on the screen with her. But the Great One did not refuse. Again, she took that for a hopeful sign. "Thank you for being willing to listen to me," she said, wanting him to know she realized the concession was unusual.
"It is no inherent merit on your part, let me assure you." Like most Foitani, Solut Mek Kem did not waste politeness on beings outside his kin-group. "My willingness, as you call it, is purely pragmatic. I am forced to recognize that the situation in which I find myself is not that which I anticipated on returning to awareness. You are part of this new situation. I will learn what I can, then act."
From a Foitan, that was a miracle of moderation; had Jennifer had to devise a motto for the Foitani, she would have come up with something like, Shoot first, then question the corpse. She said, "I have two things I want to discuss with you. One, obviously, is the prospect of a second round of Suicide Wars."
"This, again obviously, has my interest, though many aboard Vengeance feel it would be worthwhile if it meant exterminating all vodranet."
"But isn't it as likely to result in getting rid of all you kwopillot, or maybe all of your species?"
"This prospect is all that has stayed our hands thus far."
"Wonderful." The Great Ones used little in the way of subterfuge. They'd had scant need of it; whatever they wanted, they'd simply taken. Jennifer could have done with more socially lubricating hypocrisy?facing up to such straightforward self-interest was daunting. She said, "The other matter has to do with the humans you hold in your data storage system."
"Here we may have room for discussion, assuming it can be completed before fighting commences. As I told you before, I am indifferent to their fate," Solut Mek Kem said. "I asked you once if you wanted live copies produced for you."
"I don't think of them as copies. I think of them as humans," Jennifer answered. "I don't like the idea of their being in your hands; they aren't experimental animals."
Bernard Greenberg came up beside her. "That's right. What would you do if some other race held Foitani just to find out how they worked?"
"Destroy that race," Solut Mek Kem answered at once, his own voice as flat as the Spanglish words that came from the translator. "It has happened before. With the contemptible popguns in your vessel, however, you do not enjoy that option. You exist here on sufferance, not through strength. Remember it."
"We're here because Foitani thought we could solve a problem that baffled them, and the Harold Meeker is only a trading vessel, not a warship. I suggest you remember that, if you ever go into human space. We're better able to protect ourselves now than when you kidnapped those primitive ancestors of ours," Greenberg said.