The quiet hiss of the air-lock gaskets sealing made her sag with relief. Logically, it shouldn't have mattered. She was just as much in the power of the Great Ones inside the Harold Meeker as she had been outside. But logic had little to do with it. The barrier looked and felt strong, no matter how flimsy it was in fact.
"I have a question for you," Greenberg said. "Suppose you do manage to convince the old-time Foitani you've given them a way to work out how to exist alongside their modern cousins? The modern Foitani don't have that way. You need two sides to have peace, but one is plenty to start a war."
"You're right." She paced back and forth, as best she could in the cramped crew compartment. "I'll call Aissur Aissur Rus. He's had some actual experience working with the concepts I'm selling. If anyone can interest the others in them, he's the one."
"Not Voskop W Wurd?" Greenberg asked slyly.
She rolled her eyes. "No, thanks."
As it happened, Aissur Aissur Rus called her first. She explained to him the deal she had put to the Great Ones, knowing all the while that Solut Mek Kem or one of his aides was surely listening in. She finished, "You were the one among your people who thought someone used to the ideas of science fiction would be able to help you on Gilver, and you turned out to be right. Do you think that you modern Foitani can apply this same sort of creative extrapolation to the problem of living with kwopillot?"
"That is?an intriguing question," Aissur Aissur Rus said slowly. "If the answer proves to be affirmative, its originator would surely derive much credit therefrom." You would derive that credit, you mean, Jennifer thought. Aissur Aissur Rus continued, "If on the other hand the answer is in the negative, the Suicide Wars begin again shortly afterward, at which point no blame is likely to accrue, for who would survive to lay blame?"
"Then shall I send you the same materials I gave to Solut Mek Kem?" Jennifer asked. "Maybe you can use them, if not to change Pawasar Pawasar Ras's mind, then at least to open it a little bit."
"What materials did you furnish to the Great One?" Aissur Aissur Ras asked. Jennifer told him. He said, "I presently have all of those, I believe, save 'Hawk Among the Sparrows.' We kidnapped you before you gained the opportunity to discuss the literary pitfalls of overreliance upon advanced technology. Though alien, I find them most intriguing documents. 'The Marching Morons' presents a quite Foitani-like view of what constitutes proper behavior under difficult circumstances?not that we would ever have permitted culls to breed as they did to establish that story's background."
"Aissur Aissur Rus, I'm convinced you would have gotten an A in my course," Jennifer said.
"So you have said, human Jennifer. I shall take this for a compliment. My people have said repeatedly, in talks you have heard and in many more conversations where you were not present, that they could not imagine how they were to live with kwopillot. I still cannot imagine how we are to accomplish this. Nevertheless, perhaps you have furnished us a tool wherewith to focus our imagination more sharply on the problem. If this be so, all Foitani will be in your debt."
"That's not something you ought to tell a trader, you know," Jennifer said.
"Possibly not. Nevertheless, you are at present in no position to exploit my words. Will you send 'Hawk Among the Sparrows' to me now?"
Jennifer fed the piece into the computer for transmission to Gilver. She remarked, "You know, Aissur Aissur Rus, you may end up as Odern's ambassador to the Great Ones if you do manage not to fight. You're better with strange peoples than any other Foitan I've met. Thegun Thegun Nug, for instance, would have ordered me to send him that story just now, instead of asking for it."
"He is an able male," Aissur Aissur Rus said stoutly.
"Have it your way," Jennifer said. "Out." She turned to Greenberg. "Now we wait to see what the Great Ones have to say."
"I hope we don't wait too long," he answered. "I'd be willing to bet Odern's fleet is already heading this way, and I have no idea how for from Gilver Rof Golan is. For once, I wouldn't mind if the communicator interrupted us."
"Is that a hint?"
"You know a better way to pass the time?" Greenberg asked.
"Now that you mention it, no," Jennifer said.
The communicator did not interrupt them. Like Greenberg, Jennifer almost wished it would have.
"You will report to me at once," Solut Mek Kem said, as abrupt as if he'd been Thegun Thegun Nug. Jennifer and Greenberg traded worried glances as they hurried out through the air lock. The communicator had been silent for thirty-six hours before that sharp order. Solut Mek Kem knew what he thought of the works Jennifer had given him. Whatever it was, he wasn't letting on.
A Foitani guard waited outside the Harold Meeker. Jennifer could not tell if it was the same one who had escorted her to Solut Mek Kem before. The guard said nothing and gave no clues, merely gesturing come along with his hand weapon. One of the nice things about human worlds, she thought, was that sometimes whole weeks went by without anyone pointing a gun at you.
She also could not tell if she and Greenberg went by way of the same moving chamber as they had the last time; one blank room looked much like another. Solut Mek Kem was definitely in the same office he had occupied before. The company he kept there, however, was a good deal different.
Some sort of invisible screen?possibly material, possibly not?kept the CroMagnon man and woman from either running away or attacking the Foitan. The two human specimens turned fierce, frightened faces on Jennifer and Greenberg as the guard led them into the chamber. They shouted something in a tongue as dead as the woolly mammoth.
"You have won your wager," Solut Mek Kem said. "The concept of extrapolation mixed with entertainment is not one we developed for ourselves, yet its uses quickly become obvious as we grow acquainted with it. I wonder how many other interesting concepts we have exterminated along with the races that created them." Jennifer had not imagined a Foitan could feel guilt. A moment later, Solut Mek Kem disabused her of her anthropocentrism, for he said, "Well, no matter. They are gone, and I shall not worry about them. The masters of these creatures?" He stuck out his tongue at the CroMagnon couple, "?are also now gone from our data store; I keep my bargains. The copies are yours to do with as you will."
Jennifer started to ask if there was any way for her to check that, then held her tongue. If the Great Ones wanted to cheat, they could; how was she supposed to thread her way through their data storage system? Besides, questioning Solut Mek Kem was liable to make him angry, and at the moment he was about as well disposed as a Foitan could be toward members of another species.
Instead of complaining to him, she turned to Greenberg. "I suppose the kindest thing we can do for these poor people is stun them and put them out of their sensory overload before they scare themselves to death." She wasn't sure she was exaggerating; half-remembered tales of primitive humans said they might do just that.
The translator carried her words to Solut Mek Kem. "I will take care of it for you," the Great One said. He rapped on the wall behind him to expose a cavity. From it he took a weapon smaller than the one the Foitani guard carried. He started to point it at the two reconstituted humans.