For the erks had never found an undivided civilization. There were always differences of opinion or policy or religion or habits of thought... and to the erks a difference meant a struggle.
And a struggle meant a war.
Castor forced himself to stay at the index screen for hours, well into the time when he should have been asleep. When he walked out he almost tripped over a pair of drowsing dumb erks curled up in the doorway while they waited to see what fascinating thing the human would do. He looked at them with horror. They weren't comic, capering little monsters anymore. They, and their smart kin, were deadly.
If there were a war between Yanks and Chinks, would anyone win at all?
Or would the assistance of the erks mean that both sides lost, eternally?
Tsoong Delilah slept fitfully in the hot and stuffy room the erks had given her. There were no guards at night and no need for them. If she ever stirred outside her chamber there would soon be a gaggle of dumb erks following her, making enough noise to alert a few smart ones. And anyway, where did she have to go?
Delilah's days on World passed in a sort of angry fog. The fact that her loins lusted for Castor confused her. The fact that this planet of armed lunatics was planning, as one might elect to shoot a passing duck, to destroy her Han Home terrified her. The fact that she could find no solution to either problem frustrated her...
And when she woke, dreaming that Castor had invited himself to her bed without warning, and discovered it was no dream, she exploded in resentment.
"Now, then, boy!" she snapped, scuttling over to the far side of the bed as he slid in on the near, "what are you doing? Have all the Yank sisters got their periods at once? Are you trying to change your luck? Have you taken pity on an old woman?"
"Delilah," he said persuasively, a hand coming to cup her shoulder and a moment later the other reaching over to cup a breast, "don't you remember how much we like to make love to each other? So what is wrong with our doing it, simply to give each other pleasure?"
"You call it pleasure!" she began, sneering. But in fact she also called it pleasure, and angry though Delilah might be, insane she was not. When Castor tugged her toward him she did not resist. When Castor kissed her lips she returned the kiss; and, all in all, she did in fact remember how much they liked to make love to each other and discovered all over again how true that memory was. It was only when they had finished and Castor was lying on top of her, his slight frame molded into hers, slowly and reminiscently moving in her with no urgency, that the anger began slowly to seep back...
And then he put his mouth down to her neck and nibbled gently and whispered something.
"What?" said Delilah aloud.
"I said sssh," he whispered. "The erks watch us everywhere. Don't say anything."
Delilah felt herself tense up. Her mouth formed a question, but his left hand moved up from her breast to gently cover her lips. "Delilah," he whispered, "pretend you are a real Yank. Convince them. Convince the erks, too. Convince everybody, even Manyface."
She turned her head, looking about the room to see if indeed there was an erk somewhere watching him. The ornate wall paneling could, she realized, conceal any number of panels. A microphone could be anywhere. Why? She could not guess why. She rubbed her cheek against Castor's—how good it felt!—-and whispered, "Why?"
"Because," he breathed, "otherwise they will wreck our world. Go to the library. See for yourself." And then the nibbling at the neck got serious and the hand on her breast more urgent; and when at last he left for his own bed, Delilah lay back spent and content and wondering what he meant.
The wondering continued. The delightful lassitude began to go when she began to wonder if, indeed, he had come to her bed for no other purpose than to whisper in her ear.
II
When Delilah had seen the library records she retired to her room, among the queer-smelling flowers that the erks decorated guests' rooms with, and retired further to her bed and would, if she could, have retired to the womb or out of life forever; because for the first time in Tsoong Delilah's life she was scared. The situation did not involve merely a criminal who might outwit the resources of her Renmin police and do violent, terrible things. It was not anything so trivial and personal as the unfaithfulness of her innately faithless young lover that she feared. It was so large and terrifying an event that she could not contemplate it at all.
If the library was trustworthy, the erks were very likely to annihilate everything Delilah had ever sworn loyalty to. And she could see no way of stopping them.
After a long time of hugging herself in the bed, eyes closed, awake, unseeing, trying to be unfeeling, she began to think. That first terrible paralysis of fear seeped away.
There had to be something she could do. She acknowledged that the odds were immense against her, but that did not excuse Inspector Tsoong Delilah from trying! As she lay there, eyes open, staring at the ceiling that probably was staring back at her, she began to scheme.
Her first step, of course, had to be merely to do what Castor had demanded of her. She had to pretend to be more Yank than the Yankees. She had to acquire trust, and she had very little time to do it in.
It was an unfortunate necessity that the best way to be trusted was to do something personally obnoxious to her.
So, as soon as she could, Tsoong Delilah went to the shed where the warriors were rehearsing their arts, marched up to Feng Miranda, and said, "You are right. We must fight for America's freedom. I am a trained pilot and commander. Use me, Miranda. Let me help."
She saw at once, of course, the way Miranda glanced quickly to Castor; and saw, too, the faintly patronizing look Miranda gave her. She had made up her mind in advance that these would not matter to her, and although that did not turn out to be true, she accepted them. Let Miranda think what she liked. The advantage was all Delilah's. She knew what Miranda was thinking, although the knowledge displeased her. Miranda did not, however, know what Delilah was thinking—would not be allowed to—least of all to know that "We must fight for America^ freedom" was only a specific and particular excerpt from a larger and more important statement: "We must fight for America's, and the rest of the Earth's, freedom, from the erks."
If Castor could come to her bed to whisper secrets, Delilah could employ the same stratagems. What she decided to do next was so grotesque that she smiled all the way to Manyface's room. "Old man," she said roughly and tenderly as soon as she got there, "I am horny. Are you still capable of sex?"
The battered face that dwelt in the middle of the huge head peered at her. "Of course I am!" he said testily.
"Don't you know anything of medicine? I can be physically capable of whatever I wish, only—"
"Only," she finished for him—surprised to discover that now she was more tender than rough—"you are a freak, and so it embarrasses you to have a woman make love to you. Well. It is a different world here, Manyface. There are very few men. Marginal cases are upgraded greatly. You are very attractive to me now, my dear old pumpkin-head, and I would like it if you and I were to retire to some pleasant place in the countryside and enjoy each other as best we can."
And, to her surprise, Manyface was quite a tender and ardent lover; and, when they had explained to the following erks that human beings from Earth really required privacy for their copulation and the indulgent smart erks had herded the dumb ones away, she found that sex in the performance of one's duty could be almost as satisfying as sex for hygienic purposes and a lot more so than sex with an offhanded, reluctant, and untrustworthy lover.
And then, under the great orange vines that parasitized the grove they lay in, she whispered in Manyface's ear, "I've seen the history index material in the library. I know what will happen if the war begins."