I began to agree. Better no helper at all than an unwilling one. One world only needed one cyb to adjust it.
Finally, I told Someone to go play and leave this problem to those equipped to deal with it. (I didn’t specify mentally, but any cyb can fill in between the screens.)
More eager to head out than to argue, Tango scooted Centerward at full ratiodrive. The warbabies were all mine.
I did what I had said over and over was The Right Thing. I waited.
The war leader kept making small corrections to the file, until finally he just read it, over and over.
Sometimes he questioned me again. In a way, answering him was difficult, because my own answers were the exact opposite to the answers my native programming demanded. A sentient, after all, is a sentient, no matter what color their stripes are. After all, most of the sentients I know off this world have no stripes. Most have, for that matter, no flesh bodies to have stripes on.
But as I continued to work on and absorb the file, I found it easing the programming, so more and more I could simply answer naturally.
Of course Remaldorixi would feel pain if I stuck them.
The day I could say it, easily and truthfully, was the day he closed the file, as it was.
Also, though I didn’t know it until later, that was the day he started setting up the Final Peace Conference.
He kept me too busy to worry about security, and that wasn’t my job anyway. But when I found out what he had in mind, it totally appalled me. Killer understatement. Or maybe, just plain killer.
I doubt there was any race of Nats anywhere, except the cave types perhaps, who don’t have some equivalent of an arena. This org-hive had one, used for war games, the kind that half the pops come to watch in person, to see how well the troops are doing. It may have originally been designed for more peaceful sports but who knew.
It could hold a generous fraction of the pops of this org-hive. A large fraction.
It was going to.
He was going to be on stage. Plus two huge screens, one on each side of the platform, each holding the main top Nats of one of the respective cultures. A third screen behind showed the audience a similar arena in Remaldor, showing the Remaldori leader, on their stage in that arena.
I argued until my tail drooped between my legs. I could have saved my energy. The only concession he made was that I could be on the platform with him. But not too close.
Not too close. Of course. If assassins did happen to manage to smuggle a weapon in, no use giving them an extra free target, besides the top leader of the whole world, no my no. I couldn’t believe it. But he was doing it. So, while he and his people were setting up his Idiocy, I was making my own preparations. All I could think of. Then I thought of more. Started processes I prayed to all Infinity I’d never need to depend on. Cursed and pummeled my brain and kept trying to close off all the loopholes. Knowing it was the one contingency you haven’t thought of that does you in, every time.
There wasn’t a wall anywhere near where I was, the next few cycles, that didn’t have my nervous scratch marks.
There were only seven people on the stage, but hundreds crowding on each screen, and hundreds of thousands in the audience. A similar setup in the capital of Remaldor, held their leader, and security, with their screens showing our audience and the smaller screen on the platform, our leader.
Seven people on the stage. Him, me, the security squad leader and four of her people.
The Remaldori leader had an assistant also (not Tango’s body, with a drone running it when I couldn’t spare enough attention, but someone else) and a similar squad of security types.
But the security folk were merely for show. They didn’t have energy weapons, or even the older, explosive propellant stuff. (I’d never even heard of those before coming here. Talk about primitive!)
No. They had ceremonial swords. Long sharp knives in fancifully decorated sheathes.
Oh so helpful if somebody in the audience pulled a real weapon.
I stood poised, ready to fling myself in front of him, if any weapon did appear.
He read the file, slowly. The other leader did the same, in their language. As if one was merely translating what the other was saying. Except I knew how much labor had been put in, to make this statement. I even knew what the other leader had contributed. I got that from Tango early on. Mine wrote stuff that needed translation. But the Remaldorix wrote a share too, which had to be translated into my language. Both of them had worked on it.
I knew whose idea it had been originally, though, and who had contributed the most.
He finished. The other leader finished.
“This,” he said, “is how all of us are going to live our lives from now on. If nobody wants war, it need not be, ever again.”
The other leader said the same thing, in Maldorit.
“I agree,” said our man.
“I agree,” said their man.
“Now,” said our man, “you, all who are here, all who are listening, must also agree. You must—”
“NO!”
I whirled. It was the security leader. “No! We cannot trust them. You are a traitor!”
And something was happening on the screen, on the other platform. But I paid no attention to it. I was diving for him, to protect him from the danger coming from the direction I had never expected.
“NO!” He put out a hand to shove me aside, but I was diving—
The energy bolt splashed us both. I screamed, I had never endured such a wash of sheer pain in my entire existence. He gasped and went limp.
I pulled myself away. One arm and part of that side was a mass of pure agony. But he had taken most of the blast right in the torso. My body might be fixable. (If not, I would survive, since if this body died I would merely return to my ship brain.) He was dying if not dead.
“You killed him!” I screamed.
“My country above all.” She put the muzzle of the weapon in her own mouth and pulled the trigger.
“May your anima rot forever!”
“Son…” It wasn’t much more than a whisper, a breath, but I heard it.
I crouched, tried to support him, my good arm around the back of his body—even there I could feel cracked and burnt flesh. “Medic!”
“No.” He looked up, into the camera. “Give my death… meaning. Make mine… the last death… in war.”
“Nooooo!”
“Accept… my covenant.” He slumped against me. I knew a dead weight when I felt one.
One of the security guards came over, bowed. “I accept all your covenant, lord leader.” Another came behind. “And I.” The third, then the fourth. “And I.” “And I.”
It was the last one who turned to the screen with our own leaders, and said. “What about you?” Then to the audience. “And you! He died to give us peace. Will you not take his last gift?”
Somewhere in the audience, someone was shouting, “Peace! Peace! Peace!” Only it wasn’t one someone, it was two… three… a dozen… a score… a hundred. Hundreds. Thousands. Emphasizing the single word with the stomp of feet. Peace! Peace! Peace!
There was a racket coming from the screens showing Remaldor. I realized that it, too, was a single word. Their word for Peace. I looked at the screens. Everyone was standing, stamping, shouting out the one word. Peace. Peace. Peace.
Except in the smallest screen. In that screen… ah, the sweet black of infinity! On the other screen, my opposite number was holding their leader, slumped and limp.
Both leaders. Dead. For peace. Killed by those closest to them, who couldn’t stand the thought of ending war.
Yet those deaths would seal the peace, and the covenant, more than any other single act.