Kassquit came out of the elevator. She waved when she saw Karen in the lobby. She not only waved, she came over to her, saying, “I greet you.”
“And I greet you,” Karen answered cautiously. She and Kassquit still didn’t usually get along. “What can I do for you today?” Would Kassquit be gloating at the prospect of war, too? She never got tired of bragging how she was a citizen of the Empire. As far as Karen was concerned, that was one of the things that made her less than human. She didn’t want to be human, and wished she weren’t.
But now Kassquit said, “If you know any way to keep the peace between your not-empire and the Empire, please speak of it to Sam Yeager and to Fleetlord Atvar. We must do whatever we can to prevent a war.”
“I completely agree with you,” Karen said-and if that wasn’t a surprise, it was close enough for government work. Government work is exactly the problem here, she thought. She went on, “From my perspective, the problem is that the Race thinks war would be more to its advantage than peace.” And how would Kassquit take that?
Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. “Truth. And a truth I do not know how to get around. My superiors are convinced they will have to fight later if they do not fight now, and they will be at a greater disadvantage the longer they delay. By the spirits of Emperors past, they must be addled!”
Karen wondered if they were. Humans progressed faster than Lizards. Both sides could see that. But… “If we can destroy each other, what difference does it make who has the fancier weapons? Both sides will be equally dead.”
“That is also a truth.” As usual, Kassquit’s face showed nothing, but urgency throbbed in her voice. “Under such circumstances, war is madness.”
“Yes,” Karen said. “The United States has always held this view.”
“After its experience when the colonization fleet came to Tosev 3 and in the unprovoked attack by the Deutsche, the Empire is not sure that is a truth,” Kassquit said. “And, speaking of unprovoked attacks, consider the one your not-empire made against the colonization fleet not long after its ships went into orbit around your world. If you see a way to seize a victory cheaply and easily, will you not take it? This is the Race’s fear.”
“I do not know what to tell you, except that Sam Yeager is the one who made sure our unjust act would not go unpunished,” Karen said. “I do not think we would make the same mistake twice. And I cannot help seeing that you have just made a strong case for war, at least from the Empire’s point of view.”
“I know I have. Making the case for war is easy-if one does not reckon in the dangers involved,” Kassquit said. “My hope is that your not-empire has indeed changed from its previous aggressive stance. If I can persuade my superiors of that-and if you wild Tosevites work to convince them of the same thing-we may possibly avert this fight, even now.”
“Would Sam Yeager be the American ambassador to the Race if we had not changed our ways?” Karen asked.
“Sam Yeager would not be your ambassador if the Doctor had survived,” Kassquit pointed out. “The Doctor was a very able diplomat. No one would say otherwise. But no one would say he was a shining example of peace and trust, either.”
She was right about that. If you were in a dicker with the Doctor, he would have had no qualms about picking your pocket. Not only that, he would have tried to persuade you afterwards that he’d done it for your own good. That talent had made him very valuable to the United States. Whether it had made him a paragon of ethics might be a different question.
“Do what you can with your own officials,” Karen said. “I will speak to Sam Yeager. As you say, we have to try.”
Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. They might not like each other, but that had nothing to do with anything right now. Karen rode up to her father-in-law’s room and knocked on the door. When he opened it, he said, “You look like a steamroller just ran over your kitten.”
She eyed him. “You don’t look so happy yourself.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not,” Sam Yeager said. “The small stuff is, Atvar is mad as hops because the Race found a rat-a half-grown rat-in a building a couple of miles from here. He keeps trying to make it out to be our fault, even though the cleaners let the darn things out.”
“A half-grown rat? So they’re breeding here, then,” Karen said.
“Sure looks that way,” Sam Yeager agreed. “And that’s just the small stuff. The big stuff is… Well, you know about the big stuff.”
“Yes, I know about the big stuff. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.” Karen summed up the conversations she’d just had with Trir and Kassquit. She went on, “What can we do? We have to be able to do something to convince the Lizards this war’s not worth fighting. Something-but I don’t know what.”
Sam Yeager let out a long, weary sigh. “If they’re bound and determined to go ahead and fight, I don’t know what we can do about it but hit back as hard as we can. They look to have decided that this is going to be the best chance they’ve got.” He shrugged. “They may even be right.”
“Even if they are, it’ll be a disaster!” Karen exclaimed.
Her father-in-law nodded. “I know that. I think they know it, too. If they don’t, it’s not because I haven’t told ’em. But if they think it’ll be a disaster now but maybe a catastrophe later…” He spread his hands.
“We don’t want a war with them. We just don’t, ” Karen said.
“Their attitude is, we may not want one now, but we’re a bunch of changeable Big Uglies, and sooner or later we will,” Sam Yeager said. “I don’t know how to convince them they’re wrong, either. And I’d better. If I can’t…”
“Kassquit is trying the same thing on their side.” Karen wasn’t used to talking about Kassquit with unreserved approval-or with any approval at all-but she did now.
“Good for her. I hope it helps some, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it,” Sam Yeager said. “I hope something helps some. If it doesn’t…” He paused again, and grimaced. “If it doesn’t, we’ll have a war on our hands.”
“We can see it’s madness. Kassquit can see it’s madness. The Lizards are usually more reasonable than we are. Why not now?” Karen could hear the despair in her voice.
“It’s what I told you before. They must think this is their best chance, or maybe their last chance. It doesn’t look that way to me, but I’m not Atvar or the Emperor.” Sam Yeager’s scowl grew blacker. “I’m just a scared old man. If something big doesn’t change in a hurry, four worlds are going to go up in smoke.”
In the control room these days, Glen Johnson felt more as if he were in a missile-armed upper stage in Earth orbit, or even in the cockpit of a fighter heading for action against the Lizards. Anything could happen, and probably would. He knew damn well that the Race could overwhelm the Admiral Peary. His job, and the job of everybody else on board, was to make sure they remembered they’d been in a fight.
The ship had a swarm of antimissiles that were supposed to be a hair better than the best the Race could fire. She also had close-in weapons systems-a fancy name for radar-controlled Gatling guns on steroids-to knock out anything the antimissiles missed. Put that together and it wouldn’t keep the Admiral Peary alive. It wasn’t supposed to. But it was supposed to keep her alive long enough to let her get her own licks in.
“What do you think?” Johnson asked Mickey Flynn. “Are we ready for Armageddon?”
Flynn gave that his usual grave consideration. “I can’t say for sure,” he replied at last. “But I do know that Armageddon sick and tired of worrying about it.”
Johnson groaned, as he was no doubt intended to do. Mickey Flynn looked back blandly. Johnson was sick of worrying about it, too, which didn’t mean he wasn’t doing his share and then some. “What do we do if the balloon goes up?” he said.