Miles stopped talking. The silence that followed his words this time was a long one. But at last it was broken by the taller of the two aliens standing with the crew of the Fighting Rowboat at midpoint.
“We were right originally then,” said the Center Alien slowly. “It was a part of your primitive nature that caused it—and we could not understand, because it is a part we have long abandoned. You are still on that early road from which we departed a very long time ago. Do not think, though, that we are less grateful to you because of what you have just told us.”
He turned a little so that his gaze was directly on Miles. The Center Alien seemed almost to speak directly and privately to Miles.
“No matter from what source it sprang,” said the Center Alien, “from will or mind or instinct, the fact remains that what you did changed the battle picture and resulted in our saving our galaxy. What can we do for you and these others to show our gratitude?”
Miles had been prepared for the question. Now he answered quickly before any of the others from the Fighting Rowboat could speak up.
“We want to stay independent,” said Miles, “and much of what you could give us might not be good for that independence. But there are a few things… Now that we’ve been brought together aboard the Fighting Rowboat, we’d like our races to stay in touch. So give us ships then, or show us how to build our own ships, so that our twenty-three different races can communicate and travel among our separate worlds.”
“The ships and the knowledge you ask for are yours,” said the Center Alien. He hesitated. “And if in the future you should want more than this from us, we will arrange a method of communication so that you need only ask.”
“Thanks,” said Miles. “But I don’t think we’ll be asking.”
17
The summer sun of a later year was sinking toward the hours of late afternoon above the high banks of the Mississippi River by the University of Minnesota campus when the envoy from that race called (by themselves) the Rahsesh alighted from a government car at the edge of a road on the west bank of the river. Before the envoy, humans in plain clothes guarded a small section of green lawn that run outward a short distance to the edge of a bluff. Recognized by the guards, in his personal and diplomatic capacities, the alien envoy was admitted through their lines. He went alone across the grass to where a man stood with his back turned, painting on a large canvas set up on a heavy easel. A brown-haired girl sat quietly in a camp chair near him, reading.
The painter was in light slacks and white shirt with sleeves rolled up. Smears of gray, blue, and yellow paint were on his bared forearms, on his hands and fingers, and the canvas before him was heavy with wet paint of many colors. The envoy from the Rahsesh went swiftly, smoothly, and quietly up to stand at his elbow.
“Am I interrupting you, friend Miles?” he asked the painter.
“No,” Miles shook his head without looking around. “I’m all done, Luhon. I’m just putting a little polish on a last few sections. You’ve met my wife, Marie?”
She raised her head to smile at Luhon before returning to her book.
“No. I’m honored to meet her,” said Luhon. “Continue with your occupation, friend Miles, I can wait.”
“No, go ahead. Talk.” said Miles, still without turning. “Do you know you’re the first one in? None of the rest of our old crew from the Fighting Rowboat has got to Earth yet.”
“They’ll be along shortly, I’d guess,” said Luhon. “Did each of the races pick its former representative to be its envoy? It occurred to me that there might be races which might want to send someone else.”
“Not for this meeting,” said Miles. His brush point placed yellow color lightly on the canvas. “Each of our twenty-three races needs all the understanding it can get about the others, and that sort of understanding is possible only through someone who already knows the rest of us. In fact, I said as much in the message I sent around to the other races. You must have noticed my recommendation to that effect in the letter I sent the Rahsesh.”
“I noticed,” replied Luhon, gazing at the canvas with some small interest and curiosity. “But it occurred to me that perhaps the recommendation was special in my case.”
“No,” said Miles.
For a few seconds neither one said anything. Miles worked away at his painting.
“You know, friend Miles,” said Luhon thoughtfully, “when the Center Aliens asked you, after the battle with the Silver Horde, what we all wanted in the way of reward, you answered him without talking it over with the rest of us first.”
“That’s right,” answered Miles, painting.
“And now,” murmured Luhon, “here you’ve called a meeting of all of us on your world, speaking for all our races—again all on your own. Also, that notice you sent around, friend Miles, didn’t say especially what we all were getting together to discuss.”
“It said,” said Miles, “that what we were going to discuss would at first be understandable only to those who, like we twenty-three, had had experience with the Center Aliens and the Silver Horde.”
“True,” said Luhon, “and that was enough to satisfy my government—and, I suppose, those who govern the other twenty-one races. But is it going to be satisfactory to the twenty-three of us, when we all come face to face again, I ask you, friend Miles?”
“All right. You’ve asked me,” answered Miles, and paused to squint at the descending sun sending its rays slanting now across university buildings, trees, river bluffs, and river—the entire scene of Miles’ painting. “And you’ve made a point of coming early, to be sure that you’d be the first to ask me.”
“I was your second-in-command,” Luhon reminded him mildly.
“True,” said Miles, straightening up and stepping back from the canvas, brush in hand, to get a longer perspective at what he was doing. “All right, friend Luhon. I’ll give you your answer. I’ve called us all together again here to begin making plans for the day when it’ll be our turn, eventually, to take over control of the galaxy from the Center Aliens.”
His words sounded calmly on the warm summer air. But they were received by Luhon in a silence that stretched out and out.
Miles went on, unperturbed, examining his canvas. He stepped forward once more and began to make a few more tiny alterations on it with the yellow-tipped number ten brush he still held. Finally, behind him, Luhon spoke again.
“I have my people to think of,” said Luhon slowly. “If you’ve become mentally unreliable, friend Miles, I’ll put off whatever friendship and allegiance I had to you and so inform the rest of the twenty-two—crewmates and races alike.”
“That’s up to you,” said Miles. “Meanwhile, why don’t you think a little about what I’ve just said? I didn’t say anything about taking over from the Center Aliens tomorrow, or next year, or even a thousand years from now. I said that we’d be taking over eventually—and we needed to start talking about that eventuality now.”
“Have you forgotten”—Luhon’s voice was almost a whisper—“the number of Center Alien ships in the Battle Line? Have you forgotten the number of Center Aliens that each of those great ships must have held? And what one Center Alien was able to do to our whole ship and crew? Can you imagine how many like him there must be, and the number of worlds they must occupy, in toward the galaxy’s center? Can you imagine all that and the thousands of years of technological advantage they must have over us—and still say what you’re saying?”