So calm, so natural and normal, so clearly confirming much of his thesis about the Altavar and their motives.
“We hope that this time we may reason with your leaders, and avoid all war, but this may not be possible,” the creature continued. “We have studied your people well, and we understand you.”
“Do you, really? I wonder.” All he could see was not a terrible, gruesome alien form and stench, only an entire race of Talant Ypsirs, shorn of any need to be cheery, political, or human in any sense. The Medusans called them demons with no real understanding of how right they were.
“We know your concern,” the Altavar told him. “Once, you see, our race was much like yours. We grew from a single world not unlike your own, although, obviously, evolution took a different path. We breathe the same sort of air, we drink and are made up of the same water. Our cells would be understandable to your biologists. Only the most warlike, competitive races survive to expand, so do not think us any different from you there, either. We, too, had our empire of several hundred worlds. And when faced with threat, we, too, fought. Because our history is so much like your own, we know full well what your Confederacy will do, how it will behave. But we are far older than your kind. Our objectives have changed, our purpose is firm and sure, our entire race committed to a single set of goals and objectives, while yours exists only to exist and to no real purpose. We desire none of your worlds. We desire none of your territory, nor your people.
“But your people will never believe that, for they know no higher purpose. They will not accept, or countenance, our great task, nor understand it. This is sad, for if there was any way to avoid the spilling of blood we would do so. That, we think, is why we were willing to allow Kree-gan his chance. That and the fact that we had the luxury of time. We still have some time, but we fear his plan has achieved instead this current situation. Tomorrow we will begin to resolve it.”
He nodded. “Yes. Tomorrow. Thank you for speaking to me.” He looked at Morah, who nodded, turned, and walked out without another word. He followed, remembering that the Altavar didn’t stand on protocol.
It took a little while of breathing good air before his stomach would settle down enough to have any sort of conversation. Morah waited patiently for him to recover.
“Well, did you find any surprises in your pet theories?”
He thought a moment. “Yes and no. It depends on just how well that thing translates. I heard the right words, but words can mean different things to different people.”
“Tell me,” the security chief said, “just out of curiosity—and if you can without giving away your own position. Just why do you think that the Altavar are so obsessed with the Diamond?”
“Huh? I assumed it had something to do with reproduction, but if I heard that thing correctly it may not. What did I miss?”
Morah thought his answer over carefully. “Then my guess was correct. You are a good agent, Carroll, and you have the most brilliant deductive mind I have ever encountered, Kreegan included. Do not feel badly. You labor under a handicap impossible to overcome.”
“I knew I missed something—but you still haven’t told me what, yet.”
“I think not. Not at this time. If anything, the true answer would make even the slender hope of settlement impossible. Reproduction is a good theory, and you should stick with it. The Council will understand it, perhaps accept it, and it will do as a basis for negotiations. The true answer, however, they will never accept, for they share your fatal flaw—and mine, too, for I had to be shown to believe.”
He looked at Morah, frowning. “Then at least tell me the flaw.”
“These are aliens, Mr. Carroll. They are, as the old one said, far closer to us than their hideous appearance and smelly hides admit, but they are alien all the same. They were shaped by a history that went vastly different from ours, and they reacted in a way, I suspect, that we could not. It should be obvious that their values, their institutions, their way of looking at things is very different from our own and would require a mind-wrenching adjustment to understand.”
“Do you understand it?”
“Sometimes I think I do, but I cannot really say so truthfully. I know what they are doing, and why they are doing it, but that is not the same thing as understanding it. I think it is time we both turn in, Mr. Carroll. Tomorrow, we settle it, and, in a sense, I fear that the hopes of Kreegan and, in fact, myself, will be dashed. I know those people too well, those high and mighty Confederacy leaders. You see Talant Ypsir and see a monster. I look at the Council and the Congress and the planetary leaders and I see a great gathering of Talant Ypsirs, and would-be Talant Ypsirs if they thought they could get away with it. That is the true reason they established the Warden Diamond; you have only to recognize it yourself. They wanted a place of security, refuge, and escape in case they were caught. The Four Lords of the Diamond are not truly any different from the Nine Hundred Lords of the Confederacy, who are merely greater hypocrites.” He turned to go, and the agent reached out and softly took hold of his arm for a moment.
“Morah—I have to know. Just whose side are you on?
“What is your ultimate game? You hate the Confederacy, but you have the same contempt for the Four Lords and the Diamond systems. You hoped that Kreegan could save humanity, yet you work for the aliens. What is your game?” The chief of security sighed. “Once I had a game, Mr. Carroll. I don’t any longer. I am trapped in a near-endless madhouse of a universe I did not make and cannot control or truly influence. From our viewpoint the Altavar are incredibly wise and totally insane, but insanity itself is a matter of degree. I am certainly insane by the standards of the Confederacy. Think of me as you would yourself. Neither of us asked to be here, nor did we fight for the responsibility that has been dropped upon us. Both of us do what we must because we are here, not because we are even the best people to be here. And, being totally insane ourselves, while we do not wish the ruin, carnage, and senseless violence that impends, we will both, wearily and without joy, work like hell to pick up the pieces.”
“That’s a pretty shitty universe you live in.” Morah grinned. “I wouldn’t bring this up tomorrow, but, for the record, the Altavar have three sexes. One contributes sperm, one egg, into a third who bears the young. And given a near-perfect medical knowledge, they live about three times as long as we do.” And with that, Yatek Morah went off to bed.
The conference was an awkward affair, but it was the best that could be done on short notice. He wondered from the start why such a minor moon, ill-suited for this sort of thing, should have been chosen, but suspected it might have been to accommodate the Altavar.
The technicians had rigged a screen at each end of the “conference room” and a similar setup, but not two-way, for the aides and assistants and others in the dorm next door. Inside the room sat the four current Lords of the Diamond dressed in their best, or most dramatic, as well as Dumonia and “Mr. Carroll,” the last two facing the rest despite the fact that Laroo was really Dumonia’s surrogate. Morah, it seemed, didn’t fully believe his statements on Dumonia’s power and neither recognized it nor told the others. Dumonia, for his part, was happy to be there as a representative of the Confederacy, although he found that concept highly amusing.
To the Lord’s right, on the screen, was an Altavar, possibly the same one he’d spoken to the night before. To their left the screen showed two men and a woman, all civilized worlders, dressed in formal robes of office. These were the senior ranking members of the Council, the rest of whom watched on a larger screen in an adjoining room back in the Confederacy.