There was a considerable uproar, of course. Humans and aliens alike yelled, screeched, thundered a thousand questions at one another. They ignored me as I stood at the head of the table in a uniform of blood red, my arms folded across my chest. My own crew seemed just as startled and confused as the rest.
I let the politicians babble and called Frede to my side.
“What is this?” she asked, breathless, her eyes wide with stunned surprise. “How did you—”
“I’ll explain later,” I said. “Right now I want you and the rest of the crew to serve as a guard of honor. And to make sure that none of these politicians leave the table.”
Frede blinked twice, a thousand questions in her eyes. But she turned without another word and set up the crew at parade rest evenly spaced around the table, their backs to the trees and flowering foliage of Paradise.
The politicians were still jabbering and bickering among themselves, hurling accusations across the table.
I took the pistol from my red leather holster and fired a sizzling laser beam down the length of the table, burning a hole in its end just short of the Arachnoid web. They all jerked back, shocked into silence.
I smiled at them and put the pistol away as I said, “You’re probably wondering why I asked you here this morning.”
“Who are you?”
“Where are we?”
I held up my hands to silence them before any more questions could be asked.
“We are on Earth, at a time approximately twelve and a half millennia earlier than your own era.”
“Nonsense!”
“A patent lie, no one can travel across time. Our scientists have tried it and—”
“Shut up!” I snapped in my best military voice of command.
They shut up.
“You don’t have to believe a word I say,” I told them. “That doesn’t matter at all. What does matter is this: You are going to sit at this table until you have hammered out an agreement to end the war.”
They stirred at that.
“I don’t care if take days or years. No one leaves this time and place until you have agreed on peace. Once you do, you will be returned precisely to the times and places you were when I brought you here.”
“And what do you propose to do if we refuse to discuss peace?” asked the biggest Tsihn there, a real dragon with multihued scales encrusted with decorations.
“I will shoot you, one at a time, until you do begin meaningful discussions.”
Half of them leaped to their feet, shouting.
“How dare you?”
“You can’t—you wouldn’t!”
But they saw my troopers standing behind them, saw the guns at their waists, the grim smiles on their youthful-yet-aged faces.
“You will make peace or you will die,” I said sternly. “Just as you send your soldiers to be killed in battle, now you can face death yourselves.”
“You would kill unarmed civilians?”
“Who killed the people of Yellowflower?” I asked. “Who wiped out the Hegemony colonies? Who gave the orders?”
They sank back into their chairs.
“Listen to me,” I urged them. “If the war goes on, one side or the other will begin to use star-wrecking weapons. When you come to that point, the older species of the galaxy will annihilate all of you, without mercy and without remorse. You will all be exterminated like vermin.”
That started them arguing. I assured them of the Old Ones’ resolve. “Weapons powerful enough to destroy whole stars can set up chain reactions that can destroy much of the galaxy, perhaps the entire galaxy. That will not be permitted.”
“Who are you to make such threats?”
I smiled coldly. “In a sense, I am the ambassador from the Old Ones and the other ancient species of this galaxy. They have remained aloof from us because we are too young and too ignorant to be of interest to them. But now that we threaten the existence of the galaxy, they have no choice but to take notice of us—and take action.”
They did not want to believe me, but after long hours of debate and argument they began to accept what I told them. The sun sank behind the lofty trees and night came on. I kept them at the table, protected and warmed by a bubble of energy. I produced food and allowed them to leave the table briefly, knowing that there was no place in this continent-wide forest that they could escape to.
“No one returns to their own time and place until a peace agreement has been reached,” I said.
Days went by. They argued, they railed at each other, they hurled accusations and threats across the table. I reminded them that unless they began working toward peace I would begin shooting them. And I pointed to the loudest of the loudmouths.
“You’ll go first,” I said.
His eyes widened, but he stopped his insults and imprecations.
It was like a giant group-therapy session. It took time for them to air their true resentments, their real fears. They accused one another of all sorts of aggressions and atrocities, at first. But gradually, knowing that there was no alternative, knowing that they themselves were facing death, they began to get to the underlying causes of the war.
I knew that the real cause was the manipulations of the Creators. No matter what these humans and aliens agreed upon, the Creators could upset it in the blink of an eye. I realized that after I had finished with these politicians, I would have to face the Creators. Led by Aten, the Golden One.
I was surprised that he did not show himself here, even indirectly, disguised as one of the politicians. Probably he was content to let me work out a peace agreement, and then rip it to shreds before it could be implemented. He enjoyed playing with the human race that way, toying with us, tempting us and then degrading us when we reached for greatness. Like flies to wanton boys, I thought. Except that this fly has no intention of allowing any god to pull its wings off. Not now that I’ve learned how to use them.
Chapter 32
It took weeks. Seven weeks, plus two days. A hundred times or more I thought my imposed peace conference would see a murder across the conference table. A thousand times the politicians blustered at one another, hurled accusations, threats, turned to me and blistered the air with their rage, promising to flay me alive once they got back to their own worlds.
Each time I told them that no one would leave this time and place until they had agreed upon peace, with a treaty that they all endorsed, a treaty that bound them all to stop the war. And I warned them that if they could not end the war, they would become casualties themselves.
A dozen times they came close, only to have the agreement shattered on some objection, some grievance, some seemingly impossible demand.
But slowly, grudgingly, they inched toward the agreement that I demanded. I used no force, except the threat of execution. That was enough to keep them at their work. I fed them and allowed them to refresh themselves from time to time. I allowed them to sleep when they needed to, although that caused some complications because the Skorpis preferred to sleep in the daytime and the Tsihn and humans at night. The Arachnoids did not seem to sleep at all. But always I brought them back to that conference table, like dragging a puppy to the paper it is supposed to use when you are training it.
After fifty-one days they had the agreement on paper. They were exhausted, all of them, by the effort. But where they had started, fifty-one days earlier, as enemies and strangers across the table, now they knew each other, perhaps even respected each other. Even the incommunicative Arachnoids had used the translating machines I gave them to make certain that their needs and desires were addressed in the treaty.
They were about to sign the document when I made the final objection.
“There is one problem that the human members of this conference have not addressed,” I said from the head of the long table.