The Kailth stirred. "You must understand all that has happened."
I snorted. "Oh, I understand. All of it."
"Tell me," he challenged.
I glared at him, knowing that it was over. But at least before I died Tawni would get to see what her adored liberators really were. "You used me," I said.
"You got Tawni to give me a calix to take back to the UnEthHu. Which you've now used to kill Convocant Devaro and everyone aboard that full-wing."
"We regret the loss of the other humans," the alien said. "As we also regret the loss of the Kailthaermil warriors aboard the flyers which were destroyed. But their deaths were of Convocant Devaro's devising, not ours."
"How can you say that?" I demanded. "If I hadn't taken that calix back with me, none of this would have happened."
There was a soft hissing sound. "You do not yet understand, Stane Markand," the Kailth said. "If not for the calix, it would indeed not have happened this way.
But it would still have happened."
I shook my head, my brief flash of defiance draining away. "You're not making any sense," I said with a sigh. "It was the calix that brought Convocant Devaro here."
"No," the Kailth said firmly. "It was Convocant Devaro's desire for power over others that brought him. The calix did nothing but bring that desire into focus."
"You did not seek to use my gift for such purposes," Tawni added earnestly.
"For you it was a joy, and a blessing. It was only Convocant Devaro who sought to use it for his own gain."
I gazed back at her face. "So you knew all along," I said. "From the beginning was nothing but a pawn in this."
Her mouth twitched as if I'd raised a hand to her. But she held my gaze without flinching. "I gave you a gift from my heart," she said. "For friendship. It was not part of any plan."
"The Citizen-Three is correct," the warrior said. "Our plan was to begin there."
He pointed up at the bubbling fire of the volcano. "Tawnikakalina's gift was indeed only a gift." He regarded me thoughtfully. "If you were no more than a pawn, we would not tell you this."
"So why are you telling me?" I countered. "What do you want from me?"
"I have said already," the Kailth said. "Understanding." He reached out an armored hand to touch Tawni's shoulder. "There is ambition that drives one to be the best one can be," he said. "That is the ambition Tawnikakalina has for her art. Perhaps you have such ambition as well."
He lowered his hand. "But there is also ambition that seeks power over others, and does not care what destruction is left in its wake. We have seen this cruel madness in the Phashiskar, and the Baal'ariai, and the Aoeemme. And we see it now in the humans.
"And when such ambition threatens the Kailthaermil, we must offer it the means to destroy itself."
I looked over at the other warriors still cutting their trench. "Convocant Devaro said war with you is inevitable. Is that what you mean?"
"No," the Kailth said. "We have no desire for war with the UnEthHu. You do not subjugate the other beings within your boundaries, but treat them with justice.
Nor are there fundamental human interests or needs which demand conflict with the Kailthaermil. War will come only if individual humans choose to create it for their own purposes."
I glanced up at the volcano. "Men like Devaro."
Tawni's grip tightened on my arm. "I do not wish war with your people, Stane," she said quietly.
"I don't want it either, Tawni," I said, looking at the Kailth warrior again.
"But it seems to me that the war may have already begun. Whether or not Devaro did this of his own free will, the fact remains that it was the Kailth who provided the calix that tempted him down that path."
"You are correct," the Kailth said. "The war has indeed begun."
Reaching into his armor, he pulled out the pistol he'd taken from me. I caught my breath, feeling Tawni shrink against my side. "But it is not a war against humans," the Kailth continued. "It is a war against meaningless and unnecessary war."
He held up the pistol. "This is such a war, Stane Markand, the war Convocant Devaro sought to create against the Kailthaermil Empire for his own purposes.
It may be stopped thus—"
He grasped the barrel with his other hand, and with a sharp crack of broken gunplastic snapped the weapon in half. A squeeze with the armored hand, and the barrel shattered into splinters.
"Or it may be stopped thus." Reaching into the shattered frame with two fingers, he gave a sharp tug and pulled out the firing pin. "It is a war that must be fought, or many innocent lives will be lost," he said quietly, handing me the pin and what was left of the ruined gun. "Which way would you choose for us to fight it?"
I looked at Tawni. She was gazing back up at me, the skin of her face tight with quiet anxiety. Waiting to see how I would react to all this.
Perhaps waiting to see if she had lost a friend.
"What about Tawni's people?" I asked the Kailth. "Devaro gave his calices away to others. If any of them tries to use them the same way he wanted to, they may come here to get more."
"The Kailthaermil freed us when we had no hope," Tawni said quietly. "To help them free others, we willingly accept the danger."
"Perhaps," the Kailth said, "you can help make them safer."
I looked down the slope, toward the villages below. "Yes," I said. "Perhaps I can."
And with a lot of help, I did. Ten months later, in a precedent-shattering treaty, Quibsh became joint colonial territory of the Kailth and UnEthHu.
Three years after that, convention was again shattered as the humans of Quibsh and Sagtt'a were granted full joint citizenship between the two races. Over those three years, six SkyForce officers and five more Convocants figured out Devaro's brainscan trick and attempted to use the calices to amass power. All of them either died in the attempt or were politically destroyed.
And in the midst of it all, in the greatest miracle of all, Tawni became my wife. And later, of course, your mother.
And so, as we stand here on the eve of the Fifth Joint Kailthaermil-UnEthHu Expedition into the unknown areas of the galaxy, I wanted you to know how my Year of YouthJourneying came out. It was the year I learned about politics and war, about ambition and selflessness, about art and death and love.
The year I grew up.
Our hopes and blessings go with you, my son, as you leave with the expedition tomorrow. May your nineteenth year be as blessed as mine.
With love, Dad.
The Play's the Thing
The whole trouble started when the Fuzhtian ambassador announced that he wanted to see a Broadway play.
Though I suppose you could equally well say the trouble started when those first silent Fuzhtian probes snuggled coyly up behind our geosynchronous TV
satellites and began shipping the signals back home. You might even go back further and say that it all started when Marconi's first radio went on-line and began spewing electromagnetic radiation out into space for everyone to hear.
Oh, well, hell, let's be honest. All of it really started with whoever the bunch of trouble-making Sumerians were who sat around on a rainy Sunday afternoon and invented entertainment.
Because that's really what started the trouble: our vast entertainment industry, and the Fuzhties' maniacal love for it. For a simple example—and this isn't supposed to be noised about—when the Fuzhtian ship landed outside the White House, the "Greetings and Joy to Humankind" line that will be going into the history books were actually his second words to the Secretary-General. His actual first words were an expression of disappointment from his government that Johnny Carson was no longer hosting the "Tonight Show." For those of you who'd always wondered why Carson suddenly came out of retirement right after that to do a one-month stint as guest-host, now you know.