Garth rolled out of the boat on his wheels. When it had gotten to the ground, the honkers pulled the ramp away. The Integrator spoke to an aide, and she hurried to the pilot and conversed with him. Then the canopy slid shut, the boat rose, turned, and accelerated away.
Garth came speedily to Tappy. It whistled a long series of dots and dashes. When it stopped, Candy said, "Garth says that it is ready to interpret for the commander of the fleet."
"Fleet?" Jack said, but he knew what she meant.
Candy pointed upward. He looked again at the sky and still saw only clouds.
"Garth has been receiving messages for the last half hour," Candy said.
Tappy spoke as if she were suddenly short of breath. "What did the commander say?"
"She wants to send down a negotiator. He'll come down in a small vessel, and he'll be alone and unarmed. He just wants to present the empire's demands."
"I thought he wanted to negotiate?"
"The Gaol don't know the difference between demanding and negotiating. You should know that, Jack."
"Yeah, I know. Candy, when does the commander want the meeting to take place?"
"As soon as possible."
"Tell Garth to tell the commander she'll get the time of the meeting shortly. We have to confer about it first."
While the android was whistling at the cyborg, Jack swiftly considered the possible consequences of permitting the Gaol to come down in the spaceboat. Why this face-to-face confrontation? Why not just talk via Garth? It could not be because the commander wanted a close look at the situation. She could see them as clearly through her instruments as if she were hovering just above them.
Maybe she thought that her demands would be much more powerful if they were delivered personally. Issuing from a scary-looking creature with its ratcage-body, its brutal face, and its lack of brainpan, the demands would have an impact that could not be matched by messages relayed via Garth.
But then the Gaol probably did not think of themselves as frighteningly alien and horrible. On the other hand, they must have observed that their appearance did nauseate the bipedal species they had encountered. See a Gaol; feel like throwing up.
It was an anthropocentric reaction, but it was natural.
The Gaol would not wish to destroy the Imago's host except as a last resort. Did the Gaol believe that this situation demanded that Tappy be killed? He did not think so. It had not developed to the point where they would say, "Screw it!" and then kill her. Not yet, anyway, though it could lead to that.
It was not likely that the negotiator's boat was armed or equipped with an atom bomb. The Gaol would not have to depend upon that to kill Tappy if the commander decided that that was the only solution to their problem. Missiles launched from the orbiting ships could do that work much more effectively and with no warning at all.
He told Candy and Tappy what he had been thinking.
"The Gaol boat might be equipped with remote-controlled machinery," he said. "Controlled either by the negotiator or, more likely, from the spaceship by the commander. She might have ideas about abducting you, Tappy. I don't know how, but I'm thinking of something like paralyzing gas sprayed from it, then the boat opening up and scooping you into it and taking off. The negotiator would be sacrificed, but they wouldn't care."
They agreed, and so did the Integrator when they explained what they had been talking about. Jack told Candy to send a message through Garth.
"The boat must land at least half a mile from us," Jack said. "The negotiator will walk to us. Just after he leaves the boat, it will ascend. When it's at least a hundred miles above the surface, the negotiator can start walking toward us. Tell the commander that you have radar capabilities and can ascertain that the boat rises to the agreed-upon altitude. And you'll know immediately if it starts to go below that height."
Garth whistled. Candy said, "He says he doesn't have long-range radar."
"The commander probably doesn't know that. Even if she checks up on the specs for Garth's type of cyborg and they don't indicate he has radar, she can't be sure we haven't installed the equipment in him."
The airboat had returned. It was as packed with passengers as during the first haul. They spilled out, the number of males being the same as the number of females. Now that he thought of it, the first load had been an equal division of the sexes. That was strange because the warriors who had attacked the ship had been mostly male.
The women and men were covered with war paint, black, white, and red stripes. Interspersed among these were stars and triple crosses. The women bore crimson six-pointed stars, and the men bore blue five-pointed stars. The triple crosses were all purple edged with yellow. The foreheads of both sexes were marked with three concentric circles. The outer circle was white; the next circle, black; the inner circle, blue. Around the women's navels were three similarly colored concentric circles. The navels were painted a bright rosy red.
The men's penises were decorated with three red wavy lines radiating from the longitudinal axis. The same number of wavy lines, colored blue, spread out from each side of the women's vaginas and across the upper thighs.
The second boatload had brought brushes and paint pots with them. They proceeded at once, in the midst of much honking and gesticulating, to paint the first boatload.
What were they up to? Jack thought. They certainly were not going to attack the Gaol negotiator. Probably, they were getting ready for some sort of magical ceremony. Though they were far advanced in biological science and technology, they were otherwise primitives. They believed in magic. That, at least, was the impression he had gotten during his brief but intense experiences with them.
But he could be mistaken.
Garth whistled. When he was done, Candy said, "The commander agrees to your terms. Everything will be done as you wish. The boat will land in approximately an hour."
"Ask the commander if we can get a preview of the offers that'll be made by the negotiator," Jack said. "We can think them over while we're waiting for him."
In less than a minute, the commander's reply was relayed by Candy.
"She prefers that the negotiator deliver the terms in person."
"Okay," Jack said. "We can't force her."
He wondered what the Gaol were planning. It would be nothing good for anybody in this camp and especially not for Tappy.
During the hour allotted, five more boatloads of honkers came. The sixth was jammed with cooking utensils and food. Jack asked Tappy to ask the Integrator about the reason for bringing in all these people. Also, she should ask him why they were all painted. By then, the shaman had also been decorated.
Tappy, after a brief exchange with the shaman, said, "He'll only say that this is all for, uh..."
She cocked her head as she did so often when thinking hard. "Uh, the best translation would be, 'for the big showdown.' "
"Showdown?" Jack said.
"Yes. And that's all he'll say."
"How the hell could this be a showdown? And how would he know it is?"
"He won't say anything more about it. Don't press him. Jack. It's not the honker way. He'd be offended."
"He knows or thinks he knows much more man I do. More than you, too, right, Tappy?"
"Yes, I think so. I hope so."
Jack strode back and forth, fuming and muttering to himself. Sometimes, he believed that he was the leader, the captain, the man with the ultimate authority. The Integrator had let him make decisions and so deluded him into believing that he was the leader. But when the shaman wanted to do certain things, he just ignored Jack.
Tappy was looking even more distraught than when they had first come to this place. In fact, she seemed to be coiling in on herself. She needed consolation, moral support, assurance, and love. He started toward her to give her what she needed. Garth's whistles halted him.