“I would suggest that the marshal look more closely into the matter,” said the Jhan. His eyes were still slitted. “I promise him he will find the individual is a Morah; and of course, I expect the prisoner’s immediate return.”
“The Morah Jhan can rest assured,” said Whin, “any Morah held by my troops will be returned to him, immediately.”
“I will expect that return then,” said the Jhan, “by the time Ambassador Dormu has received his instructions from Earth and we meet to talk again.”
He rose, abruptly; and without any further word, turned and left the room. The servers and the musician followed him.
Dormu got as abruptly to his own feet and led the way back out of the room in the direction from which he and Whin had come.
“Where are you going?” demanded Whin. “We go left for the lifts to the Message Center.”
“We’re going back to look at our kidnapped prisoner,” said Dormu. “I don’t need the Message Center.”
Whin looked sideways at him.
“So… you were sent out here with authority to talk on those terms of his, after all, then?” Whin asked.
“We expected them,” said Dormu briefly.
“What are you going to do about them?”
“Give in,” said Dormu. “On all but the business of giving them corridors through our space. That’s a first step to breaking us up into territorial segments.”
“Just like that—” said Whin. “You’ll give in?”
Dormu looked at him, briefly.
“You’d fight, I suppose?”
“If necessary,” said Whin. They got into the lift tube and slipped downward together.
“And you’d lose,” said Dormu.
“Against the Morah Jhan?” demanded Whin. “I know within ten ships what his strength is.”
“No. Against all the Morah,” answered Dormu. “This situation’s been carefully set up. Do you think the Jhan would ordinarily be that much concerned about a couple of small settlements of our people, away off beyond his natural frontiers? The Morah—all the Morah—have started to worry about our getting too big for them to handle. They’ve set up a coalition of all their so-called Empires to contain us before that happens. If we fight the Jhan, we’ll find ourselves fighting them all.”
The skin of Whin’s face grew tight.
“Giving in to a race like the Morah won’t help,” he said.
“It may gain us time,” said Dormu. “We’re a single, integrated society. They aren’t. In five years, ten years, we can double our fighting strength. Meanwhile their coalition members may even start fighting among themselves. That’s why I was sent here to do what I’m doing—give up enough ground so that they’ll have no excuse for starting trouble at this time; but not enough ground so that they’ll feel safe in trying to push further.”
“Why won’t they—if they know they can win?”
“Jhan has to count the cost to him personally, if he starts the war,” said Dormu, briefly. They got off the lift tube. “Which way’s the Medical Section?”
“There”—Whin pointed. They started walking. “What makes you so sure he won’t think the cost is worth it?”
“Because,” said Dormu, “he has to stop and figure what would happen if, being the one to start the war, he ended up more weakened by it than his brother-emperors were. The others would turn on him like wolves, given the chance; just like he’d turn on any of them. And he knows it.”
Whin grunted his little, humorless laugh.
They found the fugitive lying on his back on an examination table in one of the diagnostic rooms of the Medical Section. He was plainly unconscious.
“Well?” Whin demanded bluntly of the medical lieutenant colonel. “Man, or Morah?”
The lieutenant colonel was washing his hands. He hesitated, then rinsed his fingers and took up a towel.
“Out with it!” snapped Whin.
“Marshal,” the lieutenant colonel hesitated again, “to be truthful… we may never know.”
“Never know?” demanded Dormu. General Stigh came into the room, his mouth open as if about to say something to Whin. He checked at the sight of Dormu and the sound of the ambassador’s voice.
“There’s human RNA involved,” said the lieutenant colonel. “But we know that the Morah have access to human bodies from time to time, soon enough after the moment of death so that the RNA might be preserved. But bone and flesh samples indicate Morah, rather than human origin. He could be human and his RNA be the one thing about him the Morah didn’t monkey with. Or he could be Morah, treated with human RNA to back up the surgical changes that make him resemble a human. I don’t think we can tell, with the facilities we’ve got here; and in any case—”
“In any case,” said Dormu, slowly, “it may not really matter to the Jhan.”
Whin raised his eyebrows questioningly; but just then he caught sight of Stigh.
“Mack?” he said. “What is it?”
Stigh produced a folder.
“I think we’ve found out who he is,” the Military Police general said. “Look here—a civilian agent of the Intelligence Service was sent secretly into the spatial territory of the Morah Jhan eight years ago. Name—Paul Edmonds. Description—superficially the same size and build as this man here.” He nodded at the still figure on the examining table. “We can check the retinal patterns and fingerprints.”
“It won’t do you any good,” said the lieutenant colonel. “Both fingers and retinas conform to the Morah pattern.”
“May I see that?” asked Dormu. Stigh passed over the folder. The little ambassador took it. “Eight years ago, I was the State Department’s Liaison Officer with the Intelligence Service.”
He ran his eyes over the information on the sheets in the folder.
“There’s something I didn’t finish telling you,” said the lieutenant colonel, appealing to Whin, now that Dormu’s attention was occupied. “I started to say I didn’t think we could tell whether he’s man or Morah; but in any case—the question’s probably academic. He’s dying.”
“Dying?” said Dormu sharply, looking up from the folder. “What do you mean?”
Without looking, he passed the folder back to Stigh.
“I mean… he’s dying,” said the lieutenant colonel, a little stubbornly. “It’s amazing that any organism, human or Morah, was able to survive, in the first place, after being cut up and altered that much. His running around down on the docks was evidently just too much for him. He’s bleeding to death internally from a hundred different pinpoint lesions.”
“Hm-m-m,” said Whin. He looked sharply at Dormu. “Do you think the Jhan would be just as satisfied if he got a body back, instead of a live man?”
“Would you?” retorted Dormu.
“Hm-m-m… no. I guess I wouldn’t,” said Whin. He turned to look grimly at the unconscious figure on the table; and spoke almost to himself. “If he is Paul Edmonds—”
“Sir,” said Stigh, appealingly.
Whin looked at the general. Stigh hesitated.
“If I could speak to the marshal privately for a moment—” he said.
“Never mind,” said Whin. The line of his mouth was tight and straight. “I think I know what you’ve got to tell me. Let the ambassador hear it, too.”
“Yes, sir.” But Stigh still looked uncomfortable. He glanced at Dormu, glanced away again, fixed his gaze on Whin. “Sir, word about this man has gotten out all over the Outpost. There’s a lot of feeling among the officers and men alike—a lot of feeling against handing him back…”
He trailed off.
“You mean to say,” said Dormu sharply, “that they won’t obey if ordered to return this individual?”