“They’ll obey,” said Whin, softly. Without turning his head, he spoke to the lieutenant colonel. “Wait outside for us, will you, Doctor?”
The lieutenant colonel went out, and the door closed behind him. Whin turned and looked down at the fugitive on the table. In unconsciousness the face was relaxed, neither human nor Morah, but just a face, out of many possible faces. Whin looked up again and saw Dormu’s eyes still on him.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Ambassador,” Whin said, in the same soft voice. “These men are veterans. You heard the doctor talking about the fact that the Morah have had access to human RNA. This outpost has had little, unreported, border clashes with them every so often. The personnel here have seen the bodies of the men we’ve recovered. They know what it means to fall into Morah hands. To deliberately deliver anyone back into those hands is something pretty hard for them to take. But they’re soldiers. They won’t refuse an order.”
He stopped talking. For a moment there was silence in the room.
“I see,” said Dormu. He went across to the door and opened it. The medical lieutenant colonel was outside, and he turned to face Dormu in the opened door. “Doctor, you said this individual was dying.”
“Yes,” answered the lieutenant colonel.
“How long?”
“A couple of hours—” the lieutenant colonel shrugged helplessly. “A couple of minutes. I’ve no way of telling, nothing to go on, by way of comparable experience.”
“All right.” Dormu turned back to Whin. “Marshal, I’d like to get back to the Jhan as soon as the minimum amount of time’s past that could account for a message to Earth and back.”
An hour and a half later, Whin and Dormu once more entered the room where they had lunched with the Jhan. The tables were removed now; and the servers were gone. The musician was still there; and, joining him now, were two grotesqueries of altered Morah, with tiny, spidery bodies and great, grinning heads. These scuttled and climbed on the heavy, thronelike chair in which the Than sat, grinning around it and their Emperor, at the two humans.
“You’re prompt,” said the Jhan to Dormu. “That’s promising.”
“I believe you’ll find it so,” said Dormu. “I’ve been authorized to agree completely to your conditions—with the minor exceptions of the matter of recognizing that the division of peoples is by territory and not by race, and the matter of spatial corridors for you through our territory. The first would require a referendum of the total voting population of our people, which would take several years; and the second is beyond the present authority of my superiors to grant. But both matters will be studied.”
“This is not satisfactory.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dormu. “Everything in your proposal that it’s possible for us to agree to at this time has been agreed to. The Morah Jhan must give us credit for doing the best we can on short notice to accommodate him.”
“Give you credit?” The Jhan’s voice thinned; and the two bigheaded monsters playing about his feet froze like startled animals, staring at him. “Where is my kidnapped Morah?”
“I’m sorry,” said Dormu, carefully, “that matter has been investigated. As we suspected, the individual you mention turns out not to be a Morah, but a human. We’ve located his records. A Paul Edmonds.”
“What sort of lie is this?” said the Jhan. “He is a Morah. No human. You may let yourself be deluded by the fact he looks like yourselves, but don’t try to think you can delude us with looks. As I told you, it’s our privilege to play with the shapes of individuals, casting them into the mold we want, to amuse ourselves; and the mold we played with in this case, was like your own. So be more careful in your answers. I would not want to decide you deliberately kidnapped this Morah, as an affront to provoke me.”
“The Morah Jhan,” said Dormu, colorlessly, “must know how unlikely such an action on our part would be—as unlikely as the possibility that the Morah might have arranged to turn this individual loose, in order to embarrass us in the midst of these talks.”
The Jhan’s eyes slitted down until their openings showed hardly wider than two heavy pencil lines.
“You do not accuse me, human!” said the Jhan. “I accuse you! Affront my dignity; and less than an hour after I lift ship from this planetoid of yours, I can have a fleet here that will reduce it to one large cinder!”
He paused. Dormu said nothing. After a long moment, the slitted eyes relaxed, opening a little.
“But I will be kind,” said the Jhan. “Perhaps there is some excuse for your behavior. You have been misled, perhaps—by this business of records, the testimony of those amateur butchers you humans call physicians and surgeons. Let me set your mind at rest. I, the Morah Jhan, assure you that this prisoner of yours is a Morah, one of my own Morah; and no human. Naturally, you will return him now, immediately, in as good shape as when he was taken from us.”
“That, in any case, is not possible,” said Dormu.
“How?” said the Jhan.
“The man,” said Dormu, “is dying.”
The Jhan sat without motion or sound for as long as a roan might comfortably hold his breath. Then, he spoke.
“The Morah,” he said. “I will not warn you again.”
“My apologies to the Morah Jhan,” said Dormu, tonelessly. “I respect his assurances, but I am required to believe our own records and experienced men. The man, I say, is dying.”
The Jhan rose suddenly to his feet. The two small Morah scuttled away behind him toward the door.
“I will go to the quarters you’ve provided me, now,” said the Jhan, “and make my retinue ready to leave. In one of your hours, I will reboard my ship. You have until that moment to return my Morah to me.”
He turned, went around his chair and out of the room. The door shut behind him.
Dormu turned and headed out the door at their side of the room. Whin followed him. As they opened the door, they saw Stigh, waiting there. Whin opened his mouth to speak, but Dormu beat him to it.
“Dead?” Dormu asked.
“He died just a few minutes ago—almost as soon as you’d both gone in to talk to the Jhan,” said Stigh.
Whin slowly closed his mouth. Stigh stood without saying anything further. They both waited, watching Dormu, who did not seem to be aware of their gaze. At Stigh’s answer, his face had become tight, his eyes abstract.
“Well,” said Whin, after a long moment and Dormu still stood abstracted, “it’s a body now.”
His eyes were sharp on Dormu. The little man jerked his head up suddenly and turned to face the marshal.
“Yes,” said Dormu, a little strangely. “He’ll have to be buried, won’t he? You won’t object to a burial with full military honors?”
“Hell, no!” said Whin. “He earned it. When?”
“Right away.” Dormu puffed out a little sigh like a weary man whose long day is yet far from over. “Before the Jhan leaves. And not quietly. Broadcast it through the Outpost.”
Whin swore gently under his breath, with a sort of grim happiness.
“See to it!” he said to Stigh. After Stigh had gone, he added softly to Dormu. “Forgive me. You’re a good man once the chips are down, Mr. Ambassador.”
“You think so?” said Dormu, wryly. He turned abruptly toward the lift tubes. “We’d better get down to the docking area. The Jhan said an hour—but he may not wait that long.”
The Jhan did not wait. He cut his hour short, like someone eager to accomplish his leaving before events should dissuade him. He was at the docking area twenty minutes later; and only the fact that it was Morah protocol that his entourage must board before him, caused him to be still on the dock when the first notes of the Attention Call sounded through the Outpost.