“Better take it easy, General,” I said, in what I meant to be a soothing tone. Instead he lunged at me and snarled. “Do not seek to patronize your betters, vermin!”
“The name’s Bayard,” I told him. “Colonel Bayard, of the Net Surveillance Service. You’re my prisoner of war, and I suggest it would be a good idea to behave yourself. By the way, why are you here?”
“It is the high privilege and manifest destiny of the Noble Folk to occupy and make use of all suitable planes of the multi-ordinal All,” he announced. “To this end, I volunteered to conduct a reconnaissance of the Second Devastation―alone, of course, for how could I permit a lesser being to share my high destiny?”
“Alone? There are thousands of you, and more arriving while I sit here and try to figure out what in hell you want.”
“On my initial penetration of the Devastation,” he explained, “I found a cluster of viable planes of existence deep in the forbidden sector. I reported back to Headquarters and proposed the present mission, under the overall command of Captain General His Imperial Highness the Prince of the Select.”
“What is it you want?” I persisted.
“We require this territory as living space for the Noble Folk,” he told me, as if belaboring the obvious. “Candidly,” he went on, “at my first visit, in an area occupied by a great desert on this plane (it is an inland sea at home), I saw no evidence of life of any kind, and we thought we were occupying a virgin plane. We did not suspect the presence of your own combative kind, akin, we have discovered, to the detestable yilps, the ubiquituous primate pests of Ylokk, the scurrying vermin that infest our fruit trees and godowns―as well as garbage dumps,” he added, sneering. “And perhaps to their slightly larger jungle-dwelling relatives, the mongs. You attacked us on sight; naturally, we responded in kind. You call this ‘war’ in one of your dialects; we have no word for it. The Noble Folk of Ylokk are peaceful and dwell in amity.”
“I’ve watched some of your ‘Noble Folk’ eating their dead comrades,” I said with audible disapproval. “Sometimes before they were dead. What’s noble about that?”
“Ah, my poor fellows are starving,” Swft mourned. “At home, we always wait for brain-death before beginning.”
“You eat humans, too,” I pointed out, “or at least snack a little. We don’t like that.”
He wagged his narrow head. “Nor do I,” he sighed. “It makes one dreadfully bilious. And we’re quite sick enough already. The disease, in truth, is what drove us here.”
“Aha! The truth at last.”
“I have spoken truly,” the alien huffed. “In Great Ylokk, the disease rages, killing whole towns; our civilization is crumbling! Cities are become charnel houses, where looters roam, attacking the helpless! You, as a sentient being, must, of course do all you can to alleviate suffering on such a scale!”
“Our altruism doesn’t extend, quite, to allowing you to take over our world and destroy our culture,” I explained. “You’ll have to call it off, General, and find another solution. Try Sector Thirty-five. There’s a fine swath of unoccupied Lines there, where, as far as we can determine, the mammals didn’t make it, and the insects rule the world.”
“Pah!” he spat. “You’d relegate the Noble Folk to a nest of fleas? You will regret this insolence, Colonel!”
“I doubt it, General,” I told him. “But it isn’t my feelings―or yours―that are the problem we’re facing. The problem is how I can convince you this invasion of yours won’t work, before we’ve both suffered irreparable damage?”
“Your word ‘invasion,’ implying as it does the violent seizure of territory rightfully the property of others, is inappropriate,” he snarled. “We found no population of the Noble Folk here, and never dreamed of the existence of another sapient species―especially an overgrown yilp or mong. We came as peaceful colonists to people a deserted world.”
“You must have realized your mistake pretty quickly,” I pointed out. “You couldn’t have imagined the buildings and machines you encountered were natural formations.”
“You mongs―” he stated.
“ ‘Humans,’ ” I corrected.
“Very well, ‘humongs,’ if it matters,” he resumed impatiently, “and we Ylokk as well, are a part of nature, and all our works are natural. As natural, say, as a bird’s nest, or a beehive, a beaver dam, a larva’s labyrinth, a spider’s web, and so on. I concede I had doubts when I saw what was clearly a city, if overly spacious and light-drenched.”
“That’s the first time anybody ever described Stockholm in those terms,” I commented. “Why didn’t you call it off when you saw we were civilized? You can drop the pretense that you didn’t know: your points of entry are all located in major cities.”
He waved that away, weakly. “The proper sites for cities,” he said didactically, “are constant across the planes. We quite naturally sited our staging depots in our cities; thus we arrived in yours.”
“What about the first time?” I chivvied him, “when you say you arrived in a desert?”
“An experimental displacer installation, located on a tiny island in the Sea of Desolation, for reasons of security,” he grumped.
“You should have backed off as soon as you saw the first town,” I insisted.
“Impossible!” the sick alien croaked. “The plan was too far advanced in execution―and the need to escape disease remained!”
“Why didn’t you develop a vaccine against this disease?” I wanted to know.
He looked bewildered. “I recall the word, of course,” he said. “My deep briefing was complete, if hurried. But the concept eludes me: to interfere, by one’s own actions, with a Provision of Nature? Our philosophers have perceived that the Killing is in fact, a benign dispensation of Nature to alleviate the problem of overpopulation. You would propose to interfere with the working of the Will?”
“In a small way,” I conceded. “This disease of yours is caused by a virus, a competing life-form, which invades your tissues, destroys red blood cells, gives you headaches, weakens you, and finally kills you. It doesn’t have to. It can be cured.”
“You rave, Colonel,” he countered. “Surely you don’t believe it’s possible to influence the workings of the Will?”
“We do it all the time,” I told him. “It’s part of the Will; that’s what this building is for. Why do you think we brought you here?”
“To kill me, of course,” he supplied promptly. “Debased creatures though you are, you could not fail to recognize in me a superior being, and are according me a high ritual death suitable to my rank. I acknowledge your propriety in this matter, at least. I await the moment of awful truth unflinchingly. Bring on your shamans! Do your worst! I shall die as a peer of the Noble Folk should!”
“We’re trying to cure you, not kill you, General,” I told him, feeling weary. I had a right to feel weary. I hadn’t slept since . . . I couldn’t remember.
“I call on you now to place a sword in my hand,” he declared as if he fully expected instant obedience. “My own hallowed blade is in my displaces Fetch it at once!”
“If you’re so peaceful,” I said, “what’s all this ‘hallowed blade’ stuff? A pig-sticker is a pig-sticker, isn’t it?”
“Your astounding ignorance is beneath my contempt,” he told me. “The origins of the Code of Honor lie so far back in the history of the Noble Folk that―but I perceive you mock me,” he changed the tack. “You yourself are no stranger to the Code of the Warrior―or your distorted version of it.”