The sound of the office door opening brought both men around.
"The little squirt already knows," said a dry voice from the doorway. Ambassador Alan Dormu came into the room. He was a slight, bent man, of less than average height. His fading blond hair was combed carefully forward over a balding forehead; and his face had deep, narrow lines that testified to even more years than hair and forehead.
"Who told you?" Whin gave him a mechanical grin.
"We diplomats always respect the privacy of our sources," said Dormu. "What difference does it make—as long as I found out? Because you're wrong, you know, Marshal. I'm the one who's responsible. I'm the one who'll have to answer the Jhan when he asks about this at lunch."
"Mack," said Whin, continuing to grin and with his eyes still fixed on Dormu, "see you later."
"Yes, Marshal."
Stigh went toward the door of the office. But before he reached it, it opened and two officers came in; a major and a lieutenant colonel, both wearing the caduceus. Stigh stopped and turned back.
"Here're the doctors, sir."
"Fine. Come here, come here, gentlemen," said Whin. "Take a look at this."
The two medical officers came up to the fugitive, sitting in the chair. They maintained poker faces. One reached for a wrist of the fugitive and felt for a pulse. The other went around back and ran his fingers lightly over the upper back with its misshapen and misplaced shoulder sockets.
"Well?" demanded Whin, after a restless minute. "What about it? Is he a man, all right?"
The two medical officers looked up. Oddly, it was the junior in rank, the major, who answered.
"We'll have to make tests—a good number of tests, sir," he said.
"You've no idea—now?" Whin demanded.
"Now," spoke up the lieutenant colonel, "he could be either Morah or human. The Morah are very, very, good at this sort of thing. The way those arms—We'll need samples of his blood, skin, bone marrow—"
"All right. All right," said Whin. "Take the time you need. But not one second more. We're all on the spot here, gentlemen. Mack—" he turned to Stigh, "I've changed my mind. You stick with the doctors and stand by to keep me informed."
He turned back to Dormu.
"We'd better be getting back upstairs, Mr. Ambassador," he said.
"Yes," answered Dormu, quietly.
* * *
They went out, paced down the corridor and entered the lift tube in silence.
"You know, of course, how this complicates things, Marshal," said Dormu, finally, as they began to rise up the tube together. Whin started like a man woken out of deep thought.
"What? You don't have to ask me that," he said. His voice took on an edge. "I suppose you'd expect my men to just stand around and watch, when something like that came running out of a Morah ship?"
"I might have," said Dormu. "In their shoes."
"Don't doubt it." Whin gave a single, small grunt of a laugh, without humor.
"I don't think you follow me," said Dormu. "I didn't bring up the subject to assign blame. I was just leading into the fact the damage done is going to have to be repaired, at any cost; and I'm counting on your immediate—note the word, Marshal—immediate cooperation, if and when I call for it."
The lift had carried them to the upper floor that was their destination. They got off together. Whin gave another humorless little grunt of laughter.
"You're thinking of handing him back, then?" Whin said.
"Wouldn't you?" asked Dormu.
"Not if he's human. No," said Whin. They walked on down a corridor and into a small room with another door. From beyond that other door came the faint smell of something like incense—it was, in fact, a neutral odor, tolerable to human and Morah alike and designed to hide the differing odors of one race from another. Also, from beyond the door, came the sound of three musical notes, steadily repeated; two notes exactly the same, and then a third, a half-note higher.
Tonk, tonk, TINK! . . .
"It's establishing a solid position for confrontation with the Than that's important right now," said Dormu, as they approached the other door. "He's got us over a barrel on the subject of this talk anyway, even without that business downstairs coming up. So it's the confrontation that counts. Nothing else."
They opened the door and went in.
* * *
Within was a rectangular, windowless room. Two tables had been set up. One for Dormu and Whin; and one for the Jhan, placed at right angles to the other table but not quite touching it. Both tables had been furnished and served with food; and the Jhan was already seated at his. To his right and left, each at about five feet of distance from him, flamed two purely symbolic torches in floor standards. Behind him stood three ordinary Morah—two servers, and a musician whose surgically-created, enormous forefinger tapped steadily at the bars of something like a small metal xylophone, hanging vertically on his chest.
The forefinger tapped in time to the three notes Whin and Dormu had heard in the room outside but without really touching the xylophone bars. The three notes actually sounded from a speaker overhead, broadcast throughout the station wherever the Jhan might be, along with the neutral perfume. They were a courtesy of the human hosts.
"Good to see you again, gentlemen," said the Jhan, through the mechanical interpreter at his throat. "I was about to start without you."
He sat, like the other Morah in the room, unclothed to the waist, below which he wore, though hidden now by the table, a simple kilt, or skirt, of dark red, feltlike cloth. The visible skin of his body, arms and face was a reddish brown in color, but there was only a limited amount of it to be seen. His upper chest, back, arms, neck and head—excluding his face—was covered by a mat of closely-trimmed, thick, gray hair, so noticeable in contrast to his hairless areas, that it looked more like a garment—a cowled half-jacket—than any natural growth upon him.
The face that looked out of the cowl-part was humanoid, but with wide jawbones, rounded chin and eyes set far apart over a flat nose. So that, although no one feature suggested it, his face as a whole had a faintly feline look.
* * *
"Our apologies," said Dormu, leading the way forward. "The marshal just received an urgent message for me from Earth, in a new code. And only I had the key to it."
"No need to apologize," said the Jhan. "We've had our musician here to entertain us while we waited."
Dormu and Whin sat down at the opposite ends of their table, facing each other and at right angles to the Jhan. The Jhan had already begun to eat. Whin stared deliberately at the foods on the Jhan's table, to make it plain that he was not avoiding looking at them, and then turned back to his own plate. He picked up a roll and buttered it.
"Your young men are remarkable in their agility," the Jhan said to Dormu. "We hope you will convey them our praise—"
They talked of the athletic show; and the meal progressed. As it was drawing to a close, the Jhan came around to the topic that had brought him to this meeting with Dormu.
" . . . It's unfortunate we have to meet under such necessities," he said.
"My own thought," replied Dormu. "You must come to Earth some time on a simple vacation."
"We would like to come to Earth—in peace," said the Jhan.
"We would hope not to welcome you any other way," said Dormu.
"No doubt," said the Than. "That is why it puzzles me, that when you humans can have peace for the asking—by simply refraining from creating problems—you continue to cause incidents, to trouble us and threaten our sovereignty over our own territory of space."
Dormu frowned.
"Incidents?" he echoed. "I don't recall any incidents. Perhaps the Jhan has been misinformed?"
"We are not misinformed," said the Jhan. "I refer to your human settlements on the fourth and fifth worlds of the star you refer to as 27J93; but which we call by a name of our own. Rightfully so because it is in our territory."
Tonk, tonk, TINK . . . went the three notes of th
e Morah music.
"It seems to me—if my memory is correct," murmured Dormu, "that the Treaty Survey made by our two races jointly, twelve years ago, left Sun 27J93 in unclaimed territory outside both our spatial areas."
"Quite right," said the Jhan. "But the Survey was later amended to include this and several other solar systems in our territory."
"Not by us, I'm afraid," said Dormu. "I'm sorry, but my people can't consider themselves automatically bound by whatever unilateral action you choose to take without consulting us."
"The action was not unilateral," said the Jhan, calmly. "We have since consulted with our brother Emperors—the Morah Selig, the Morah Ben, the Morah Yarra and the Morah Ness. All have concurred in recognizing the solar systems in question as being in our territory."
"But surely the Morah Jhan understands," said Dormu, "that an agreement only between the various political segments of one race can't be considered binding upon a people of another race entirely?"
"We of the Morah," said the Than, "reject your attitude that race is the basis for division between Empires. Territory is the only basis upon which Empires may be differentiated. Distinction between the races refers only to differences in shape or color; and as you know we do not regard any particular shape or color as sacredly, among ourselves, as you do; since we make many individuals over into what shape it pleases us, for our own use, or amusement."
He tilted his head toward the musician with the enormous, steadily jerking, forefinger.
* * *
"Nonetheless," said Dormu, "the Morah Jhan will not deny his kinship with the Morah of the other Morah Empires."
"Of course not. But what of it?" said the Jhan calmly. "In our eyes, your empire and those of our brothers, are in all ways similar. In essence you are only another group possessing a territory that is not ours. We make no difference between you and the empires of the other Morah."
"But if it came to an armed dispute between you and us," said Dormu, "would your brother Emperors remain neutral?"
"We hardly expect so," said the Morah Jhan, idly, pushing aside the last container of food that remained on the table before him. A server took it away. "But that would only be because, since right would be on our side, naturally they would rally to assist us."
"I see," said Dormu.
Tonk, tonk, TINK . . . went the sound of the Morah music.
"But why must we talk about such large and problematical issues?" said the Jhan. "Why not listen, instead, to the very simple and generous disposition we suggest for this matter of your settlements under 27J93? You will probably find our solution so agreeable that no more need be said on the subject."
"I'd be happy to hear it," said Dormu.
The Jhan leaned back in his seat at the table.
"In spite of the fact that our territory has been intruded upon," he said, "we ask only that you remove your people from their settlements and promise to avoid that area in future, recognizing these and the other solar systems I mentioned earlier as being in our territory. We will not even ask for ordinary reparations beyond the purely technical matter of your agreement to recognize what we Morah have already recognized, that the division of peoples is by territory, and not by race."
He paused. Dormu opened his mouth to speak.
"Of course," added the Jhan, "there is one additional, trivial concession we insist on. A token reparation—so that no precedent of not asking for reparations be set. That token concession is that you allow us corridors of transit across your spatial territory, through which our ships may pass without inspection between our empire and the empires of our brother Morah."
Dormu's mouth closed. The Jhan sat waiting. After a moment, Dormu spoke.
"I can only say," said Dormu, "that I am stunned and overwhelmed at these demands of the Morah Jhan. I was sent to this meeting only to explain to him that our settlements under Sun number 27J93 were entirely peaceful ones, constituting no human threat to his empire. I have no authority to treat with the conditions and terms just mentioned. I will have to contact my superiors back on Earth for instructions—and that will take several hours."
"Indeed?" said the Morah Jhan. "I'm surprised to hear you were sent all the way here to meet me with no more instructions than that. That represents such a limited authority that I almost begin to doubt the good will of you and your people in agreeing to this meeting."
"On our good will, of course," said Dormu, "the Morah Jhan can always depend."
"Can I?" The wide-spaced eyes narrowed suddenly in the catlike face. "Things seem to conspire to make me doubt it. Just before you gentlemen joined me I was informed of a most curious fact by my officers. It seems some of your Military Police have kidnapped one of my Morah and are holding him prisoner."
"Oh?" said Dormu. His face registered polite astonishment. "I don't see how anything like that could have happened." He turned to Whin. "Marshal, did you hear about anything like that taking place?"
Whin grinned his mechanical grin at the Morah Jhan.
"I heard somebody had been picked up down at the docks," he said. "But I understood he was human. One of our people who'd been missing for some time—a deserter, maybe. A purely routine matter. It's being checked out, now."
"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."