'I don't know yet. I'm seeing Jim Briskin in a few moments; we're going to try to think of something we can offer them - offer George Walt actually, since they're doing the talking. As I
see it, the Pekes don't actually need to expand into our world; they haven't even filled up their own. They have no pressing population problem, as we have. So there may be something they want and can use more than mere land. Because that's all they're going to find if they try to come over here. I know damn well our people will put up a fight until there's nothing left standing. It'll be a scorched-earth planet... we can promise them that. As a starter.'
Turning to Pat, Sal said, 'We're going to make a deal; there's no other way out.'
'I heard,' she said. 'I wish I hadn't; I didn't want to hear that.'
'Isn't that something ? Our ancestors didn't make a deal. They wiped the Pekes out.'
'But now,' Pat said, 'they have George Walt.'
He nodded. Evidently that made the difference. But he had a terrible feeling that Tito Cravelli was wrong as to the quantity of techniques that George Walt had passed on to the Pekes. His intuition was that the transfer of knowledge had gone the other way: it had been the Pekes who had educated George Walt.
Jim Briskin said half-ironically, 'We can offer them the Encyclopedia Britannica, translated into their language.' If they have a written language, he added to himself. Or if George Walt haven't given them that already. 'Maybe George Walt have passed them everything they'll ever need,' he said to Tito Cravelli, who sat moodily facing him across the room. 'I'd assume that during the next century George Walt probably have gone back and forth continually.' He could picture it, and it was not encouraging.
'Who can we ask for help from ?' Sal Heim said, to no one in particular. 'Call God.' His wife patted his arm, sympathetically. 'Don't do that,' Sal complained. 'It distracts me. In the name of something-or-other there must be somebody we can turn to.'
The vidphone rang and Tito Cravelli rose to answer it After a few moments he returned. 'That was my contact at TD. At this moment, while we're sitting here muttering pointless maledictions,
Pekes are pouring through the rent.'
Everyone in the room stared at him.
'That's right,' Tito said, nodding. "So already now the TD administration building is full of then; in fact they're beginning to leak out into downtown Washington, D.C. Leon Turpin's been conversing with President Schwarz, but so far ...' He shrugged. 'They erected a concrete barrier in front of the rent but the Pekes simply moved the rent to one side. And kept on coming across.' He added, 'Bohegian, my contact, is leaving the TD building; they're being evacuated.'
'Christ,' Sal Heim said. 'Christ, sweet shimmering Christ.'
Pat Heim said, 'You know who I'd like to see you talk to ?' She glanced around at the others. 'Bill
Smith.'
'Who's that ?' Cravelli asked sharply. 'Oh yeah. The Peke. That anthropologist Dillingsworth has him. What could Bill Smith tell us ?'
'He would know what they lack,' Patricia said. 'Maybe for instance they've been trying for a dozen centuries to achieve a space drive. We could turn a small rocket engine over to them, one with only a million pounds of thrust or so. Or maybe they don't have music. Think what it would mean: we could start them out with single instruments such as the harmonica or the Jew's harp or the electric guitar
'Yes,' Cravelli agreed acidly, 'But George Walt have already done that. At least, we've got to assume that. You heard that Peke talking Latin; I didn't grasp, really genuinely grasp, how much
George Walt have accomplished until I heard that ... then I threw in the sponge. I don't mind admitting it; that's when I gave up, pure and simple.'
'And decided to plead for a deal,' Sal Heim said, half to himself.
'That's right,' Cravelli said. 'Then I knew we had to come to some kind of terms. It didn't terrify you to hear Sinanthropus talking Latin ? It should have.'
'I've got it,' Pat Heim said. 'That one Sinanthropus, that old white-haired so-called philosopher up in the satellite, he's a mutant. More evolved than the others, greater cranial area or something, especially in the forehead region. Unique. George Wall are pulling the wool over our eyes.'
'But they are pouring through the nexus rent,' Cravelli said coldly. 'Whether they speak Latin or don't. If Leon Turpin has ordered the TD administration building evacuated, you know it's critical.'
'I've got it,' Pat said, 'Oh my god, I've really got it. Listen to me. Let's turn the Smithsonian
Institute over to the Pekes, in exchange for them leaving. What about that ?'
'Institution,' Cravelli said, correcting her.
'And if that's not enough,' Pat said, 'we'll throw in the Library of Congress. They'd be smart to take that. What an offer!'
'You know,' Sal said, hunching forward and gazing steadily down at his knees, 'she may have something there. Look what they'd get out of that; the entire assembled, collected artifacts and knowledge of our culture. A hell of a lot more - incredibly much more - than George Walt can give them.
It's the wisdom of four thousand years. Boy, I tell you; I'd take it in a second if it were offered to me.'
After a long pause Tito Cravelli said, 'But we're forgetting something. None of us are in a position to make the Pekes any kind of offer; none of us hold any official position in the government. Now, if you were already in office, Jim...'
Take it to Schwarz, 'Sal said.
'We'd have to,' Pat agreed rapidly. 'And that means going to the White House, since the phone lines are all tied up. Which one of us would Schwarz be willing to see ? Assuming he'd see any of us.'
Sal said, 'It would have to be Jim.'
Shrugging, Jim Briskin said, 'I'll go. It's better than merely sitting around here talking.' It all seemed futile to him anyhow. But at least this way he'd be doing something.
'Who're you going to take the offer to ultimately ?' Cravelli asked him. 'Bill Smith ?'
'No, Jim said. 'To that white-haired Sinanthropi philosopher up in the satellite.' Obviously, he was the one to go to; he held the power.
'George Walt aren't going to like it when they hear it,' Cravelli pointed out. 'You'll have to talk fast; they'll do their best to shut you up.'
'I know,' Jim said, rising to his fed and moving toward the door. 'I'll phone you from Washington and let you know how I made out.'
As he left the apartment, he heard Sal saying, 'I think, though, we ought to take the Spirit of St
Louis out when the Pekes aren't looking and keep it. They won't know it's gone; what do they know about airplanes ?"
'And the Wright brothers' plane,' Pat said, as he started to shut the door after him. He paused, then, as he heard her 'Do you think he'll get in to see President Schwarz ?'
'Not a chance,' Sal said emphatically. 'But what else am we do ? It's the best we could come up with on such short notice.'
'He'll get in,' Cravelli disagreed. 'I'll make you a dime bet.'
'You know what else we could have offered ?' Pat said. 'The Washington Monument.'
'What the hell would the Pekes do with that ?' Sal demanded.
Jim shut the door after him and walked down the corridor to the elevator. None of them, he reflected, had offered to come with him. But what difference did it make ? There was nothing they could do vis-a-vis President Schwarz ... and perhaps nothing he could do, either. And even if he did get in to see Schwarz, and even if Schwarz went along with the idea - how far did that carry him ? What were the chances that he could sell the Sinanthropi philosopher on the idea with George Walt present ?
But I'm still going to try it, he decided. Because the alternative, a general war, would doom our colonists there on the other side; it's their lives we're trying to save.