The interpreter needed to go back and forth with Hull a few times, but when he finally made sense of that, it made sense to Atvar, too. Worst of it was that the Tosevite was right. Every time fresh males went into Chicago, an offensive somewhere else on Tosev 3 necessarily suffered, either that or a garrison in a “safely conquered” region was reduced, whereupon, more often than not, the region was found not to be so safely conquered after all.
Trying to match Hull’s irony, the fleetlord said, “What would you have us do, then, Exalted Tosevite?”
“Who, me? I’m just a jumped-up Tennessee lawyer,” Hull replied, which occasioned still more translation difficulties. Once they were resolved, Hull went on, “We don’t hold with fancy titles in the United States-never have, never will. We figure part of being free is getting away from all that nonsense.”
Atvar stared at him in honest bewilderment. Every society built by every intelligent race was hierarchical-how could it be otherwise? Why pretend such a manifest and obvious truth did not exist?
He had no time to ponder that; Hull was still talking: “If you really want to know what I want you to do, what the people of the United States want you to do, what the people of the world want you to do, it’s not what anybody would call complicated: quit killing people and go back to your own planet.”
The fleetlord tried to imagine his reception if he returned to Home with a beaten army in cold sleep, bearing word that the species that had defeated him was now seeking to develop space travel on its own and would in a short time (as the Race reckoned such things) be heading out toward the Empire. “It cannot be,” he answered quickly.
“Well, I allow I reckoned you’d say as much,” Cordell Hull told him. “Next best would be for you to stay here-we’d set aside land somewhere for you, maybe-and make peace with us.”
“You Tosevites are not in any position to grant us terms,” Atvar said angrily. “We are in the process of conquering you, of bringing you into the Empire, and we shall continue until victory is won, in Chicago and everywhere else.”
“If you’re going to take that attitude, why did you bring me up here to this spaceship in the first place?” Hull asked. “Flying up here was a big jolt for an old man like me.”
“You were summoned to hear our demand for the return of the traitor Straha, which you have insolently refused, and to bring a warning back to your emperor,” Atvar said.
“We don’t have an emperor, or want one, either,” Hull said.
“Your leader, then-whatever you call him.” Atvar hissed in exasperation. “The warning is simple: if you seek to produce nuclear weapons, you will be utterly destroyed.”
Hull studied him for a while before answering. Every so often, despite their weird features, the Tosevites could look disconcertingly keen. This was one of those times. Being divided up into tens or hundreds of ephemeral little squabbling empires, each always trying to outdo or outcheat its neighbors, had given them a political sophistication-or perhaps just a talent for chicanery-the Race, despite its long history, had trouble matching.
Slowly, Hull said, “You intend to conquer us whether we make these weapons or not. Why should we give up the best chance not just to hurt you but to beat you? What’s the percentage in it for us?”
“We shall conquer you with or without your nuclear weapons,” Atvar answered. “More of your not-empire, more of your people, will survive if you do not force us to extremes.”
Cordell Hull made a strange noise, half gasping, half barking. “This is what the Big Uglies use for laughter,” the interpreter said.
“Yes, I know that,” Atvar answered impatiently. “What did I say that was so amusing?”
When the U.S. Secretary of State spoke again, he made a grim kind of sense: “Why should we care? In your scheme of things, we’re all going to be your slaves forever anyhow. To keep that from happening, we’ll do anything-anything,I tell you. Men are meant to live free. When you came here, we were fighting among ourselves to make that happen. We’ll fight you, too.”
Now Atvar was the one who hesitated. The Big Uglies constantly prated of freedom. The best analysts of the Race kept trying to understand, and kept having trouble. Atvar didn’t find the concept attractive; what the Tosevites meant by it seemed to him nothing more than anarchy.
“Do you not care what happens to the males and females under your rule?” he asked. To any civilized male, the Race came first. Any individual’s fate paled in importance beside the welfare of the group.
If the Tosevites thought like that, they did a good job of hiding it. Cordell Hull said, “If the United States isn’t free, if her people aren’t free, there’s no point to the whole business. Time you figured that out. You get your soldiers and your bases out of our country, maybe we have something to talk about. Until then, forget it.”
Molotov had made the same demand, although he’d couched it in terms of-what had he called it? — the ineluctable historical dialectic, a notion that gave analysts even more trouble than did the mysterious and quite possibly unreal thing called freedom. The Big Uglies had a gift for dreaming up concepts unsupported by evidence.
Atvar said, “If you cannot make us do something, you are in a poor position to tell us we must do it as a price for beginning talks.”
“The same applies to you,” Hull retorted. “You can’t make us quit trying to beat you by any way that comes to hand, so you’d just as well give up on that. Maybe after we’ve battered you some more, you’ll be more willing to talk sense.”
The fleetlord’s breath hissed out in a long sigh. “You will regret your obstinacy.” He turned to one of the males who had brought Hull to the conference chamber. “We are finished here. Take him back to the shuttle; let him convey to his emperor-his not-emperor, I should say-the substance of our discussion.” When the Tosevite was gone, Atvar sighed again. “They refuse to see reason. The more readily they yield and accept the Emperor’s supremacy, the higher their place within the Empire will be. If we cannot trust them, if they are always rising in futile revolt-”
Before he could finish the thought, Pshing’s face appeared on the screen once more. “Exalted Fleetlord, urgent new reports from Britain.”
By his adjutant’s tone, the new reports weren’t good ones. Urgent news from the surface of Tosev 3 was seldom good. “Give them to me,” Atvar said.
“It shall be done. As threatened, the British have turned loose their new weapon or weapons against us. Chemicals?of what sort we are still investigating-are being delivered by artillery and aerosol to poison our males. Casualties have occurred as a result of this. These poisonous gases have also adversely affected morale; when the Big Uglies employ them, they are sometimes able to achieve local successes in their wake. Commanders in Britain urgently request countermeasures.”
Atvar stared at Pshing, who looked back at him as if expecting him to produce countermeasures from a pouch on his belt. “Refer all this to our scientific teams, with a highest priority tag,” the fleetlord answered. Then he asked, “Are the Tosevites indiscriminately poisoning their own fighting males in an effort to harm us?”
One of Pshing’s eye turrets swiveled down toward his desktop to study a report there. “Exalted Fleetlord, this does not appear to be the case. They wear masks which give them at least some protection against their own chemical agents. Some of these have been captured. We are endeavoring to modify them to serve our own needs, and doing the same with our antiradiation masks. Unfortunately, we have very limited quantities of the latter.”
“Good that you thought of it, though,” Atvar said. For a moment there, he’d wondered if he was the only male in the entire Race left with a working brain. Then he realized that now, instead of worrying about whether the Big Uglies were able to match the technical developments of the Race, he was worrying about whether the Race could duplicate something the Big Uglies had invented.