The Early Pohl (13 page)

Daughters of Eternity

JAMES MacCREIGH

What it finally boiled down to was Earth, Mars and Venus—against the Oberonians.

Oh, there were other planets and races represented at the Peace Conference. Every nation in the Solar System was there. But the little nations, the minor powers, didn't count for much. Whatever permanent peace terms came out of the conference, they would be made by Earth, Mars, Venus—and the Oberonians.

And the Oberonians were out for war.

The Great War was just over, leaving every race decimated. I was a press attaché to the Terrestrial delegation—which is really only a nicer way of saying I was a reporter. The fact that I held any kind of newspaper job was, I am proud to say, due to my work alone. But my managing to wangle the career-making assignment of covering the First Interplanetary Peace Conference can probably be traced to the fact that I am the son of Eustis Durand, Earth's World President.

None of my associates on the other papers and news services ever seemed unduly respectful to me because of my father's high position. I didn't mind; I liked it that way. It gave me a chance to know them better. And one or two of them, such as Barbara King, the Radiovox correspondent, I wanted to know real well.

Barbara came into my room just as I was eating breakfast on the morning of the fifth day of the conference. She's tall, red-headed, and has a voice that reminds you of Braunzwich's electro-viol when he plays a Chopin nocturne.

She said, "Move over, Lower-order, and pour me some coffee."

Barbara King was liable to call you most anything, in that husky, smooth voice of hers, and make you like it. But "Lower-order" was something out of the usual line of affectionate insult.

"What do you mean, 'Lower-order'?" I asked. "I like me, even if you don't."

She smiled, showing teeth that were whiter than the rays of Sirius. "Then you haven't heard the news, I take it? Well, read this!" She flipped a news-transparency into my toast.

I fished it out, blotted it, and read:
"Strictly confidential
. Report to Terrestrial delegates. Do not file. Agents operating on Rhea, former colony of Oberonian Empire, report inflammatory speeches being made, seemingly with government approval, if not actual sponsorship. Oberonian racist theories are re-emphasized. Many references are made to Terrestrials and Martians as 'Lower orders of animate matter . . . unfit for rule, good only for slaves to the Oberonian Master race'. This is propaganda in direct conflict with the anti-nationalism clauses of the Armistice. If meetings are held under government approval, would seem to indicate that dissolution of Oberonian Empire was a fraud and that undercover reorganization work is being carried on."

I tried to keep my voice steady. "Where did you get this?" I asked. "And why are you showing it to me? Your outfit would like an exclusive story on a piece of news like this. Why cut me in on it?"

Barbara sighed. "Act your age, Lee," she said reprovingly. "You won't send that to your paper any more than I would. Do you think I would have showed it to you if I thought there was any chance of its getting out? I got it from a delegate—a guy who trusts me. Even if it didn't mean getting him in trouble, I still wouldn't send that. It's hot."

She was right, of course.

"Well—" I began—and stopped.

I drank the last of my coffee and lit a cigarette before I asked, "What are we doing about it?"

Barbara shrugged. "That I don't know. If the Oberonians are up to their old tricks, it means that this conference is a failure before it gets well started. And we're all wasting our time out here." She glanced at her watch and then rose hastily.

"I've got to get going," she said. "I've got to interview Madame Lafarge—Earth's only woman delegate. Human interest stuff. I just thought you ought to know about this. Keep your eyes open when you're around the Oberonian contingent—and remember this, you owe me a favor for letting you see this."

She waved the message at me, then struck a match and ignited it. When it was burned completely she broke up the ash and went out "So long," she called.

"So long," I echoed thoughtfully.

I leaned back in my pneumatic chair and drew a deep breath from my cigarette. The heavy Venusian tobacco smoke made excellent smoke rings. I blew one and stared at it, trying to see through it to what lay ahead for humanity.

The Oberonian Empire had started the last war. The five planets and moons which formed their empire had been the most potent military reservoir in the history of the Solar System. They'd made only one little miscalculation when they set off the fuse that plunged the nine planets into four years of carnage. They hadn't figured on Earth's immediate and decisive entrance into the war. Venus and Mars, the original targets for their attack, they could have vanquished within months. But Earth, the untapped reserve of man-power and industries; Earth, the most highly mechanized planet of all, had for once acted with courage and immediate decision.

The Oberonian drive had been stopped. Then the war had resolved itself into a contest of duration. The planet that could hold out the longest would win. Holding out meant building new rockets to replace those destroyed by enemy fleets; meant keeping up the morale despite constant attacks by raiders, despite occasional major defeats; meant diverting all of the planets' productive resources into the channels of war.

The Tri-Planet Confederation—Earth, Mars and Venus—had won. But at a terrific cost. Ten percent of the intelligent life of the Solar System was destroyed. Some planets suffered more than others—Mercury's frightful toll is too well known to mention. Others, such as the Oberonians themselves, lost comparatively little. But every planet, belligerent or not, felt the effects of that war economically at least. And the economic toll, in the long run, was perhaps even worse than the loss of life.

The war had ended finally through a palace coup in the Oberonian government. Faced with the inescapable fact that Tri-Planet production was increasing by leaps and bounds, the Oberonians had only one recourse: to stop the war. They stopped it for good and all, it seemed. Popular pressure forced the abdication of the War-minded emperor; no new king succeeded to the throne. The Oberonian Parliament proclaimed the independence of all the colonies, the end of the Empire, and the withdrawal of all the territorial claims that had inspired the war.

That move saved the skins of the Oberonians. For the traditionally sportsmanlike Earthmen, as was to be expected, showed quick willingness to forget old wounds and to give the new regime a place in the Peace Conference. Nor was that a wrong thing to do. For the Oberonian Empire had been potent only because it was so large. Split into five separate groups, it was considerably less formidable.

Only, according to the secret message I had seen, it wasn't split at all, but was united as ever—probably by secret treaties and agreements which might even have been concluded before the formal announcement of the end of the Empire.

I lit a new cigarette from the butt of the old and tried to follow the thing through. Why would the Oberonians be anxious for a resumption of hostilities? They'd lost the last war. A new one, so soon after the first, would be hopeless. Everything was the same—wasn't it?

No! It wasn't the same at all!

For I recalled with a sinking heart the fact that Earth, and to a lesser degree Venus, had already begun the demolition of certain munitions industries. Scores of private space-yachts and freighters, appropriated by the space-navies for the war, were being stripped of their armaments and returned to their owners. The armies and navies were being demobilized, their members returning to civilian life.

The thing that was different about the present situation was the Peace Conference itself. Where before it had been common knowledge that the Oberonian Empire was a rapacious, martial group of predatory nations, now people had dismissed that menace from their minds. A project of the Conference was to have been total disarmament. Earth's government had already begun on that. If the Oberonians should fail to follow suit, it would mean. . . .

It might mean almost anything—including a new war which Earth and its allies would lose.

I flipped my cigarette away and left for the press room. It was nearly time for the day's session to begin.

I had forgotten my pass and the Press Relations Bureau was very strict about things like that. They made me go back for the pass, which was also my identification. I couldn't blame them for taking every conceivable precaution to see that unauthorized persons were kept from the council room, but I still felt vaguely angry with someone as I arrived at my sealed-in booth ten minutes late.

A Martian delegate was speaking on the horrors of war. Purely platitudinous; just one of the things that a politician likes to get on the record. I made sure the recorder-tape was running so that I could send the text to my paper, then proceeded to forget the speaker.

The Council Hall was probably the largest and most magnificent enclosed room ever built anywhere. The Peace Conference couldn't meet on any major planet because of the gravity. For political reasons, it was advisable that it not meet on any planet, lest the government of the favored world feel that it was entitled to special favor. So an entire asteroid—Juno—had been hollowed out, fitted with special sealed chambers for the delegates from each world, equipped with the newest and best equipment of every sort of communication, relaxation, comfort and efficiency.

The representatives of forty-two supposedly sovereign powers were here. Each group had its own gas-tight chamber, as luxuriously furnished as could be, each in the proper style for the beings it contained. The ammonia-men from Jupiter and Saturn sat ponderously in their rotating cells of high-pressure methane gas. The rotation provided them with the gravity to which they were accustomed; by special stroboscopic lighting devices they were able to view the outside scene as well as
if
they had been motionless.

The great black metal delegates from the Robot Republic stood utterly motionless in a perfect vacuum. They had no special gravity-effects; high gravity or low it made no difference to these "descendants" of the intelligent robots that had been banished from Earth and Mars scores of years back.

The Venusian representatives—there were two groups of them, one from each polar civilization—swam restlessly about in murky, tepid water.

And the Oberonians were there too, as well as the lesser delegates.

The Martian had completed his speech with an appeal for disarmament. I kept the tape running, but opened up the switch which kept me connected in direct, automatically coded radio with my paper's office on Earth. If there were going to be speeches on disarmament, I wanted to be ready to make my commentaries on them. I knew, probably better than any but a half-dozen others, how important that question had suddenly become.

An Oberonian signalled that he wished the floor. The Chairman for the day, a lank, demon-black Callistan, yielded it to him and the mechano-translators clicked and buzzed as the switch from Martian to Rhean dialect of Oberonian was made.

The Rhea-Oberonian began to speak. I couldn't hear his voice, but I had a pretty good idea what it was like—a thin, whining twitter. That was Oberonian language, in whatever dialect. The mechano-translator, of course, made impeccable English of it.

The Oberonian, viewed in the synchronized stroboscopic lighting, was an impressive sight. That race runs to height, and this member of it was no exception. He was close to fourteen feet tall, and the light gravity of his home world had allowed him to spread out. On Earth he would have weighed close to a thousand pounds.

Except for the fact that they are a dozen times bigger, Oberonians greatly resemble lemurs. Their skin is furred—a necessity in their cold home worlds. The pattern of their fur reminds me of a North American animal,
mephitis mephitica
—skunk.

That's what their politics reminded me of, too.

I was all set to forget about diplomatic secrecy and send through a hot message to my office. The Oberonian, I was sure, would disregard what the previous speaker had said, and try to get the attention of the Conference fixed on some new topic. Disarmament would be something taboo with him—if that secret report had been correct. Perhaps he would talk about it in weasel-words, or he might even denounce it openly, though that wouldn't be at all in keeping with the Oberonian foreign policy. But it ought to prove interesting.

So I leaned forward in my chair, listening to the calm, metallic voice of the mechano-translator. . . .

And twenty minutes later, when the Oberonian had finished speaking, I was still leaning forward, in a tense expectation that had somehow gone sour.

For the Oberonian hadn't evaded the issue of disarmament. Nor had he denounced it. He had, instead, presented what seemed to be a complete, efficient, and workable plan for disarmament—
plus
a proposal for an interplanetary police force with full authority to investigate every part of every planet and use any measures necessary to insure that the disarmament agreement was kept.

There might have been loopholes in the proposal—loopholes that the Oberonians were planning to wriggle out of. There might have been, and by all the evidence I'd ever heard concerning the treachery of Oberonians, there should have been. But I, who was looking for any such loopholes, who knew things that were supposed to be Oberonian state secrets, couldn't find them.

It was enough to shake my faith in Oberonian nature. I had a strong impulse to go over and brave the sub-arctic cold of their section to shake the speaker's hand and ask his apology.

It was a good thing I didn't.

There were a lot of other speeches made that day, but none of them counted for much. I walked out on them, after sending my notes and commentaries—minus the secret item—to the paper. I went back to my room and sat down to think. But I didn't get a chance. Without the formality of a knock, the door opened and Barbara King walked in. She had a companion with her—and the companion was Mercurian!