Chapter 39

Meiersdottir, who had kept working steadily throughout Igwanda's tirade, turned to hand him the drink she'd prepared. "I take it mommy doesn't approve," she said with a wry smile.

"The good sergeant makes himself far too busy about matters that do not concern him," Igwanda grumbled as he took a solid swig of whisky.

"Is he?" she asked. He looked puzzled. "A good sergeant?"

"No. He is in fact quite a poor sergeant. Ill-disciplined himself, but too much of a stickler with the troops. They do not like him."

"Then why on Earth did you choose him?"

"My first choice, a man I had commanded before, was unavailable, and he came highly recommended," Igwanda replied. "I have wondered why for some time. Perhaps those who recommended him did so to get him out of their command, if his behavior there was anything like it has been under me." He shook his head. "Well, no matter, he is merely an irritant."

"And he's certainly nothing in my young life," she said briskly. "All right, Carlos, you seemed pretty hesitant about trusting their sincerity. It's just us, now, is there more than you said?"

"Well, the tale of the Arabian Nights keeps nagging at my mind," he said slowly.

"Don't be cryptic," she said. "What?"

"Why did Sheherezade tell all those stories?" he asked.

"She told them to the king because she'd been sentenced to death," she said impatiently. "But she left him with a cliffhanger each night so he wouldn't execute her the next day. She was stalling, buying time— oh! You think Joe and Akakha may be doing that?"

"The possibility occurs to me given their perceived need for time," he answered.

"Time for what?"

"To move their mothers."

She looked at him open-mouthed. "I never thought of that! Of course, though, you threatened their mothers and said you knew where they were, so ... Carlos, that's awful! We have to do something!"

It was his turn to look astonished. "'Awful?' Why—?"

"Carlos, think it through," she said forcefully. "Their mothers are in some kind of underground nests, right?"

"That is what the signal-tracing appears to show."

"And I pretty much got the impression that the nests are also nurseries for their young, their children, didn't you?"

"That seems reasonable," he replied.

"OK, now take one of those nests and think about emptying it wholesale in secrecy and moving the whole entourage on an emergency basis to a substitute you had to build just about overnight. How many babies are going to survive? How many older children—how many mothers, for that matter?"

He stared at her. "The thought never occurred to me," he said slowly.

"Carlos, we have to take the pressure off them so they won't do anything drastic like that," she said. "You have to withdraw your threat."

"That threat may be the only thing keeping us alive," he pointed out.

"Well, if it is, shouldn't we find out?"

"I had rather hoped to make that discovery without such imminent risk," he said dryly. "At least to you. And also with more time to establish better communication. Besides, it would be pointless."

"Why pointless?"

"Put yourself in their position," he said. "Suppose technologically superior beings threatened all of humanity and you thought only one particular action would save our species. Would you believe them if they then recanted, trusting humankind's survival to their saying, in effect, 'we did not really mean it?' Or would you fear it was perhaps some trick, some effort to dissuade us from taking the one action we think might save us, and take that action anyway, no matter how great the sacrifice?"

"Yes," said Meiersdottir pensively.

"A threat, once made, can never be rescinded; even disavowed, it hangs like the sword of Damocles over the head of the one threatened."

"Then ... Carlos, even if they move the mothers we can find the new locations easily, right?"

"The same way we found the present ones," he said. "There will be a concentration of transmission activity there."

"Why not tell them that, then?" she asked. "Prove it, if we have to? Let them know it's useless to move the mothers."

He shook his head. "That might be even more dangerous. It is never good to back any creature against a wall. If we show them their position is hopeless, that they can never escape us and are at our absolute mercy, the stress ... I would not care to risk how they might react."

"But Carlos—"

"Amanda, why are you making so much of this? They seem to have accepted their casualties as the price of war—a war of their making, not ours," he added. "War causes collateral damage; civilians die as well as combatants. I would not wish this upon them, but I see no reason to ... what?" She was vehemently shaking her head.