Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [130]
“You may draw your own conclusions. The important thing is that you accept. And there is another reason.”
Yirghiz was growing impatient to return to the bridge. “What else?”
“We happen to like you. Not all of my kind feel thusly, but a great many do. We do not like the Pitar. Not after what they have done, showing neither remorse nor repentance. But for an accident of biology it might have been a thranx world they despoiled. On a more informal level, I am compelled to say that I like you.”
Yirghiz’s instinct was to reply in kind, but he found he could not. However convivial it might be, the creature seated opposite him was still simply too…buggy. That was not a rational, scientific response, he knew, but he could not help it. Like so many he knew, he remained a prisoner of his racial history, of memories of thousands of years of competing with far smaller distant cousins of the thranx for food, for space, for very existence.
That would not prevent him, however, from accepting their help.
“It’s not within my purview to agree to so momentous a proposition.” He gestured in the field marshal’s direction. “No one on this ship or in the armada has that power. Believe me, I personally would be glad to accept all and any additional assistance, regardless of its origin.”
“Because you are going nowhere here,” Haajujurprox told him.
MacCunn bridled. “We are making progress. With each engagement the Pitar lose ships and fighters. We’re wearing them down.”
“And they are wearing you down. We are quite capable of monitoring human opinion. In a war of attrition conducted in the vastness of interstellar space, it is the well-emplaced defenders who usually win. With the forces at your command you cannot break through their defenses.”
“Our land-based production plants and orbital assembly facilities are turning out newer and better ships and weapons.” The field marshal’s voice was tight.
“As are the Pitar, who have the advantage of bringing them to bear sooner and more easily than you can. It is not unreasonable to imagine that they might succeed in out-producing you. They have the resources of two planets as highly developed as Earth operating in close proximity to one another, whereas your subsidiary colony worlds are widely scattered. The raw resources of not one but two extensive asteroid belts are theirs to draw upon. Your position here becomes less, not more, tenable over time.”
MacCunn swallowed hard. “Denigrating the efforts of the people you propose to help strikes me as a peculiar way to initiate an alliance.”
“Truth is not denigration,” the elderly thranx countered. “Mathematics is not prejudiced and does not take sides.” Glancing down, she consulted a delicate device strapped to the forepart of one truhand. “By this time your world council should have reached a decision on our offer. Our arrival here, you see, was timed to coincide with the very secret debate that has been taking place within your government for several of your weeks.”
MacCunn and Yirghiz exchanged a startled glance. The look was sufficient between friends to convey the awareness that neither man knew something relevant that he had neglected to tell the other.
As if choreographed, both senior officers’ private readers vibrated for attention. Removing the instruments, the two men read in silence. Despite herself, Haajujurprox was impatient to receive more than visual reactions from the humans.
Sighing heavily, Yirghiz slipped his recorder back into its holster. “The actual communication was received before you set foot on this ship. It took the time we have spent talking to decode, recheck, and decode the recheck. If your skills in battle are as precise as the timing of your diplomacy, your help will be most welcome indeed.”
The di-eint interpreted this promptly. “Then your government is agreed?”
MacCunn nodded briskly. “Any help you want to give us is hereby accepted. Details of a full alliance will continue to be discussed and debated. But in the interim, if you should happen to extirpate