Jonnie thought, boom indeed. We'll all go boom if this conference fails.

Chapter 7

Sir Robert had not been in the conference room three minutes before he realized that he was fighting the most difficult duel of his life.

And he was in no shape for it. He had hardly slept at all since their return and he recognized now that this was a huge error. For all his nickname, “the Fox,” he felt sluggish mentally. That nickname had been earned in physical combat and not in a conference room. Had this been a matter of troop dispositions and tactics, he could have coped with it. He would have laid an ambush for this Tolnep and transfixed him with arrows and hacked him to pieces with lochaber axes.

But there stood the Tolnep, elegant, poised, and deadly, already pressing Sir Robert back toward defeat.

Sir Robert's morale was very bad. Half the antiaircraft cover of Edinburgh had been wiped out by a desperate charge of Tolnep marines. Russia was not answering at all. And his own wife was unreported after a cave-in of passages to the bunkers. It was desperate that he get a cease-fire!

Yet this Tolnep was dithering around, posing, fiddling with his scepter, flattering the emissaries, and acting like he had all the time in the world!

His name was Lord Schleim. He had a tittering laugh that alternated with insidious, acid hisses. He was a master of debate much like a swordsman became a master of his blade.

“And so, my worthy colleagues,” the Tolnep was saying now, “I really have not the faintest idea why this assemblage was convened at all. Your own time, your physical comfort, even the dignity of your august persons, representing as you do the most powerful lords of the universes, should not have been assaulted and insulted by an upstart lot of barbarians involved in a petty, local dispute. This is a purely local affair, a minor spat. It involves no treaties and so your presence was well known to be unneeded by this weak band of outlaws and rebels who seek to call themselves a government. I propose that we simply dismiss this gathering and leave it up to the military commanders.”

The august body stirred, bored. And they were an august body. Jewels glittered on the breathing masks of some. Brilliant cloth rippled as they moved. Some even wore crowns as tokens of the sovereign power they represented. Twenty-nine arbiters of the fates of sixteen universes, they were quite conscious of their power. They felt that if they so chose, they could flick this small and unimportant planet into eternity with no more than a careless gesture of a claw or finger tip. They were not really paying too much attention to Lord Schleim, but tittering and whispering to one another, possibly about trivial scandals that had occurred since last they saw one another. They were evidence, physically, of what happens when different genetic lines, moving up from different roots, became sentient.

Off to the side sat the small gray man. Another man, quite similar to himself but with a better-quality gray suit, had arrived. They were quietly watching Sir Robert. It was very plain they were not going to intervene or help further.

Sir Robert loathed courtiers. Weak and corrupt and dangerous– that had always been his opinion of this breed. His contempt, he counseled himself, must not show. “Shall we get on with this meeting?” he said.

The emissaries stirred. They muttered responses. Yes, let's complete the formalities. Must have come for something or other. Let's get it over and done with-I’ve a birthday party waiting for my pet lizard (a remark followed by laughter).

They had all shown their credentials earlier and these had been acknowledged by the group, all but Sir Robert's.

Lord Schleim had seated himself off to the side, in front where he could appear to be addressing them all as their leader. “We have not actually examined the credentials of this...this...soldier? who called this meeting,” he offered. “I move that he be removed as the principal speaker, that I be appointed in his stead.”

Sir Robert offered them the disc. It was played. It was in Gaelic, a tongue they didn't know. And he might have been called ineligible to conduct the meeting had he not looked beseechingly at the small gray man and if one of the disinterested members had not asked the small gray man whether he had accepted these credentials. The small gray man nodded. Bored, the rest of them accepted the credentials.

That one had been touch-and-go for Sir Robert, for just prior to his entrance he had gotten word that the

Chief of Clanfearghus had been wounded in repelling an attack on the guns and he did not know whether he could get a confirmation from Edinburgh.

“I fear,” said Lord Schleim, “that I must raise another critical point. How can we be sure that this upstart planet can afford even the small costs of convening such a meeting as this? Your lordships surely would not want to remain unpaid and have to bear such expenses yourselves. They guaranteed the diplomatic costs but we have no way of knowing that they will ever pay them. A scrap of paper saying that one is owed does not fit well in the pocket.”

The emissaries laughed at the joke, poor as it was.

“We can pay,” glowered Sir Robert. “With scraps off dirty plates?” said

Lord Schleim.

The emissaries laughed some more.

“With Galactic credits!” snapped Sir Robert.

“Taken, no doubt,” said Lord Schleim, “from the pockets of our crewmen. Well, never mind. Your august lords have a perfect right to declare that the meeting should proceed. But I, myself, feel it is demeaning for the representatives of such mighty and powerful sovereigns to meet just to determine the conditions of surrender and capitulation of some felons-”

“Stop!” bellowed Sir Robert. He had had enough. “We are not here to discuss our surrender! Also there are other planets than your own involved and we have not heard from them!”

“Ah,” said Lord Schleim with a leisurely, airy rotation of his scepter,

“but my planet has the most ships here– two for every one the other planets have. And the senior officer of this 'combined police force' happens to be a Tolnep. Quarter-Admiral Snowleter-'

“Is dead!” roared Sir Robert. “His flagship, the Capture, is lying right out there in the lake. Your admiral and that entire crew are carrion.”

“Oh, so?” said Lord Schleim. “It had slipped my mind. These accidents happen. Space travel is a perilous venture at best. Probably ran out of fuel. But it doesn't alter what I have just said at all. Captain Rogodeter Snowl is the senior officer, then. He has just been promoted. So it remains that the senior commander and the greatest number of ships are Tolnep, which leaves me in the position of principal negotiator for the surrender of your people and planet after their unprovoked attack on us.”

“We are not losing!” stormed Sir Robert.

Lord Schleim shrugged. He cast a negligent glance over the assemblage as though pleading with them to have patience with this barbarian and drawled, “Would the assemblage give me leave to confirm certain points?”

Yes, of course, they muttered. Reasonable request.

Lord Schleim's head bent over the round ball atop his scepter, and with a shock Sir Robert realized it was a disguised radio and that he had been in communication with his forces all along.

“Ah,” said Lord Schleim as he raised his head, showed his fangs in a smile, and fixed his glass-hooded eyes on Sir Robert. “Eighteen of your major cities are in flames!”

So that was why they were burning deserted cities. To make an appearance of winning. Just to terrorize and have a bargaining position in any surrender talks.

Sir Robert was about to tell him those were just deserted ruins that hadn't been lived in for a millennium, but Lord Schleim was pressing on. “This august assembly needs proof. Please have this trace run off!" He pulled a tiny thread from the base of the radio, a trace copy of the type they received from drones.