demands.'
'You'd think that after such a long time they'd be willing to compromise a little, for the sake of all the benefits that would follow,' said another of the Star Force commanders down the table. 'Well, for one thing,' Delvecchio said, 'compromise isn't a word we could ever have used in a negotiation like this. To people arguing over territory or economic advantage, the word 'compromise' coming from a third party is code for 'We're going to help the other side get the better of you.' You can try to produce the symptoms of compromise: a settlement in which each of the participating parties goes away secretly feeling that they've given up too much and the other side has given up hardly anything. But the word itself must never be mentioned. Nor must you allow any situation to arise in which one side starts looking too satisfied. The other side will immediately suspect betrayal-or even worse, that the side opposite is going to get more of what it wants than your own side might. In these long hate cases, that's tantamount to winning. There must never be a winner in a negotiation. Or at least, there must never be a perception that there is a winner on either side.'
Major T'teka was shaking his slender dark head. 'Ambassador, their behavior simply doesn't seem rational.'
She smiled, a thin tired look. 'Of course not, Major. If they were being rational about this, any of them, we wouldn't have had to come Space knows how many starfalls and half a million kilometers past that to stop this old war. If you treat the various sides in a given negotiation as essentially crazy as bedbugs, you'll do a lot better... and this one is no different.'
Captain Dareyev blinked at that. 'Excuse me, Ambassador, but what's a bedbug?'
Delvecchio put her eyebrows up then laughed. 'You know, I have no idea! It's something my mother used to say. I assume it's some kind of bug that gets in bed with you, a nasty enough prospect. Makes me itch just thinking of it. At any rate,' Delvecchio said, 'matters have been deteriorating over the last six months. Various power blocs in the governments of both planets have been pressing for either quick results, in terms of a massive investment package from outside-the-Verge interests, or a walkout and the end of the negotiations, followed by an immediate return to war.' 'Old habits,' Gabriel said softly, 'die hard.'
'Yes,' the ambassador said. 'And planetary elections are due shortly on Ino. The politicians there are quite aware of the galvanizing effect of a good war on the populace. They intend to use this to consolidate their own position and then come back to the negotiating table stronger than the other side.' She looked wry. 'At the same time, they are aware that if they break the present truce or if I catch them stalling, I will dissolve the negotiations, leave, and tell the Concord Administrator that this particular disagreement is to be classified as 'intractable' with further intervention to be attempted no sooner than seventy-five years from now.'
The faces around the table went very quiet. 'You mean, after everyone presently negotiating is dead,' said Gabriel.
'That is language that must not leave this room,' Delvecchio said. 'But you're correct. If war breaks out, there will be no action except to keep it quarantined here. If the two parties wish to continue in that vein, they will be allowed to do so, and in seventy-five years my distant successor will come back and try again with the next generation. The rest of the Verge will have gone ahead with its own military and economic development, of course, with the Concord's assistance, and Phorcys and Ino will not have. You may imagine the results. I assure you, the delegations will have been doing so. That is, if the more intelligent members of the delegations have gotten a whiff of the Concord's intentions.' 'Which you will have seen to it that they have,' Captain Dareyev said.
Delvecchio threw her an expression of utter innocence. 'Well,' she said, 'in a roundabout sort of way. In our non-joint sessions four days ago, I let each side know that I had been authorized to make them both offers that far surpassed earlier levels of assistance that had been mooted. Both sides were amazed and understandably suspicious as to why this had happened just now. Neither of them knew, nor was I about to tell them, that I had been authorized to make offers at these levels nearly a year ago. At that time, though, had I made such offers, they would have either been too easily accepted with no promise of change forthcoming, or they would have been rejected in a bid to improve either party's negotiating position.
'Now both parties have gone off with the new offers in hand. Many members of both governments have turned right around in their skins and are hot to accept these offers, even though it means much closer cooperation with the other side than they would normally ever have been willing to admit. But both negotiating teams, for differing sets of largely personal reasons, are intent on rejecting the offers. Their problem is that the offer is too good to reject. The pressure on both planets for acceptance has been rising. If I have judged the situation correctly, each side will arrive here tomorrow with the covert intention of sabotaging not the other side's deal, but its own-by revelation of elements of improper behavior, or behavior that can be construed as improper, from the side hostile to them. This then will give them an excuse to cry 'bad faith' and break off negotiations. And then, in the fullness of time, they will go back to war.'
Someone down the table swore under her breath. Someone else said, 'Ambassador, don't they even care about their own people?'
'Oh, absolutely they do,' Delvecchio said dryly. 'They care about them enough to see them dead rather than allow them to betray their principles. Their masters' principles, at least.' An uncomfortable silence fell all around. 'No matter,' Ambassador Delvecchio said. 'If what I have planned works out, none of this will come to pass. And if it does, it won't be for lack of our trying to stop them. Here is the order of business.' She touched the table again. The holographs vanished, to be replaced by a scrolling list of political points to be handled.
Gabriel leaned over and said to Captain Dareyev, 'What are the odds at the moment?'
Elinke gave him one of those sidelong, potential-bloody-stump looks. 'Lieutenant,' she said under her breath, 'you know regulations strictly forbid betting of any kind aboard ship.'
'I heard seven to four against the ambassador last night.'
Elinke made a very demure and nearly inaudible snort down her perfect nose. 'If you were such an idiot as to lay money down before the odds lengthened,' she breathed, not taking her eyes off the text scrolling up into the air from the tabletop, 'I'd gladly take it off you, and then chuck you into stir. It was nine to five against after breakfast, which you would doubtless know if you had been there. You need to stop skiving off. People are beginning to notice. Not officially yet, lucky for you. Now pay attention.' Gabriel did, though not entirely to the text. He had read it all last night, anyway. 'Here,' Delvecchio was saying, indicating one subsection of the text. 'Here is what I'm counting on to set it off. Rallet, the head of the Phorcyn delegation, is furious about the potential Eraklion heavy metal allotments. He thinks they give Ino much too much potential to get their breeder program into high production- especially the secret one, the 'dirty breeder' that neither we or Phorcys are supposed to know about. So Rallet will blow the secret program's cover. On the Inoan side, once this happens, their own senior negotiator, ErDaishan, will riposte by informing us of Phorcys's sabotage and destruction of the Eraklian open-cast heavy metal workings at Ordinen.' She shot a quick glance at Elinke.
Captain Dareyev nodded, just once. 'Which has been successfully averted,' Delvecchio said. 'And without loss of life- congratulations, Captain, and please pass the congratulations to Captain Devereaux on Callirhoe. The Phorcyn delegation is presently in a state of shock. They will be looking for some other way to respond, but they won't be able to find anything in time, by my reckoning. And I shall remove the possibility of any such intervention by confronting them with the information about both these matters, immediately, up front. Both sets of actions are in direct contravention to both parties' agreements with us as 'honest brokers,' and that contravention will derail the negotiation process immediately without either the Phorcyn or Inoan delegations gaining the pleasure or the political advantage of having caused it themselves. Instead they will have mutually pulled the roof right down on their own heads, and they will beg us to get them out of the situation.' Delvecchio smiled, ever so gently. 'And, of course, we will.'
There was a somewhat breathless silence. Finally Commander T'teka said, 'Ambassador, how do you find all these things out?'
She looked very calm. 'I have my sources,' Delvecchio said, 'and it might surprise you where they are. 'Discovery' on that can wait a few years-at least until the people involved are out of office-or it otherwise doesn't matter any more. What matters now is that tomorrow afternoon the Inoan and Phorcyn delegations will arrive here prepared to destroy these talks. They will instead find themselves engaging in what will be the first of many unpleasant but useful rapprochements: a genuine agreement, a treaty, to which they are both going to have to sign their names. It will take most of the day and the night. There will be a lot of noise. There may be violence.' 'Not on my ship,' said Captain Dareyev.'Attempted violence, I should say,' said the ambassador, nodding at the captain in courteous acknowledgment. 'But neither side will be willing to leave without bringing some kind of resolution about
