Fire With Fire

“So the United Nations elected to willingly transfer its authority to the World Confederation?”

Damn. The Arat Kur had smelled the blood of human political discord and were on the scent-but how? Their questions were not just precise and penetrating-they were too precise, too penetrating, almost as if-

Visser had once again instructed Thandla to cut the connection. “This is over. We should never have agreed to respond to this line of questioning.”

Caine looked at where the Arat Kur’s blinking yellow quatrefoil had been. “No-we’re fine.”

“How can you say that? If we continue to answer their questions, they will soon be claiming that the United Nations was illegally sidestepped. They will thus decide that the World Confederation is illegitimate, and that Earth is too politically factious to be a member state.”

Caine shook his head. “No: the Arat Kur are already well past that point.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we’ve been wrong about the Arat Kur. Their questions aren’t an attempt to acquire knowledge about us, or even to discover flaws or contradictions in our dossier.”

“Then why are they asking these questions?”

“Because they already know the answers and hope that when pressed, we’ll lie. Somehow, the Arat Kur already know about the uproar over how the Confederation usurped the power and prerogatives of the UN.”

“How could they know?”

Downing had moved toward the center of the gallery. “It’s impossible to know how they got the information. But we do know that it’s illegal for them to have it. And that’s a weapon we can use against them. We can expose them in front of the whole-”

“No.” Visser’s voice was unusually calm. Arms folded tightly, she was completely still, eyes closed.

“With all due respect, Ambassador, you said it yourself: we have to stop this line of questioning. I put it to you that this is the only way to really put an end to it. If we-”

“No. I am no longer concerned with ending this line of questioning.” She opened her eyes. “The Arat Kur have laid a deeper trap.”

Chapter Forty-Three

ODYSSEUS

Downing blinked. “A deeper trap?”

Visser nodded. “They know we will realize that their questions arise from illegally acquired knowledge.”

“And that is precisely why we must expose them.”

“Mr. Downing, they want us to expose them.”

Durniak forgot her composure and her English in the same instant: “Shto?”

Visser shrugged. “It is the only reasonable conclusion. They knew we would figure this out. And they must logically presume that we will then expose their violations. But if they foresee this course of events, then it follows that they must welcome it.”

“But why? What could they achieve?”

Elena’s response to Durniak was slow but certain. “Discord.”

Visser was nodding again. “Ja. Discord. This Accord is not so stable, I think.”

Caine found himself nodding, too. “During our first contact, Alnduul mentioned the possibility of ‘specious’ actions by other member states. And then there was his reaction to our question about what would happen if we declined membership: his gills snapped shut with a sound like a popgun going off.”

Downing chimed in. “And then there’s the anxiety over us blundering into someone else’s ‘pathway of expansion.’ That should merely be awkward, not a crisis.”

Visser furnished the deductive capstone. “If the Accord was politically coherent, then this entire candidacy process would simply have been a pro forma exercise. No: the Arat Kur’s line of questioning is an attempt to use us to widen the rifts already present in the organization.”

“And to put our candidacy in the trashcan.” Elena was looking directly at Caine as she said it.

Caine forced himself not to be distracted by her eyes and pressed on. “What we really need are answers about why the Arat Kur are trying to spoil the party.”

Lemuel rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure-but what the hell do we do about the Arat Kur? If we let them keep asking questions, they uncover Earth’s dirty laundry for everyone else to see. And if we tell them we’re on to them, they call us liars and everyone goes home angry. Or, we can simply lie about the UN. Then they’ll expose our lies, we’ll expose theirs-and we all go to hell together, anyway. So with choices like those-hey, Riordan; what’re you doing?”

Caine had moved to the very end of the gallery, the tip of the teardrop’s sharp tail. He touched the canopy. “Dr. Thandla, the Dornaani gave us the opacity for privacy. Do we have an override?”

“Er…yes, we do.”

“Please restore the transparency.”

“Wha-?” Visser gasped. Wasserman brayed a counterorder, but it was too late: the opalescent curve above them faded away.

Caine looked down at the Dornaani delegation. They were all-all-facing toward the human gallery. Eyes unblinking. Caine nodded at Alnduul, who made no movement in return.

Visser cleared her throat behind him. “Mr. Riordan-Caine-”

Caine felt all the Dornaani eyes looking directly at him, kept looking back at them as he spoke: “Here’s what we do: we tell the Arat Kur-and the Accord-the truth. Everything. We deny them nothing. Give them every sordid detail they want to pursue.”

“And when it becomes obvious that the Arat Kur have illegal advance knowledge?”

“We let someone else point it out. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Why?”

“Because the Dornaani already know what’s going on.”

“What? How-?”

“They monitor us-legally. So they know about recent events on Earth, too: how else did they know about Nolan? So they already know that the Arat Kur have illegal access to information. But the Dornaani aren’t pointing fingers, so I’m thinking that they’d like this to play out nice and calm. Which means that right now-oddly enough-the fate of the Accord and their Custodianship could be in our hands. Whether we publicly prove the Arat Kur, or ourselves, to be liars, is equally harmful to the Dornaani: both outcomes indicate that they have failed as Custodians, and it weakens the Accord.”

Trevor was nodding. “Yup. That’s how it would play out, for them. So they’d be happiest if we play dumb and go along with the charade.”

“And thereby keep the peace.”

Downing shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Risky business, giving the Arat Kur any info they want.”

Caine shrugged. “Except, if we’re right, the Arat Kur came here expecting to cause an incident, not actually gather intel. So if they try to interrogate us without a prior investigatory game plan, we’re likely to learn more from them than they will from us.”

Downing’s eyebrows went up. “Yes, that’s probably true.”

Visser was looking back and forth between them. “I do not understand.”

“Caine is quite right, Ambassador. If we do not tip our hand-if we ‘play dumb’-then the Arat Kur will want to keep asking more questions. But each one of their questions tells us a great deal about what they already know about us-and what they don’t. With some careful analysis, we might even be able to reconstruct what sources of information on Earth they had access to-or at least those they didn’t. The more questions they improvise today, the more we learn about them and their intelligence operations.”

Caine nodded. “And it puts the ball back in the Arat Kur court: they’ll damn themselves with their own actions.”