Gredaof Cadast, and others who wished to be in on the parley, a dozen or so in all. Many bowmen kept guard, fearing the yumens might have hidden weapons, but they sat behind bushes or bits of wreckage left from the burning, so as not to dominate the scene with the hint of threat. With Gosse and Colonel Dongh were three of the yumens called officers and two from-the logging camp, at the sight of one of whom, Ben ton, the ex-slaves drew in their breaths. Benton had used to punish 'lazy creechies* by castrating mem in public.
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The Colonel looked thin, his normally y<&>w-brown skin a muddy yellow-grey; his illness had been no sham. 'Now the first thing is,' he said when they were all settled, the yumens standing, Selver's people squatting or sitting on the damp, soft oak-leaf mold, 'the first thing is that I want first to have a working definition of just precisely what these'terms of yours mean and what they mean in terms of guaranteed safety of my personnel under my command here.'*
There was a silence.
'You understand English, don't you, some of you?'
'Yes. I don't understand your question, Mr. Dongh.'
'Colonel Dongh, if you please!'
'Then you'll call me Colonel Selver, if you please.'' A singing note came into Selver's voice; he stood up, ready for the contest, tunes running in his mind like rivers.
But the old yumen just stood there, huge and heavy, angry yet not meeting the challenge. 'I did not come here to be insulted by you little humanoids,' he said. But his lips trembled as he said it. He was old, and bewildered, and humiliated. All anticipation of triumph went out of Selver. There was no triumph in the world any more, only death. He sat down again. 'I didn't intend insult, Colonel Dongh,' he said resignedly. 'Will you repeat your question, please?'
*' I want to hear your terms, and then you * 11 hear ours, that's all there is to it.'
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Selver repeated what he had said to Gosse.
Dongh listened with apparent impatience. 'All right. Now you don't realize that we've had a functioning radio in the prison compound for three days now.' Selver did know this, as Reswan had at once checked on the object dropped by the helicopter, lest it be a weapon; the guards reported it was a radio, and he let the yumens keep it. Selver merely nodded. 'So we've been in contact with the three outlying camps, the two on King Land and one on New Java, right along, and if we had decided to make a break for it and escape from that prison compound then it would have been very simple for us to do that, with the helicopters to drop-us weapons and covering our movements with their mounted weapons, one flamethrower could have got us. out of the compound and in case of need they also have the bombs that can blow up an entire area. You haven't seen those in action of course.'
'If you'd left the compound, where would you have gone?'
* 'The point is, without introducing into mis any beside the point or erroneous factors, now we are certainly greatly outnumbered by your forces, but • we have the four helicopters at the camps, which there's no use you trying to disable as they are under fully armed guard at all times now, and also all the serious fire-power, so that the cold reality of the situation is we can pretty much call it a draw and speak in positions of mutual equality. This of
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course is a temporary situation. If necessary we are enabled to maintain a defensive police action to prevent all-out war. Moreover we have behind us the entire fire-power of the Terran Interstellar Fleet, which could blow your entire planet right out of the sky. But these ideas are pretty intangible to you, so let's just put it as plainly and simply as I can, that we're prepared to negotiate with you, for the present time, in terms of an equal frame of reference.'
Selver's patience was short; he knew his ill-temper was a symptom of his deteriorated mental state, but he could no longer control it. 'Go on, then!'
'Well, first I want it clearly understood that as soon as we got the radio we told the men at the other camps not to bring us weapons and not to try any airlift or rescue attempts, and reprisals were strictly out of order—'
'That was prudent. What next?'
Colonel Dongh began an angry retort, then stopped; he turned very pale. 'Isn't there anything to sit down on,' he said.
Selver went around the yumen group, up the slope, into the empty two-room bungalow, and took the folding desk-chair. Before he left the silent room he leaned down and laid his cheek on the scarred, raw wood of the desk, where Lyubov had always sat when he worked with Selver or alone; some of his papers were lying there now; Selver touched them lightly. He carried the chair out and set it in the rainwet dirt for Dongh. The
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old man sat down, biting his lips, his almond-shaped eyes narrow with pain.
'Mr. Gosse, perhaps you can speak for the Colonel/' Selver said. 'He isn't well.'
'I'll do the talking/* Benton said, stepping forward, but Dongh shook his head and muttered, 'Gosse.'
With the Colonel as auditor rather than speaker it went more easily. The yumens were accepting Selver's terms. With a mutual promise of peace, they would withdraw all their outposts and live in one area, the region they had forested in Middle Sornol: about 1700 square miles of rolling land, well watered. They undertook not to enter the forest; the forest people undertook not to trespass on the Cut Lands.
The four remaining airships were the cause of some argument. The yumens insisted they needed them to bring their people from the other islands to Sornol. Since the machines carried only four men and would take several hours for each trip, it appeared to Selver that the yumens could get to Eshsen rather sooner by walking, and he offered them ferry service actoss the straits; but it appeared that yumens never walked far. Very well, they could keep the hoppers for what they called the 'Airlift Operation/ After that, they were to destroy them. Refusal. Anger. They were more protective of their machines than of their bodies. Selver gave in, saying they could keep the hoppers if they flew them only over the Cut Lands and if the weapons in them were destroyed. Over
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mis they argued, but with one another, while Selver waited, occasionally repeating the terms of his demand, for he was not giving in on mis point.
'What's the difference, Benton,' the old Colonel said at last, furious and shaky, 'can't you see that we can't use the damned weapons? There's three million of these aliens all scattered out all over every damned island, an covered with trees and undergrowth, no cities, no vital network, no centralised control. You can't disable a guerrilla type structure with bombs, it's been proved, in fact my own part of the world where I was bora proved it for about thirty years fighting off major super-powers one after the other in the twentieth century. And we're not in a position until a ship comes to prove our superiority. Let die big stuff go, if we can hold on to the sidearms for hunting and self-defense!'
He was their Old Man, and his opinion prevailed in the end, as it might have done in a Men's Lodge. Benton sulked. Gosse started to talk about what would happen if the truce was broken, but Selver stopped him. 'These are possibilities, we aren't yet done with certainties. Your Great Ship is to return in three years, that is three and a half years of your count. Until that time you are free here. It Will not be very hard for you. Nothing more will be taken away from Centralville, except some of Lyubov's work that I wish to keep. You still have most of your tools of tree- cutting and ground-moving; if you need more tools, the iron-mines of Peldel are in your territory. I think all
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this is clear. What remains to be known is this: When that ship comes, what will they seek to do with you, and with us?'
'We don't know,' Gosse said. Dongh amplified: 'If you hadn't destroyed the ansible communicator first thing off, we might be receiving some current information on these matters, and our reports would of course influence the decisions that may be made concerning a finalised decision on the status of this planet, which we might then expect to begin to implement before the ship returns from Prestno. But due to wanton destruction due to your ignorance of your own interests, we haven't even got a radio left that will transmit over a few hundred miles.'
* *What is the ansible ?'' The word had come up before in this talk; it was a new one to Selver. 'ICD,' the Colonel said, morose.
'A kind of radio,' Gosse said, arrogant. 'It put us in instant touch with our home-world.'
'Without the 27-year waiting?'
