'Your social secretary?' asked the Martian lady. 'I'll give her the details.'
Then the Karfiness entered regally and all the ladies of the court twiddled their curtailed chelae with deep veneration as she folded up in a basketlike affair.
'Mr. Weems,' she said graciously. He advanced and bowed, Earth fashion, for all of his encumbering furs. 'Mr. Weems, we are delighted to see you here. Such a refreshing change from those slimy little Venusians!' Her English was perfect, though lispy.
'And I, madame, am delighted to attend. If there is any message I can take back to Earth from you—any word of friendship—you have only to say it.'
She regarded him amiably. 'The people of Earth know well that the people of Mars are wholly committed to a policy of amicable industrial cooperation. Nothing will please me more than to reassure my friends of the third planet that there is no end of this policy in sight.'
What did that mean? wondered Weems. Was she playing with him?
'I trust,' he said, 'that you are wholeheartedly working in the interests of peace among the planets?'
'So I have said,' she said simply. 'So I shall always say.' Incredible! Did she take him for an imbecile? Or—or 'Thank you for this kind assurance,' he said, bowing again and retiring.
When he had cornered Dr. Carewe he said agitatedly, 'I don't get it at all. I simply don't understand. Is she lying into my teeth? The least she could have done would have been to turn aside the questions. I never dreamed I'd get an answer at a time like this!'
'Neither did I,' she said slowly. 'Something is rotten in the Matriarchy, and it isn't the customary scent of senile decay peculiar to dictatorships. The biology of the Martians demands a dictatorship, what with their weird reproductive methods. Unless there were a strong and centralized authority they'd slump back into barbarism after a few thousand years of unrestricted matings. Here's one dictator who's loved by the dictatees.'
She was silent for a moment, then said, 'To change the subject, I have the place and time for tomorrow's party. The lady is—I knew you couldn't tell one from another—director of a munitions and fabrication syndicate.'
'Thanks,' he said vaguely, taking the memo. 'That's the perfect spot of irony to top off the evening—in fact this whole damned mission that failed.'
He went to the party with Dr. Carewe, both thoroughly wrapped up in fur and wool against the Martian indoors ten-below temperature. And, they carried thermos flasks full of hot coffee for an occasional warming nip in a dark corner. Anything but that would be unmannerly.
His hostess presented Weems to her husband-brother-nephew, an example of the ungodly family relationships into which their anatomy naturally led. The creature was very much smaller than the female, and spoke only Martian, which the Earthman could not handle except sparingly. He got the idea that they were talking about auriferous sand, but how they got onto the subject he did not understand. He excused himself as quickly as he could and retreated for some of the steaming coffee.
'Earthman, of course!' said a hearty voice.
He turned to see a curious, stubby person, quite human in his appearance, but with a somehow distorted look —as though he had been squeezed in a hydraulic press. And the person wore elaborately ornamental trappings of a blackish-silver metal.
'You must be a Jovian,' he said, corking the thermos. 'I've never seen one of your people before. You're more—ah—human than these others.'
'So they say. And you're the first Earthman I've ever seen. You're very—
ah—long.' They both laughed; then the Jovian introduced himself as a pilot on the regular Io-Mars freighters. He waved off Weems'
introduction. 'Don't bother, Weems,' he said. 'I know of you.'
'Indeed?' There was a pause. With the diplomatic instinct to avoid embarrassment whenever possible, the Earthman asked, 'Why don't your people appear more often on Earth? You could chuck some of that osmium you have to wear here on Mars.'
'This?' the Jovian gestured at his trappings. 'A mere drop in the bucket. I have a hundredweight in each shoe. But the reason is that the Earth is relatively undeveloped in its space culture—though, of course, much better developed than Jupiter. There are so few of us—fifty million on the whole planet.' He shrugged whimsically. 'We're growing, of course. There was a polygamy decree a few years ago—did you hear of it?'
'No—I'm sorry to say I know nothing at all about your planet. I'm in the diplomatic service. Studying Venus, mostly.'
'So? Perhaps you are the wrong man to come to, then. We know nothing about these matters. Is there a person more appropriate to whom I ought to broach the idea of a rapprochement between our two worlds?'
Weems was rocked back on his heels. Unheard of! Diplomacy as casual as this was tantamount to an interplanetary incident. The Jovian continued as casually as before, 'You see, we've no navy and don't need space rights. It's strictly commercial, so we haven't got any Foreign Office. We hardly trade at all with Venus and Earth, and our Mars relations are settled by treaty once every four of Mars' years.'
'Excuse me,' said Weems abruptly. He had just caught a high sign from Dr. Carewe, who was holding a flimsy like a dead rat. He sidled over to her inconspicuously.
'Well—what turned up?'
'The chip,' she said breathlessly, 'has been knocked off. I just got this from our Embassy—by messenger. It's a copy of the note the Earth F.O.
just sent to Venus. The Earth F.O. not only assures Venus that not only does Earth impeach the Venus F.O. but that she is prepared to put its jurisdiction to trial.' She handed him the flimsy.
He scanned it almost unbelievingly. 'The so-and-sos,' he commented inaudibly. 'That about fixes our little red wagon, Doc. Though we have an ally. Jupiter wants its place in the sun.'
As the woman stared with amazement, he introduced the Jovian to her and explained the situation. The squat man listened with increasing anxiety as he dilated on the relations that would exist between the two worlds.
'Will we really,' he asked at length, 'need all those men—actually twenty-five on our end!—to handle a little thing like a military alliance?'
'Lord, yes!' breathed Weems. 'Code clerks, secretaries, subsecretaries, second-subsecretaries—lots more.'
'May I ask,' said the woman, 'why this sudden interest in protocol and procedure has come up on Jupiter?'
The Jovian looked a little embarrassed. 'It's a matter of pride,' he explained. 'The three other planets have their own secret codes and messages. We're the only planet that hasn't got sealed diplomatic pouches absolutely inviolable in any jurisdiction! And so our Executive Committee decided that if it's good enough for them it's good enough for us.'
'I see,' said Weems thoughtfully. 'But how is it that you, the A pilot on a freighter, are their Plenipotentiary without even identification?'
'As a matter of fact,' confessed the Jovian with some hesitation, 'I was given a note, but it seems to be lost. Do things like that really matter?'
'They do,' said Weems solemnly. 'But you were saying—?'
'Yes. They chose a freight pilot to avoid taking a man off real work. It's our principle of the economization of kinesis. Without its operation we'd have all sorts of superfluous men who did only half a man's work.
And do not forget that to a people of only fifty million that is no small matter. We need every man, all the time.'
'As to the treaty necessary,' said the woman, 'would you prefer it to be secret or published?'
'Secret,' promptly replied the Jovian. 'It'll be more fun that way.'
Up dashed a very young subattache from the Earth Embassy. 'Excuse me,' he shrilled, his voice breaking. 'But you have to come at once. It's important as—as the very devil, sir, if you will excuse—' He found himself addressing empty air and an amused Jovian. The two Earth people had flown to their sand car. They had been awaiting the summons.
The ambassador was waiting for them, grim and white. He was no fool, this ambassador; his punishment for that was the dusty job on Mars instead of an office on Terra. He had just removed the earphone clamps, they saw; the diplomatic receiver set was on his desk.
