That, of course, was not exactly striped-pants diplomatic language. I wondered, for a moment, what Norman Gazarian, the protocol man, would think if he heard an Ambassador calling another Ambassador Fido.
But it seemed to be the kind of language that Mr. Vuvuvu understood. He skinned back his upper lip at me and began snarling and growling. Then he turned on his hind paws and padded angrily down the aisle away from the front of the courtroom.
The spectators around him and above him began barking, baying, yelping at him: “Tie a can to his tail!” “Git for home, Bruno!”
Then somebody yelled, “Hey, look! Even his wrist watch is blushing!”
That was perfectly true. Mr. Gglafrr Ddespttann Vuvuvu’s watch-face, normally white, was now glowing a bright ruby-red.
I looked at Stonehenge and found him looking at me. It would be full dark in four or five hours; there ought to be something spectacular to see in the cloudless skies of Capella IV tonight.
Fleet Admiral Sir Rodney Tregaskis would see to that.
From Report
of Space-Commander Stonehenge
to Secretary of Aggression, Klüng:
… so the measures considered by yourself and Secretary of State Ghopal Singh and Security Coordinator Natalenko, as transmitted to me by Mr. Hoddy Ringo, were not, I am glad to say, needed. Ambassador Silk, alive, handled the thing much better than Ambassador Silk, dead, could possibly have.
… to confirm Sir Rodney Tregaskis’ report from the tales of the few survivors, the z’Srauff attack came as the Ambassador had expected. They dropped out of hyperspace about seventy light-minutes outside the Capella system, apparently in complete ignorance of the presence of our fleet.
… have learned the entire fleet consisted of about three hundred spaceships and reports reaching here indicate that no more than twenty got back to z’Srauff Cluster.
… naturally, the whole affair has had a profound influence, an influence to the benefit of the Solar League, on all shades of public opinion.
… as you properly assumed, Mr. Hoddy Ringo is no longer with us. When it became apparent that the Palme-Silk Annexation Treaty would be ratified here, Mr. Ringo immediately saw that his status of diplomatic immunity would automatically terminate. Accordingly, he left this system, embarking from New Austin for Alderbaran IX, mentioning, as he shook hands with me, something about a widow. By a curious coincidence, the richest branch bank in the city was held up by a lone bandit about half an hour before he boarded the spaceship. …
Final Message
of the Last Solar Ambassador to New
Texas
Stephen Silk
Copies of the Treaty of Annexation, duly ratified by the New Texas Legislature, herewith.
Please note that the guarantees of nonintervention in local political institutions are the very minimum which are acceptable to the people of New Texas. They are especially adamant that there will be no change in their peculiar methods of insuring that their elected and appointed public officials shall be responsible to the electorate.
Natalenko reread the addendum, pursed his thick lips and sighed. There were so many ways he could be using Mr. Stephen Silk. …
For example—he looked at the tri-di star-map, both usefully and beautifully decorating his walls—over there, where Hoddy Ringo had gone, near Alderbaran IX.
Those were twin planets, one apparently settled by the equivalent descendants of the Edwards and the other inhabited by the children of a Jukes-Kallikak union. Even the Solar League Ambassadors there had taken the viewpoints of the planets to whom they were accredited, instead of the all-embracing view which their training should have given them. …
Curious problem … and, how would Stephen Silk have handled it?
The Security Coordinator scrawled a note comprehensible only to himself. …
The Edge of the Knife
Chalmers stopped talking abruptly, warned by the sudden attentiveness of the class in front of him. They were all staring; even Guellick, in the fourth row, was almost half awake. Then one of them, taking his silence as an invitation to questions found his voice.
“You say Khalid ib’n Hussein’s been assassinated?” he asked incredulously. “When did that happen?”
“In 1973, at Basra.” There was a touch of impatience in his voice; surely they ought to know that much. “He was shot, while leaving the Parliament Building, by an Egyptian Arab named Mohammed Noureed, with an old U.S. Army M3 submachine-gun. Noureed killed two of Khalid’s guards and wounded another before he was overpowered. He was lynched on the spot by the crowd; stoned to death. Ostensibly, he and his accomplices were religious fanatics; however, there can be no doubt whatever that the murder was inspired, at least indirectly, by the Eastern Axis.”
The class stirred like a grainfield in the wind. Some looked at him in blank amazement; some were hastily averting faces red with poorly suppressed laughter. For a moment he was puzzled, and then realization hit him like a blow in the stomach-pit. He’d forgotten, again.
“I didn’t see anything in the papers about it,” one boy was saying.
“The newscast, last evening, said Khalid was in Ankara, talking to the President of Turkey,” another offered.
“Professor Chalmers, would you tell us just what effect Khalid’s death had upon the Islamic Caliphate and the Middle Eastern situation in general?” a third voice asked with exaggerated solemnity. That was Kendrick, the class humorist; the question was pure baiting.
“Well, Mr. Kendrick, I’m afraid it’s a little too early to assess the full results of a thing like that, if they can ever be fully assessed. For instance, who, in 1911, could have predicted all the consequences of the pistol-shot at Sarajevo? Who, even today, can guess what the history of the world would have been had Zangarra not missed Franklin Roosevelt in 1932? There’s always that if.”
