Gordon Dickson - The Human Edge

“Why won’t they—if they know they can win?”

“Jhan has to count the cost to him personally, if he starts the war,” said Dormu, briefly. They got off the lift tube. “Which way’s the Medical Section?”

“There”—Whin pointed. They started walking. “What makes you so sure he won’t think the cost is worth it?”

“Because,” said Dormu, “he has to stop and figure what would happen if, being the one to start the war, he ended up more weakened by it than his brother-emperors were. The others would turn on him like wolves, given the chance; just like he’d turn on any of them. And he knows it.”

Whin grunted his little, humorless laugh.

They found the fugitive lying on his back on an examination table in one of the diagnostic rooms of the Medical Section. He was plainly unconscious.

“Well?” Whin demanded bluntly of the medical lieutenant colonel. “Man, or Morah?”

The lieutenant colonel was washing his hands. He hesitated, then rinsed his fingers and took up a towel.

“Out with it!” snapped Whin.

“Marshal,” the lieutenant colonel hesitated again, “to be truthful… we may never know.”

“Never know?” demanded Dormu. General Stigh came into the room, his mouth open as if about to say something to Whin. He checked at the sight of Dormu and the sound of the ambassador’s voice.

“There’s human RNA involved,” said the lieutenant colonel. “But we know that the Morah have access to human bodies from time to time, soon enough after the moment of death so that the RNA might be preserved. But bone and flesh samples indicate Morah, rather than human origin. He could be human and his RNA be the one thing about him the Morah didn’t monkey with. Or he could be Morah, treated with human RNA to back up the surgical changes that make him resemble a human. I don’t think we can tell, with the facilities we’ve got here; and in any case—”

“In any case,” said Dormu, slowly, “it may not really matter to the Jhan.”

Whin raised his eyebrows questioningly; but just then he caught sight of Stigh.

“Mack?” he said. “What is it?”

Stigh produced a folder.

“I think we’ve found out who he is,” the Military Police general said. “Look here—a civilian agent of the Intelligence Service was sent secretly into the spatial territory of the Morah Jhan eight years ago. Name—Paul Edmonds. Description—superficially the same size and build as this man here.” He nodded at the still figure on the examining table. “We can check the retinal patterns and fingerprints.”

“It won’t do you any good,” said the lieutenant colonel. “Both fingers and retinas conform to the Morah pattern.”

“May I see that?” asked Dormu. Stigh passed over the folder. The little ambassador took it. “Eight years ago, I was the State Department’s Liaison Officer with the Intelligence Service.”

He ran his eyes over the information on the sheets in the folder.

“There’s something I didn’t finish telling you,” said the lieutenant colonel, appealing to Whin, now that Dormu’s attention was occupied. “I started to say I didn’t think we could tell whether he’s man or Morah; but in any case—the question’s probably academic. He’s dying.”

“Dying?” said Dormu sharply, looking up from the folder. “What do you mean?”

Without looking, he passed the folder back to Stigh.

“I mean… he’s dying,” said the lieutenant colonel, a little stubbornly. “It’s amazing that any organism, human or Morah, was able to survive, in the first place, after being cut up and altered that much. His running around down on the docks was evidently just too much for him. He’s bleeding to death internally from a hundred different pinpoint lesions.”

“Hm-m-m,” said Whin. He looked sharply at Dormu. “Do you think the Jhan would be just as satisfied if he got a body back, instead of a live man?”

“Would you?” retorted Dormu.

“Hm-m-m… no. I guess I wouldn’t,” said Whin. He turned to look grimly at the unconscious figure on the table; and spoke almost to himself. “If he is Paul Edmonds—”

“Sir,” said Stigh, appealingly.

Whin looked at the general. Stigh hesitated.

“If I could speak to the marshal privately for a moment—” he said.

“Never mind,” said Whin. The line of his mouth was tight and straight. “I think I know what you’ve got to tell me. Let the ambassador hear it, too.”

“Yes, sir.” But Stigh still looked uncomfortable. He glanced at Dormu, glanced away again, fixed his gaze on Whin. “Sir, word about this man has gotten out all over the Outpost. There’s a lot of feeling among the officers and men alike—a lot of feeling against handing him back…”

He trailed off.

“You mean to say,” said Dormu sharply, “that they won’t obey if ordered to return this individual?”

“They’ll obey,” said Whin, softly. Without turning his head, he spoke to the lieutenant colonel. “Wait outside for us, will you, Doctor?”

The lieutenant colonel went out, and the door closed behind him. Whin turned and looked down at the fugitive on the table. In unconsciousness the face was relaxed, neither human nor Morah, but just a face, out of many possible faces. Whin looked up again and saw Dormu’s eyes still on him.

“You don’t understand, Mr. Ambassador,” Whin said, in the same soft voice. “These men are veterans. You heard the doctor talking about the fact that the Morah have had access to human RNA. This outpost has had little, unreported, border clashes with them every so often. The personnel here have seen the bodies of the men we’ve recovered. They know what it means to fall into Morah hands. To deliberately deliver anyone back into those hands is something pretty hard for them to take. But they’re soldiers. They won’t refuse an order.”

He stopped talking. For a moment there was silence in the room.

“I see,” said Dormu. He went across to the door and opened it. The medical lieutenant colonel was outside, and he turned to face Dormu in the opened door. “Doctor, you said this individual was dying.”

“Yes,” answered the lieutenant colonel.

“How long?”

“A couple of hours—” the lieutenant colonel shrugged helplessly. “A couple of minutes. I’ve no way of telling, nothing to go on, by way of comparable experience.”

“All right.” Dormu turned back to Whin. “Marshal, I’d like to get back to the Jhan as soon as the minimum amount of time’s past that could account for a message to Earth and back.”

An hour and a half later, Whin and Dormu once more entered the room where they had lunched with the Jhan. The tables were removed now; and the servers were gone. The musician was still there; and, joining him now, were two grotesqueries of altered Morah, with tiny, spidery bodies and great, grinning heads. These scuttled and climbed on the heavy, thronelike chair in which the Than sat, grinning around it and their Emperor, at the two humans.

“You’re prompt,” said the Jhan to Dormu. “That’s promising.”

“I believe you’ll find it so,” said Dormu. “I’ve been authorized to agree completely to your conditions—with the minor exceptions of the matter of recognizing that the division of peoples is by territory and not by race, and the matter of spatial corridors for you through our territory. The first would require a referendum of the total voting population of our people, which would take several years; and the second is beyond the present authority of my superiors to grant. But both matters will be studied.”

“This is not satisfactory.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dormu. “Everything in your proposal that it’s possible for us to agree to at this time has been agreed to. The Morah Jhan must give us credit for doing the best we can on short notice to accommodate him.”