Diane Duane - Starrise at Corrivale

Captain Dareyev nodded, just once. "Which has been successfully averted," Delvecchio said. "And without loss of life- congratulations, Captain, and please pass the congratulations to Captain Devereaux on Callirhoe. The Phorcyn delegation is presently in a state of shock. They will be looking for some other way to respond, but they won't be able to find anything in time, by my reckoning. And I shall remove the possibility of any such intervention by confronting them with the information about both these matters, immediately, up front. Both sets of actions are in direct contravention to both parties' agreements with us as 'honest brokers,' and that contravention will derail the negotiation process immediately without either the Phorcyn or Inoan delegations gaining the pleasure or the political advantage of having caused it themselves. Instead they will have mutually pulled the roof right down on their own heads, and they will beg us to get them out of the situation." Delvecchio smiled, ever so gently. "And, of course, we will."

There was a somewhat breathless silence. Finally Commander T'teka said, "Ambassador, how do you find all these things out?"

She looked very calm. "I have my sources," Delvecchio said, "and it might surprise you where they are. 'Discovery' on that can wait a few years-at least until the people involved are out of office-or it otherwise doesn't matter any more. What matters now is that tomorrow afternoon the Inoan and Phorcyn delegations will arrive here prepared to destroy these talks. They will instead find themselves engaging in what will be the first of many unpleasant but useful rapprochements: a genuine agreement, a treaty, to which they are both going to have to sign their names. It will take most of the day and the night. There will be a lot of noise. There may be violence." "Not on my ship," said Captain Dareyev."Attempted violence, I should say," said the ambassador, nodding at the captain in courteous acknowledgment. "But neither side will be willing to leave without bringing some kind of resolution about because neither trusts the other as far as any of them can spit. Trust." She looked rueful. "It will be decades before we see that from these people. But a settlement, yes, by quite late tomorrow night, I'd say. And if not, we return the delegations, break orbit, and make starfall back to Corrivale where reports will be filed for the various authorities involved, and where informal quarantine will be invoked on the Thalaassa system. After that . . ." she shrugged. "Further business will be in the hands of the local Concord Administrator. Any questions?"

Falada's protocol chief, Lieutenant Ferdinand, had some queries about the setup of the formal meeting room for the next day, which Delvecchio handled. Then she looked down the table again and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your help. I know you will all do your best to forward this process without revealing any details to non-cleared personnel." "Especially the negotiating teams," said Captain Dareyev.

Delvecchio gave her a particularly dry smile. "Especially. They will be brought to different docking bays, as usual, and all precautions should be taken to have them avoid seeing one another even at a distance until they actually enter the meeting room. All right? Then thank you, all. And wish us luck." All stood as the Ambassador did. Slowly people began to head out. Elinke, standing up and stretching, looked around her casually, then glanced over at Gabriel and said, very softly, "Fourteen to one, at best." "Think so?" Gabriel said and gave her what was meant to be a noncommittal look. She flashed him a grin and left, heading back up to her Bridge. Gabriel let the room empty in front of him, then drifted up to Delvecchio. She looked at him, still wearing that dry smile. "Disappointed?" she said. "You'd really like it if the warring parties turned on us, wouldn't you?" "I'm a marine," Gabriel said. "Whichever answer I give you in this context could be the wrong one. But-" "Don't be concerned," the ambassador said. "I understand you. But I don't think we have to worry about them threatening us. There are much worse problems to avoid."

Gabriel nodded. After a moment, he said, "Do you really think you can pull all this off?" "Oh, I know I can," Delvecchio said, looking down at the paperwork and the datacarts. "My part of it, anyway. Everything now rests with the two negotiating teams. As long as human nature doesn't change before tomorrow afternoon, and they don't stop hating each other before then, we'll be just fine." Gabriel shook his head in bemusement at the sheer cheerfulness of her cynicism. And she thinks I might be good at this kind of work? I think I've got a long way to go. "And will they stop hating each other after that?" he said.

Delvecchio looked up at him mildly as she gathered up her papers. "/ won't live long enough to find out," she said, "but that's hardly an issue. I'll see you in the morning."

She went out, and a few moments later Gabriel went after her, suddenly very eager indeed to see the "bloodshed" begin the next afternoon.

THE REST OF the day's schedule went haywire, which gave Gabriel the hint he needed that things were indeed in the air. For one thing, many marine staff under Hal's supervision were pulled back from other duties to be run over to Callirhoe to assist in maintenance work secondary to the mission she had just completed. The swearing started in earnest when word spread among Falada's marine complement of the action that the other ship had seen not six hours ago. It had not been hand-to-hand work-just shipboard stuff, the Star Force ship going in low to preempt the little Phorcys-based raiders who had attacked Ordinen, Eraklion's biggest open-cast mine-but the marines assigned to Callirhoe managed to make it sound like the Second Galactic War when they came aboard that night for the usual "two-ships" social. All this meant that Gabriel's spatball team's meeting had to be postponed, and the idea of doing any further reading of transcripts that night went right out the airlock. Suit drill, though conducted as professionally as always-after all, there was no treating casually the only thing that stood between you and space-had more than the usual buzz about it. Crew morale was always a major concern for Star Force. They knew what made their ships effective-not machines, but people. So any time two Concord Star Force vessels met for the first time in a system, especially when they were carrying complements of marines, there would be a social get-together as soon as circumstances permitted it. The two captains, having conferred at some length, were fairly certain that there would be no further antics from the local system-based ships-especially with one Star Force vessel in orbit around each of the two "offending" planets keeping an eye on them and (via a few clandestinely sown surveillance satellites) on Eraklion as well.

By 2000, the temporary walls separating the main briefing room from its twin next door had been opened out so that one big space was available. By 2030, alternating panels of white-silver and midnight- velvet curtains had been hung up to soften the feel of the place, the lights had been lowered, and the room was full of tables and chairs and food. Lots of food. If there was anything anyone knew about marines, it was that they ate their weight in protein every day, just to prove they could. The other thing that everyone knew about marines-that they could talk the tusks off a weren-was also being proven all over the room.

"You shoulda seen it," someone was saying to Hal as Gabriel came up beside him. "It was just like a dirg's nest when you knock it down off the rocks. They came in real low over Eraklion's spaceward side. The Phorcyns thought they were under the radar, and maybe they were, of the ground-based stuff... but not ours. There were maybe two hundred of them-little ships, not even military, some of them-just hoppers, just private craft with guns. Are these people crazy? What kind of line are their bosses selling them that they'll go up against a cruiser with nothing but the family in-system flitter with a couple of grenade cannons strapped to it?"