Mike Resnick - Birthright

“Nobody wants you to lie, Pilar,” said Mihal. “What religion tries to do is give you an awareness of your relationship to God. Once you understand that relationship, asking forgiveness won't be a lie.” “Don't you feel a certain measure of pride in what we've done?” asked Pilar. “Man, in his time, has walked on a million alien worlds and bent Nature to his will. He gave shape and scope and meaning to the galaxy. Why should I be ashamed of that?” “Look where it got us,” said Mihal.

“Next time we'll do it better.”

Mihal shrugged. “I think we'd better be getting back. We've been gone almost forty minutes.” They returned to Rodat's side and took turns watching him throughout the remainder of the day. As night fell his breathing became more uneven, and his left arm started twitching spasmodically. Finally he opened his eyes.

“Still here, priest?”

“I'm not about to leave you,” said Mihal solemnly. The old man muttered something unintelligible. Its tone was not complimentary. Suddenly his body stiffened, as if riddled with intense pain. Mihal reached out and held his hand. “Have courage,” he said softly, as Rodat began to relax. “I wish you the same,” said the old man. “And strength.” “Me? Why?”

“Because, priest, you're going to need it.” He sat in silence for a few minutes. Then he started reading from his prayer book again. Rodat told him to keep quiet and stared boldly out at the darkness, eyes unblinking, jaw set, ready to meet his Maker on his own terms.

Mihal closed the book and sighed. He suddenly had a terrible apprehension that he was going to spend the rest of his life being tolerated.

“I think you're right, old man,” he said at last. “Eh?”

“It's going to be a long tour of duty.” 25: THE PACIFISTS

(No mention of the Pacifists can be found in Origin and History of the Sentient Races. ) The huge room was filling up. Here was a Canphorite, tall, slender, dignified; there sat an Emran, muscles bulging, shifting uncomfortably; walking through the doorway were ambassadors from Lodin XI, Castor V, and Procyon III, looking as unalike as any three sentient beings could look. And standing in the midst of the gaudily dressed beings who had come from all points of the galactic compass were two Men.

“Looks like a pretty good turnout,” said Lipas, the smaller of the two. “It's even better than I had hoped for,” said Thome. “We just may come out of this in good shape.”

A Teroni, its face obscured by the chlorine gas inside its helmet, approached them.

“Where is your delegation?” it asked.

“They'll be here, never fear,” said Thome in Galactic-O. “They had better be,” said the Teroni, walking away to where a number of other chlorine-breathers were gathered.

“I wonder what is keeping them,” said Lipas softly. “We're not going to be able to stall much longer.” “They're only about half an hour late,” said Thome confidently. “And besides, a third of the aliens aren't here yet either.”

“But they aren't vital to the meeting,” said Lipas. “ We are.” That was indeed the crux of it. It was Man who was the focal point of the meeting; any other race or even any group of races was merely window dressing. Man had fallen upon hard times in the past century, hard even compared to those that existed at the beginning of the millennium. From four thousand worlds he was now reduced to less than five hundred. His military might, which during the heyday of the Oligarchy and early Monarchy could not even be computed, was now a matter of record: 53,305 battleships, a standing army of less than a billion, and some seventeen billion hand weapons. These were still formidable figures, but precious few of the races assembled in this room had any reason to be envious of them; most possessed far more firepower, and incomparably better communication systems. Man's economy had suffered even more than his military power. Of his 489 worlds, some 368 were in the throes of a severe depression, while most of the others were fighting a losing battle against runaway inflation. The Deluros VI planetoids, with no finances available to maintain them, had finally been cannibalized and sold to alien scientific establishments. On every front, Man's star was fast approaching its nadir. Isolated anti-human pogroms had turned into widescale wars of extermination, economic sanctions had turned into galaxywide boycotts, and treaties were signed and broken by alien races with the regularity that had once characterized the race of Man. Man responded with bluff, guile, and pressure in proportions that he thought would do the most good; but the aliens had possessed a master teacher for millennia, and had learned their lessons well. So Man resorted to force. Half his meager Navy was lost in one brief battle around Praesepe VI. The entire planet of Aristotle was blown up. The worlds of the Spica system were taken, one by one, in less than a week. Torn and reeling, bloody but unbowed, Man fought on. Or rather, most Men did. But there were a few, such as Thome, who could see no sense in absorbing defeat after defeat, humiliation after humiliation. He did not preach surrender, for no Man—including himself—ever surrendered. But he spoke in favor of reaching a political accommodation with the other races of the galaxy, and soon had so many followers that he was encouraged to form a political party. It ran candidates for offices on Sirius V, Delta Scuti II, and Earth ... and lost every election. After an appropriate interval his followers ran again, and lost again.

Determined to prove to Mankind that pacifism was a viable alternative to a bitter series of wars that

could end only in the extermination of the race, he went over the heads of his constituency and approached the aliens directly.

If he could arrange a conference between all the races of the galaxy, Man included, would they be willing to participate?

The aliens were in the driver's seat, and they knew it. Only if certain conditions were met, they answered, would they consent to such a meeting. The conditions?

All delegates would speak with T-packs. Not modified Terran T-packs, but Galactic ones. Thome agreed.

The meeting would be held on Doradus IV, symbolic of the first worldwide population that Man had wiped out through sheer carelessness, rather than malice. Thome agreed.

The delegation of Men must be empowered to speak for the entire race. They'd had enough experience in signing agreements with one representative of the race and then having other Men deny that anyone had spoken for their specific interest groups. Thome agreed.

The race of Man must totally disarm prior to the meeting. Thome explained, time and again, that he did not have the influence or the power to make his race lay down its arms. That, after all, was one of the hoped-for goals of the meeting. However, he would guarantee that no Man attending the conference would bear arms. After considerable procrastination, the aliens agreed. There were, including Man, 13,042 intelligent races in the galaxy. Some of these, such as the insectoids of Procyon II, who had no interest in the affairs of other races, or the ichthyoids of Gamma Leporis IV, who bore Man no ill will, were not invited to the conference. But of the 11,039 races invited to send delegations, 9,844 had responded favorably. Even such far-flung and exotic beings as the Vasorites, who spent their entire lives following their small red sun over the horizon on incredibly long, untiring legs, agreed to attend. In fact, Thome had more trouble getting Man to agree to the meeting than any of the aliens. After all, Men were the reason for the meeting. They would be expected to disarm, to make territorial concessions, to pay economic tributes, and they weren't happy about it. Thome kept hitting away at the only alternative—racial death—and at long last the leaders of the loosely-knit Interstellar Union of Man, a conservative government that ruled more by consent than any effective manifestation of real political power, agreed.