“The mountains will not support us,” explained Tolk more calmly. “We have already eaten them bare — that’s no secret. We must have the lowlands. And we are certainly not going to let you hold any land whatsoever, to base an attack on us in a later year.”

“If you think you can wipe us off the sea now, without a loss that will cripple you also, you may try,” added Wace.

“I say we can!” stormed T’heonax. “And will!”

“My lord—” Delp hesitated. His eyes closed for a second. Then he said quite dispassionately: “My lord admiral, a finish fight now would likely be the end of our nation. Such few rafts as survived would be the prey of the first barbarian islanders that chanced along.”

“And a retreat into The Ocean would certainly doom us,” said T’heonax. His forefinger stabbed. “Unless you can conjure the trech and the fruitweed out of Achan and into the broad waters.”

“That is true, of course, my lord,” said Delp.

He turned and sought Trolwen’s eyes. They regarded each other steadily, with respect.

“Herald,” said Delp, “tell your chief this. We are not going to leave the Sea of Achan. We cannot. If you insist that we do so, we’ll fight you and hope you can be destroyed without too much loss to ourselves. We have no choice in that matter.

“But I think maybe we can give up any thought of occupying either Lannach or Holmenach. You can keep all the solid land. We can barter our fish, salt, sea harvest, handicrafts, for your meat, stone, wood, cloth, and oil. It would in time become profitable for both of us.”

“And incidental,” said Van Rijn, “you might think of this bit too. If Drak’ho has no land, and Lannach has no ships, it will be sort of a little hard for one to make war on another, nie? After a few years, trading and getting rich off each other, you get so mutual dependent war is just impossible. So if you agree like now, soon your troubles are over, and then comes Nicholas van Rijn with Earth trade goods for all, like Father Christmas my prices are so reasonable. What?”

“Be still!” shrieked T’heonax.

He grabbed the chief of his guards by a wing and pointed at Delp. “Arrest that traitor!”

“My lord—” Delp backed away. The guard hesitated. Delp’s warriors closed in about their captain, menacingly. From the listening lower decks there came a groan.

“The Lodestar hear me,” stammered Delp, “I only suggested… I know the admiral has the final say—”

“And my say is, ‘No.’ ” declared T’heonax, tacitly dropping the matter of arrest. “As admiral and Oracle, I forbid it. There is no possible agreement between the Fleet and these… these vile… filthy, dirty, animal—” He dribbled at the lips. His hands curved into claws, poised above his head.

A rustle and murmur went through the ranked Drak’honai. The captains lay like winged leopards, still cloaked with dignity, but there was terror in their eyes. The Lannachska, ignorant of words but sensitive to tones, crowded together and gripped their weapons more tightly.

Tolk translated fast, in a low voice. When he had finished, Trolwen sighed.

“I hate to admit it,” he said, “but if you turn that marswa’s words around, they are true. Do you really, seriously think two races as different as ours could live side by side? It would be too tempting to break the pledges. They could ravage our land while we were gone on migration, take all our towns again… or we could come north once more with barbarian allies, bought with the promise of Drak’ho plunder — We’d be back at each other’s throats, one way or another, in five years. Best to have it out now. Let the gods decide who’s right and who’s too depraved to live.”

Almost wearily, he bunched his muscles, to go down fighting if T’heonax ended the armistice this moment.

Van Rijn lifted his hands and his voice. It went like a bass drum, the length and breath and depth of the castle raft. And nocked arrows were slowly put back into their quivers.

“Hold still! Wait just a bloody minute, by damn. I am not through talking yet.”

He nodded curtly at Delp. “You have some sense, you. Maybe we can find a few others with brains not so much like a spoonful of moldy tea sold by my competitors. I am going to say something now. I will use Drak’ho language. Tolk, you make a running translation. This no one on the planet has heard before. 1 tell you Drak’ho and Lannacha are not alien! They are the same identical stupid race!”

Wace sucked in his breath. “What?” he whispered in Anglic. “But the breeding cycles—”

“Kill me that fat worm!” shouted T’heonax.

Van Rijn waved an impatient hand at him. “Be quiet, you. I make the talkings. So! Sit down, both you nations, and listen to Nicholas van Rijn!”

The evolution of intelligent life on Diomedes is still largely conjectural; there has been no time to hunt fossils. But on the basis of existing biology and general principles, it is possible to reason out the course of millennial events.

Once upon a time in the planet’s tropics there was a small continent or large island, thickly forested. The equatorial regions never know the long days and nights of high latitudes: at equinox the sun is up for six hours, to cross the sky and set for another six; at solstice there is a twilight, the sun just above or below the horizon. By Diomedean standards these are ideal conditions which will support abundant life. Among the species at this past epoch there was a small, bright-eyed arboreal carnivore. Like Earth’s flying squirrel, it had developed a membrane on which to glide from branch to branch.

But a low-density planet has a queasy structure. Continents rise and sink with indecent speed, a mere few hundreds of thousands of years. Ocean and air currents are correspondingly deflected; and because of the great axial tilt and the larger fluid masses involved, Diomedean currents bear considerably more heat or cold than do Earth’s. Thus, even at the equator, there were radical climatic shifts.

A period of drought shriveled the ancient forests into scattered woods separated by great dry pampas. The flying pseudo-squirrel developed true wings to go from copse to copse. But being an adaptable beast, it began also to prey on the new grass-eating animals which herded over the plains. To cope with the big ungulates, it grew in size. But then, needing more food to fuel the larger body, it was forced into a variety of environments, seashore, mountains, swamps — yet by virtue of mobility remained interbred rather than splitting into new species. A single individual might thus face many types of country in one lifetime, which put a premium on intelligence.

At this stage, for some unknown reason, the species — or a part of it, the part destined to become important — was forced out of the homeland. Possibly diastrophism broke the original continent into small islands which would not support so large an animal population; or the drying-out may have progressed still further. Whatever the cause, families and flocks drifted slowly northward and southward through hundreds of generations.

There they found new territories, excellent hunting — but a winter which they could not survive. When the long darkness came, they must perforce return to the tropics to wait for spring. It was not the inborn, automatic reaction of Terrestrial migratory birds. This animal was already too clever to be an instinct machine; its habits were learned. The brutal natural selection of the annual flights stimulated this intelligence yet more.

Now the price of intelligence is a very long childhood in proportion to the total lifespan. Since there is no action-pattern built into the thinker’s genes, each generation must learn everything afresh, which takes time. Therefore no species can become intelligent unless it or its environment first produces some mechanism for keeping the parents together, so that they may protect the young during the extended period of helpless infancy and ignorant childhood. Mother love is not enough; Mother will have enough to do, tending the suicidally inquisitive cubs, without having to do all the food-hunting and guarding as well. Father must help out. But what will keep Father around, once his sexual urge has been satisfied?