Well, Scheherazade,Sulu thought. We’ll get to continue breathing for about as long as the sultan likes the tale you’re about to tell.

Turning to face Burgess again, he said, “Looks like it’s your play, Ambassador. You’d better make it good.”

Sulu heard Joh’jym groan, and saw that Jerdahn was rousing him with repeated percussive slaps to the face. Still tied to his chair, the Neyel commander lolled his head and blinked in the bright cabin lights as consciousness returned more fully.

“Jerdahn? What is this?” he said, looking around the shuttle. His speech was slurred, no doubt a residual effect of the phaser Jerdahn still held in his hand.

“Drech’tor,” Jerdahn said to his superior. His tone was respectful, though Sulu noticed that he hadn’t lowered his phaser. “I have helped to arrange a parley with our adversaries. I regret that circumstances prevented speaking to you about it in advance.”

Joh’jym tugged at the tough crash harness that had been wound around his body to secure him to the chair. “So you say, Subaltern. But your abducting and confining me inspires little confidence.” The commander of Oghen’s Flamenodded toward the forcefield barrier, beyond which the two inert Tholians were clearly visible to him. “And how can [347] one converse with Devils who lack even the rudiments of language?”

Apparently, Yilskene was not nearly so inert as he appeared. “We have often asked the same question about yourspecies, biped. How is it possible for you to suddenly acquire the ability to produce intelligible speech?”

Burgess stretched her hands toward Neyel and Tholian alike. “We possess instantaneous translation technology. Neyel culture has nothing like it, and the Tholian equivalent evidently isn’t yet quite as developed as ours. It is my hope that our translator will provide the basis for creating a new understanding between your peoples and ours.”

Sulu began to feel an ember of hope burning within him. Perhaps there was indeed some method to Burgess’s madness after all. “Perhaps we should start by clearing up the most urgent of the misunderstandings that divide you.”

“Say on,” Yilskene said.

“I refer to the weapons which your adversaries claim you have deployed against them, from your colony world.”

Yilskene’s multilayered voice grew sharply discordant. “Weapons? The settlement contains only peaceful members of various lesser castes, mainly builders and engineers. As well as equipment designed to seal the interspatial rupture through which the aggressors attack us. Because this task is large, and the colony has run this equipment continuously over a period of many years. We no longer send ships to the OtherVoid.”

Burgess seemed to mull these facts over for a long moment before addressing the two Neyel. “I ask that you both consider the possibility that the damage the Tholians’ equipment has caused to Neyel worlds on the other side of the rift may be entirely unintentional.”

Joh’jym did not yet appear convinced. “You wish us to believe that the technology that has ravaged our worlds was [348] intended only to close the rift? How could all of the war and suffering we Neyel have endured since our first encounters with these Devils have been a mere accident?”

Burgess now seemed to be in her element. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “Centuries ago, my home planet was plunged into a global war because of the assassination of a single man. A crime, a mistake, if you will, that was allowed to engulf an entire world. War can be the ultimate mistake, the last in a long, dreary series of errors.”

Sulu thought he saw a subtle change in Joh’jym’s gray eyes. “If mistake it is, it is a mistake to which two civilizations have already committed themselves.”

“And both of those civilizations may cease to exist soon unless they both commit themselves to something nobler,” Burgess said.

“How?” Mosrene said, his choir of voices sounding infinitely sad. Sulu surmised that, because he was a diplomat, issues such as the expanding Tholian-Neyel conflict must weigh heavily on his soul. “How can we do that, once hide has been sliced and ichor has been drawn?”

“We can start,” Burgess said, “by examining and trying to put right all the mutual errors that have led us to the edge of this precipice.”

Jerdahn laughed, but without mirth. “There seem to have been many. Where do we begin?”

Burgess looked pained. She didn’t seem to have a ready answer. Sulu wondered if she was finally realizing just how enormous a task she had chosen to tackle. After all, even the Organians might have had some trouble sorting this situation out.

Sulu decided to jump in. “Let’s start with the way both of your species simply assumed that the other wasn’t even sentient. It seems to me this entire conflict was built on the assumption that the other side is an implacable foe that can’t be reasoned with. Maybe once the word gets out on both [349] sides that this isn’t so, everyone involved will have to reevaluate the idea of war. And put a stop to it.”

Silence reigned aboard the shuttlecraft for several minutes while everyone considered what had been said.

Then Mosrene spoke up, his chorus of voices far more pleasing and harmonious than before. “The Tholian Lattice has already been advised of what you and Ambassador Burgess have revealed to us today. Much will doubtless be reevaluated now, among allthe castes.”

“Do you think the Tholian Assembly’s government will consider not reactivating the damaged equipment on the colony?” Sulu said. “If you were to cease your recent efforts to close the interspatial rift, the Neyel might regard it as a real sign of good faith.”

“I can make no promises today,” Mosrene said. “But I believe the Great Castemoot Assembly can be swayed. I will advocate a cessation of all activity in and around OtherVoid as long as invader hostilities cease. But there is much work ahead.”

“I will authorize the release of Excelsiorand the other vessel,” Yilskene said. “As a gesture of good faith, the other vessel has my leave to enter OtherVoid to return home. Excelsiormust get under way on a heading for Federation space in one of your hours.”

Smiling, Sulu turned back to Burgess. “Then I think now would be an excellent time for anothershow of good faith, Ambassador. Don’t you agree?”

Burgess nodded, evidently aware that if Yilskene and Mosrene had really just made contact with the Tholian Lattice, then continuing to detain them in the shuttle wasn’t necessarily going to buy anyone’s safety. She entered a series of commands into one of the cockpit consoles, then bid the two Tholians good-bye.

After Yilskene and Mosrene had vanished from sight, Burgess set about pumping out the noxious, [350] Tholian-friendly atmosphere contained behind the forcefield barrier. Sulu glanced at his suit’s telltales and saw that it had only minutes of breathable air left, thanks to all the damage it had sustained during the truthcombat.

As the atmosphere around him normalized, he glanced toward the two Neyel. Joh’jym, whom Jerdahn had just freed from his bonds, appeared thoughtful. Jerdahn, however, looked downright glum.

Burgess evidently noticed it as well. “What’s wrong, Jerdahn?”

Jerdahn handed his phaser to Burgess. “I fear our ‘reevaluation’ will be a good deal less efficient than that of the Dev—the Tholians. Unlike them, we have no magical ‘Lattice’ we can consult in order to avert war.”

“No, we do not,” said Joh’jym, absently rubbing at his rough-skinned wrists. Evidently the tough crash harness material had begun to cut off his circulation. “But we may have something that will work at least as well. I have personally briefed the Gran Drech’tor of the Neyel Hegemony on three occasions since this conflict began. And Jerdahn once served as one of her visors, before he found himself on the wrong side of the issue of Total War against the Devils.”