“I must disagree,” he said. “I am sorry. I understand how you feel.”
“You do not,” she said through clamped jaws. “You cannot.”
“But after all,” he said, forcing dryness, “I am not just a man with human desires. I represent my government. I must return to tell them what is here, and I can predict their response.
“They will help you stand off attack. That is not an aid you can refuse, is it? The men who will be responsible for all Meyco are not going to decline our offer of alliance merely to preserve a precarious independence of action, whatever a few extremists may argue for. And our terms will be most reasonable. We will want little more from you than a policy working toward conciliation and close relations with the Sky People, as soon as they have tired of battering themselves against our united defense.”
“What?” said Loklann. Otherwise it was very still. Eyes gleamed white from the shadows of helmets, toward Ruori.
“We will begin with you,” said the Maurai. “At the proper time, you and your fellows will be escorted home. Your ransom will be that your nation allow a diplomatic and trade mission to enter.”
“No,” said Tresa, as if it hurt her throat. “Not him. Send back
all the others if you must, but not him—to boast of what he did today.”
Loklann grinned again, looking straight at her. “I will,” he said.
Anger flickered in Ruori, but he held his mouth shut.
“I do not understand,” hesitated Don Páwolo. “Why do you favor these animals?”
“Because they are more civilized than you,” said Ruori.
“What?” The noble sprang to his feet, snatching for his sword. Then, stiffly, he sat down again. His tone froze over. “Explain yourself, S’flor.”
Ruori could not see Tresa’s face, in the private night of her hood, but he felt her drawing farther from him than a star. “They have developed aircraft,” he said, slumping back in his chair, worn out and with no sense of victory. 0 great creating Tanaroa, grant me sleep this night!
“But—”
“It has been done from the ground up,” explained Ruori, “not as a mere copy of ancient techniques. Beginning as refugees, the Sky People created an agriculture which can send warriors by the thousands from what was once desert, yet plainly does not require peon hordes. On interrogation I have learned that they have sunpower and hydroelectric power, a synthetic chemistry of sorts, a well-developed navigation with all the mathematics which that implies, gunpowder, metallurgics, aerodynamics. . . . Oh, I dare-say it’s a lopsided culture, a thin layer of learning above a largely illiterate mass. But even the mass must respect technology, or it would never have been supported to get as far as it has.
“In short,” he sighed, wondering if he could make her understand, “the Sky People are a scientific race—the only one besides ourselves which we Maurai have yet discovered. And that makes them too precious to lose.
“You have better manners here, more humane laws, higher art, broader vision, all the traditional virtues. But you are not scientific. You use rote knowledge handed down from the ancients. Because there is no more fossil fuel, you depend on muscle power;
inevitably, then, there is a peon class, and always will be. Because the iron and copper mines are exhausted, you tear down old ruins. In your land I have seen no research on wind power, sun power, the energy reserves of the living cell—not to mention the theoretical possibility of hydrogen fusion without a uranium primer. You irrigate the desert at a thousand times the effort it would take to farm the sea, yet have never even tried to improve your fishing techniques. You have not exploited the aluminum which is still abundant in ordinary clays, not sought to make it into strong alloys; no, your farmers use tools of wood and volcanic glass!
“Oh, you are neither ignorant nor superstitious. What you lack is merely the means of gaining new knowledge. You are a fine people, the world is the sweeter for you, I love you as much as I loathe this devil before us. But ultimately, my friends, if left to yourselves, you will slide gracefully back into the Stone Age.”