“Do you?”
Morah shrugged. “I know and accept them, even if I do not completely understand them. I doubt if any human ever will—nor they us. We are the products of two so totally alien histories that I doubt if even an academic acceptance of one another’s motives and attitudes is possible. On an individual basis, perhaps—on a collective basis, never. The Confederacy simply cannot tolerate something that powerful that is also inscrutably different, particularly with a pronounced technological edge. They would attack, and you know it.”
He made no reply to that, because he could find no flaw in the argument. Morah was simply presenting human history from its beginnings. Such was the nature of the beast—as he should know, being human himself. So instead he changed the subject slightly. “Is there another way? I am in something of a trap myself, you know. My bosses are demanding a report. My own computer analyzer had to be, talked into letting me out the door of my lab to come up here and make a call—and it never would have done so if it thought I was going to call you. When I return, I will have a matter of hours, perhaps a couple of days, to make a report. I will be forced to make it. And then the whole thing will be out of my hands. I am running out of time, and that’s why I’m coming to you.”
“What do you want of me?”
“Options,” he told the strange, powerful man. “Solving your little puzzle was simple. Solving the bigger problem is something beyond me.”