The man continued to stand there as the troop approached. He appeared to be all alone. The ground was almost perfectly flat here and covered with yellow grass and low, scrubby plants, apparently leaving nowhere for other people to hide, but the Brigadier hard been ambushed once by men hiding in dug out holes in the ground and wasn't about to make the same mistake again. He ordered the procession to come to a halt, therefore, while he, Shanks and Pettiwell went on to meet the man alone. If it did turn out to be an ambush, their escort would be outside the trap and could come to their rescue. “I think you should remain behind as well,” he said to the Kelvon diplomat. “Emperor Tyron will be most displeased if anything happens to you.”

“But you're taking him?” asked Pettiwell, indicating the scientist.

“He doesn’t seem to be affected by the arc oscillator,” said Shanks, his forehead creased with worry. “If they've already found a way to defeat the device, I may see some clue as to how they’re doing it.”

“Well, If he can brave the danger, then so can I. Lead on, Brigadier!” The Brigadier nodded his lack of concern and geed his horse onto a slow forward walk, the other two men following him.

Shanks looked up into the sky as they proceeded. It appeared to be completely empty, there were no Radiants up there, unless they were so high as to be totally invisible. The Brigadier thought that the Radiant city was only a few miles ahead of them now, close enough for its luminous glow to be visible if it had been night. According to the reports of scouts who'd investigated the area over the last couple of weeks, there were normally several of the creatures in the sky at any one time, going about their incomprehensible business. Had they withdrawn because of the approach of the arc oscillator? Maybe they had cleared the area because they were about to summon a terrible storm to blast the invaders! He looked ahead at the Brigadier. He didn’t seem concerned, but then it was always difficult to read his face, to see what was going on behind those expressionless grey eyes. He sighed. If he thought they were riding into an ambush he would have tried harder to make him and Pettiwell stay behind, wouldn’t he? He tried to convince himself that he would have, and that that meant there was no danger, but his heart still beat harder in his chest and he squinted to try to get a better look at their visitor, in case there was anything in his stance or expression that might give a clue as to his intentions.

He had a bushy black beard, he saw, and was dressed in the white clothes of those taken to be adopted. He had bright white skin, he thought, but as they got closer he saw that he'd been wrong. His skin was glowing. Not brightly enough to be easily visible from a distance in the bright daylight, but evident as they closed to within a couple of dozen paces from him. He continued to simply stand there as they approached, squinting as he regarded them impassively, as if he was there for some important purpose and the three men approaching him were a distraction that he would rather not have had to bother with. He didn’t appear to be armed, and there didn't seem to be anywhere in his clothing where he could hide a weapon, but Shanks saw the Brigadier’s hand going to the hilt of his pistol nonetheless and Shanks remembered that, if the man ahead was advanced enough in his adoption, he could curse the other two men back to their animal forms with a simple touch. Is that why he let me come? he wondered. In case violence breaks out and he needs someone who can't be cursed to go hand to hand with him? He really hoped not. He had no illusions as to how well he would do in a real battle.

When only a dozen feet separated them the man finally held up a hand in a stop gesture and the Brigadier reined in his horse, his hand still on his pistol. “Please, go no further,” he said in the deep voice of a man who had once been in the habit of drinking a lot of cheap alcohol. “My masters can already sense that infernal machine or yours. It is causing disquiet in the city.”

“Good!” shouted Shanks. “How disquieting will they find it when we drive it all the way to the front gates of their city? I've seen what it does to them! We'll drive them out of the city, and all their other cities as well! We'll chase them to the ends of the...” The Brigadier reached out and gently touched his arm. “Let's hear what the man has to say,” he said.

“My masters wish to negotiate,” the bearded man said. “Their plan to bring peace and security to mankind...”

“The same peace and security you gave to the Hetin folk!” interrupted the scientist. “They had a mighty civilisation and your masters destroyed it!”

“Mister Shanks,” said the Brigadier calmly. “If you cannot remain in control of yourself I shall insist that you return to the column.” He gave the man a sharp look and Shanks nodded reluctantly. He’d made his feelings known, though. Gotten his anger off his chest, but had he betrayed himself in the process?

He had, it seems, because the bearded man was looking at him thoughtfully. “The fate of the Hetin civilisation wouldn’t mean so much to you unless you were one of them,” he said. “My masters told us that one of you was helping build the transmitter. Have you come to take revenge on them on behalf of your entire race?”

“We have come to reach a peaceful settlement,” said the Brigadier before the scientist could speak. “One in which humans, hetins and Radiants can live peacefully together. Do you have authority to speak on behalf of the Radiants?”

“I was sent to invite you to enter the city, under a flag of truce, so that you can speak to the Radiants directly. Just two or three of you. The rest of you, including that infernal machine, must remain here.”

“Why must we enter the city? Why can't we speak to them through you, by telepathy?”

“I don't yet have telepathy. I was only adopted a few months ago, my raising has barely begun.”

“So that's why the machine doesn’t affect you!” cried Shanks in relief. “It does work by affecting their telepathy, as we suspected!” The man bowed his head in reply.

“There are a dozen of us representing different human nations,” said the Brigadier. “They all have the right to be present at the negotiations. It is not your masters who are dictating the terms here, Mister Martin. It is we. We are willing to go unarmed into the Radiant city, with the promise that the soldiers here behind us will avenge us if anything happens to us. If this is not acceptable to your masters, then we will all enter the city now, carrying the machine with us.”

“I will have to pass on your... Your terms. Will you wait here while I go back to speak to them?” The Brigadier nodded. “By the way, how do you know my name?”

“It was a guess really, but a rather easy one. You were clearly adopted very recently, and your accent places you as a Kelvon citizen. Your appearance matches a description I was given of a member of the Popular Uprising who worked for Lord Benjamin Hedley and who was carried off by the Radiants a few months ago.”

“May I ask who gave you that description?”

“A very courageous young man who gave his life saving human civilisation from your machinations. His name was Malone.”

John Martin laughed. “Ah yes, I remember him! Dog man! So he was undercover, was he? Well, he fooled me, I have to say! Did you know he murdered two Kelvon agents in cold blood? Benjamin had his doubts about him, so he had him kill an agent he'd captured, to test him. He did it without batting an eye! Very impressive! It's absolutely no shame to be taken in by a man like that! May I ask how he died?”

“We think a Radiant killed him shortly after he killed Benjamin. He died well, there's no greater compliment that one soldiers can give to another.”

“If you two have finished reminiscing,” said Pettiwell impatiently, “Can we get back to the business at hand?” He turned back to John Martin. “You were going to deliver our terms to your masters.”

“Yes, and I shall do so. Please give me until sundown before you do anything precipitant.” He then turned and began walking back to the city. The Brigadier watched him go for a moment or two, then dismounted. “While we're waiting,” he said, “we might as well make camp here and make ourselves comfortable. Get a bite to eat, perhaps.” He began leading his horse back towards where the rest of their men were waiting.

Pettiwell laughed. “I think Kelvon made you a little soft, Brigadier! Thinking of your stomach when we're on the brink of victory?” The Brigadier gave him a stern look and the diplomat’s laugh died in his throat. Shanks grinned in amusement, then followed the Brigadier back to the main body of the column.

☆☆☆

John Martin returned an hour before sundown to tell them that the Radiants had agreed to their terms. The Brigadier thanked him and told him that, since it was getting late, he, Shanks and the diplomats would enter the city first thing the next morning. John Martin left to take the message back to his masters and the invaders settled down for the night, leaving people awake to keep a careful watch. Shanks went to inspect the arc oscillator first, though. The Ministry of Science had found a couple of electrical engineers to be his apprentices and he'd left them in charge while he'd been with the Brigadier. They'd kept the machine in good order, but Shanks noted that their supply of chemicals for the batteries was running low faster than they'd expected. They’d be okay if the peace talks didn't go on for more than a day or so, but any longer than that and they'd have to either rely on the hand crank or let the machine stop working and hope that the Radiants didn’t try to attack them, just out of spite. He consoled himself with the thought that killing them would have little affect on relations between humans and Radiants. The instructions for building the arc oscillators had now been distributed all across the human world. The destruction of the Brigadier's expedition would only lead to a massive retaliation from massed human armies armed with radio machines and incendiary ammunition.

The next morning, therefore, the twelve men had a quick breakfast, saddled their horses and set off towards the Radiant city. John Martin was standing at the edge of their camp waiting for them, and he walked alongside them as they crossed the hard, stony ground towards the glow on the horizon, slowly fading as the sun rose behind them. “You're carrying weapons,” the adoptee remarked conversationally.

“Yes,” replied the Brigadier.

“Is it normal to carry weapons to a peace conference?”

“This isn't going to be a peace conference. This is going to be us telling your masters what they have to do if they don't want us driving arc oscillators to every one of their cities we can find.”

“So you’re expecting them to surrender to you? They're the owners of this planet! Cattle don't dictate terms to the farmer!”

“If they think we're cattle, then this will be an educational experience for them.”

The Brigadier refused to say anything else after that, and so the fifteen men walked in silence the rest of the way. The city came into view before anyone but the Brigadier, who alone had seen it before, knew what it was. At first they thought it was just a cloud lying on the horizon, shining by the reflected light of the rising sun, but it grew in size as they approached, and they saw that it had a texture not quite the same as a normal cloud. It looked more like a huge pile of cotton wool that some giant had dropped into a cobweb that prevented it from touching the ground, sparkling with the light of hundreds of Radiants floating around and within in, but there was something else, some alien quality to it that none of them could quite put their finger on. Something that gave them the unsettling impression that it didn't belong there, that it was the product of another world, a foreign presence that contaminated the land above which it hung, the very air that passed across and through it. Every one of the approaching men, even the Brigadier himself, felt a sense of outrage at the very sight of it, but then he realised there'd been no such feeling the first time he'd been here. It's because, the first time I was here, I didn't know they were the enemy, he thought. I didn't know what their plans for us were. It's that knowledge that's making me feel this way, that's making all of us feel this way.

There was another man waiting for them as they approached. Another adoptee, but further along the path of adoption and no doubt possessing telepathic abilities, as well as the ability to curse them all, except Shanks, if he so chose. The scientist’s hand went to the handle of the pistol the Brigadier had insisted he carried, the pistol loaded with incendiary rounds that would kill a human as easily as a Radiant. If the man attacked and it came down to him to defend them, would he be up to the task? Would he be able to actually kill someone if he had to? He prayed, hard, that he never had to find out.

“Welcome,” the man said as they reached him. He had the glowing skin of an adoptee, but his hair was greying and he stood with a slight stoop as if he had a pain in his lower back. “Brigadier. It's good to see you again.”

“Daniel,” replied the Brigadier. “They've still got you doing the reception duty, then?”

“It's been my duty for the past hundred years, and probably will for the next hundred. One of the benefits of being an adoptee is that the ageing process slows considerably. If my adoption were to be cancelled, it would be at least that long before I went back into the ground.”

“You know this man, Brigadier?” asked Pettiwell.

“It's all in my report, which I presume you've read,” replied the Brigadier. “This is where I first learned the truth about the Radiants.” He turned back to Daniel. “Are you going to be our interpreter?”

“I would be happy to perform the role, if I'm acceptable to you.”

“One person is as good as another. I assume that that creature is the one we will actually be conversing with.” He looked up, at where a Radiant had left the city and was approaching them, low enough that the tips of its tentacles were almost touching the ground.

“That is correct.”

“I assume he has a position of authority in Radiant society?”

“They don't have leaders the way humans do. Among Radiants, tasks are allotted to the individual best able to perform them. That Radiant has taken an interest in human culture and history, and so was judged by the others to be best suited to deal with you.”

“And will the others abide by whatever agreement he reaches with us?”

“They will. Every Radiant in the city will be listening in, by means of their telepathy. In a sense, you will be negotiating with the entire city.”

“And what about the other cities? Do they have a single government, or does every city rule itself?”

Daniel had to think for a moment before answering. “They're not like humans,” he said at last. “They don't compete against each other. All Radiants do what is best for the entire Radiant race, even if it means sacrificing their own lives. If one city thinks it’s in their best interests to come to an agreement with you, then all the others will as well.”

“Then I suppose that will have to do,” said the Brigadier. “Where would you like the meeting to take place?”

“There is only one place where humans and Radiants can meet ‘face to face’, as it were. The Museum of the Hetin Folk.” The Brigadier nodded. He'd been about to suggest that very place. He looked around and saw the building about half a mile away, across the cultivated farmland that surrounded the city. “Lead on,” he said, therefore, and Daniel nodded, turning to lead the way.

☆☆☆

Shanks stared around the interior of the building, a nobleman’s mansion raised a hundred feet above the ground with open ceilings and floors to allow Radiants to float within it with their eyes level with the exhibits. “My people created all this?” he asked with something like religious awe. He picked up a piece of equipment whose back had been removed to reveal a dusty clutter of tiny components linked with rubber coated wires. He had no idea what it was, but it was clearly the product of a manufacturing process far more advanced than anything possessed by humans today. The surfaces and shelves were crowded with similar artefacts, many of them bizarre beyond comprehension but all indicative of a culture and civilisation that had risen to heights that nobody today could even imagine. “This is what they stole from us!” he snarled, glaring at the Radiant that was lowering itself in through the hole in the ceiling. “They say we walked on the moon! Who knows what we might have accomplished if they hadn't... Hadn't done what they did!”

“The Radiant says that your civilisation was doomed to destroy itself,” said Daniel. “They were consuming non renewable resources at an ever increasing rate, polluting the environment with the waste products of their industries, building ever more powerful weapons, weapons of such violence that all life in the world was threatened. Either by war or social collapse, their civilisation would certainly have ended by now.”

“They don't know that! They're lying to justify their crimes!”

“It says they have no reason to lie. It also says that you should be grateful for their intervention, that you are only alive because of it.”

“It says what?” His hand flew to the pistol at his belt, but the Brigadier’s hand lashed out to grasp his wrist and hold it tight. “We're only here to talk,” he said in a soft voice. “Just talk.”

“The Radiants estimate that there are several thousand Hetin folk still living among normal humans,” Daniel continued. “If they had not intervened, though, the Hetin folk would undoubtedly be completely extinct by now. You owe your continued existence to their...”

“That's a lie!”

“Mister Shanks,” said the Brigadier, “I have warned you before. If you cannot control yourself, I shall have to ask you to leave.”

“You don't know what it’s like! To see all this...” He waved his hand around at the artefacts surrounding them. “To see all this evidence of what we once were...”

“It was clearly a mistake to come here,” said Daniel. “If we'd had more advance warning, another venue could have been found...”

“No, this will be fine,” said the Brigadier. “Mister Shanks, although his anger is quite justified and understandable, will hold himself in restraint. Isn't that right, Mister Shanks?” He gave the scientist a warning glare until the other man nodded reluctantly. He took his hand away from his pistol, but continued to glare at the Radiant as if he could kill it by willpower alone. The Brigadier looked around at the assembled diplomats, who had all seated themselves in the chairs provided and were arranging papers on the desks in front of them, desks of all different sizes and designs as if their hosts had had to search around at short notice for any item of furniture that might serve the function. Another adoptee, a young woman with long hair tied back in a ponytail, was moving from desk to desk, placing a pitcher of water and a small glass on each one. “Food will be served at around midday,” she said with a bright smile, but the Brigadier frowned. Did they think their fury would be averted with a few sandwiches and glasses of wine? He was relieved to see similar frowns on the faces of the diplomats, though. These are all professional negotiators, he reminded himself. They know their jobs. I must trust them to do it.

Since the only negotiating any of the delegates had ever done had been with other humans, they decided to proceed as if the Radiants were merely another human nation. The diplomats took turns to introduce themselves, therefore, naming themselves and the country they represented, and then they waited for the Radiant to do the same. After a few moments had gone by without the creature replying, though, the Brigadier, who had decided to play the part of neutral invigilator, cleared his throat softly. “Traditionally, this is where your master introduces himself,” he said to Daniel.

“Radiants don't have names, as such,” the adoptee replied, though. “They have...” He paused as he searched for the right words. “Mental labels. Like, if you were so see someone you recognised but whose name you didn’t know, you might think of him as ‘The tall man with the pimple on his nose who seemed nice because he made way for me at the bar in the tavern’, except that Radiant names are much longer and can encompass hundreds of years of shared experiences. I suppose that the closest he could come to having a name would be to call him Alpha, which means that he is the one who knows the most about human civilisation and so has been chosen to take the lead in this endeavour. He is only Alpha for these negotiations, though. Tomorrow, they might be debating the new grazing lands for a herd of cattle and another Radiant would be Alpha because he knows the most on that subject.”

“What name did he have when he was human?” asked Richard Daerden, the Helberian delegate.

“Radiants have no memory of having been human,” replied Daniel. “Any more than you have any memories of being the animal you were raised from.”

“Doesn’t that bother you? I mean, being adopted must be like dying, then! Everything you are now being lost as if it never were! That's a horrific concept!”

“Not at all, because we become something far greater, and it will still be me, even though I have no memories of what came before. There are unfortunate people who lose their memories as a result of a head injury. Do you consider them to no longer be people?”

“Of course not, but no-one would choose to lose their memories!”

“Let's not get sidetracked, please,’ said the Brigadier. He turned back to Daniel. “Alpha it is, then. Is there anything else your client would like to say before we get started?”

“I'd like to ask something, if I may,” interrupted Richard Daerden, though, anger visibly rising within him. “I would like to know whether this Alpha took part in the attack on Marboll.”

“We cannot get into that!” said the Brigadier, though. “We are here to make peace, not continue the war! The only way we will make progress here is if we draw a line under all that has gone before and look forward, to the future. We have to forgive the attacks they have made upon us in order to make a new beginning.”

“They destroyed our whole civilisation!” said Shanks, half rising from his chair. “Killed millions! That's a lot to forgive!”

“Nevertheless we have to try, if there is to be a future for any of us.”

“Before we go any further,” said Daniel, “Alpha wishes me to say something to you. You came here thinking that you hold all the cards, to use a human analogy, and that you have us as your mercy, but the Radiants have a weapon they have not used yet. A weapon they would rather not use, as it would impact their civilisation almost as hard as it would yours. They will use it, though, if the terms you try to impose on them are deemed unacceptable.”

“What is the nature of this weapon?” asked Pettiwell.

“You know that the Radiants can cause volcanoes to erupt.”

“Yes, but there are very few volcanoes in human lands, and none close to major cities. We have no reason to feat Radiant volcanoes.”

“That is not true. There are few volcanoes there today, but that was not always the case. Long, long ago, the lands in which humans live now were the site of the most extensive volcanic activity this planet has ever known. Millions of cubic miles of molten rock were erupted...”

“Preposterous!” exclaimed Pettiwell.

“Not at all. We have scholarly books written by the Hetin folk that testify to this fact, and you can see the evidence for yourselves. Almost everywhere in human lands, if you dig down deep enough, you will find basalt and other volcanic rocks, in places a mile thick. Your own cities are built from basalt! The Hetin books say that almost all life was extinguished from this planet during this time! The fires responsible for this extreme natural disaster have long since grown cold, of course, but they can be rekindled and they will be if we fail to come to an understanding here today.”

The delegates stared aghast at the Radiant, floating, seemingly serene, in the centre of the room. “As you say,” said Pettiwell, “that would have as great an impact upon them as upon us!”

“Not as great,” replied the adoptee. “You humans are to be found only on this continent, but there are Radiants all across the world, on every continent. They will simply relocate to other continents, where the impact of the eruptions will be less, for the duration, taking some humans with them with which to reseed your race afterwards. A far smaller population, under strict control, denied any form of technology whatsoever. The impact upon the Radiants would still be massive, of course, but the end result, centuries from now, would be far more favourable to them. There are those among them who suggest that they should do this anyway, no matter what the outcome of these talks.”

“He's bluffing!” exclaimed one of the delegates. The one from Erestin, the Brigadier thought. It annoyed him that he didn't know for sure.

“No, I don’t think he is,” said Pettiwell, though. “We know that they can control volcanoes. Given enough time, and the right incentive, we have to assume that they really can do what they claim. Very well, then. We have to come to an agreement that is agreeable to all of us. Human and Radiant alike. Are we agreed?” Heads nodded reluctantly around the table. “Then let’s get on with it!”