Vilcabamba

“Sure.” Now Moffatt nodded. He remembered that from studying history, too. And Peru--or the mountainous, inaccessible parts of Peru--still maintained a precarious freedom from the Krolp. Moffatt had exchanged a few messages with el Presidente. That was as much as either one of them could hope to do. “What about it?”

“The Incas never knew what hit ’em. They were just starting to use bronze. They didn’t even write. The Spaniards had guns. They had armor. They had swords. They rode horses. They . . . Well, to make a long story short, they had three thousand years on the Incas. The Native Americans fought like hell, and it didn’t do ’em one goddamn bit of good.”

Harris Moffatt III felt an unpleasant frisson. Given his circumstances, how could he not? “What goes around comes around. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not exactly, Mr. President,” the Secretary of Alien Affairs said, which wasn’t reassuring to Moffatt. His advisor went on, “The Incas who didn’t give up built a new town called Vilcabamba, in the jungle on the east side of the Andes. Their ruler--the Inca--lived there, and his court, and stuff like that. And they tried to . . . to adapt to what had happened to them.”

“What do you mean, adapt?” Moffatt asked.

“They learned whatever they could. They stole horses and swords. Some of them became Christians--mostly to keep the Spaniards off their backs, I think, but also because their own gods weren’t doing them much good. But other ways, too, littler ways. Some of the houses there had tile roofs instead of the thatch they’d always used before.”

“Huh,” the President said uneasily, remembering the LED display that aped a real Krolpish minisun. He asked the obvious question: “What happened to them?”

“They hung on for about forty years. They had trouble with their renegades, too,” the Secretary of Alien Affairs said. “Then the Spaniards finally got sick of their nuisance raids and overran them.”

“We’ve lasted longer than they did, anyhow,” Harris Moffatt III said. “We’ve just got to keep on doing it, that’s all.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” the Secretary of State replied. What else was he supposed to say?

• • •

Prilk and his guards waited impassively in the square. “Well, Moffatt, what is it going to be?”

“You can’t mine silver on our land,” Moffatt said. “You would ruin our whole country”--what’s left of our whole country--”if you did.”

“We are going to mine that silver,” the Krolpish envoy said, his voice flat and hard. “You cannot stop us from doing it. Because you cannot stop us, you cannot say in truth that the land is yours.”

“If your folk come onto our land without our leave, you will see what we can do,” Harris Moffatt III said. His son was already on his way back to the free USA from St. Louis. He hoped.

Prilk let out flatulent Krolpish laughter. “I foul myself in fear,” he said.

A sarcastic Krolp was the very last thing the President needed. “You will see,” he repeated. “Tell Governor Vrank the land is ours, the silver is ours, and he may not have it.”

Prilk leaned his torso forward, toward the President. As with humans, that meant earnestness among the Krolp. “Moffatt, you had better think again. You have no hope of winning.”

“We have no hope if you trash our country, either,” Moffatt said, which was nothing but the truth.

“But we would not interfere with you if you did not act like a fool,” Prilk said.

“If I did what you told me to do, you mean,” Moffatt replied. “And you would interfere with the United States. You would interfere badly. That interferes with me.”

“You will be sorry,” Prilk warned.

“I am already sorry. Everyone on Earth is sorry. We are sorry you ever found us,” the President said.

“Which has nothing to do with how many claws are on a franggel’s foot,” Prilk said.

Harris Moffatt III had never seen a franggel. Come to that, neither had Prilk. The Krolp had hunted them to extinction hundreds of years before. They lingered on in proverbs, though. The President had heard this one many times before. Nothing to do with the price of beer, an English-speaking human probably would have said. But he’d heard about a franggel’s foot even in English. Krolpish phrases, Krolpish ideas, gained. Human notions retreated. Pretty soon, they’d have nowhere to retreat to.

Vilcabamba.

The President hadn’t imagined he’d remember the name of the place, not while the Secretary of Alien Affairs was yakking about it. He also hadn’t imagined he would sympathize with the poor befuddled Inca holdouts who’d tried to hang on to their old way of life there. If the Krolp started strip-mining in Utah, the old American way of life, or what was left of it, was gone forever.

“Envoy Prilk, we will fight to stop you,” he repeated, his voice firmer than it had been a few minutes earlier.