"Complete surrender," he suggested.
"And you know what that would mean."
Farradyne looked at her. It was an impasse and he knew it as well as she did. The law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is only good when there is a higher authority to see that it goes no further. When there is no just authority to pass judgment, the loss of an eye is revenged with interest, and the anger and resentment and desire for counter-revenge grow and pyramid until nations and planets and solar systems are involved in punitive wars that leave both sides weak and broken. Primitive and ruinous it was. But then, so was all revenge.
It need not be ruinous. There could be a better way to pride, to personal or national integrity. It had been done before in the middle of the Twentieth Century and it had been the start of a consolidated Terra. For there is personal pride in knowing that you have let your defeated enemy live; in letting your defeated enemy know that you feel strong and secure enough to hold his efforts in contempt.
Farradyne looked at Carolyn. "Surrender," he suggested to her. "Then we'll move in quietly and count off your people. We've lost many of ours, so we'll just tally off so many men to be murdered in cold blood. So many virgins to be ravished. So many wives to be left without husbands and so many husbands left without wives. Children left homeless to such and such a number." His voice rose. "So much hunger; so much pestilence; so much famine; so much death. What in the hell do you think we are, Carolyn, a race of God damned vultures?"
"What do you want me to do?" she whimpered. "You're in the driver's seat."
"No, I'm not!" yelled Farradyne. "And I'm not going to be held responsible for anything that wasn't my idea in the first place. Your outfit started this and now if your outfit does not care for the end-game, it's for you to say. Now—do we drop mercurite?"
She searched his face and saw nothing but hard determination. She shook her arm from Roberts' clutch and walked to the radio. Into the microphone she began to singsong. She went on for some time; staccato, musical now and discordant then, her triple-tongued voice rising and falling as she spoke rapidly.
Then she turned from the radio. "You win," she said. "Somehow you always win. And maybe—maybe I'm glad it's all over!"
Tears welled in her eyes and she turned away from them to stumble down the stairway blindly.