 Why doesn't Malloy go to the peace talks himself?
Every man in the Diplomatic Corps who developed a twitch or a quirk was shipped to Saarkkad IV to work under Bertrand Malloy, Permanent Terran Ambassador to His Utter Munificence, the Occeq of Saarkkad. Number two suffered from some sort of emotional block that left him continually on the horns of one dilemma or another. And, Malloy knew, his own position was not unimportant in that war. For nine years, Bertrand Malloy had been Ambassador to Saarkkad, and for nine years, no Saarkkada had ever seen him. To have shown himself to one of them would have meant instant loss of prestige. To violate the rigid social setup of Saarkkad would mean the instant closing off of the supply of biochemical products that the Saarkkadic laboratories produced from native plants and animals—products that were vitally necessary to Earth's war, and which could be duplicated nowhere else in the known universe. It was Bertrand Malloy's job to keep the production output high and to keep the materiel flowing towards Earth and her allies and outposts. So Malloy was stuck with the culls. Not the worst ones, of course; there were places in the galaxy that were less important than Saarkkad to the war effort. She came in through the door, a rather handsome woman in her middle thirties, clutching a sheaf of papers in her right hand as though someone might at any instant snatch it from her before she could turn it over to Malloy.
 Malloy has a psychological disorder that prevents him from leaving the house. He also hates aliens.
 Malloy is too sick to travel to the peace conference. He also hates aliens.  Malloy needs to stay on Saarkkad IV to keep the drug supply lines flowing.  Malloy is too far from Saarkkad V to get to the peace conference on time. He also hates aliens.  Malloy has a psychological disorder that prevents him from leaving the house. He also hates aliens.