And the elvish kids, the babies in each others' arms and the birds fluttering down; and Dibs—Dibs lying in his armor like a broken piece of machinery—when a shot got you, it got the visor and you had no face and never knew it; or it got the joints and you bled to death trapped in the failed shell, you just lay there and bled: he had heard men and women die like that, still in contact on the com, talking to their buddies and going out alone, alone in that damn armor that cut off the sky and the air——
They brought him down tunnels that were poured and cast and hard overnight, thatkind of construction, which they never got out on the Line. There were bright lights and there were dry floors for the fine officers to walk on; there was, at the end, a new set of doors where guards stood with weapons ready—
—against us? DeFranco got that sense of unreality again, blinked as he had to show his tags and IDs to get past even with the colonel's orders directing his escort.
Then they let him through, and further, to another hall with more guards. AlSec MPs. Alliance Security. The intelligence and Special Services. The very air here had a chill about it, with only those uniforms in sight. Theyhad the elf. Of course they did. He was diplomatic property and the regs and the generals had nothing to do with it. He was in Finn's territory. Security and the Surface Tactical command, that the reg command only controlled from the top, not inside the structure. Finn had a leash, but she took no orders from sideways in the structure. Not even from AlSec. Check and balance in a joint command structure too many light-years from home to risk petty dictatorships. He had just crossed a line and might as well have been on another planet. And evidently a call had come ahead of him, because there were surly Science Bureau types here too, and the one who passed him through hardly glanced at his ID. It was his face the man looked at, long and hard; and it was the Xenbureau interviewer who had been on the tape.
"Good luck," the man said. And a SurTac major arrived, dour-faced, a black man in the SurTac's khaki, who did not look like an office-type. Hetook the folder of authorizations and looked at it and at deFranco with a dark-eyed stare and a set of a square, well-muscled jaw.
"Colonel's given you three hours, Lieutenant. Use it."
"We're more than one government," says deFranco to the elf, quietly, desperately. "We've fought in the past. We had wars. We made peace and we work together. We may fight again but everyone hopes not and it's less and less likely. War's expensive. It's too damn open out here, that's what I'm trying to tell you. You start a war and you don't know what else might be listening."
The elf leans back in his chair, one arm on the back of it. His face is solemn as ever as he looks at deFranco. "You and I, you-and-I. The world was whole until you found us. How can people do things that don't make sense? The wholething makes sense, the parts of the thing are crazy. You can't put part of one thing into another, leaves won't be feathers, and your mind can't be our mind. I see our mistakes. I want to take them away. Then elves won't have theirs and you won't have yours. But you call it a little war. The lives are only a few. You have so many. You like your mistake. You'll keep it. You'll hold it in your arms. And you'll meet these others with it. But they'll see it, won't they, when they look at you?"
"It's crazy!"
"When we met you in it, we assumed we. That was our first great mistake. But it's yours too." DeFranco walked into the room where they kept the elf, a luxurious room, a groundling civ's kind of room, with a bed and a table and two chairs, and some kind of green and yellow pattern on the bedclothes, which were ground-style, free-hanging. And amid this riot of life-colors the elf sat cross-legged on the bed, placid, not caring that the door opened or someone came in—until a flicker of recognition seemed to take hold and grow. It was the first humanlike expression, virtually the only expression, the elf had ever used in deFranco's sight. Of course there were cameras recording it, recording everything. The colonel had said so and probably the elf knew it too.
"Saitas. You wanted to see me."
"DeFranco." The elf's face settled again to inscrutability.
"Shall I sit down?"
There was no answer. DeFranco waited for an uncertain moment, then settled into one chair at the table and leaned his elbows on the white plastic surface.
"They treating you all right?" deFranco asked, for the cameras, deliberately, for the colonel— (
Damn you, I'm not a fool, I can play your damn game, Colonel, I did what your SurTacs failed at, didn't I? So watch me.)
"Yes," the elf said. His hands rested loosely in his red-robed lap. He looked down at them and up again.
"I tried to treat you all right. I thought I did."
"Yes."
"Why'd you ask for me?"
"I'm a soldier," the elf said, and put his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. "I know that you are. I think you understand me more."
"I don't know about that. But I'll listen." The thought crossed his mind of being held hostage, of some irrational violent behavior, but he pretended it away and waved a hand at the other chair.
"You want to sit down? You want something to drink? They'll get it for you."
"I'll sit with you." The elf came and took the other chair, and leaned his elbows on the table. The bruises on his wrists showed plainly under the light. "I thought you might have gone back to the front by now."
"They give me a little time. I mean, there's—"
(Don't talk to him, the colonel had said. Let him talk.)
"—three hours. A while. You had a reason you wanted to see me. Something you wanted? Or just to talk. I'll do that too."
"Yes," the elf said slowly, in his lilting lisp. And gazed at him with sea-green eyes. "Are you young, deFranco? You make me think of a young man."
It set him off his balance. "I'm not all that young."
"I have a son and a daughter. Have you?"
"No."
"Parents?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Have you parents?"
"A mother. Long way from here." He resented the questioning. Letters were all Nadya deFranco got, and not enough of them, and thank God she had closer sons. DeFranco sat staring at the elf who had gotten past his guard in two quick questions and managed to hit a sore spot; and he remembered what Finn had warned him. "You, elf?"
"Living parents. Yes. A lot of relatives?"
Damn, what trooper had they stripped getting that part of human language? Whose soul had they gotten into?
"What are you, Saitas? Why'd they hand you over like that?"
"To make peace. So the Saitas always does."
"Tied up like that?"
"I came to be your prisoner. You understand that."
"Well, it worked. I might have shot you; I don't say I would've, but I might, except for that. It was a smart move, I guess it was. But hell, you could have called ahead. You come up on us in the dark—you looked to get your head blown off. Why didn't you use the radio?" A blink of sea-green eyes. "Others ask me that. Would you have come then?"
"Well, someone would. Listen, you speak at them in human language and they'd listen and they'd arrange something a lot safer."
The elf stared, full of his own obscurities.
"Come on, they throw you out of there? They your enemies?"
"Who?"
"The ones who left you out there on the hill."
"No."
"Friends, huh? Friendslet you out there?"