"They agreed with me. I agreed to be there. I was most afraid you'd shoot them. But you let them go."
"Hell, look, I just follow orders."
"And orders led you to let them go?"
"No. They say to talk if I ever got the chance. Look, me, personally, I never wanted to kill you guys. I wouldn't, if I had the choice."
"But you do."
"Dammit, you took out our ships. Maybe that wasn't personal on your side either, but we sure as hell can't have you doing it as a habit. All you ever damn well had to do was go away and let us alone. You hit a world, elf. Maybe not much of one, but you killed more than a thousand people on that first ship. Thirty thousand at that base, good God, don't sit there looking at me like that!"
"It was a mistake."
"Mistake." DeFranco found his hands shaking. No. Don't raise the voice. Don't lose it. (Be your own nice self, boy. Patronizingly. The colonel knew he was far out of his depth. And he knew.)
"Aren't most wars mistakes?"
"Do you think so?"
"If it is, can't we stop it?" He felt the attention of unseen listeners, diplomats, scientists—himself, special ops, talking to an elvish negotiator and making a mess of it all, losing everything. (Be your own nice self— The colonel was crazy, the elf was, the war and the world were and he lumbered ahead desperately, attempting subtlety, attempting a caricatured simplicity toward a diplomat and knowing the one as transparent as the other.) "You know all you have to do is say quit and there's ways to stop the shooting right off, ways to close it all down and then start talking about how we settle this. You say that's what you came to do. You're in the right place. All you have to do is get your side to stop. They're killing each other out there, do you know that? You come in here to talk peace. And they're coming at us all up and down the front. I just got word I lost a friend of mine out there. God knows what by now. It's no damn sense. If you can stop it, then let's stop it."
"I'll tell you what our peace will be." The elf lifted his face placidly, spread his hands. "There is a camera, isn't there? At least a microphone. They do listen."
"Yes. They've got camera and mike. I know they will."
"But your face is what I see. Your face is all human faces to me. They can listen, but I talk to you. Only to you. And this is our peace. The fighting will stop, and we'll build ships again and we'll go into space, and we won't be enemies. The mistake won't exist. That's the peace I want."
"So how do we do that?" (Be your own nice self, boy— DeFranco abandoned himself. Don't see the skin, don't see the face alien-like, just talk, talk like to a human, don't worry about protocols. Doit, boy.) "How do we get the fighting stopped?"
"I've said it. They've heard."
"Yes. They have."
"They have two days to make this peace."
DeFranco's palms sweated. He clenched his hands on the chair. "Then what happens?"
"I'll die. The war will go on."
(God, now what do I do, what do I say? How far can I go?) "Listen, you don't understand how long it takes us to make up our minds. We need more than any two days. They're dying out there, your people are killing themselves against our lines, and it's all for nothing. Stop it now. Talk to them. Tell them we're going to talk. Shut it down."
The slitted eyes blinked, remained in their buddha-like abstraction, looking askance into infinity.
"DeFranco, there has to be payment."
(Think, deFranco, think. Ask the right things.) "What payment? Just exactly who are you talking for? All of you? A city? A district?"
"One peace will be enough for you—won't it? You'll go away. You'll leave and we won't see each other until we've built our ships again. You'll begin to go—as soon as my peace is done."
"Build the ships, for God's sake. And come after us again?"
"No. The war is a mistake. There won't be another war. This is enough."
"But would everyone agree?"
"Everyone does agree. I'll tell you my real name. It's Angan. Angan Anassidi. I'm forty-one years old. I have a son named Agaita; a daughter named Siadi; I was born in a town named Daogisshi, but it's burned now. My wife is Llaothai Sohail, and she was born in the city where we live now. I'm my wife's only husband. My son is aged twelve, my daughter is nine. They live in the city with my wife alone now and her parents and mine." The elvish voice acquired a subtle music on the names that lingered to obscure his other speech. "I've written—I told them I would write everything for them. I write in your language."
"Told who?"
"The humans who asked me. I wrote it all."
DeFranco stared at the elf, at a face immaculate and distant as a statue. "I don't think I follow you. I don't understand. We're talking about the front. We're talking about maybe that wife and those kids being in danger, aren't we? About maybe my friends getting killed out there. About shells falling and people getting blown up. Can we do anything about it?"
"I'm here to make the peace. Saitas is what I am. A gift to you. I'm the payment." DeFranco blinked and shook his head. "Payment? I'm not sure I follow that." For a long moment there was quiet. "Kill me," the elf said. "That's why I came. To be the last dead. The saitas. To carry the mistake away."
"Hell, no. No. We don't shoot you. Look, elf—all we want is to stop the fighting. We don't want your life. Nobody wants to kill you."
"DeFranco, we haven't any more resources. We want a peace."
"So do we. Look, we just make a treaty—you understand treaty?"
"I'm the treaty."
"A treaty, man, a treaty's a piece of paper. We promise peace to each other and not to attack us, we promise not to attack you, we settle our borders, and you just go home to that wife and kids. And I go home and that's it. No more dying. No more killing."
"No." The elf's eyes glistened within the pale mask. "No, deFranco, no paper."
"We make peace with a paper and ink. We write peace out and we make agreements and it's good enough; we do what we say we'll do."
"Then write it in your language."
"You have to sign it. Write your name on it. And keep the terms. That's all, you understand that?"
"Two days. I'll sign your paper. I'll make your peace. It's nothing. Our peace is in me. And I'm here to give it."
"Dammit, we don't kill people for treaties."
The sea-colored eyes blinked. "Is one so hard and millions so easy?"
"It's different."
"Why?"
"Because—because—look, war's for killing; peace is for staying alive."
"I don't understand why you fight. Nothing you do makes sense to us. But I think we almost understand. We talk to each other. We use the same words. DeFranco, don't go on killing us."
"Just you. Just you, is that it? Dammit, that's crazy!"
"A cup would do. Or a gun. Whatever you like. DeFranco, have you never shot us before?"
"God, it's not the same!"
"You say paper's enough for you. That paper will take away all your mistakes and make the peace. But paper's not enough for us. I'd never trust it. You have to make my peace too. So both sides will know it's true. But there has to be a saitas for humans. Someone has to come to be a saitas for humans. Someone has to come to us."
DeFranco sat there with his hands locked together. "You mean just go to your side and get killed."
"The last dying."
"Dammit, you arecrazy. You'll wait a long time for that, elf."
"You don't understand."
"You're damn right I don't understand. Damn bloody-minded lunatics!" DeFranco shoved his hands down, needing to get up, to get away from that infinitely patient and not human face, that face that had somehow acquired subtle expressions, that voice which made him forget where the words had first come from. And then he remembered the listeners, the listeners taking notes, the colonel staring at him across the table. Information. Winning was not the issue. Questions were. Finding out what they could. Peace was no longer the game. They were dealing with the insane, with minds there was no peace with. Elves that died to spite their enemies. That suicided for a whim and thought nothing about wiping out someone else's life.