The Best Military Science Fiction of the 20th Century (60 page)

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So the Bureau went to the secretary, the secretary went to the major general on the com; all this at fifteen hundred yesterday; and
they
hauled me in on it at two this morning. You know how many noses you’ve got out of joint, Lieutenant? And what the level of concern is about that mess out there on the front?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m sure you hoped for a commendation and maybe better, wouldn’t that be it? Wouldn’t blame you. Well, I got my hands into this, and I’ve opted you under my orders, Lieutenant, because I can do that and high command’s just real worried the Bureau’s going to poke and prod and that elf’s going to leave us on the sudden for elvish heaven. So let’s just keep him moderately happy. He wants to talk to you. What the Bureau wants to tell you, but I told them
I’d
make it clear, because they’ll talk tech at you and I want to be sure you’ve got it—it’s just real simple: you’re dealing with an alien; and you’ll have noticed what he says doesn’t always make sense.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t yes ma’am me, Lieutenant, dammit; just talk to me and look me in the eye. We’re talking about communication here.”

“Yes—” He stopped short of the ma’am.

“You’ve got a brain, deFranco, it’s all in your record. You almost went Special Services yourself, that was your real ambition, wasn’t it? But you had this damn psychotic fear of taking ultimate responsibility. And a wholesome fear of ending up with a commendation, posthumous. Didn’t you? It washed you out, so you went special ops where you could take orders from someone else and still play bloody hero and prove something to yourself—am I right? I ought to be; I’ve got your psych record over there. Now I’ve insulted you and you’re sitting there turning red. But I want to know what I’m dealing with. We’re in a damn bind. We’ve got casualties happening out there. Are you and I going to have trouble?”

“No. I understand.”

“Good. Very good. Do you think you can go into a room with that elf and talk the truth out of him? More to the point, can you make a decision, can you go in there knowing how much is riding on your back?”

“I’m not a—”

“I don’t care what you
are
, deFranco. What I want to know is whether
negotiate
is even in that elf’s vocabulary. I’m assigning you to guard over there. In the process I want you to sit down with him one to one and just talk away. That’s all you’ve got to do. And because of your background maybe you’ll do it with some sense. But maybe if you just talk for John deFranco and try to get that elf to deal, that’s the best thing. You know when a government sends out a negotiator—or anything like—that individual’s not average. That individual’s probably the smartest, canniest, hardest-nosed bastard they’ve got, and he probably cheats at dice. We don’t know what this bastard’s up to or what he thinks like, and when you sit down with him you’re talking to a mind that knows a lot more about humanity than we know about elves. You’re talking to an elvish expert who’s here playing games with us. Who’s giving us a real good look-over. You understand that? What do you say about it?”

“I’m scared of this.”

“That’s real good. You know we’re not sending in the brightest, most experienced human on two feet. And that’s exactly what that rather canny elf has arranged for us to do. You understand that? He’s playing us like a keyboard this far. And how do you cope with that, Lieutenant deFranco?”

“I just ask him questions and answer as little as I can.”

“Wrong. You let him talk. You be real
careful
what you ask him. What you ask is as dead a giveaway as what you tell him. Everything you do and say is cultural. If he’s good he’ll drain you like a sponge.” The colonel bit her lips. “Damn, you’re
not
going to be able to handle that, are you?”

“I understand what you’re warning me about, Colonel. I’m not sure I can do it, but I’ll try.”

“Not sure you can do it.
Peace
may hang on this. And several billion lives. Your company, out there on the line. Put it on that level. And you’re scared and you’re showing it, Lieutenant; you’re too damned open, no wonder they washed you out. Got no hard center to you, no place to go to when I embarrass the hell out of you, and
I’m
on your side. You’re probably a damn good special op, brave as hell, I know, you’ve got commendations in the field. And that shell-shyness of yours probably makes you drive real hard when you’re in trouble. Good man. Honest. If the elf wants a human specimen, we could do worse. You just go in there, son, and you talk to him and you be your nice self, and that’s all you’ve got to do.”

“We’ll be bugged.” DeFranco stared at the colonel deliberately, trying to dredge up some self-defense, give the impression he was no complete fool.

“Damn sure you’ll be bugged. Guards right outside if you want them. But you startle that elf I’ll fry you.”

“That isn’t what I meant. I meant—I meant if I could get him to talk there’d be an accurate record.”

“Ah. Well. Yes. There will be, absolutely. And yes, I’m a bastard, Lieutenant, same as that elf is, beyond a doubt. And because I’m on your side I want you as prepared as I can get you. But I’m going to give you all the backing you need—you want anything, you just tell that staff and they better jump to do it. I’m giving you carte blanche over there in the Science Wing. Their complaints can come to this desk. You just be yourself with him, watch yourself a little, don’t get taken and don’t set him off.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Another slow, consuming stare and a nod.

He was dismissed.

IV

So where’s the hole we’re digging end?

Why, it’s neverneverdone, my friend.

Well, why’s it warm at the other end?

Well, hell’s neverneverfar, my friend.

“This colonel,” says the elf, “it’s her soldiers outside.”

“That’s the one,” says deFranco.

“It’s not the highest rank.”

“No. It’s not. Not even on this world.” DeFranco’s hands open and close on each other, white-knuckled. His voice stays calm. “But it’s a lot of power. She won’t be alone. There are others she’s acting for. They sent me here. I’ve figured that now.”

“Your dealing confuses me.”

“Politics. It’s all politics. Higher-ups covering their—” DeFranco re-chooses his words. “Some things they have to abide by. They have to do. Like if they don’t take a peace offer—that would be trouble back home. Human space is big. But a war—humans want it stopped. I know that. With humans, you can’t quiet a mistake down. We’ve got too many separate interests…. We got scientists, and a half dozen different-commands—”

“Will they all stop fighting?”

“Yes. My side will. I know they will.” DeFranco clenches his hands tighter as if the chill has gotten to his bones. “If we can give them something, some solution. You have to understand what they’re thinking of. If there’s a trouble anywhere, it can grow. There might be others out there, you ever think of that? What if some other species just—wanders through? It’s happened. And what if our little war disturbs them? We live in a big house, you know that yet? You’re young, you, with your ships, you’re a young power out in space. God help us, we’ve made mistakes, but this time the first one wasn’t ours. We’ve been trying to stop this. All along, we’ve been trying to stop this.”

“You’re what I trust,” says the elf. “Not your colonel. Not your treaty words. Not your peace. You. Words aren’t the belief. What you do—that’s the belief. What you do will show us.”

“I can’t!”

“I can. It’s important enough to me and not to you.
Our little war.
I can’t understand how you think that way.”

“Look at that!” DeFranco waves a desperate hand at the room, the world. Up. “It’s so big! Can’t you see that? And one planet, one ball of rock. It’s a little war. Is it worth it all? Is it worth such damn stubbornness? Is it worth dying in?”

“Yes,” the elf says simply, and the sea-green eyes and the white face have neither anger nor blame for him.

D
E
F
RANCO SALUTED AND
got out and waited until the colonel’s orderly caught him in the hall and gave his escort the necessary authorizations, because
no one
wandered this base without an escort. (But the elves are two hundred klicks out
there
, deFranco thought; and who’re we fighting anyway?) In the halls he saw the black of Union elite and the blue of Alliance spacers and the plain drab of the line troop officers, and the white and pale blue of the two Science Bureaus; while everywhere he felt the tenuous peace—damn, maybe we
need
this war, it’s keeping humanity talking to each other, they’re all fat and sleek and mud never touched them back here—But there was haste in the hallways. But there were tense looks on faces of people headed purposefully to one place and the other, the look of a place with something on its collective mind, with silent, secret emergencies passing about him—
The attack on the lines,
he thought, and remembered another time that attack had started on one front and spread rapidly to a dozen; and missiles had gone. And towns had died.

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,
that
kind 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.
They
had 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.
He
took 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.”

“W
E’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
whole
thing 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.”

D
E
F
RANCO 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 crosslegged 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.”