The Scapegoat

“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 Fi

“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?”

“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.