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"I," the elf said, his image on the screen much the same as he had looked on the hillside, straight-spined, red-robed—only the ropes elves had put on him had left purpling marks on his wrists, on the opalescing white of his skin, "I'm clear enough, aren't I?" The trooper accent was strange coming from a delicate elvish mouth. The elf's lips were less mobile. His voice had modulations, like singing, and occasionally failed to keep its tones flat.
"It's very good," the scientist said, the man in the white coveralls, who sat at a small desk opposite the elf in a sterile white room and had his hands laced before him. The camera took both of them in, elf and swarthy Science Bureau xenologist. "I understand you learned from prisoners."
The elf seemed to gaze into infinity. "We don't want to fight anymore."
"Neither do we. Is this why you came?"
A moment the elf studied the scientist, and said nothing at all.
"What's your people's name?" the scientist asked.
"You call us elves."
"But we want to know what you call yourselves. What you call this world."
"Why would you want to know that?"
"To respect you. Do you know that word, respect?"
"I don't understand it."
"Because what you call this world and what you call yourselves isthe name, the right name, and we want to call you right. Does that make sense?"
"It makes sense. But what you call us is right too, isn't it?"
"Elves is a made-up word, from our homeworld. A myth. Do you know myth? A story. A thing not true."
"Now it's true, isn't it?"
"Do you call your world Earth? Most people do."
"What you call it is its name."
"We call it Elfland."
"That's fine. It doesn't matter."
"Why doesn't it matter?"
"I've said that."
"You learned our language very well. But we don't know anything of yours."
"Yes."
"Well, we'd like to learn. We'd like to be able to talk to you your way. It seems to us this is only polite. Do you know polite?"
"No."
A prolonged silence. The scientist's face remained bland as the elf's. "You say you don't want to fight anymore. Can you tell us how to stop the war?"
"Yes. But first I want to know what your peace is like. What, for instance, will you do about the damage you've caused us?"
"You mean reparations."
"What's that mean?"
"Payment."
"What do you mean by it?"
The scientist drew a deep breath. "Tell me. Why did your people give you to one of our soldiers?
Why didn't they just call on the radio and say they wanted to talk?"
"This is what you'd do."
"It's easier, isn't it? And safer."
The elf blinked. No more than that.
"There was a ship a long time ago," the scientist said after a moment. "It was a human ship minding its own business in a human lane, and elves came and destroyed it and killed everyone on it. Why?"
"What do you want for this ship?"
"So you do understand about payment. Payment's giving something for something."
"I understand." The elvish face was guileless, masklike, the long eyes like the eyes of a pearl-ski
"You mean you don't think our word for it is like your word for it?"
"That's right."
"Well, that's an important thing to understand, isn't it? Before we make agreements. Peace means no fighting."
"That's not enough."
"Well, it means being safe from your enemies."
"That's not enough."
"What is enough?"
The pale face contemplated the floor, something elsewhere.
"What isenough, Saitas?"
The elf only stared at the floor, far, far away from the questioner. "I need to talk to deFranco."
"Who?"
"DeFranco." The elf looked up. "DeFranco brought me here. He's a soldier; he'll understand me better than you. Is he still here?"
The colonel reached and cut the tape off. She was SurTac. Agnes Fi
DeFranco knew. He had tried that route once. He knew more than most what kind it took to survive that training, let alone the requisite ten missions to get promoted out of the field, and he knew the wit behind the weathered face and knew it ate special ops lieutenants for appetizers.
"How did you make such an impression on him, Lieutenant?"
"I didn't try to," deFranco said carefully. "Ma'am, I just tried to keep him calm and get in with him alive the way they said. But I was the only one who dealt with him out there, we thought that was safest; maybe he thinks I'm more than I am."
"I compliment you on the job." There was a certain irony in that, he was sure. No SurTac had pulled off what he had, and he felt the slight tension there.
"Yes, ma'am."
" Yes, ma'am. There's always the chance, you understand, that you've brought us an absolute lunatic. Or the elves are going an unusual route to lead us into a trap. Or this is an elf who's not too pleased about being tied up and dumped on us, and he wants to get even. Those things occur to me."
"Yes, ma'am." DeFranco thought all those things, face to face with the colonel and trying to be easy as the colonel had told him to be. But the colonel's thin face was sealed and forbidding as the elf's.
"You know what they're doing out there right now? Massive attacks. Hitting that front near 45
with everything they've got. The Eighth's pi
"Dead." The colonel's eyes were bleak and expressionless. "Word came in. I know it's more than a stat to you. But that's what's going on. We've got two signals coming from the elves. And we don't know which one's valid. We have ourselves an alien who claims credentials— andcomes with considerable effort from the same site as the attack."