“walk.”
Without demur his prisoner began to do that, in the direction he had indicated.
“What did I do that humans always do?” deFranco asks the elf, and the grave sea-colored eyes flicker with changes. Amusement, perhaps. Or distress.
“You fired at us,” says the elf in his soft, songlike voice. “And then you stopped and didn’t kill me.”
“It was a warning.”
“To stop. So simple.”
“God, what else do you think?”
The elf’s eyes flicker again. There is gold in their depths, and gray. And his ears flick nervously. “DeFranco, deFranco, you still don’t know why we fight. And I don’t truly know what you meant.
Are you telling me the truth?”
“We never wanted to fight. It was a warning. Even animals, for God’s sake—understand a warning shot.”
The elf blinks. (And someone in another room stirs in a chair and curses his own blindness. Aggression and the birds. Different tropisms. All the way through the ecostructure.) The elf spreads his hands. “I don’t know what you mean. I never know. What can we know? That you were there for the same reason I was? Were you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know that. We never wanted a war. Do you understand that, at least?”
“You wanted us to stop. So we told you the same. We sent our ships to hold those places which were ours. And you kept coming to them.”
“They were ours.”
“Now they are.” The elf’s face is grave and still. “DeFranco, a mistake was made. A ship of ours fired on yours and this was a mistake. Perhaps it was me who fired. What’s in this elf’s mind?
Fear when a ship will not go away? What’s in this human’s mind?
Fear when we don’t go away? It was a stupid thing. It was a mistake. It was our region. Our—”
“Territory. You think you owned the place.”
“We were in it. We were there and this ship came. Say that I wasn’t there and I heard how it happened. This was a frightened elf who made a stupid mistake. This elf was surprised by this ship and he didn’t want to run and give up this jump-point. It was ours. You were in it. We wanted you to go. And you stayed.”
“So you blew up an unarmed ship.”
“Yes. I did it. I destroyed all the others. You destroyed ours. Our space station. You killed thousands of us. I killed thousands of you.”
“Not me and not you, elf. That’s twenty years, dammit, and you weren’t there and I wasn’t there—”
“I did it. I say I did. And you killed thousands of us.”
“We weren’t coming to make a war. We were coming to straighten it out. Do you understand that?”
“We weren’t yet willing. Now things are different.”
“For God’s sake—why did you let so many die?”
“You never gave us defeat enough. You were cruel, deFranco. Not to let us know we couldn’t win—that was very cruel. It was very subtle. Even now I’m afraid of your cruelty.”
“Don’t you understand yet?”
“What do I understand? That you’ve died in thousands. That you make long war. I thought you would kill me on the hill, on the road, and when you called me I had both hope and fear. Hope that you would take me to higher authority. Fear—well, I am bone and nerve, deFranco. And I never knew whether you would be cruel.” The elf walked and walked. He might have been on holiday, his hands tied in front of him, his red robes a-glitter with their gold borders in the dawn. He never tired. Hecarried no weight of armor; and deFranco went on self-seal and spoke through the mike when he had to give the elf directions.
Germ warfare?
Maybe the elf had a bomb in his gut?
But it began to settle into deFranco that he had done it, he had done it, after years of trying he had himself a live and willing prisoner, and his lower gut was queasy with outright panic and his knees felt like mush. What’s he up to, what’s he doing, why’s he walk like that— Damn! They’ll shoot him on sight, somebody could see him first and shoot him and I can’t break silence— maybe that’s what I’m supposed to do, maybe that’s how they overran Gamma Company—
But a prisoner, a prisoner speaking human language—
“Where’d you learn,” he asked the elf, “where’d you learn to talk human?”
The elf never turned, never stopped walking. “A prisoner.”
“Who? Still alive?”
“No.”
No. Slender and graceful as a reed and burning as a fire and white as beach sand. No. Placidly. Rage rose in deFranco, a blinding urge to put his rifle butt in that straight spine, to muddy and bloody the bastard and make him as dirty and as hurting as himself; but the professional rose up in him too, and the burned hillsides went on and on as they climbed and they walked, the elf just in front of him.
Until they were close to the tunnels and in imminent danger of a human misunderstanding.
He turned his ID and locator on; but they would pick up the elf on his sensors too, and that was no good. “It’s deFranco,” he said over the com. “I got a prisoner. Get HQ and get me a transport.” Silence from the other end. He cut off the output, figuring they had it by now. “Stop,” he said to the elf on outside audio. And he stood and waited until two suited troopers showed up, walking carefully down the hillside from a direction that did not lead to any tunnel opening.
“Damn,” came Cat’s female voice over his pickup. “Da-amn.” In a tone of wonder. And deFranco at first thought it was admiration of him and what he had done, and then he knew with some disgust it was wonder at the elf, it was a human woman looking at the prettiest, cleanest thing she had seen in three long years, icy, fastidious Cat, who was picky what she slept with.
And maybe her partner Jake picked it up, because: “Huh,” he said in quite a different tone, but quiet, quiet, the way the elf looked at their faceless faces, as if he still owned the whole world and meant to take it back.
“It’s Franc,” Jake said then into the com, directed at the base.
“And he’s right, he’s got a live one. Damn, you should seethis bastard.”
III
So where’s the generals in this war?
Why, they’re neverneverhere, my friend.
Well, what’ll we do until they come?
Well, you neverneverask, my friend.
“Iwas afraid too,” deFranco says. “I thought you might have a bomb or something. We were afraid you’d suicide if anyone touched you. That was why we kept you sitting all that time outside.”
“Ah,” says the elf with a delicate move of his hands. “Ah. I thought it was to make me angry. Like all the rest you did. But you sat with me. And this was hopeful. I was thirsty; I hoped for a drink. That was mostly what I thought about.”
“We think too much—elves and humans. We both think too much. I’d have given you a drink of water, for God’s sake. I guess no one even thought.”
“I wouldn’t have taken it.”
“Dammit, why?”
“Unless you drank with me. Unless you shared what you had. Do you see?”
“Fear of poison?”
“No.”
“You mean just my giving it.”
“Sharing it. Yes.”
“Is pride so much?”
Again the elf touches deFranco’s hand as it rests on the table, a nervous, delicate gesture. The elf’s ears twitch and collapse and lift again, trembling. “We always go off course here. I still fail to understand why you fight.”
“Dammit, I don’t understand why you can’t understand why a man’d give you a drink of water. Not to hurt you. Not to prove anything. For the love of God, mercy, you ever learn that word?