female, to ignore such rugged good looks. They seemed even more attractive since Gabriel wore them completely without affectation, even apparently without seeming to be aware of them at all. He was dark with high cheek bones. His eyes were set deep so that thoughtful looks on him seemed more thoughtful than they might have on a less structured face, and angry looks seemed somehow more threatening, flashing out from underneath those eyebrows that nearly met over the nose-- a feature that the old stories suggested indicated an unusual amount of blood more directly traceable to the Union of Sol. Either way, it was rare enough to see an angry look from Gabriel, but you saw a lot of the thoughtful ones, another reason why Lauren had begun making a point to invite him to work more closely with her. There were few enough career officers who had that considering look this early in their careers. It always boded well, in Lauren's opinion, and she was not above grabbing new young talent for her branch of the Services when she could. There was too much old entrenched habit and lack of talent to make up for.
In any case, she considered him an asset. Add to the physical handsomeness the size of the young man- tall, big across the shoulders-and you came up with an almost daunting package. It never hurt for an ambassador, or someone who was likely enough to be an ambassador someday, to be physically imposing as well as handsome. There were some negotiations in which brawn was still as useful as brain. And Gabriel apparently took the physical training part of his job description very seriously. A Concord Marine shall maintain himself in physical condition suitable to his role ... to be ready for anything, anywhere, any time, was what the regs said. As in any other branch of the Services, there were always Marines who honored the regulations more in the breach than in the observance, but Connor was not one of them. Eager to Strike, the Marine motto went. Gabriel looked it, and though the eagerness was low-key, it was still very much there.
'Is the briefing still at nineteen?' Gabriel said, after another drink of his chai. 'Yes. You'll be there?'
'I wouldn't miss it. Fortunately I've been able to get the day's other duties handled early.'
And you stayed up how late for the last couple of nights to do that? Lauren thought, obscurely pleased.
Very good. Aloud she said, 'Have you had a chance to review the last few weeks' transcripts?'
Gabriel nodded, suddenly looking a little weary to Lauren's eyes. 'I don't usually have trouble with research,' he said, 'but reading that stuff made my head hurt.'
'A normal reaction,' Delvecchio said, leaning back in her chair.
'It's just that... they've been doing this for so long,' Connor said, shaking his head. 'Four, five generations now. Brush wars, flare-ups, 'hot' wars that last a year, two years, five . . . those I can understand. But the idea is that the fighting is supposed to resolve something ... for good or ill. This has resolved nothing. It's as if the fighting has become a habit: something they don't dare stop, because they don't know what they would do if they didn't have a war to fall back on. And meanwhile, the basic problem-access to the resources on Eraklion-hasn't been solved. It's as if they didn't want to solve it.' Delvecchio tilted further back in her chair. 'Well, we've been over this ground a couple of times before. I'll grant you that would be a competent enough analysis for someone who wasn't all that intimate with the problem. Maybe it passes for analysis on the upper decks.' She gave him a wry look. The 'upper decks' were where the Marine forces were quartered. 'And before you accuse me of insulting your shipmates' intelligence, let me say that you have access to more information than they have. So tell me: why did the governments on Phorcys and Ino agree to allow negotiations to start three years ago? What's changed all of a sudden?'
'The Concord stepped in,' Gabriel said. He wore a slight smile as he said it.
'Now stop grinning like a Marine who sees the prospect of stepping into a good fight. As doubtless you do. If I get my way, it will need to step in no further. And your job is to help me get my way.'
'Via diplomatic channels,' Connor said mildly, 'or via the barrels of our guns?'
'At the moment there is no difference,' Delvecchio said, 'though if our efforts tomorrow afternoon finally fail, that will change. Meanwhile, you and I and this whole ship are a gun pointed at the heads of the governments of Phorcys and Ino ... though only a symbolic one. Sooner or later, there will be peace, or they'll wish there had been. But you still haven't answered my question.'
'But I have. The Galactic Concord did step in. The Verge has been forgotten territory or ignored territory for so long. Now the Concord appears and begins asserting itself....'
'More popular mythology,' Delvecchio said, just a little sharply. 'This was never forgotten territory.
But it is a major error to intervene in an area before you have the force, both military and infrastructural, to support your intervention. Only in the last ten years or so has such force become available, along with the political will at the First Worlds' level to assert it. Now we're here. We come to Phorcys and Ino at their request, which by itself is interesting and worthy of attention. We've been fact-finding in this neighborhood for three years, making no actual decisions about them or requirements of them ... just finding out why they hate each other so. The surface reasons, of course. And letting them see, standing behind us as it were, all the reasons they might want to pay serious attention to anything we might suggest during the actual negotiation period. Affiliations with stellar nations, with other Verge systems, military protection and development, investment packages... ' 'And if they don't take advantage of the suggestions?' Gabriel asked.
Lauren's smile was brief and grim. ' 'Eager to Strike.' Well, that is what you're here for should hostilities break out- hostilities aimed at us instead of the end of negotiation. But as for the parties involved ... Certainly there was once a time when there was only one kind of negotiation: the kind where you stand over the participants and explain to them that if they don't stop fighting you'll kill them all, and that what they're going to do is this ... Then rather later came the kind where you coerce the hostile parties into close quarters for an extended period and force them to recognize one another as 'human.'' She put up her eyebrows, sighing. 'Can you imagine how simple it must have been when there was only one species involved in this kind of thing? Only one set of biological 'code'?'
'The ones we're working with now are all Homo sapiens,' Gabriel said, 'and they still seem to have enough trouble grasping the concept.'
'Yes,' Delvecchio said. 'Well, the semantics are antiquated, I admit. But the ancient negotiators would try holding people together until they stopped being Us and Them, until 'They' were perceived as 'enough like Us that they should have our kind of rights and be treated with the kind of respect we accord one another.' Or, rather, 'enough like Us that we shouldn't kill them.' ' Gabriel nodded. 'That kind of diplomacy must have been hard to bring off.'
'Oh, sometimes it worked. There were gifted diplomats who realized that getting intelligent, hostile, and wary humans to grant one another that kind of privileged status was almost impossible to do by mere persuasion. So they used all kind of other dirty tricks, exploiting cultural 'hardwiring' that the participants had forgotten they had.' She smiled: a wry, sly little look.
'No one forgets more quickly than an 'intelligent, civilized man' how different he looks while eating, for example ... or how different his enemy looks. Or how different the kinds of conversation are that take place over dinner tables from those that happen over negotiation tables. Who cares what shape the dinner table is, as long as you can reach the salt?' She sighed. 'But the problem is that, even after you've tricked both sides into seeing one another as different kinds of 'Us,' the perception requires constant reinforcement. Remembering one's own humanity and its requirements is something that has to happen constantly, after all. How much more complex and distasteful will you find the business of remembering your former enemy's humanity? Of believing in it? Of upgrading them once again, every day, to 'Us' status from 'Them'? It's easy to forget to do it. Saints would find it difficult. Sinners-' She gave Gabriel a cool look. 'Those are mostly who we deal with, ordinary beings, all too representative of both the worst and the best of their species' traits. The 'sinners' take a lot of work before the upgrading of their enemies becomes routine, and a generation or two before the perception of their children's children shifts to match it. Then the trick is a trick no more, but reality.'
'The older kind of diplomacy must have been a lot easier,' Gabriel said. 'I mean, the kind where you just tell them to stop fighting... or else.'
'It was,' Delvecchio said. 'But we can no longer be so careless or so unethical. Tomorrow afternoon the negotiating teams from the two planets will arrive, and they'll leave either with a peace or our implicit blessing on the final destruction of one another's planets. I trust that the spectre of the second will overshadow the feast, as it were, quite effectively. If not, we must let them get on with working out their own destruction, though I don't think it's going to happen that way-which is why we both have a briefing to prepare for.' She stood up.
Gabriel stood up too, looking thoughtful. After a moment he said, 'So what is the answer to the question?'
'About why the two parties have consented to negotiations?' Delvecchio gave him a dry look. 'I don't know.' 'What? I mean, I beg your pardon?'
