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The grownups are all very busy, but the children are all bored.
Bored or having nightmares. But Tasárinon was not on a ship and did not see the people dying and has only heard it thirdhand and can't exactly have nightmares about the look in his mother's eyes - well, he probably could, but he hasn't - so he's bored, and he is drawing on the floor. It is an absurdly intricate drawing. He has been embellishing it for three days.
Hm. Cam tries some other things he might want suddenly - basement dwellers do respond very rudimentarily to pain, do painkillers work...?
Huh.
Cam runs through some more drugs. They mostly don't work or work really badly. It is in all unpromising.
After a while Maitimo contacts him. "Hey, how goes it? I thought to ask some of our own medical people, they were all not optimistic at the prospect and can explain why if you like, but you might have some advantages background-wise on them. We're leaving in twelve hours. There are others leaving later if you aren't back by then."
"I've basically come to the conclusion that drugs, at least human-efficacious drugs, do not work on Elves - I can put a basement dweller in a coma but it takes a big dose and reversing it was weird too. I'll come back now."
He torches the place and flies back to the shipyard.
Maitimo meets him. "I'm sorry to hear that. Our medical people are happy to work with you on something better, though they think our bodies can't run without our brains for any real length of time and expect the coma thing won't work. Though if your interest is in nonlethally stopping a fight, you don't need the option of a protracted coma."
"So you might not run into the problems that'd arise with trying to keep us unconscious for days. I can make sure you're jumping on the same ship as the medical people, at least. D'you know enough to make orc mindless bodies, test what works on them?"
"I was sort of imagining you'd want to have a confrontation in which you demand to know why we didn't tell you we were mass murderers, are you just not particularly interested in that?"
"I mentioned that the leap-ships are the only way out and we didn't have enough. We didn't have any. Leaving Valinor is - well, forcefully frowned upon, to put it mildly, and has never been done. And when we announced our intent to do so, the Valar told us we were being foolish little children who should go back home. We thought about doing it the long way in the slower-than-light ships. We were projecting fifteen, twenty percent casualties just getting out of this system, it's - well defended, by the Valar, and those ships aren't meant for leaving it. And then those of us who made it would arrive in two and a half Years and by then I think most of Endore's population of probably-billions will be dead. Our years are ten times as long as yours, you said? Twenty five of yours, that's how long the trip is.
We went to Alqualonde. We asked for the ships. No. We asked for help building them. No. We asked for a lesson on lightspeed travel. Nope. They'd locked down their archives.
My father decided to steal them.
There are no weapons in Valinor and there'd never been any violence and we thought we could just take the things and go but it turns out you can do as much damage with high-powered construction equipment with the safeties ripped off as with any weapon designed for the purpose, and they tried to stop us, and we fought back, and then the Maia of Alqualonde noticed what was going on and swatted fully loaded ships out of the air - killing everyone on board - and we made it out with horrifying losses and were sentenced in absentia to thirty thousand counts of murder. That is how it happened."
"Yes. Everyone we killed should be back within a few weeks, I think. Our people won't be, because convicted of murder."
Dammit why couldn't everyone be conveniently resurrectable. "And you didn't bring this up because?"
"The Valar's sentence. My family is exiled from Valinor, as is everyone who follows us instead of turning back to repent. We will meet our deaths in Endore, and we will wait for reembodiment until long after everyone we wronged has forgiven us. Every project we begin will turn to evil ends; we will be houseless and nameless forever. Vala sentences - carry weight, they can actually bring about the things they prophecy. I have no idea if you fall under it, but you are likelier to if you choose to take up our cause knowing what we've done in the service of it."
"And also obviously I wanted the ships because there are potentially billions of lives at stake. But you knowing might make things worse, and I'd have avoided it for that reason alone."
"Or, you know, I eventually go back to Hell, and all my projects will turn to evil ends, and I get summoned for high-energy physics work on Earth and I fuck it up and Earth is sucked into a black hole and fourteen billion people die and don't have any backups and most of them go to Limbo which have I mentioned it's unpleasant there and I can't take any extra precautions because nobody told me."
"I did tell you about the Doom. I just didn't tell you anything that'd make it likelier for it to apply to you."
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