"I'm not as familiar with her policies on this kind of thing-" he looks to the other cleric.

    "I'm not either."

"What can you commit to, if she doesn't cooperate?"

"What does that mean?"

"I need you to have a plan that definitely leads to the daeva not being imprisoned without an alternative available to them. If Ehlonna will send a cleric who can cast the spell, once it exists, great. If she won't, you have to do something else. There are other gods; they'll know about this world eventually, we're not going to be able to keep this secret forever. I'm sure some of them will be willing to help you. But I need to know that you're going to at very least accept that help, from a broad enough range of gods that I can be sure I can find one willing to do it."

"That's a hell of a posture coming from you."

"Well, it's what you've got to work with. To make sure you understand - that year's leeway? That's not something you get. It's something I get, and only as long as I honestly believe there's a chance we can work something out. It's not that Fharlanghn has decided that this is tolerable."

"It's none of his business. Why doesn't he go back to ignoring us like he did for however long he existed before you showed up?"

"Of course it's his business, he's the god of freedom."

"He's your god of freedom."

"Even if it worked that way - which it doesn't - he's their god of freedom, too, if they want him. I think we can both guess how that goes."

"Freedom to blow people to kingdom come, uh-huh. I don't know what else you have clerics of. Ehlonna's fine. Have you got gods of the sea? Arts and crafts? The moon? Penguins, peanut butter, poetry? Anybody who didn't participate in a hostile act against all the mortals of Revelation has a better starting position."

"Take your pick. What I need is a commitment from you that you'll take the option when you have it."

"I'm looking at lots of options. If you're worried about your time spent headhunting I can compensate that."

"This isn't something you have a choice about."

"Some god of freedom."

   "-Raafi-"

"I'll be - later." He teleports out.

"I'm not a diplomat," sighs the Secretary of Defense. "I'm career military in a world that thought it was done with war. The diplomats will be politer but it comes down to the same thing, you know."

"What thing, exactly?"

"The thing where sending the Ganymede inmates to the four winds was an outrageous overreach that put innocent people in grave danger and everybody being offered to patch the gaping hole it left in our security is working for the perpetrator or his collaborators."

He nods. "That's hard to deal with, I know."

"I'm not trying to have a therapy session, I'm trying to protect Mars."

"It seemed like both of you were getting pretty emotional, there. Was there something you were trying to accomplish with that?"

"Anger's an evolved response for social maneuvering. It isn't vestigial, it's important, it tells people they can't lay down ultimatums without cost even if they can arrange things so that pursuing the fight won't help whoever they're picking on. It's a game theory thing. It isn't actually in Mars's interest for me to pretend to be a robot. I'm pissed the hell off, and I have a damn good reason, and it's not going to smooth over like people aren't running away to their cousins' houses on Earth because at least there if a daeva attacks they'll probably have air."

"All right. And what do you want him to do differently? I don't think he has the option to give you what you want without making any demands."

"I want every single person on Mars - and for that matter anywhere else, but I work for Mars - acknowledged as just as much a stakeholder in this mess as his god. I don't care if he's big and powerful and untouchable and can force people to do what he wants while mumbling something about freedom. He's one guy. Or possibly as many as eighteen guys, if you believe everything you read on the internet, but what he wants matters because it makes him a threat, not because it's right and proper for him to win every argument he ever gets into with no vote and ten minutes of proxy negotiation with an underling that ends when his representative gets bored and teleports away without so much as a 'can I speak to your manager'. Scared people on Mars are in the hundreds of millions. They're not panicking over nothing. I want every damn person from Oerth to get it through their heads that releasing a bunch of criminal daeva and then making demands is a terrorist action, and if the gods don't know how to apologize and set a frame where they're making amends, then their human lackeys at least ought to figure it out."

"I think that if Raafi didn't understand that this was serious he wouldn't have come in the first place."