"...it has been a complete disaster and thousands of people are dead."

"I am really unclear on how much you people even care about that. Does that figure count the kid you murdered?"

"I - I didn't -"

Sigh. "Possibly don't introduce me to whoever did."

"Do you mean the executioner or the people who do sentencing -"

"Sentencing. If I got angry at people for being cogs in this nightmare apparatus you have going I'd just be mad at everyone whose hair wasn't red."

"Reds would've handled the body," remarks Davar.

"In civilized societies any death is avoided at almost any cost."

"This is only going to exacerbate the skills problem if you run off with a bunch of undertakers," Davar says.

"I could off my personal allowance support a hundred of you for ten local years and Nelyo can spend the state's money which is a million times that."

"...if that's really something you wanna do," says Davar. "People might get restless about being useless..."

"Yeah, I don't know that that's the best thing to do, but whatever we do will improve on that."

Nod.

"Anyway," he says, "who should I meet."

"Governor Riado, I think," says Savo.

"Okay."

Back up the elevator they go. Here is Governor Riado's office. "Governor, this is Prince Morifinwë..."

"One of the aliens?" says Riado.

"Yes. I regret that we did not have the chance to meet sooner."

"I'll say, everyone thinks you're going to help the Tapai conquer us. I take it that's not the case? Or Savo has another idea -"

Savo winces.

"We are endeavoring to bribe the Tapai into abandoning this war; we have quite a lot to bribe them with, and more on the way, and we very dearly hope that we need not resort to any other means to make apparent our displeasure with petty internal wars. We can't teach a society to travel between stars if they hold life so lightly as to send their children off to die in territory disputes, you see."

"The greys get restless if they haven't got anybody to shoot at," says Riado. "Bribe away, though."

"Yes, that's among the barriers to welcoming you to the galaxy. A permanent class of people whose job is to kill people makes it hard to envision the transition to peaceful members of society. But I'm optimistic we can come up with something. Maybe they can all be athletes."

"The veterans who come home are usually cops, security guards, that sort of thing," volunteers Savo.

"There you go, we'll come up with something. Or they can shoot at Melkor, he might think it's funny."

"Anyway, please, bribe them, get them out of our territory."