“Lit-ta, quargs surrender to us. Rarely, but surrender. They behave reasonably, they don’t try to escape, they don’t attack the guards, they may even answer simple questions that do not concern the war or their home, they can work, keep order among their own, but they never answer any questions about war, their social structure, their economy, their industry, or anything except the simplest questions. We’ve tried force and chemistry and psychological breaking. It all works, but as soon as the quarg decides to talk, he dies. Now I see why. But now you and your skills are on the stage. Tell me, can you get the quarg’s block down before the death order goes off, if he doesn’t know that it’s you and that he’s in danger?”

“It’sss verrry complicated… He ssshould be consciousss. Procccedure rrrequiresss prrreparrration. He will sssee… feel and die.”

“And if he’s convinced until the last minute that everything is normal, that there’s only people around, who can’t get the block down and don’t even know it exists? Because the quargs we’ve captured don’t know we’ve met yet.”

“I have to think, Rrrearrr Admirrral,” Lit-ta nodded her head, “What’sss important to me rrright now isss the negotiationsss you’rrre taking me to. I can’t be too distrrracted. But you asssked me an interrresssting question. I’ll contact you afterrrwardsss, wait.”

* * *

Inga and I returned to Earth just as the negotiations with the lizards were coming to an end. Our diplomats have achieved impressive success, which, in general, was not surprising, because the upsides for both parties of our meeting with the lizards were immeasurably greater than the downsides.

Tobolsky was so pleased with the results of the work of the diplomats that he decided to meet Lit-ta personally, which he had not originally planned, as the Federation President should have met with the leader of the Allied state, but this was a very unusual case.

Of course, the meeting was not called negotiations, but a reception, which somewhat mitigated the unequal status of the parties, but the essence of it did not change. The delegation of lizards was transported with their ship to the Solar System and invited to the Presidential Palace. The official part of the meeting was broadcast online and, as was customary, it was not without solemn speeches.

Tobolsky said nothing new to me in his speech, he praised the courage of the lizards and talked a lot about «fruitful cooperation», «broad prospects», «joint efforts» and other «shoulder to shoulder». And Lit-ta turned out to be one hell of a thing. She, of course, also said the words that corresponded to the moment, but then went on much less formally:

“Ourrr people rrrememberrr theirrr historrry. And thisss historrry does not contain warrrs. We have alwaysss rrresolved ourrr differrrencesss peacefully, through negotiationsss and mutual concessionsss. We have been taught to fight by quargsss who arrre utterrrly incapable of negotiationsss. I had plenty of time asss a guessst on board Rrrearrr Admirrral Lavroff’s ssship, and with hisss help I was able to get a look at the hissstorrry of humansss. You fought a lot, but then you found the ssstrength to ssstop arrrmed conflictsss and unite. The sssame quargsss made you rrrememberrr your passst. I have no doubt that thisss warrr will rrresult in our common victorrry. I’ve ssseen enough to know it for sssurrre. But after victorrry comesss a new time when our peoplesss will have to live together among the starrrsss. It will be a tessst of our frrriendship, because differrrences between us are certain to arrrissse, it is inevitable. But I am convinced that the orrriginal peaccce-loving nature of ourrr people and the corrrrect assessment of your historrrical experrrience by you will enable usss to preserve peaccce forever.”

That was a very good speech, if you ask me. In ordinary language, it would sound something like this: “Dear Allies, we are delighted to meet you, and we are prepared to do our utmost to work together to defeat our evil enemies, but keep in mind that we can look forward, and do not think that after victory you can dictate your terms to us by force.”

Lit-ta did not want to finish her speech on such a note, and suddenly for me continued:

“Our meeting took place in battle. And it happened that 35 people werrre killed by our weaponsss. It took usss a while to figurrre out who was frrriend and who wasss enemy. But your sssoldiers didn’t fire a sssingle shot back. We thank the people for their ssself-rrrestrain and patience. We regret the loss of the worthy fighters,” Lit-ta took a little break and rocked her body, changing the position of the tail on which she rested, like on another leg, “I wish to exprrressss my grrratitude to the commanderrr of these men, whose ssskill prrrevented our firssst meeting frrrom becoming the last one. Our people will alwaysss welcome Rrrearrr Admirrral Lavroff among usss.”

It was a ritual phrase. I knew that from our previous conversations with Lit-ta, but its exact meaning was not entirely clear to me, and the lizards’ leader clearly attached great importance to her statement. I suspected that in the future this story had every chance of getting the most unexpected development.

* * *

Lit-ta’s call caught me in my office. After Inga and I got back from Barnard-3, the Department of New Equipment and Armaments of the Ministry of Defence was in chaos for the third day. Well, the boss wasn’t at his desk for a month and a half…

“Igorrr, good time!” said Lit-ta from the tablet screen, showing me her split tongue, which in some cases meant smiling, but I still haven’t figured out the subtleties of their facial expressions.

“Good time, Lit-ta,” I replied, and with a hand gesture made it clear to the staff that the meeting was temporarily postponed, “Are you satisfied with the outcome of the negotiations?”

“I got what I came here forrr,” the lizards’ leader said, without going into the details, “There will be otherrrsss worrrking with people. I’m not a diplomat, I’m a goverrrnorrr-generrral, and I need to get back to my ssstarrr syssstem and rrrepair the damage. But I rrremember our converrrsssation about captivesss, Rrrearrr Admirrral. I had the time to think. What you asssked me might work. It’sss important, and I’m willing to ssspend my time worrrking with the quarrrgsss, but not more than two weeksss of your time.”

I had to drop everything and tackle a new issue again, but it was worth it.

The question of what to do with the captured quargs arose almost immediately after the outbreak of the war. As soon as the intelligence services lost interest in them because of their utter uselessness as a source of information, the problem of housing and holding prisoners was transferred to the service of the rear, headed by the very active General Barrington. The unpleasant fact that the quargs do not live in captivity for more than ten years was not known at the time. Regardless of their living conditions, they died from the failure of all systems of the body, caused by completely ambiguous causes. Barrington was faced with the question of what to do with this pool of freeloaders, already quite numerous and growing, who consume the resources of the belligerent state and will consume them beyond a very uncertain time.

In captivity, the quargs behaved very well, even surprisingly. Therefore, Barrington settled the matter quite radically. In the Kruger 60 binary star system, there was a suitable planet moving in an intricate orbit around two red dwarfs, one of which flares up every eight minutes, doubling its luminosity. The value of this celestial body was highly questionable, and it would have deserved the definition of a «worthless boulder», but from this it was saved by a rather large but very scattered deposit of Americium, which was a rare, moderately radioactive metal, and was highly sought after by the Federation economy. The colonization of the planet for the extraction of Americium by industrial methods was considered to be economically impractical, and the planet was forgotten by people who didn’t even bother to name it. But then General Barrington showed up and it was about the use of manpower, which was not just free, but in fact had a negative value, that is, it received subsidies for its maintenance and guarding from the Ministry of Defence. In this scenario, the economic indicators suddenly became quite positive, and the Earth Federation had its first quarg colony.

Barrington did not create unbearable living conditions for the captured enemies. The standard artificial sun has warmed the planet with its gentle thermonuclear rays, the gravitational corrector has normalized the gravitational force, atmospheric generators wrapped the stone ball in an air coat, and then… Barrington then handed it over to the quargs themselves. Humans brought to the planet food for the nearest future, mining equipment for the development of scattered deposits, modular structures for housing construction and public buildings and a minimally needed set of industrial blocks to build the city’s primary infrastructure. The new residents of the colony have been told a very simple rule of life: you give us Americium, and we give you everything you ask, well, except… you know…

That was a very productive idea. Among other things, it made it possible to observe the quargs in the natural, so to say, conditions of existence. Security didn’t go on the planet, humans could only be found at a few locations where the quargs could exchange for Americium the goods they needed. Other than that, the prisoners managed on their own. They quickly created some kind of settlement with their administration and even the police, as crime among them was as common as among people.

Three years later, it became clear that the model had worked. The quarg police were even allowed to purchase hand-held weapons and order light armored suits. This step was taken after several major clashes between criminal elements and forces of order were observed from orbit, and those clashes led to mass fights in which the police had no advantage over criminals. Barrington decided that it was easier to arm the quargs themselves with light weapons than to take charge of maintaining order in the colony, and he was quite right. In any event, there were no further major disturbances.

And now Lit-ta and I have arrived at this colony. To Kruger 60 we were delivered by cruiser Moscow, kindly assigned to me from the Fifth Strike Fleet by Admiral Nelson. The lizards’ leader brought along five of the congeners who were in charge of the science and engineering part of the operation, I understand.

“Igorrr,” told me Lit-ta, “It isss highly desirrrable that the quarrrg you brrring me have lived here forrr about ten yearsss. If he diesss, it doesn’t matter, the block in his brrrain will kill him sssoon enough.”

“Why is it so?”

“We don’t know. Maybe the block needsss to be updated perrriodically, otherwissse it’sss killing the host. But we don’t know why they did it.”

“Lit-ta, how long does it take your assistants to grow a cocoon to remove the block?”

“About three hourrrsss.”

“In that time, I will select ten candidates. We’ll get them all to the cruiser together and politely explain that we want to do a full medical diagnostic of their organisms to try and figure out the causes of their deaths in captivity. Many of them have already undergone such procedures. They usually acquiesce in silence and tolerate tests. This time, we’re going to put them in a full diagnostic capsule designed specifically for their bodies. The first five prisoners will undergo the normal procedure in front of each other. They’ll see another patient lie in the capsule, it closes and after a while releases it back alive and well. Except the capsules will be different all the time, and in the fifth capsule, instead of our stuffing, there will be your cocoon. Your men… I’m sorry, but what do I call you to make you comfortable?”

“You can sssay «yourrr lizzzarrrdsss». Sssoundsss good, we apprrreciate,” responded Lit-ta, showing me her split tongue.

“Great. So, can your lizards make it to be as close as possible to the inside of our capsules?”

“That’sss trrricky, but we have to trrry. Otherwissse, it’sss not gonna work.”

“The main thing is that there’s a resemblance. When the outer shell of the capsule is closed, the light will go out, and then do whatever you want, but without any sudden movement.”

“We need accessss to the occipital part of their skull and to the ssspine. There will be attached ssseveral…” Litta thought, looking for a word, “prrrobesss, most likely. They’re sssuch sssoft extensionsss.”

“Very well. We have a lot of stuff in the capsules, too, and these things touch the head and the back during the examination. We’ll just make special holes for your probes, and leave the rest of the capsule inside as it was. There won’t be seen any difference. ”

“I’m ssstarrrting,” Lit-ta nodded in a perfectly human motion and turned to her aides.

* * *

The first five quargs passed the standard procedure of examination impassively as usual. They were used to comply with the orders of people, knowing that no one is intentionally harming them, but if they resist, there can be complications.

The sixth prisoner, who looked very similar, like all of them, to a zombie from the grave, but neat and moving normally, unlike this popular horror hero, calmly approached the capsule indicated to him and stepped into the niche behind the doors slid open. The doors closed, and the capsule slowly took up a horizontal position. Nothing unusual happened for five minutes, and then the capsule shook, and the medical diagnostic devices that we didn’t dismantle to provide the procedure some extra credibility gave us a warning.

We urgently stopped the process of «examination», but it was too late, the prisoner died.

“It’sss a classsic death when a block goesss off,” said Lit-ta behind my back, “We haven’t considered sssomething, Igorrr. We have to trrry again.”

Our attempts cost the lives of three more quargs. We changed the terms each time. We’ve even made a complete analogue of lizard cocoon probes from our terrestrial polymer materials and we did a «checkup» of another prisoner first on this simulator. He survived, but when he tried to repeat the procedure with a real cocoon, he died, just like all the others. The only condition we knowingly did not change was the length of the quargs’ captivity. Neither I nor Lit-tа wanted to experiment with prisoners who still have a few years to live. I mean, they’re enemies, but right now, they’re not dangerous and they’re perfectly law-abiding, so it’s better to risk those who are about to die, ’cause if our method works, they’ll have a chance at a normal life for years to come.

“We’rrre making a little bit of a missstake sssomewherrre,” told me Lit-ta while making nervous movements with the tail from which the cruiser officers tried to stay away. ’Cause trampling a high-ranking ally’s tail is, you know, not so good, it’s fraught with diplomatic complications.

“In the latter cassse, we werrre closssest to the target. The block was about to disssintegrrrate, but that’s when the death orrrder went off.”

“Do they feel anything when the block starts to disintegrate?”

“We don’t know. Anyway, it’sss a very sssubtle feeling, almost imperrrccceptible.”

“Can we dull it with something? Like pain?”

“Only the pain ssshould not be too sssevere. I need the patient’sss clearrr consciousssnesss.”

“The pain won’t be strong, but it’ll be throbbing in a jagged rhythm, distracting.”

“Okay. Let’sss trrry it.”

This time our legend for the quargs has changed. We didn’t talk about checkups to find a way to prevent their sudden deaths in captivity, it could put patients on their guard and make them subconsciously listen to life-threatening feelings. We told another batch of test subjects that we’re selecting candidates for resettlement in another colony where living standards are higher, but health requirements are stricter, because the hard work there required certain physique. The prisoners were not very enthusiastic about this information, because they knew that they had at best a few months left to live and that there was no point in changing anything in life, but they agreed to be examined without objection, as a matter of habit, even when we gave them honest warning that there might be pain.

A sixth prisoner entered the capsule as in all previous trials. The first test we did with the dummy probes in order the quarg to get used to the sensations and not twitch. Then the session was repeated with real probes released by the cocoon of lizards. In the fifth minute, the medical complex triggered the alarm, but not in the way it did when a patient died. The quarg was bad, very bad and painful, but he didn’t die, and the resuscitation module, which was automatically activated, called out for help from people, because it couldn’t decide what to do in an unfamiliar situation.

The prisoner survived.