"Has Bailey been ok to you?" She watched him intently, almost the way Father observed everything. She must know some involuntary drell reactions—she reads Father's subtleties too well.

"He's been good to me. Professional, but he's been better to me than I expected."

She smiled. "Good. I was a little worried, but I get the feeling he's taken you under his wing."

"Worried? Why?"

"He just never seemed comfortable with non-humans is all. But I think he likes you a lot anyway. He wrote to me about you, how he had you helping some of the poor children around the station…"

"Bailey's got me working in a program he set up for human kids."

And only human kids. Humans looked out for other humans all too well in Zakera from what he'd seen. He still couldn't think of Bailey as a bigot, since he treated his turian and asari constables the same way he treated the humans who worked under him. Everyone who worked with him was part of his squad, his people, and he'd protect any of them to the death if he had to. He'd give them advice, wanted or unwanted, whether they came to him looking for it or not. And he had to bug me about Father. Right or wrong, he had to push.

"Do you like it?" She watched him again with that same kind of half-eerie focus.

"They're almost too smart for their own good, even if some don't show it at first. I've never seen so much energy. They run all over the place, spouting off stories, lies and the truth all in the same breath, almost like they don't know what's real and what isn't. Well, most of them. Others are quiet and like to read the books we've scrounged them. All of them like to draw and color. That makes even the rowdiest of them quiet down."

Father watched him with Ellen's focus, though she'd softened a little and grinned.

"Kids are a riot, aren't they? I get the feeling, though, that drell children are different."

"Siha, young drell have perfect recall, so any lying on their part is done with full awareness. Kolyat seemed as imaginative as the human children I've encountered, though he never confused reality with the truth of memory."

"I just remember when I was a kid that my imagination was every bit as real as, well, everything you could touch. Sometimes I liked my imagination better. You said the program's for human children, though. No other kids?"

"Bailey claims it's because humans are the 'newcomers' and haven't established themselves on Zakera yet. 'We haven't had the chance to make our own institutions yet,' he says, 'like the turians or the asari. We're still not welcome here, and the aliens do everything they can to rub it in our faces.'"

"Well, the turians…" Ellen said and then trailed off as Father shot her a look. "Never mind. Heard anything about our old friend, Talid?"

What was she going to say? Father always tried to intervene at the weirdest times. And the most irritating ones as well. He gritted his teeth and stared at his plate.

"He lost the election."

"Thank God!" She made that strange motion over her chest and then flushed as she stared down at her plate.

"I suppose he never spoke differently of humans after two of them were instrumental in saving his life," Father said.

"That's why he lost. Someone made sure that C-Sec footage of the incident was released to his opponent."

"Bailey," Ellen said, and snickered. "Shame Talid never backed down from his hatred, but…"

"I can't say if it was Bailey or not. But it probably was, or someone he slipped the recording to."

"Never underestimate humans," Father said. "I find that most of them surprise me at the strangest of times."

"Humans seem all right as far as I can tell. I don't have any real problems with them, so I'm not sure why Talid would."

Ellen stirred her greens again. "A few reasons, the same way a lot of humans aren't so fond of turians. No one ever says what the real reason is, no matter how much you hear all the usual complaints."

Might as well come out and say it. "I've heard you didn't think much of aliens."

"'Didn't' pretty much sums it up. Guess you could say I wasn't that different from Talid not that long ago."

"Then you know what the real reason is for Talid's bigotry."

"Yeah." She smashed a chunk of tuber with her fork and squished it a few times.

She was going to make him ask. Too much like Father again. "And what's the reason?"

"You're just like Thane!" She grinned and squeezed Father's hand. "Just as persistent. Relentless, even."

He mustered all his annoyance and did his best to glare at her.

"It's easy."

"I don't get you."

"Bigotry is easy. You just look at things and people who are different from you, and instead of using your brain to overcome your fear, you just give in to it. Talid probably hates us for kicking turian tail and because a human sacrificed the Council. A lot of humans hate turians because they tried to turn Shanxi to rubble instead of trying to talk to us. Then there was the Council that treated us and every other non-Council species as inferiors. Add in the batarians who enslaved and killed so many humans, and it was a hell of a lot easier for me to hate 'aliens' instead of the criminals and butchers who tried to kill us. Luckily my own wake-up call was a lot less painful than Talid's."

"You still hate batarians?"

"Nah, not really. I hate their government, their culture, that damned caste system that enslaves the people. Most of the batarians I met on Omega seemed basically decent, just like anyone else you'd run into anywhere. Well, aside from that fucking bartender that poisoned me. But he's dead, so it doesn't really matter."

"You killed him?" Father asked.

"No. Another customer did." Her voice dropped. "I might have had something to do with it, though."

"How do you hate a culture, but not the people? That doesn't make sense."

"Doesn't it? I can't stand the whole concept of turian hierarchy. People are equal, and their society shouldn't assign them ranks. They should be allowed to do whatever they want to if it doesn't harm others. Still, most turians are okay in my books if they don't have a chip on their shoulder about humans. Hate the system, not the people who are subject to it and indoctrinated to accept it."

"Politicians are worthless, Siha? You have said as much more than once."

She smiled.

"Do you have a problem with human government?"

"Well, it's about the best we can do, but, yeah. The Alliance definitely has its faults, especially in abandoning human colonies. It's inefficient and bureaucratic as all hell. But at least every human citizen has a vote, which is far more than I can say for Council aristocracy."

"Even with humans mostly in charge?"

"Especially now. We should know better, but we don't."

Father's smile seemed far too placid for the madness coming out of Ellen's mouth. Without law, without government… And yet, he'd picked up a gun to shoot a politician. Maybe she's not so wrong.

"Why should humans 'know better?'"

"Earth has been an experimental lab for just about every kind of economic system, government system, and social system you see in the galaxy now. Aristocracy doesn't work—it just results in blindness. Having the Council in human hands hasn't fixed anything."

"You sound very human, Siha."

"Ahem." She chewed on a chunk of tuber with her lips curled a little at the corners.

"You have an interesting perspective on things, Ellen."

"Don't listen too hard to my anti-government bullshit. I'm just a soldier." She snorted and her lips twisted up at one corner.

"And soldiers fight to defend their people's governments," Father said.

At that she grinned. "Irony. For me, it's a lifestyle."