"Because we're not a group of aliens," she said calmly. "Because this planet is our planet, everybody on it is an Aurelian. And so are you!"
"You expect me to believe that?"
"It's true!" she blazed. "But you've been conditioned! You believe everything the Thuscans tell you and you've never questioned it. Now it's time somebody told you the truth!"
She leaned closer to him and he caught a trace of faint perfume. "This whole world could go up in smoke, Martin, and it actually wouldn't be important. Not to the Thuscans and not to my own people. You know why? Because it's a sidelight! An unimportant little skirmish in a battle your mind couldn't even conceive of!"
"You're lying," he said, without conviction.
She walked to the window and gestured outside.
"This Earth—it's not the home of the human race, Martin. It's a colony planet—colonized thousands of years ago, like a hundred other systems. For the last fifty thousand years, Aurelia has expanded throughout the galaxy. We don't keep contact with all the planets we've colonized—we can't. Our mission was to sow the human race far and wide and let them develope as they would.
"That was a mistake." She walked back to the desk. "Eventually we ran into the Thuscans—your so-beloved friends, Martin! They were expanding too, towards us. We had to fall back to try and defend our primitive little colony planets. And that wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all."
Her face clouded and the look of sadness deepened.