For a man he was thoughtful.
"I'm a scout," he said. "I don't know that I chose it as a way of life. I was born into the Solar Federation and I was born male and I grew up healthy and stable and as patriotic as any reasonable person can be expected to be. When war came I was drafted. I volunteered for scouting because the rest of it is dull. War is dull. It is unimaginably dull."
"Then why," Juba asked, for she was amazed at this, "do you fight wars?"
Again he laughed. Is there anything these men don't laugh at? "That's the riddle of the sphinx."
That is not the riddle of the sphinx, but Juba did not correct him.
"When you're attacked," he went on, "you fight back."
"It could not possibly," Juba said, "be as simple as you make it sound."
"Of course, it isn't," he said, and he took two square sheets that looked like papyrus, and put them each in a bowl. "There is the question of what you did, or did not do, that you should be attacked."
"And what did you do, or not do, that you should be attacked?"
He was pouring a bluish-looking milk over the papyrus thing. His hands were too large for everything he handled, and Juba wondered, if his hand were on her wrist, if he could crush it. Or, being able to crush it, if he would take care not to.