The Crucible of Empire (53 page)

"We must do as we have always done," Jihan said. "No matter what you say on this matter, the Eldests will not listen."

Tully's eyes glittered. "We will see," he said, then jerked to his feet.

Caitlin and Jihan watched as he stalked out of the Application Chamber into the back of the old house. The boards creaked with his every step.

"I do not understand his urgency," Jihan said, gazing after him. "Perhaps I need to watch the recordings again and further improve my grasp of your Jao language."

"That will not help," Caitlin said. "You speak Jao very well already, and, in truth, the Jao would probably agree with you about abandoning the
dochaya
. This is an entirely human matter."

Tully grabbed his coat off his bed, if the uncomfortable wooden platform could be graced by such a designation, back in the sleeping quarters. He felt like steam must be pouring out of his ears. He couldn't believe that Wrot had made them come all this way and fight five sodding Ekhat ships just to save the hides of a bunch of aliens who were fully prepared to jettison over half their population because they had lost out in a stupid teenage popularity contest!

He slipped out one of the back doors into the frosty midmorning air, unwilling to encounter Jihan again until he had calmed down. She was what she had been raised to be, what her culture had made her. It was not her fault and arguing with her would do no good. Caitlin had been right to shut him up. It was the Han and all those blasted Eldests who had control of this situation.

But—he had three ships full of assault troops, each and every one of which had a gun and knew how to use it. The Lleix obviously possessed shipboard weapons because they had fought the Ekhat in the same battle that had destroyed the Krant ships, but so far, he hadn't seen a single hand weapon in any of the
elian
-houses or openly carried in the city by a Lleix. He hadn't even seen so much as a lock on a door. That blasted code of
sensho
had such a grip on the Lleix, he doubted whether these people had any sort of police force at all.

He made up his mind. When the time came to load the ships, then he and his jinau troops would just round up the
dochaya
, too. Who cared what the Eldests wanted? They were just a bunch of hidebound old farts who couldn't see past the ends of their noses. He wasn't going to hang around begging their permission to do the right thing!

The only person he really had to convince was Wrot and that meant he would have to get past the stubborn Jao precept that everything and everyone had to be "of use." The
dochaya
residents weren't useless, though. They were very hard-working, given the opportunity. He just had to make Wrot see that.

The bushes next to the
elian
-house rustled, then a small silver face appeared, gazing at him with narrow black eyes. The Lleix was wearing the gray shift of an unassigned. "Inside." Tully pointed back at the house. "Much work," he said, "inside."

"No, no," the Lleix said in heavily accented Jao. "Not work." It gazed at him hungrily. "Words."

It had obviously been soaking up Jao over the last few days like Pyr and Jihan. "What words?" he said.

It closed its eyes and concentrated. "We believe—that all are—born with the—same opportunities," the Lleix said in halting Jao, obviously producing the words from memory.

Footsteps padded closer and three more just like it in dress and stature appeared. "It—is up to the—individual to make of himself—as much as possible," a second unassigned said. Then a third piped up and the two finished in unison. "Anyone can—advance if he—is willing to work hard—and learn."

Tully had said that to Pyr earlier that morning, when the youth had been snubbed by one of his fellow Lleix. What an ear these people had. "Those are my words," he said slowly. "Do you understand them?"

"Pyr explain," the first one said. The four of them gazed at Tully with that same hungry expression. "We very much interested."

"I am going to the
dochaya
," Tully said. "Come with me. We will talk along the way." He shoved his hands into his pockets, shivering as the Valeron wind gusted down off the mountains.

"Let me see," he said, "if I can explain the concept of inalienable rights."

The unassigned flocked to Tully as he passed and he spent the rest of the day in the dreadful
dochaya
. Very few could speak some Jao, though he was still amazed that any of them did. It seemed they traded the alien words among them with the fervent fascination of human children trading baseball cards.

He entered the first barracks he encountered. The interior of the low building was dim, lit only by tiny windows near the ceiling to admit the gray winter sunlight, furnished with nothing but row upon row of sleeping platforms. He sat on one, wrinkling his nose against the musty smell, and spoke to them in English until he was hoarse. They seemed to acquire language much as an infant did, needing only exposure and repetition, so he gave them as much as he could. If they were going to Earth, English would do them more good than Jao.

He talked about the probable upcoming evacuation and how all Lleix deserved to leave, not just the
elian
. He talked about human history and the theory of advancement by individual effort and hard work, not just social connections. He recited the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as least as much as he could remember, and made up the rest. He recounted the Revolutionary War. He had to restrain himself from depicting the valiant struggle against the Jao conquest and the tenacious resistance thereafter.

The four servants who had accompanied him from the jinau's appropriated
elian
-house sat on their haunches at his feet and stared up into his face with rapt black eyes. More and more Lleix crowded into the building until finally it was so stuffy he couldn't breathe and retreated back outside. The Lleix scrambled after him, murmuring random phrases to one another in English.

Stiff and cramped, he stretched and saw that the sun was low in the west, red-tinged, about to disappear behind the mountains and realized he had been here all day. His stomach rumbled. He was monstrously hungry and thirsty.

"I must go back," he said hoarsely to the silver faces and their dancing coronas, which were always in motion.

They stiffened in alarm. "No go!" one said and then the words were echoed throughout the ranks. "No go! Speak more English!"

He rubbed a weary hand over his face and felt stubble. In his bad mood that morning, he'd forgotten to shave. He needed a bath, even if it was only with a basin of cold water. "I have work of my own to do."

They stared at him silently then. Work was something they understood and respected.

"Come back?" a tiny Lleix said finally.

"Tomorrow," Tully said. "I will come back tomorrow. Until then, practice your English with one another. Learn all that you can."

"Learn very much best!" one of the original four said. None of them had left his side the entire day. They must be hungry and thirsty too, he thought.

The Lleix was just about his height, so was probably still quite young. "How are you called?" he said.

"This one Lim," it said.

"Are you male or female?" he asked.

The narrow black eyes blinked. Lim did not answer.

Tully sighed. Words, words, words, they all needed more words. "Tomorrow, Lim. We'll find out tomorrow."

He set off toward the
elian
-house district, huddled into his coat against the chill wind, then pulled his com out of his coat pocket. It was in the Off position. Damn. They'd probably been looking for him all day. If one of his officers had been that careless, he'd have had his ears for breakfast and he could just imagine what Yaut would have done. He keyed it on, then punched in a code. "Miller? How are things going?"

The com crackled. "Major? Thank God. We thought maybe you'd fallen down a hole somewhere."

A rabbit hole, maybe. Like Alice. This place seemed almost as bizarre as the realm of the Red Queen. "I've just been out of touch. Any problems?"

"Minor stuff," Miller said. "Nothing we couldn't handle."

"I'll be at the Jaolore
elian
-house in ten," he said. "Meet me there."

"Will do." The com crackled off.

The Lleix needed more words, he thought as he strode along in the chilly air. And soldiers loved to talk. He'd bring a handful who didn't have anything better to do with him tomorrow and station one in each of the
dochaya
barracks. Forget Jao. By the time the
Lexington
returned, he'd have the whole damn place reciting the Bill of Rights in English.

Caitlin thought Tully looked tired, but oddly exhilarated, when he finally turned up at the Jaolore
elian
-house and announced he was starving. "Where have you been all day?" she said, handing him a rations bar out of her pack. "Mallu has been trying to contact you for hours."

"I've been at the
dochaya
," he said, sinking onto a bench in the front room, then biting into the fruit and nut bar. He chewed for a moment. "What did he want?"

She frowned. "He wouldn't say. I'm not one of your jinau, so he told me it would be of no use for me to know."

"Ah, that old excuse," Tully said. "Jao always say that when they mean it's none of your business."

"If I'm Queen of the Universe," she said with a sniff, "everything is my business."

"I don't know how much longer we'll have to keep that up," he said. "The
Lexington
is bound to come back soon."

"I'm rather getting to like it," she said, though that wasn't the least bit true. "How long do you think it will take Ed to get used to calling me 'Your Highness?' "

He took another bite. "Remind me not to be there for that one."

The door opened, admitting a gust of frigid air along with Krant-Captain Mallu. Dried leaves skirled through in his wake. She suspected a storm was brewing up in the mountains. The big Jao flicked an ear at Tully in
acknowledgment-of-rank
. "
Vaish
." I-see-you.

Tully nodded. "
Vaist
," he said, in the superior-to-inferior mode.
You see me.
"How did the work on the Lleix ships go?"

"Surprisingly well," Mallu said. "Most of what was needed was beyond my skill, but Senior-Tech Kaln is still there, fiddling with the mechanics of their jump-drive."

"Are their ships space-worthy?" Caitlin asked.

Mallu glanced at her, plainly startled that she had inserted herself into the conversation. Silence stretched out.

"Caitlin Kralik is second only to Wrot's authority on this mission," Tully said. He stood and assumed a stiff, very military stance, shoulders braced, head high, communicating with his body in a way he was sure would make an impression upon the Jao. "You have not been present at all the planning sessions, so you may not have perceived her rank. Terra's Governor, Aille krinnu ava Terra, has every confidence in her judgement, as well as Preceptor Ronz of the Bond. You will heed her orders as you would Wrot's, Ronz's, or mine."

"Their ships?" Caitlin repeated pleasantly, as though there had been no dispute, letting her arms and upper body fall into the graceful curves of
respectful-inquiry
.

"The situation is alarming," Mallu said. His lines had now gone pretty much
neutral
, as though he didn't know what to think. "Their vessels are very old and few of them presently function. Kaln believes that most would not complete a jump, even if they could take off from this world and make it into position to try, which is doubtful."

"Then this will be their Last-of-Days," she murmured, "unless we do something."

"They have been hiding here a long time," Mallu said, "and this world is resource poor. They cannot mine the metals they need to fashion replacement parts or construct new ships."

"So they pruned their trees," she said, thinking of the vast parklike city, "and dug their winding little streams, built ornamental bridges, carved faces in their houses, decorated their clothes—and waited for the Ekhat to come and kill them."

"That pretty much sums it up," Tully said in English. "Don't forget to toss in consigning the majority of their population to a lifetime of misery in the
dochaya.
Nice picture, isn't it? They make the Jao look almost kindly, as hard as that is to imagine."

That night, the winds howled down off the mountains, shaking the
dochaya
-houses, but Lim was too excited to huddle with her fellow unassigned and sleep. The human had spent the entire day talking to them and it had not taken very long before they began to understand. First, just a word here and there in the stream of sounds, then several together, like pieces fitting together in one of the puzzles from the Children's Court before they had been cast out.