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Chapter 42

Now. The moment was now. Flow strengthened, summoning Aille across the base to the landing field with its flock of ships. It was strange to be surrounded by so many different kochan, he thought, as he walked out to the meeting stage. During the entirety of his youth on Marit An, he had only known individuals born of Pluthrak and its associated submoieties. On all sides, eyes, bright-green with curiosity, tracked him like targeting mechanisms, and whispers closed behind him like a wake. Flow surged and he felt how matters rushed to their conclusion. He tightened his perception, giving him time to consider each placement of his foot, each flick of a whisker. So much scrutiny required his carriage to be flawless.

A number of minor kochan had been represented, along with Narvo and its subsidiaries, throughout the expeditionary forces on Terra. But the Bond pulled members from all of the kochan. Aille wished he could sit down and speak with the elders who had come to tease apart the tangles in this dilemma, especially the Preceptor. Their accumulated wisdom must be great indeed.

Dau krinnu ava Pluthrak and Yaut preceded him across the field, allowing him status, for perhaps the last time. They really should not. Having become kroudh, he was not entitled to their regard, but they would not yield to his arguments and so he let them have their way.

Occupying the central-most portion of the landing field in a loose ring, the Bond of Ebezon ships were of a black alloy imbued with a rainbow hue that shimmered in the fading sunlight. Their members, the Harriers, were harnessed in gleaming black, which complemented their enigmatic eyes. Their bodies were beautifully neutral, neither curious, distracted, angry nor accusing.

Bond forces, under the loose direction of the Naukra Krith Ludh, outnumbered those of any single kochan except Narvo, Pluthrak and perhaps Dano. They possessed enough firepower to enforce whatever decisions would be made here on Terra. No kochan ever opposed their rulings once they had been formulated, much less rulings formulated in full Naukra assembly. It was shameful enough not to be able to forge association and solve one's own difficulties. How much worse then would it be to have compromise forced upon your kochan?

He'd heard creche tales of kochan so shamed by their failure to form association that their entire adult population had laid down their lives in order to end discord and allow the rest of the Jao to preserve alliance. Such incidents had been very rare, even in ancient times, and did not happen since the Naukra Krith Ludh had been formed. But the possibility was always there. Above all, Jao could never forget that the Ekhat, who had long ago made them for their own complicated reasons, now unmade them at every opportunity. Division among the kochan only allowed that grim ambition to be more easily achieved. The Jao had to fight together or die, and if they lost, the rest of sentient life in the universe would eventually die along with them.

Oppuk waited in the clearing, where the temporary tribunal had brought in black rocks of pleasing harmonics and placed them strategically to properly structure thought. They had been shaped by wind and wave and were curved so perfectly, there was not an edge anywhere on their gleaming ebony surfaces.

Within that boundary, he knew flow would be rich and smooth. Marit An had possessed such a circle. He had been allowed to experience it a few times, before achieving emergence and being assigned to Terra. He halted beyond the first outcropping and studied the configuration, trying to judge its influence before he submitted himself to it.

Dau and Yaut entered without looking back, then stood heartward, waiting, their ears already quieting, their eyes lulled.

They had arrived at the best portion of the local solar cycle, as the star's light subsided to a mellowness that did not overwhelm Jao eyes as the fullness of the day did. The Bond had gauged the flow well in convening the Naukra at this particular moment.

Off to the side, the green-gray ocean rolled toward the shore, its energies agitated by a storm cell hanging low and black on the horizon. The rising surf was white-capped, the air alive with spray. It would be difficult to put its potent invitation out of his mind and concentrate on the matters at hand.

He took a step toward the gleaming black rocks, which were as tall as his head, and felt the subtle pressure already building within. Flow at its finest. He already felt more at peace with what had to be accomplished.

Pluthrak, of course, was hoping to validate his actions here on Terra. This would allow Aille to take up his Pluthrak affiliation again, securing both his career and future, as well as bringing honor to his progenitors. Pluthrak was too subtle to seek outright oudh status over Terra, for that would be too humiliating for Narvo. They wished, instead, to use the crisis to finally force Narvo into proper association. The beginning of it, at least.

Narvo sought just the opposite, to prove Aille had been selfish and motivated only by kochan politics, that he had cared nothing for the welfare of his kind, but had only sought to make of himself a hero and Oppuk a fool, that it had been both a personal disagreement between the two of them of the basest sort and a move to increase the fortunes of Pluthrak. They would be willing, he was certain, to cede oudh status on Terra—but only at the price of Pluthrak suffering an equal humiliation. Which, of course, could only be Aille's punishment. If they had their way, he would be cut off from the solace of Pluthrak forever, shorn of any opportunity to enter a marriage-group and continue his career. Most likely, he would have to give up his life.

Neither outcome would be good for the Jao. The Pluthrak solution, in the long run, no more than the Narvo. They were still thinking in the old ways, Pluthrak no less than the others, as if traditional kochan relations encompassed all of a universe's wisdom. Aille had once thought so himself, but did no longer.

What he still failed to comprehend was whether the Bond understood. What was needed was not simply to develop association between the two most powerful of the Jao kochan, but to begin transforming association itself. Or the Jao, in the end, would come to resemble the Ekhat who had created them.

But how could he, barely emerged, bring the Jao to that realization? Aille was still looking for the answer, although he felt it, shimmering just beneath conscious recognition.

"Aille, formerly krinnu ava Pluthrak, now kroudh," a low voice summoned him from within the sleek circle.

He entered, feeling the carefully tuned energies shear around his body. Oppuk glowered as Aille took his place in the center, but his whiskers tingled, his ears flexed, even his blood sang as the flow of this configuration swept around him. It was as though the essence of water itself were here and he swam in a deep, cool sea which invigorated every cell in his body. Positive energy was building here. The Bond designers had done well.

He let it flow through him, sluice his worries and apprehensions away until he felt thoroughly purified. Without conscious intention, calm-acceptance now softened his angles and cleared the emotional sparkles of green from his eyes. He knew they must be as quiet as those of any Harrier present.

Oppuk looked out of place, his body clearly in the throes of angry-resentment. A number of Narvo elders flanked him, their vai camiti similar to his, but more balanced.

"It is forbidden," said the Preceptor who had called him inside the circle, "for one kochan to challenge another, once oudh status has been bestowed, Yet you seized control of this world against the lawful Governor, Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo." The black eyes, still as the depths of space, turned to him. "How will you defend your choices?"

"With my life," Aille said.

* * *

Yaut felt a surge of pride. It was quite proper to offer one's life to alleviate unintended damage, but he knew many here had not expected one so young to be willing. Therein lay the quality of Pluthrak, that even its most youthful scions understood the nature of vithrik and were willing to do what was right, no matter the cost.

The Preceptor regarded Aille and flow seemed to stand still. His entire body was devoid of extraneous expression, so that he seemed composed of tranquility itself. "So be it," he said at last, and Yaut felt how measured that response was, how carefully considered. "We will hear of those days, of your actions and of Oppuk's." He turned to the Narvo who stood on the other side of the vast circle. "Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo, are you also willing to surrender your life, if you are found at fault?"

Crude outrage suffused Oppuk's every line. "I have done nothing which should require my life! For over twenty orbital cycles, I have been stranded on this barbaric outpost, surrounded by incompetents and savages, and yet I have done all that was asked of me, even repelling the Ekhat when they did finally come. Where is the loss of vithrik in that?"

The Preceptor gazed at him. Again flow eased, so that even the wind, threading through the black rocks, seemed to stand still and an eternity passed between one breath and the next.

"He will." A female Narvo elder stepped forward and her eyes flashed. Her nap was pale-russet and her vai camiti stood out as though painted on with a bold hand. "Vithrik is the same for all, Pluthrak or Narvo. Oppuk will do whatever is deemed appropriate by the Naukra."

She had spoken for him, as though he were not even emerged. A current shivered through the watching crowd and all present felt Oppuk's hot shame.

Only the Harriers did not react, their bodies much more devoid of expression than a Terran's. With the natives, Yaut thought, one always knew they were thinking something, just not what. The Harriers, though, with their training, seemed to suppress all opinion.

"Summon those who witnessed the events in question, then."

Narvo, who had brought the complaint against Aille, would go first. Yaut thought Oppuk would be the primary witness, though he would have been wise to choose another. Kaul krinnu ava Dano, Commandant of all military forces in Terra's solar system, would have been ideal. But Dano had chosen to remain neutral, it seemed. Yaut did not see Kaul anywhere.

Apparently, he had gauged correctly. Oppuk stepped forward.

His posture was overbearing, an awkward combination of contempt mingled with disdain, too similar to perform well in tandem. "From the start, this Pluthrak would not listen to more experienced officers," he said. "He was counseled not to trust Terrans, that jinau soldiers were savage and unpredictable, requiring a firm hand. His response was to draft Terrans into his personal service at the earliest opportunity!"

Ears dipped as the crowd took this in, but the Harriers seemed unaffected.

"Then," Oppuk continued, "when Terrans went whining to him about having to scrap their outmoded tech, he conducted field tests to assuage their pride and argued they had a point!" He glowered at Aille. "He actually believes their addiction to ollnat is a strength!"

"But it did work, did it not?" The Preceptor seemed stillness itself, as though nothing exterior touched him.

"They lost half their ships!" Oppuk exploded, as though the words were being torn out of him. "And it will never work again. Next time, the Ekhat will expect their primitive tactics and be ready!"

"It is possible, of course, that the Ekhat ships sent a message back before being destroyed, regarding what they had encountered." The Preceptor turned black eyes to Aille. "What then?"

Aille found his lines gone to careful-consideration. "No single tactic, however effective, has to work forever. And I have found that human inventiveness coupled with Jao practicality is a very effective combination. We will devise something. Indeed, we have already begun working on it."

Oppuk turned to the assembled crowd of Naukra representatives. "Do you hear that? The crecheling is besotted with these creatures! He never stirs without one of them in attendance! He has at least twenty in his service by now!"

"Actually," Yaut said, "he has but four."

"Four out of how many?" Oppuk demanded, glaring at Aille. "How many Jao has he taken into his service?"

"Several," Aille said. He began to name them, but Oppuk interrupted.

"Perhaps Pluthrak has nothing to learn from other Jao!" Oppuk strode into the center and faced Aille. "Perhaps Pluthrak is more comfortable surrounded by worthless lifeforms!"

This was the long-standing aggression between Narvo and Pluthrak at its most blatant. Yaut could see how the naked demonstration pained the Narvo elder at Oppuk's back. It was shockingly bad manners, on display for all to see.

If only he could have instructed Aille how to handle a situation like this—he'd hoped to have more time, and he should have. Flow had not seemed so rapid, when they had first arrived on Terra.

Aille was still, his body magnificently loose and neutral. His eyes were so perfectly black that even Yaut, who knew him to possess superb control, was amazed.

To Yaut's surprise, another Jao suddenly spoke, stepping forward from behind another Naukra representative. "I have a question for Oppuk krinnu ava Narvo," he stated forcefully. "How many Jao does he have in his personal service? And if there are none—none left—what happened to them?"

To Yaut's even greater surprise, he saw that the Jao who had spoken was Wrot. The old bauta had left Pascagoula several solar cycles earlier, excusing himself from Aille's service temporarily in order to attend to what he called, vaguely, "my kochan's affairs."

Wrot bestowed a quick bow at Aille. "I am one of the young Pluthrak's personal service, as it happens. But I am speaking for my kochan here. I have been selected as their representative at the Naukra."

He turned back to Oppuk, and any pretense of politeness vanished. Blunt as always, to the point of coarseness, the old Hemm's posture was angry-contempt.

"Answer the question, Oppuk!" he commanded. "Where is your service?"

Oppuk seemed frozen, for a moment. When he spoke, his words came awkwardly. "My . . . fraghta left long ago. Too old and weary to serve any longer, she said."

Yaut saw the Narvo elders standing behind Oppuk shift their stance, uneasily. Clearly enough, Oppuk was not telling the truth—not all of it, at least.

Wrot was unrelenting. "I am not concerned about 'long ago.' You had a Jao in your personal service very recently. Ullwa is her name. Or rather—was her name."

The bowlegged old bauta advanced upon the much larger Oppuk, his ears flat, his whole body now shrieking furious-determination.

"Answer the question, you Narvo whelp! You—who boast of your Jao-ness. Where is Ullwa?"

Oppuk, involuntarily, stepped back a pace. "She—she is dead."

The stance of the Narvo elders now shifted again. Their unease was no longer disguised at all. Indeed, the eyes of the old female who led them—Nikau was her name—were shining green with suspicion.

Nikau now stepped forward. "Dead? How?"

Oppuk glanced back at her, then looked away. His stance shifted, exuding what he obviously meant to be firm-determination but was much closer to childish petulant-stubbornness. "She was hopelessly incompetent at her duties. I put her down."

A vast sigh swept through the Naukra assembly. Nikau, on the other hand, seemed frozen in place.

Wrot spoke again, quickly. "So. Now everyone knows. This is the truth of Oppuk's self-named 'firm rule.' He is a beast, nothing more—and treats his own Jao service as brutally as he has the humans placed under his charge."

The bauta pivoted, gracefully for his age, and pointed toward Aille's service. "Now I will show you, in contrast, how well Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak has trained his human service. Caitlin Stockwell, step forth."

Yaut glanced at Aille, wondering. But some subtlety in the youngster's stance made clear that he had not planned this with Wrot ahead of time. Aille, clearly enough, was as surprised as Yaut by Wrot's intervention.

Brilliant intervention, as it happened. The old bauta had skewered Oppuk—and now, Yaut was sure, would skewer him again.

Hopefully, Stockwell would survive.

* * *

Caitlin lowered her head and slipped off the blue fabric sling that supported her broken arm.

"Wait a minute," Kralik said urgently. "You're not anywhere near healed yet."

"I need both arms for this," she said, cradling her elbow with her good hand.

"I'm going with you," Kralik said.

"She must enter the circle alone," Yaut said, "if she is to speak."

Caitlin stepped forward, then stopped and pulled off the heeled shoes and dropped them. Behind her, she heard Ed's low chuckle, full of humor despite the strain of the moment.

She forced a smile from her own face, since the Jao new to Terra would misunderstand the expression. It wasn't easy. Like Ed, for reasons impossible to explain, pitching those shoes seemed like a transition; the end of one order, the beginning of something else entirely new.

* * *

The wind sang through Aille's whiskers as he waited. The air was rich with brine and spray, and hai tau, life-in-motion. Avians wheeled overhead, soaring low enough for him to pick out the elongated shape of their heads and the whiteness of their body coverings. This world was fascinating. He wanted to go back to the sea and follow another whale, perhaps even swim with it this time.

But duty lay elsewhere. Flow, which had been almost stagnant a moment before, suddenly surged. As he had gauged himself—obviously, Wrot had reached the same conclusion—Caitlin's appearance would prove decisive.

Caitlin strode past him into the center of the black stones. Her body expressed request-for-attention, the form so well executed, no well brought up Jao could have done any better. Even her broken arm was held properly, though, at that angle, she must be feeling considerable discomfort.

The Bond Preceptor shifted his notice so subtly that even Aille could not have said when Caitlin became his focus, instead of him. "You wish to speak?"

She was still concentrating on her next posture, no doubt. Aille felt himself straining to perceive it, his own ears at intrigued-inquiry. What did she mean to do here?

"Vaish," she said, using the greeting's proper form, signifying 'I see you,' rather than vaist, 'You see me,' a subtle distinction most humans did not grasp. "I am told my testimony might be of use here."

"Your designation?" the Harrier asked, seeking her function, rather than her name.

"I am a member of the Subcommandant's personal service," she said, correctly divining his intent.

A ripple ran through the onlookers. Testimony had already been presented as to how he had taken natives into his service. But Aille knew that most of them were astonished at the ease and grace of her postures.

"What would you say?"

"What I wish, if that is permitted."

The Preceptor's response came instantly, easily. "That is a given, when one steps into the Naukra circle. How could it be otherwise?"

She nodded; then, as if realizing the momentary error, shifted into accepted-understanding. The flow of the movement was so smooth, so sure, that the two gestures—one human, one Jao—seemed to form a new whole. Aille was certain that he was not the only Jao present who suddenly glimpsed a new language emerging.

"Humans, of course, cannot perceive all the considerations, but it seems appropriate that we be allowed to present our viewpoint. The conflict developed on our world, and it is our world which will bear the consequences, should an ineffective solution be adopted."

Aille watched her move, the slow sweep of her arms toward earnest-conviction, the tilt of her head adding desire-to-be-of-service. A tripartite stance? His whiskers stiffened. Would one so young and inexperienced really be so ambitious?

The Preceptor stared too, along with the rest of the crowd, some of whom forgot themselves so far as to climb up on the rocks and watch. Her forehead furrowed as she concentrated, wisely going slowly, edging toward completion. To compensate for the extra finger, she held two-as-one on each hand, as Aille had once suggested back in the Governor's palace during that fateful reception. Her immobile ears contributed nothing to the stance, of course, and her lack of whiskers was jarring, but the rest of her—

Aille sucked in his breath in admiration. She was magnificent. He had been right to employ her in his service—and Oppuk's bigotry was now obvious to all.

"There are two solutions contemplated here," she said, trembling with the effort of holding the unusually complicated posture. "Though they are not equal to the Jao, neither will much vary the Terran condition."

The Preceptor watched, his gaze black and steady, not giving away the least of what he thought of this amazing display.

"There must be another path," she said, "a third alternative, which would not only satisfy human honor but best enable humans to be of use in the war against the Ekhat." Her stance altered seamlessly to profound-respect. "I wish to suggest that third way."

 

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