The Course of Empire

by Eric Flint

  People were shouting and waving . . . something . . . over their heads. He couldn't tell exactly what. Placards, he supposed, except that something over there seemed to be metal, catching the last of the afternoon sun and reflecting it back into his eyes.

  Caitlin Stockwell emerged from the hant just ahead of Governor Narvo, her face pale and pinched. The Governor's sleek red-gold head surveyed the approaching mob and his movements had that stilted dance-like motion. "What is this?" he said to one of his guards in Jao.

  "A group of natives from a nearby population center," the closest one said. "They seem to be angry. Shall we disperse them?"

  Tully sucked in a sharp breath. Whoever these idiots were, they didn't have any understanding of what they faced. Jao "dispersal" was quite likely to be of the lethal sort. Jao took disrespect very seriously, and made no distinction between police and military tactics. "Disperse" and "put down" were practically synonyms for them.

  He dropped the slurry duct, after making sure the flow was cut off. Then, pulled off his protective gloves, wondering if he could get close enough to warn the approaching crowd back before the damned locator brought him up short.

  Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak came jogging up, closely followed by Yaut. For once, Tully was glad to see a Jao coming instead of going. The Subcommandant's ears were pricked as far forward as possible and he looked curious, rather than angry. "What do they want?" he asked Tully in a low voice.

  Tully listened. The words were growing clearer with each passing second, and some of the demonstrators carried signs. "It's the hunt," he said. "They want us to go home and leave the whales alone."

  Aille's eyes flickered so green, Tully could see no black in them at all. "Find the leader," he said. "Ask him to come forward and express his concerns. I will listen to what he has to say in Governor Oppuk's name."

  "And if I do not wish to listen?" Oppuk said in Jao, his body strangely twisted.

  "Of course you do not wish to listen," Aille said. "This is far too insignificant a matter for your attention. I will listen for you, as a good subordinate should, then either correct them as you would yourself, or dismiss them in your name."

  Oppuk held the Subcommandant's gaze, then glanced aside at the approaching mob. His whiskers flattened. "They distort the flow. It is ugliness."

  Aguilera hurried up from the supply dump a few meters away, where he and Tamt had been helping to mix the slurry. His salt-and-pepper hair was plastered to his skull by sweat. "They don't mean any harm, sir," he said to Aille.

  "Then why are they here?" Aille said.

  "It does not matter why they are here," Oppuk said. "I want them dispersed!"

  Aguilera looked distressed. "Let me talk to them, sir. I'm sure I can make them understand how misguided this is."

  "Pah!" Oppuk said. "Talking will do no good, young Pluthrak. These creatures understand only force. The sooner you realize that, the more effective you will be." His ears swiveled. "Or is it Pluthrak policy to shun force, when possible?"

  Tully saw Yaut stiffen. That had the ring of an insult, he thought.

  "I have brought one of the units newly under my command," Aille said, "as well as my personal service. I would be honored to handle this, if you will allow me."

  Put that way, from the Jao assigned to command jinau troops, Oppuk could not refuse without making the implied insult an open one. That was Tully's guess, at any rate. Tully didn't understand the ins-and-outs of the thing, but he knew the Jao—especially the big shots—were constantly engaged in an intricate dance involving their honor and status, however they saw it.

  Apparently he was right. The Governor turned his back and reentered the hant on its completed side, without saying another word.

  Caitlin Stockwell took a step after him, then stopped, her hands knotted together. "Please don't hurt them," she said to Aille in a strangled voice. "There isn't a base near here. I imagine many of these people have never even seen a Jao. They have no idea what they're doing!"

  She was probably right. Tully stepped forward. "I'll talk to them," he said with a sideways glance at Aguilera, "if you'll unleash me and turn the locator off. Otherwise, I won't be able to get close enough."

  Yaut wrinkled his muzzle. "I will give it to Aguilera. If they both go, there will not be a problem." He turned to Tully. "Unless you think to overpower him, and leave with the human mob."

  Tully realized with a start that the possibility of escape had not occurred to him. His jaw tightened. He must be losing his grip. "This isn't about me. It's about those poor miserable idiots over there who are about to get their fool heads blown off!"

  Aguilera ran a hand back over his disordered hair. "Well, come on, then. We'd better get started. I can't move too fast with this bum leg."

  Together, they waded through the grass, Tully painfully aware of his blue jinau uniform. Collaborator, he thought angrily. That was exactly what he looked like in this get up.

  A hefty fellow with a face of fish-belly white glared as they approached. "A pair of Jao lapdogs!" he said and spat into the sand. "Go back to your masters!"

  Aguilera clasped his hands behind his back. "Where are you from?"

  "What the hell difference does that make?" The man tightened his grip on a sign that read "Stop the Slaughter on Earth's Seas!"

  "Wherever it is, you probably have homes there," Tully said, "and families waiting." With a sudden pang, he thought of the refugee camps back in the Rockies, the only home he had ever known, and a piss-poor one at that. "If you ever want to see them again, you need to hop back in those cars before things get out of control."

  "Or what?" A starved-looking woman with flyaway white hair, who had to be at least sixty, stepped up to the big man's side. Her sign, carried in arthritic hands, read "Jao Bastards, Go Home!"

  Jesus. In spite of the cool sea breeze whipping up over the cliffs, Tully felt as though he'd stood too long in the sun. "Lady, do you want to die for this?" His voice was urgent. "Jao don't have a sense of humor, and they hate disrespect worse than about anything you can name. They'd just as soon kill you as look at you."

  "You can crawl for them, if you want!" Another woman pushed through the crowd. Her curly red hair hung down over her cheek, partially obscuring her face. "We're not going to! This is our world!"

  He looked at their faces. They were well meaning patriots, just like the people he'd grown up with back in the Rockies, but they didn't have a clue. Like many humans, living in small out-of-the-way towns, they'd had little if any direct contact with the Jao. This was not a fight they could possibly win.

  "Look," he said, "we all do what we have to in order to survive these days. These stupid signs aren't going to change anything. You're just taking a bad situation and making it a hell of a lot worse." He glanced over his shoulder at Oppuk's Jao guards, who were prowling back and forth like thwarted sentry dogs, their flickering eyes trained on the crowd of humans. "Believe me, you don't want to draw the Governor's attention like this. If you're going to resist, there are a thousand better ways. Don't be stupid!"

  "You heard what the man said." Aguilera jerked his head, pointing toward the parked vehicles. "Load back up in those cars and hit the road. It's just one whale."

  "One whale today!" The woman brushed her red hair out of her face. "And then they'll get to liking the sport and pretty soon there won't be any whales at all."

  "You don't understand the way they think," Tully said. "Make a big deal about it, and I guarantee they'll get rid of the whales just to make a point about who's in control. Remember Mount Everest? Don't make this worth their trouble!"

  News didn't always travel fast these days, with many rural areas isolated. But almost everyone had heard of Everest and seen pictures of the truncated cauldron of rock where the world's most famous peak had once stood.

  "From the Jao's viewpoint, you're just a handful of native peons who are getting above themselves," Tully said. "Peons are cheap at the price. It wouldn't take Oppuk ten minutes to order a ship
from orbit to target the entire Tillamook Bay area and after that you simply wouldn't be a problem any more."

  A stunned silence fell over the crowd.

  "Ever see the crater where Chicago used to be?" Aguilera asked conversationally. "I saw it happen. Fortunately, I was just far enough away from the blast radius."

  The old woman turned away, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Her male companion put an arm around her and led her back toward the cars. After a moment, the red-haired woman followed. Tully watched them go, feeling the black band around his wrist like a lead weight. He wanted to go with them. Goddammit, he belonged with them, not here. He had become a Jao lapdog, just like they said.

  "You did a good thing," Aguilera said in a low voice at his shoulder. "Probably saved more than a few lives here today."

  "Yeah, I'm a real prince," Tully muttered as he watched the townspeople straggle away in twos and threes. "Guess that's why I feel so dirty."

  * * *

  Vermin! Oppuk thought, pacing the perfect curves of his new receiving chamber. This entire world was infested with vermin! Clever vermin, yes, with a great deal of fight in them, but useless in the end. They couldn't be trained to anything practical, never behaved as manners and protocol required, and their breeding habits were simply appalling. No wonder the genotype varied so wildly. If the Jao could establish a eugenics program, then in a thousand generations they might make something useful of them. Contemplating it, he felt a rare sympathy for the difficulties the Ekhat must have faced back when they had first crafted the Jao from primitive semi-sentient stock.

  He dropped into the newly installed pool, which had been filled with local ocean water, then floated on his back, staring at the whorls across the black ceiling. The Naukra Krith Ludh did not understand what this world was really like. If they had, they would have just incinerated it, despite its resources, to keep it out of the hands of the Ehkat, and moved on to something with more promise.

  Twenty orbital cycles ago, he had arrived full of enthusiasm, proud at having been chosen by Narvo for the much-prized Terran posting. Today . . .

  His greatest hope left was simply that, if the Naukra grew wise and commanded the destruction of the planet, they would permit Oppuk to supervise the ending of what he had begun. Everest was still a moment he remembered with pleasure. With so much more pleasure, would he do the same to Terra itself.

  "The crowd has been dispersed," Drinn's dispassionate voice said from behind.

  "How many were put down?" he asked, hoping the answer was "all."

  "None," Drinn said. "Several members of the Subcommandant's service persuaded them to leave."

  He splashed upright. "The female bodyguard?"

  "No, the two human males. They spoke briefly and then the natives stuffed themselves back into their vehicles and departed."

  Oppuk ducked under the water to clear his head, and calm his sudden fury. He'd thought this predilection of Aille's to take humans into his service the foolish fancy of one newly released from the kochanata, but perhaps not. The Pluthrak might be bold enough, even so young, to plan an open contest with Narvo. If so, his humans might indeed have their uses.

  Still, it would have been wiser to kill all who had dared to protest. Such soft-headedness, common when you allowed humans to deal with their own species, was always a mistake and sent the wrong message. The Subcommandant had avoided trouble now only at the cost of more recalcitrant discord later. Humans were incorrigible. Oppuk knew that like he had once known the currents of his own birthpool.

  Oppuk felt the rage drain away, and the lines of pleased-anticipation overtaking him. There was a trap here, waiting for the Subcommandant. Oppuk would give him the space to stumble into it.

  Chapter 20

  The next day dawned cool, gray, and wet, though fortunately the main storm had not reached the shore, as Aille had thought likely. Rain slanted out of the direction humans called "west," blowing across the sea in great glittering sheets. Obviously, he was not familiar enough yet with weather patterns on this world to make accurate judgements.

  Outside the hant, both Tully and Aguilera, awaiting ground transport to the docks, managed to project aggrieved-discomfort without a fragment of Jao body-speech between the two of them. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, Tully muttered something about "drowned rats," a phrase for which Aille had no reference. Aguilera was his usual reticent self, but hunched his shoulders against the driving rain and futilely kept wiping his face as though to emphasize his condition.

  Tamt, being Jao, gloried in the wet, and for the first time since Yaut had called her into Aille's service, looked actually pleased. Her stance was unrefined, but genuine, and Aille had to admit the fraghta had done well with her. Of course, instruction was a fraghta's specialty. He supposed he should not be surprised Yaut had been effective. It did make him wonder how well the fraghta would do with him in the end.

  Caitlin Stockwell emerged from the hant to stand at Oppuk's side. Her stance was subdued, as neutral as Aille had ever seen it. "Miss Stockwell," he said, and she glanced at him, seeming startled before she damped that out as well.

  "Is 'Miss' the correct honorific?" he said. "I have undergone English imprinting during every dormancy period since I arrived on this world, but my usage is not always accurate."

  "Yes," she said, crossing to his side with a backwards glance at Oppuk. "It's quite correct. I'm sorry if I gave any impression it was otherwise."

  "I assumed, after my invitation, you would be using my transport to this area," Aille said, "but I see you came with the Governor instead."

  "I had hoped to travel with you and General Kralik," she said, "but the Governor requested otherwise."

  "An honor," Aille said, though he thought by the slope of her shoulders perhaps she did not find it so.

  "He has officially attached me to his household," she said. "I am to be tutored in formal movement by a Jao master, as soon as one can be found."

  She was to be a mere servitor, then, not a member of the Narvo's personal service. Aille thought that was a mistake on Oppuk's part. But, of course, Narvo did not see things as Pluthrak did. He cocked his head, trying to read her lines, but they were ambiguous at best. "This does not please you?"

  "It—" She gripped her hands together, twining her fingers in a quintessentially human gesture he couldn't decipher. "I had hoped to continue my education at the university. This—development—will disrupt my plans."

  She was wearing a slick outer covering with a hood that shed the rain and did not seem to be suffering as were his own two humans. He touched the yellow material with his fingertips, finding it pliable and cool. "Your species is not fond of rain?"

  "Not—generally." She managed a wan smile. "Especially not when it's chilly, like today."

  "Ah, yes," he said, "Our bodies do not regard such things very much, a small legacy of the Ekhat. We were designed to be comfortable in a wide variety of circumstances."

  At that moment, the ground transport arrived to take them down to the docks at Tillamook Bay, where the Japanese trawler awaited them.

  The groundcars were of human design, though converted to maglevs, and showed signs of deterioration, including rusted patches on the vehicle bodies. The roads betrayed a lack of maintenance as well, and what habitations they passed were in very poor condition, with refuse strewn about and a number of starved looking small beasts skulking in the brush, including one lithe white-furred creature Aille had never encountered before. Humans appeared to watch the groundcars pass, despite the species' apparent distaste for getting wet.

  The pelting rain eased off as they pulled up to the docks and, in accordance with Jao etiquette, he emerged last from the car. Voices rose and Aille looked up to see a crowd of natives forming on the parking area above the docks.

  Caitlin stepped out of the car, then narrowed her eyes. "More protesters," she said to Aille in a low voice. "They're not going to let this drop. Since the Governor is doing this in your honor, can't you just re
quest some other activity instead, one less controversial? We could tell them we were just going out for a cruise, or perhaps we could fish for shark."

  "I cannot refuse the Governor's attention," Aille said. "There is long-standing strain between Narvo and Pluthrak. I would only add to it by questioning his judgement over such an inconsequential matter. Pluthrak depends on me to behave in an honorable manner here. I can do nothing else."

  Her blue-gray eyes seemed very large in her small oval face. "Don't you see?" she said. "He's deliberately provoking them. They feel very strongly about this. There is going to be trouble, and, whenever there is, humans always pay the price."

  He could see her hands trembling, an element of human body-speech he'd never before observed. Did it indicate dread, perhaps, or eagerness? He was uncertain how to respond.

  Without acknowledging the crowd, Oppuk strode down to the end of the rickety wooden dock, which was slick with rain, then used a temporary walkway to access the vessel. It was smaller than Aille had expected, but trim and gleaming, bristling with equipment and what seemed to be a huge projectile weapon of some sort at the far end. Along the side of the hull was marked the name Samsumaru, apparently another example of the human quirk for personalizing material objects.

  One of the Governor's service beckoned to Aille, haste implicit in the set of his ears. Aille started to comply, then stepped aside as several humans trotted down the weathered wooden planks, carrying the slim shaft of a portable Jao laser. He glanced back at Yaut, question in his eyes.

  Yaut flicked a whisker. "There has been much complaining in this area," he said. "The Governor would like a chance to flex his muscles. According to his staff, things get very boring in that dusty palace in the center of the continent. He likes a good row now and then."

  Then Oppuk did indeed expect trouble. Aille glanced at Caitlin, who was studying the crowd. She knew, he thought. They all knew. The natives were being deliberately provoked here, just as she said. Although he did not understand why the life of one sea animal should matter so much, he could see, if they did nothing to prevent its death, they would have lost in some important regard involving their sense of honor. And if they did indeed resist, Oppuk would ensure they lost even more.