by Eric Flint
"Yes. And this one too: 'Bad mistakes are always simple ones.' "
He gestured toward the image of the planet. "Conquest is a means to an end, nothing more. Yet always the great danger that faces a conqueror is the simplest—that they will forget their purpose and come to see it as conquest itself."
Again, he adjusted the controls; taking a bit longer, this time, since he was bringing up stored recordings rather than shifting images.
The face of a young Pluthrak appeared in the holo tank.
"What a marvelous vai camiti," Tura said admiringly. "The quintessence of Pluthrak."
The Preceptor grunted. "More, I think. This one may be—at long last!—the transcendence of Pluthrak. I have long found that Pluthrak subtlety can be as exasperating as Narvo force or Dano crudity. Less abrasive, true enough, but still every bit as exasperating. Even more exasperating, at times."
A slight subtlety in Tura's posture indicated some reservations. That did not surprise the Preceptor. Tura had come from one of Pluthrak's many affiliated kochan. Jithra, as it happened, perhaps the closest. She was still relatively new in the Bond, and old kochan ties were hard to overcome completely.
He was not concerned. Over time, Tura would shed those last residues. Patience was one of the Preceptor's most outstanding qualities—the main reason, in fact, that he had been the one selected by the Strategy Circle to oversee their plans for Terra.
Twenty years ago, that had been, to use the native term. A long time, even by the standards of the Strategy Circle.
And now, finally—hopefully—coming to fruition.
He studied the image in the holo tank. "Transcendence," he repeated. "That is what we need. And, perhaps, what we have found. A namth camiti sent to do one thing, who learned to do another. I did not really hope for that. Courage, one can expect from the young. Wisdom, rarely."
"Another thing?"
"A conqueror, Tura, who learned to do what conquerors forget. How to listen."
PART VII:
Firsts
Chapter 39
Aille monitored the holo displays as the skies above Terra filled with ships over the coming period, at least half of them the massively built harriers favored by the Bond of Ebezon. Those Aille had expected, along with the round Narvo and elongated Pluthrak ships, but also present were the designs of Dano and Nimmat, Kanu, Hij, and Jak. Others, too. Every root clan had sent at least one ship, as had their affiliated kochan and even a number of taifs.
The ships themselves were equally diverse. They ranged from dreadnoughts too immense to land on the surface of any planet to tiny personal couriers. There were troop transports as well, most of them Dano; and even one colossal mobile repair dock summoned all the way from the nearest Dree world.
Sixteen solar cycles had passed since the Bond had arrived and removed Narvo from oudh over Terra. Thereafter, the Bond had not intervened at all, apparently desiring to wait until the Jao kochan could send their representatives to Earth and assemble the Naukra.
Some of the other Jao from the lesser kochan had come, as it happened, primarily because they wished to learn how the Ekhat had been defeated. But, most came to see how, and if, Pluthrak and Narvo would resolve this thorny matter between them.
The long-festering tension between the two most powerful kochan seemed at a breaking point. A certain amount of kochan rivalry was healthy in the long-range scheme of things, motivating every kochan to always do its best, to sacrifice for the greater good and allocate resources to the struggle against the Ekhat, when keeping to their own worlds might have served them better individually. What had grown between Narvo and Pluthrak, however, was not productive. As long as a polite veneer had glossed over the antagonism, other kochan could pretend the problem was not acute. But now, the Terran Crisis, as it had come to be known, had ripped that veneer away and exposed the situation for the lurking danger it really was.
Either new association would be forged, or . . .
The alternative was dire, for all Jao. More than anything else, the other kochan had come to do what they could to contain divisive tendencies and encourage association.
* * *
As he waited for the Naukra to finally assemble, Aille continued to work in the command center at the Pascagoula refit facility. For the most part, he let Stockwell and other humans continue to organize and manage the natives' affairs, so that he could concentrate on repairing and further modifying the submarines. Other Jao could be as preoccupied as they wished with kochan affairs, but Aille's foremost concern remained the Ekhat. It was impossible to know how the aliens would react to the disappearance and presumed destruction of one of their task forces. But it was by no means precluded that they might simply send another, and soon.
Aille intended to be ready for them—and he did not intend, this time, to lose almost half of his own forces in another battle. The key, immediately, was pilot training more than anything else, which was the reason that Aille was pressing so hard to get at least some of the subs back in operating condition.
Truth was sometimes bitter, but truth was truth—and Hami had spoken it harshly at the battle evaluation meeting that had taken place soon after. The human crews of the subs had done better than the Jao pilots, Aille and one other aside. Much better. Most of the subs had played little effective part in the battle, because of the inadequacies of the pilots. And four out of six of the destroyed subs had not been lost in direct action against the enemy. Their pilots had simply not been skilled or experienced enough to keep their vessels from being swept down into destruction in the supergranular cells.
Aille and two other pilots aside, actually. In retrospect, it was clear that the pilot of the sub that had rammed the one Ekhat ship had possessed great skill. She would be sorely missed, in future battles.
Her name, Aille discovered later, had been Llo krinnu Gava . . . vau Narvo.
He was not surprised, really, although the humans seemed to have been astonished. Oppuk's monstrous behavior had its roots in long-standing Narvo customs, true, but roots were not leaves and branches. Over the years, as his unsanity grew, he had become more of a caricature of Narvo than its exemplar.
If the humans had been astonished when they discovered Llo's kochan affiliation, they had, in turn, astonished the Jao with their response. Aille as much as any.
Ben Stockwell, working with his fellow regional governors around the globe, had cobbled together an organization they called the "United Nations" to serve as an overall coordinating body for their work. Apparently it was some sort of council that had once existed, before the Jao conquest, which they intended to resurrect—although, Stockwell had privately told Aille, he intended to see to it that it had "more teeth" than its predecessor. Specifically, he proposed to place all jinau troops under the authority of the UN rather than the regional administrative entities.
Aille had found the expression peculiar, coming from a species whose dentition was so pitiful compared to Jao, much less a true predator. The Jao expression for the same thing was logical: "more mass." But, by now, he had grown accustomed to the fractured human way of looking at things.
Aille had not objected. It would make the situation easier for him, after all, to have a single body to oversee instead of the existing welter of regional districts. And, beneath the surface, he had seen the lines of association growing between humans, interwoven with Jao. It was a potentially dangerous situation, to be sure, since a single authoritative human governing body would enhance their abilities in the event of an outright rebellion. But Aille had faced the truth squarely: no matter what, if the Jao could not find proper association with the humans, a reconquest of the planet would be needed. And it would be much more difficult than the initial one, which had been very difficult to begin with.
For all practical purposes, Jao control over Terra now depended almost entirely on Aille's own prestige and popularity with the human masses. Should that be lost, for whatever reason, Aille had no doubt at all that the jinau forces under K
ralik would no longer be controllable—just as he had no doubt at all that, in his private negotiations with Wiley and other leaders of the Resistance who had come to St. Louis, Kralik had given as well as taken. The humans had been very circumspect about it—circumspect enough that Aille had chosen to ignore the matter—but the traces picked up by Jao orbital monitors were clear enough: Kralik was quietly seeing to the storage of weaponry in secure and hidden redoubts in the mountains.
And not just the mountains of this continent, either. Kralik had also been negotiating a peaceful settlement with Resistance leaders from China, as well, where the Resistance had been as strong as it had been in North America. The volume of seagoing traffic on this planet was enormous, far too great to be monitored directly by the Jao themselves. Aille was certain that the North Americans were secretly transferring weapons to the Chinese, and other moieties they considered potentially militant allies in the event of a new outbreak of war.
The situation was potentially explosive. It was for that reason, even though he personally found the custom strange, that Aille had immediately approved of the UN's first official action: the adoption of what humans called "the highest medal for valor" and the awarding of the individual variant to Llo krinnu Gava vau Narvo. The group variant had been awarded to the entire crew of the ramming submarine.
After much squabbling—humans seemed incapable of deciding upon any course of action without squabbling first—they decided to call the first variant the "Star of Terra" and the other the "Solar Unit Citation." The Star of Terra was then presented, with much fanfare in the human public communication system—what they called, with equal illogic, "the media"—to the Narvo Association Hall in Oklahoma City.
The Narvo representatives who accepted the little metallic symbol were even more puzzled by the custom than Aille himself. Humans seemed to find it a great honor to be recognized "posthumously," as they put it, whereas Jao could see no point beyond pure superstition in presenting what amounted to a bau carving to an individual who no longer existed—and, in Llo's case, had never possessed a bau to begin with. She had been a pilot, not a commander.
But, like Aille, they had chosen to accept the honor without demurral. Even Narvo, as Wrot had commented at the time, was capable of learning a lesson. And Wrot had taken the occasion to mention to Aille another of those human sayings of which the old bauta was so fond: The prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Aille had appreciated the sentiment, even if, applied directly to Jao, it was rather meaningless. Indeed, Wrot had to explain the term "hanging" to him. With their much stronger vertebrae, shorter necks and massive neck muscles, suspending a Jao in such a manner in a strong enough gravity field would eventually asphyxiate him, but it would certainly not break his neck. Thus it had never been a Jao method of execution.
Indeed, from a Jao point of view it would be a form of torture, and the Jao despised torture. Not for its cruelty, but for its implied weakness, of the torturer even more than the tortured. Torture, when all was said and done, was a form of wheedling. Conquerors commanded, they did not wheedle.
But even Narvo, confused as they might have been, were able to see immediately how well Stockwell had gauged the mentality of his own species. The media coverage of the presentation ceremony had been very extensive—"blanket coverage," as humans put it, which was a far more sensible term than "media" itself. Once the identity of the heroic pilot became widely known as a result, the anti-Narvo demonstrations began fading rapidly, both in frequency and size.
Dr.Kinsey had proven very valuable in that regard, as well, somewhat to Aille's surprise. Despite Aille's own misgivings—Yaut's had been worse—Aille had agreed to let Kinsey appear on what humans called "talk shows." Another odd custom, that, in which a population assembled before a multitude of separate comm devices observed a small group of supposed experts discourse upon a given subject. Humans had a related custom, even more peculiar, called "the speaking circuit."
From a Jao point of view, it was all rather grotesque—as if kochan elders were so indiscreet as to hold their private discussions in a public place. But humans seemed to take it for granted, and it was notable that Kinsey quickly became an immensely popular guest on these shows, as well as being flooded with invitations to speak.
That was Oppuk's damage, again, being repaired as best as possible. Unsanely, the former Governor had chosen to keep as much as possible about the Jao mysterious to their human subjects. Now, Kinsey was rectifying the damage, and since the information came from a man who was both the humans' own recognized expert on the subject, as well as a member of Aille's personal service, his words were taken for truth. "Good coin," as Wrot put it.
(Then he had to explain to Aille and Yaut what "money" meant. They were able to follow that, well enough. But understanding collapsed entirely when Wrot moved on and tried to explain something called "counterfeiting.")
Not all of what Kinsey said was accurate, in truth. But, whether from an unusual degree of percipience or simply from his enthusiasm on the subject, Kinsey peppered his accounts of Jao history with many tales of Narvo and its resolute struggle against the Ekhat. Difficult not to, of course, given Narvo's centrality in that long war. And that, too, had the salutary effect of diminishing the anti-Narvo sentiment among the human population. However much they hated Narvo, they had only to see the imagery of the devastation in south China—which Stockwell also made sure was constantly portrayed in the media—to understand that the Ekhat were far worse than even Oppuk.
And, more and more, they were coming to distinguish between Oppuk and Narvo. Skillfully—far more skillfully than any Jao could have done—Stockwell was maneuvering human sentiment, isolating Oppuk from the Jao as such and focusing twenty years of hatred and bitterness on his figure alone. Within a few days, Aille noted, Oppuk's name was used less often than what had become his new unofficial human titles: "the Evil Governor," or, sometimes, "the egomaniacal Satrap."
Still, it was a tense situation, and, as he worked, Aille found himself wondering often whether the devastation in south China would soon be repeated everywhere on the planet's surface. If not by Ekhat plasma balls, by Jao bolides. No matter how politely and discreetly it was being done, Terra was essentially a planet in rebellion. And the Jao, like any conqueror, were not prone to dealing with rebellions gently.
* * *
Nath entered Aille's office in the command center. Even with her superb posture control, Aille immediately detected traces of unease.
"Subcommandant, one from Pluthrak itself wishes to speak with you."
The initial Pluthrak representatives who had arrived on Terra had paid short visits to Aille. But they had been lesser figures, often simply from affiliated kochan, and had had little to say beyond polite expressions. Aille had thought his own kochan-parents would communicate again soon. Flow in that regard had been feeling almost complete for several solar cycles now. But he had lost himself in all the thousand everyday details of the ongoing refit and pushed the matter to the back of his mind. He straightened and glanced aside at Yaut, who was, as usual these days, doggedly noncommittal. That was Yaut's own way of disguising worry and uncertainty.
"Have them put the message through in here."
Her ears wavered, her whiskers went limp. Very unusual, for Nath. "I have not made myself understood. The kochanau himself waits just outside."
Aille could not process the words. "The kochanau? Outside?" he echoed blankly. "Here?"
"Yes." Nath's body was now rigid. "When he made himself known to me, I wished to admit him at once, but he insisted I relay his request."
"Then—bring him in," Aille said lamely. He could not wrap his mind around the idea of Meku, kochanau of Pluthrak itself, asking permission of him to do anything.
Aguilera motioned to the other Terrans present. "With your permission, Subcommandant, we will withdraw."
"I—yes," Aille managed. "That would be best, but—"
He looked again at t
he diagrams they had laid before him, his attention drawn back to the tantalizing melding of Jao and Terran tech. It was the plans, still tentative, for a new type of warship specifically designed to fight Ekhat inside solar photospheres. "I wish to see the changes we discussed implemented as soon as possible. Contact me when they are ready."
Aguilera nodded and Aille thought there was a hint of respectful-concern in the human's shoulders. The native's brown eyes narrowed. "Will you be all right, sir? I don't pretend to understand all that's going on here, but we will gladly speak on your behalf, if you think it would do any good."
The doorfield faded and Aille saw, not Meku, as he had expected, but Dau krinnu ava Pluthrak. Dau was a highly venerated and very old Jao who had been kochanau two generations before. Aille had only seen Dau once in his short life, when the elder had been between postings and had returned to Marit An. But the impression of wisdom, of having encountered Pluthrak's greatest living treasure, had been lasting.
"Vaist," he said, rising to his feet and performing grateful-welcome in its most classical mode. "I had not expected to see one so illustrious on this world."
"I have assumed Meku's responsibilities for now. He felt inadequate to cope with the intricacies of this—" Dau was old, but still vital, his body stringy with age, but not weak. His snout wrinkled as though he scented something peculiar. "This—complex situation. As far as you are concerned, it is but barely begun, but the roots of conflict with Narvo go back through the generations."
His gaze flicked over the Terrans, his eyes a tranquil black. "So it is true. You do surround yourself with natives."
"Yes." Aille read a trace of perception-of-error in Dau's stance and for an instant, he was a callow, impulsive youth back on Marit An again, observed by Dau as he was being taught to spar through wrem-fa, body learning, the most ancient of their ways, in which nothing was ever explained and conscious thought bypassed altogether. He had been baffled then, when his elders refused to clarify what was expected, and went on trouncing him until on some subconscious level he finally divined the proper response and thereby absorbed the lessons they wished to impart.
