"What?" Tully leaned forward, straining to make some sense out of its words, but Yaut jerked him back into place by the shoulder.
The foremost Ekhat stopped, its body pulsating in time with the lights. "Complete Harmony condition of contemplating."
Aille's ears swiveled. "We have not detected any sign of the Complete Harmony in this solar region."
Tully looked at Kralik. "Is that another faction of Ekhat?" he asked in a low voice.
"A competing faction." Kralik shook his head. "There's at least four, if I understood the records correctly."
"Tonal motif unmodulated for this key," the other Ekhat said. The throb of an organ badly out of tune underlay its voice, before the translator rendered the words into Jao. "Improvisation recommended."
"Jao motif?" Aille said.
"Full dynamics approach this red place," the first Ekhat said. "New notes in a condition of blue. Unharvesting. Heeding take."
"You spoke of the Complete Harmony," Aille said, returning to one of the few bits of sense Tully had been able to make out. "Is it their motif?"
"True Harmony unharvesting," the Ekhat said, turning its head so that the circle of immense eyes glowered down at the small group on the ramp. "Complete Harmony unharvesting. Condition of unharvesting all."
Tully watched the two creatures grow ever more agitated, circling one another as though they were binary suns caught in the wells of one another's gravity. "What does 'unharvesting' mean?"
"I am familiar with the term 'harvest,' " Aille said. His eyes flickered. "It refers to sweeping through a solar system and selecting those species that can make themselves of use. The Interdict, who find all lower lifeforms repulsive, do not harvest at all. Neither does the Melody. But both the Complete Harmony and True Harmony carry out such operations from time to time, depending upon their mood."
"Then 'unharvesting' indicates the opposite?" Caitlin said. "They're not coming?"
"Far more likely, it means we can expect what some call a 'weeding,' " Aille said. "Extermination of all life in this system."
"It sounds like they're trying to warn you, then," Caitlin said. "If the Complete Harmony is coming, maybe the Interdict wishes to become our ally."
Aille turned the translator off. "The term 'ally' is meaningless, applied to them. Interdict does not concern itself with the fate of lower lifeforms, any more than a human on your world would take an interest in the affairs of carrion flies. All Ekhat are xenophobic, but the Interdict is perhaps more so than any other faction. Their horror of interstellar travel is linked by some scholars to the fact that it exposes Ekhat to pollution by lower species. That they lower themselves to intervene here means only that they are using us in some way to thwart another faction."
The taller of the two Ekhat fingered the moss on its head with what seemed a nervous motion and Aille switched the translator back on. "Chord completion!" the creature cried and turned toward its partner. "Condition of minimizing!"
"Watch," Aille said grimly. "What comes next is one of the few common elements in all Interdict parleys."
The two Ekhat orbited one another in increasingly tighter circles. Their arms were extended as though they would embrace in another second, their movements becoming less graceful, more stilted. Tully suddenly became even more apprehensive. Humans did not belong here, he told himself. In fact, nothing sane belonged here.
Abruptly, the taller alien leaped upon the other and tore one of its legs off. Thick white fluid spurted as the injured Ekhat threw back its head and screamed, a terrifying, shrill cry that vibrated into Tully's marrow. Then it tackled the first, crashing with it onto the floor, where the two fought like a pair of tyrannosaurs out of Earth's past, rending gobbets of flesh and casting them aside, bellowing in pain and rage.
Caitlin backed against Kralik and closed her eyes, but Aille and Yaut only watched, their postures identical. "You knew!" Tully said. "You knew this would happen!"
"This is inevitable," Yaut said stolidly. "Members of the Interdict faction consider themselves irreversibly tainted by any contact with lower lifeforms. After communicating with us, they would never be allowed to rejoin their own kind and taint them as well. This is a form of sterilization."
"It's horrible!" Caitlin said. Her face was flushed with the terrible heat, but beneath it, she was as pale as a new moon.
"They are Ekhat," Aille said. "It is their way."