The Course of Empire(137)

"Then let's leave," Caitlin said. "They aren't going to tell us anything more and I can't bear just standing here while they tear each other to bits."



"It is required that we watch," Yaut said.



The fraghta's gaze was level, his arms positioned carefully. Tully knew he had seen that stance before. Resignation, he wondered, or perhaps aversion?



"It has been well documented that attempting to leave before the matter is concluded," Aille added, "will trigger them to suspend their attack on one another and effect our deaths first."



The carnage slowed as the two aliens weakened, but still they fought on in a pool of viscous white fluid, seemingly determined to rend each other limb from limb.



"How—" Caitlin gave a muffled sob, then tried again. "How could they have enslaved the Jao, if they can't stand even to talk to you?"



"The Complete Harmony advanced the Jao to the point of usefulness, not the Interdict," Aille said.



The taller of the two Ekhat crashed to the bloodied deck like a felled sequoia and lay twitching, the white of its eyes slowly discoloring to yellow. The other, staggering on only three legs now, continued to disembowel its companion until its strength failed. It then collapsed onto the corpse, where it tore weakly at its own flesh before finally subsiding into unconsciousness or death.



The light flashes had slowed. Aille's whiskers shifted and he looked around. "We can leave. Indeed, we must."



Kralik, his arm around Caitlin's shoulders, strode back up the small ship's ramp.



Tully hurried to keep up with them. "I never really believed in the existence of the Ekhat," he said in a low voice as they stepped through the missing hatch. "I thought it was all just Jao propaganda."



Caitlin turned reddened eyes to him. "The Jao almost never lie. Whether that's a cultural trait or something biologically hard-wired in their brains, I couldn't tell you, but they don't. They can and do exaggerate readily—sometimes even wildly—or refrain from mentioning, but they rarely invent from whole cloth. They're just not easily imaginative, the way we are. That's why they find our fascination with novels and movies so peculiar—even distasteful. To them, fiction is a form of lying." She raked perspiration-soaked hair out of her face and shuddered. "They definitely weren't exaggerating about this."



Aille and Yaut climbed in behind them.



"How are we going to leave?" Kralik said. "They've damaged the ship. We don't have a hatch left."



"I can generate a field to reinforce the inner hatch," Aille said. "It will draw our power down very low, but it will probably hold until we reach Terra."



Caitlin hugged her broken arm across her chest. "Do you have spacesuits, in case it doesn't?"



"We have suits for Jao, none for humans," Yaut said. "This vessel was never intended to transport your species."



So the three of them, Caitlin, Kralik, and himself, might not make it back. Angrily, Tully dropped into one of the seats. Just because the Ekhat were too damned impatient to wait until they'd opened the fricking door.



Insanity was one thing, but that plain pissed him off!

* * *



After Aille piloted the small ship safely away from the Ekhat vessel, Caitlin found a flavored drink in the ship's stores and offered it around, one-handed. Aille and Yaut waved the carafe away, preferring to analyze recordings of what had just transpired. She could tell by their twitchiness that what they really wanted was a good long swim. Banle had often displayed a similar mussed discontent during long formal occasions and always made her way to the nearest pool afterward.



Humans, though, liked to have something to do with their hands, when they were under stress, so she wasn't surprised when Kralik and Tully drained their cups and asked for more.



Caitlin served them, then retreated to her own seat, her head reeling, suddenly cold with an intensity that indicated shock. That terrible ship with its deranged crew—she could still taste the miasma that passed for their atmosphere, feel that excruciating racket jangling through her bones. Jao had been warning humanity about the Ekhat for over twenty years, but no one had ever really believed them. And, unfortunately, with their lack of imagination and creative expression, they had never been able to fully communicate the depth of the Ekhat's strangeness.



She herself had only thought she understood how alien another species could be before today. Compared to the Ekhat, the Jao were almost human and their rule positively benevolent. The universe was clearly a much more dangerous place than humans had ever credited. She had to get back and warn her father.