The sun was setting, the horizon turning red with dusk. Cicadas buzzed in the trees and he could hear the boom of the surf to the south. A storm must be blowing in from the Gulf. The day was still sweltering, but the car was fairly new and so had no air conditioning. Jao did not feel extremes of heat or cold, and had no use for air conditioning. That could be tough on the humans who had to spend time with them. He settled back, letting the hot heavy air run over his face and cool him as much as possible.
The driver pulled up at Aille's quarters and leaped out to open the door. The two Jao emerged. "Shall you be needing me anymore this evening, sir?" he asked.
Aille waved a careless hand. "Perhaps," he said. "Remain until further orders."
He nodded, then climbed back in the car and settled down to wait.
Tully watched them dissolve the doorfield and enter the typical Jao structure which had no corners, nor indeed any straight lines. For the moment, they didn't seem to notice he was lagging behind. He turned to the driver. "I need you to get word to my unit, Danvers. I don't want them to think I just disappeared."
Danvers blinked at him, then yawned. "If the Subcommandant wishes them to know, he'll tell them."
"They might list me as a deserter, dammit!" He gripped the hot metal of the open window with angry fingers. Any second now, the locator device around his wrist would deliver another punishing jolt. The last one had nearly scrambled his brain. He couldn't delay much longer.
"Tully, you are an idiot. Don't you get it? He's Pluthrak, and he's taken you into his personal service. That's never happened before, as far as I know—and you're worried about piddly regs? God, what I'd give to be in your shoes."
"Service!" he said contemptuously, then flinched at a warning tingle in his wrist. He held up his arm with the sleek black band. "Seems more like slavery to me!"
"You're supposed to be jinau," Danvers said, squinting suspiciously. "Don't you know anything? And why did you sign up in the first place, with an attitude like that?"
Pain raced up his arm, exploding into a white-hot nova behind his eyes. Tully cried out and dropped to his knees, unable to see or hear. Then it retreated just long enough for him to get to his feet and stagger toward the door.
Inside, he slumped against the wall, sweat drenching his face. He wasn't sure how long he could go on like this, leashed like a damn poodle.
* * *
Kaul krinnu ava Dano listened to his pleniary-adjunct's recorded report on the new Subcommandant's movements throughout the day, then stumped around his spacious quarters. His posture exuded crude, but satisfying, unmitigated suspicion.
The Dano bodystylists who had instructed him in his youth would have been appalled, but he'd always found the more vulgar postures relieved his tension as nothing else did. In public, with other Jao, he behaved in accordance with the highest standards, but in private these days he often found himself indulging his baser impulses.
Perhaps it was being forced to associate with these misbegotten natives for so long. They had only the dimmest understanding of how to bodyspeak and few of their postures had ever been standardized. Certainly, as far as he could tell, none were ever taught or properly refined. Each child was left on its own to pick up what little it could. No wonder it was so difficult to instruct them how to behave in a civilized manner.
He dropped into his chair and stared moodily at the holomap's latest revelation of Ekhat movements. It spun slowly above his desk, gleaming red for contested systems, blue for threatened ones, amber for those yet uninvolved. Bad news there, nothing but bad for some time. The Bond of Ebezon would have to send help soon or see this system lost. He had little hope they would do so in time to make a difference. The initial hopes for Terra, with its potentially vast resources, had long since faded because of the intractability of the natives. With the war against the Ekhat flaring up in many places, the Jao fleets were kept busy elsewhere.
He pushed those concerns aside, since he had no control over them, and went back to his ruminations. This newly arrived Pluthrak was conducting himself very strangely. For a youth so supposedly promising—namth camiti, it was said—he had spent far more of his time consorting with Terrans than his own kind, not at all what Kaul had anticipated. That Pluthrak had sent him here to undermine Narvo was obvious. But how did Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak expect to expand Pluthrak associations without using his time to seek out other Jao?
To be sure, his fraghta seemed proper enough. Maybe they hadn't sent this newly released youth here to embarrass Narvo. Maybe—he found himself gripping his hands in unabashed anticipation-of-another's-misfortune—they had sent this particular individual to Terra because he was disappointing, either unwilling or unable to conduct himself according to Pluthrak's high standards. Perhaps his elders believed that here on turbulent Terra he would be ground up by Narvo, thereby finally becoming of use to the kochan by hardening the antagonism with their great rival.