The Course of Empire(90)

"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 . . .