Head tilted back, Jihan spoke to the huge individual seated in the chair on a central dais. Her tone seemed plaintive. Caitlin hung back by the oversized doorway, shivering, fairly certain the leader was Grijo, the same elder she had met the night before. At least, the patterns on his garment seemed the same.
She tucked her gloved hands under her arms, trying in vain to keep warm, and surveyed the echoing hall. Most of the benches toward the back were empty, suggesting that the drafty building had originally been constructed to hold more attendees.
Jihan turned to Caitlin. "Tell them of humans," the Lleix said in her fluting voice. "Tell them of Jao slaves."
Caitlin glanced back at Mallu, who was waiting patiently among the jinau retinue, his body communicating simple unadorned attentiveness. Jao slaves, yes, she was going to have to do something about that and soon. The longer the lie went on, the harder it would be to rebuild trust after the facts came out.
She raised her head, standing tall and straight, but still feeling like a child among the tall Lleix, then breathed deeply of the shockingly icy air, nerving herself for this shameful skirting of the truth. "Humans learned from the Jao how once the Lleix suggested that they free themselves from their masters, the terrible Ekhat," she said, pausing to allow Jihan to translate. "This was an immense kindness for which the Lleix afterward suffered greatly at the hands of those same Jao."
Jihan related her words and the coronas of the listening assemblage stirred as though a wind had gusted through a field of flowers.
"The Jao were not ready to heed such advice when it was first offered," Caitlin said, her heart pounding. This was so damned important. They should have sent someone else! "But the Lleix's suggestion stayed with them, and finally, a very long time later, they realized the Lleix had given them wisdom. By then, though, it was too late. The Lleix were all dead, or so the Jao thought."
Grijo leaned forward, black eyes glittering, waiting for her to continue.
"Now we find the Lleix here, in danger once again from the Ekhat. To honor your ancestors, who attempted to help the Jao so long ago at great personal cost, humans may be able to offer assistance. I have sent the Lexington, the great ship that brought us here, back to Terra to learn what can be done."
She fell silent then and waited to see what they would make of that explanation. At least none of it was a lie.
Discussion broke out among the fancily robed Lleix. Jihan stood before Grijo in the open middle, head bowed, as the words flew back and forth, not even trying to translate. Delegate after delegate spoke, often gesturing at Caitlin and her escort. The frigid mountain wind sang through the open doors, scattering flakes of unmelting snow across the stone floor. Caitlin's feet felt like blocks of frozen granite. She'd never been so cold in her entire life.
Finally Grijo gazed at her and spoke in mangled Jao. "Why humans would helping Lleix?"
Her eyes widened and she fought to maintain her composure. Did everyone on this isolated world speak their ancient enemy's language? "Because the Jao owe the Lleix a great debt," she said carefully, "and because humans are sympathetic with those who suffer from the persecution of the Ekhat. Terra too has been attacked. We understand your peril."
None of that was a lie either, she thought, feeling shaky. Did all diplomats have to dance around the truth like this?
Finally Grijo spoke to Jihan. The Jaolore listened, then motioned to her. "You go back now," the Lleix said, her corona rippling. "Much discuss here. Last all day, more maybe."
They had to decide whether it would be okay if someone saved their lives? Caitlin shook her head. They were like a bunch of old firefighters squabbling over seniority and who got to hold the hose while the city burned down around their ears. "Very well," she said with a rueful shake of her head. Tully and his men fell in around her, faces grim, and they hiked back down the mountain trail to the transports.
The Han went on and on after the humans left, so Jihan did not return to the city until after the sun had set. She walked past the silent houses, watching servants scurry on errands, heads lowered, aureoles flattened. Everyone down to the least unassigned was upset. Last-of-Days had arrived. She herself did not speak with anyone until she presented herself at the humans' ship and was allowed to enter.
"What did they decide?" diminutive Caitlin asked, taking a seat on a long bench close to the outer hatch. Her fellow humans crowded in.
"Not decide yet," Jihan said, remaining on her feet. Narrow human seats were not made for Lleix proportions. "They not understand why humans wish to help."
"Why did the Lleix wish to help the Jao long ago?" Caitlin said.
"So the Jao would not kill them," Jihan said.
Caitlin exhaled a long slow breath. Her face curiously reddened. "Yes, there was that."
"Do not stay here," Jihan said, gesturing at the assault craft. She had been thinking about this matter all the way down the mountain. Such cramped, fusty quarters were not fit for the Human Queen of the Universe. "Come to Jaolore elian-house until your great ship returns."
"Thank you," Caitlin said, glancing at the one called Tully. "I—"
Tully broke out in a string of English words, talking too fast for Jihan to parse. If Caitlin came to Jaolore, though, Jihan was confident she would acquire more English very quickly.
"If I come, I would bring an escort," Caitlin said. "How many would you have room for?"
Jihan thought. She was not sure. The building she had selected had once supported a medium-sized elian. "Half, maybe," she said. "I have not lived in this house long and Jaolore is still small, being very new, so we have not filled it."
"Jaolore is new?" Caitlin said, canting her small head to the side as she sometimes did when perplexed.
"Long ago, there must have been a Jaolore but at some point it died out," Jihan said. "This Jaolore formed after I realized that Jao fought with the Ekhat in this system."
"But that was not long ago," Caitlin said slowly. Her strange blue eyes blinked.
"Yes, yes, a short time." Jihan looked around at the Humans and Jao. "You come now?"
"Jihan, how old are you?" Caitlin asked, watching the Lleix closely as though the answer were important.
"I am five years out of the Children's Court," Jihan said, puzzled. Surely it was obvious to all that Jihan was woefully short?
"And when are children released from this court?" Caitlin was still studying Jihan, and her changeable face had now lost its ruddiness.
"At sixteen years," Jihan said. "Is it not so with humans and Jao?"
"Then you are only twenty-one?" Caitlin said.
"Yes," Jihan said. "I am the youngest of all the Eldests, and, even worse, I broke sensho when I realized the Jao had come back. No one in the Han wishes to listen to me now."
"Twenty-one!" Caitlin seemed to be distressed.
Perhaps that number had some sort of ceremonial significance for humans. Jihan waited.
"Ooomigod!" Caitlin said in English, looking aside at Tully; then she took a deep breath. "We will accept your kind offer to stay at Jaolore," she said, reverting to Jao. "And then, when there is time, there are some matters we should discuss."
"You can't tell her," Tully said as they hiked back through the elegant city, past trees painstakingly pruned into pretzel shapes and tiny sculpted waterfalls. Frost rimed the greenish light-posts lining the narrow roads and the handrails over the bridges. They trod carefully, watching their footing. "At least not yet. Wait until Ronz gets back."
Caitlin glanced ahead at Jihan, but the young Lleix was striding ahead, presumably out of earshot. Although, Tully cautioned himself, who knew how acute their hearing was?
"We have to be straight with her," Caitlin said. Her cheeks were flushed with the cold. "She's already very low ranked because of something she did when the Jao first turned up a couple of months ago. What's going to happen to her when the leadership finds out the Jao are not our slaves, but our conquerors? We'll have a full scale panic and they're going to consider it at least partially her fault for having been duped into fronting for us."
Tully indicated Nam, Mallu, and Kaln with a jerk of his chin. "We have a number of Jao along and they're not exactly raping and pillaging. By the time we have to lay our cards on the table, the Lleix won't be afraid of them anymore."
"They'll be terrified—of them and of us," she said. "And rightfully so, because we're willfully misleading them."
He couldn't think of an answer to that so they walked in silence until they passed another vacant house. "Why are so many of these places abandoned," he said, "when there are Lleix stuck out there in the dochaya? Couldn't they just homestead some of these houses so they'd all have a decent place to live?"
"Jihan tried to explain to me about the social set-up with the elian," Caitlin said as they turned down yet another narrow lane. A few flakes of snow drifted down from the leaden clouds. "It sounds like they're a bit like Jao kochan, but even more like fraternities and sororities back on Earth. At sixteen, the children are released from the Children's Court for the Festival of Choosing. They wander the city for twenty days, visiting the elian, trying to make a favorable impression so that they'll be invited to join."
Tully, who'd grown up in Resistance camps, had of course never attended a university, but he'd heard about snooty frat boys and their antics. He shook his head. "Sounds godawful."
"Some of them get a lot of invitations and can choose their future occupation," she said. "Some, like Jihan, get only one. At least half, though, receive none and are remanded to the dochaya as 'unassigned' for the rest of their lives, working in the city's common fields and factories while hoping for employment as servants in one of the elian."
Tully remembered the sea of silver faces surrounding the assault ship after they had landed, none of them concerned that a potful of aliens, including Jao, had just set down next to their homes, but instead desperate to simply work for them.
Hair prickled on the back of his neck. The Lleix were slumlords, the whole lot of them! "They won't let them live in those empty houses, will they?" he said.
"I guess not," she said. "How soon do you think the Lexington will be back?"
"Not goddamn soon enough," he said, scowling.
* * *
Caitlin was glad to escape the close quarters of the assault ship. It had never been intended for long-term habitation. The layout provided no privacy and the interior was, frankly, getting a bit rank. She hoped the skeleton crew left behind as guards would at least air it out before they all had to cram themselves in there again and return to the Lexington.
The Jaolore elian-house, on the other hand, was roomy and smelled pleasantly of oiled wood and herbs. She especially liked the exposed rafters overhead that created the sensation of even more space. Jihan showed them the back of the house with its many bed platforms. Evidently, the Lleix sleeping patterns were more like those of humans, with a substantial dormancy each night, rather than that of the Jao, who preferred short naps scattered around the clock. Unfortunately, though, the Lleix had never conceived of anything resembling a mattress.
According to Jihan, the Han was still considering whether they would allow the humans to assist them in fleeing this world. Really, Caitlin told herself, as she slung her small travel bag onto the low wooden platform, if this was any indication of their ability to respond to emergencies, it was a wonder they weren't extinct already.
Tully poked his head into the tiny room. "There isn't nearly enough space here for the rest of my troops," he said. "Jihan is going to help me find an abandoned house or two for the rest. Do you want to come?"
She nodded, though she was tired. That trip up the mountain had taken a lot out of her. The oxygen content of Valeron air was a shade lower than humans preferred, making her feet seem heavy. She retrieved her coat and scarf and joined him.
"Why are so many houses empty?" she asked Jihan, as they walked out of Jaolore into its winter-bare gardens. The slight male named Pyr dropped behind their small group and followed, head bowed, corona flattened.
"Before, when Lleix come to Valeron, there were many elian," Jihan said, her gliding pace, as always, difficult to match. "But over time, some die out, not replaced."
So they were losing their culture along with their populace, Caitlin thought as they turned the corner. Her lungs wheezed as she struggled with the thin air.
Jihan stopped before a large house. The wind was driving down off the mountains to the west and dead leaves were skittering across the frozen ground. "All abandoned houses needing cleaning and repair," the Lleix said.
"My troops can handle that," Tully said.
"No, no!" Jihan said, and entered the long fallow gardens surrounding this particular structure. She glanced at her fellow Jaolore and motioned with one arm. "Pyr will go to the dochaya and bring servants to do what is needed."
"Yes," Pyr said in Jao and scuttled in the direction of the grim slum.
Tully stared after the retreating figure. "But we cannot pay them."
Jihan's black eyes regarded him. "You say that word again," she said, walking up to the front doors. "We do not know it."
"To pay is to give something valuable in return for goods or services," Caitlin said, picking her way along the washed-out path to the empty house as she followed.
"Then work is 'pay,' " Jihan said. "Unassigned desire only to work—to be useful to colony."
"But how do they get food then, when they have no work?" Tully said. "Where do they acquire garments?"
"They draw what they need from the kitchens in the dochaya, which is supplied by the Distributionists." Jihan's corona shifted. "They give garments too. Is it not being so with humans?"
Soup kitchens for the needy, Caitlin thought. Shelters for the homeless. Humans were indeed only too familiar with the poor and indigent, especially in the early years after the Conquest when so many had been displaced. Still, this was something different. It seemed that for the Lleix, social status and custom completely overrode the economic concerns that humans would have been mostly preoccupied with. The well-off elian were perfectly willing to see to it that the unassigned were housed, clothed and fed. But they would not allow them any of the dignity brought by work that had recognized status.
"We have—something like that," she said, not knowing what else to say.
The vacant house's broad wooden doors were unlocked and swung open with a creak. Caitlin realized she had seen nothing like a lock anywhere in the city. Did the Lleix even have a concept of crime? "Jihan," she said carefully as Tully peered inside, rifle ready, "what happens when someone does something bad, hurts someone or takes something that is not hers?"
"Let me check the place out first." Tully disappeared within with a handful of jinau.
"Why would they do that?" Waiting just outside the doors, Jihan blinked in apparent surprise, her silver corona standing on end. "If one needs garments, one applies to the Patternmakers. If one is hungry, she goes to the Distributionists and draws food for the elian kitchen. If one needs a home, one joins an elian or sleeps in the dochaya."
"But if you took something, a robe or a bowl, perhaps, what would happen?" Caitlin persisted. It was so important that she figure out these people. Once she did, she might be able to find the right words to make them understand humans and Jao as well.
"No one would wear a robe that did not belong to her," Jihan said. "It would have the wrong pattern. For all else, there is sensho."
Jihan had mentioned that word earlier. "You said you had broken sensho," she said.
The Lleix's entire body stilled. "Yes," their guide said softly, gazing down at the frozen ground. "No need for humans to listen to Jihan about anything. I am quite in disgrace."
"What is sensho?" Caitlin said, edging closer.
"Sensho is—right way to behave always," Jihan said. "Listen to those who are older and taller, do as they say."
For Jihan, then, who was so very young, that would be just about everyone, Caitlin thought. "How did you break sensho?"
Jihan hesitated so long, Caitlin thought the young Lleix would not answer. "The Starsifters said the Ekhat had returned, which they had, but I knew from my study the Jao had fought in that battle too. This they did not believe. I went to the Han when Sayr made his report and would not let the error pass."
"You pointed out that they were wrong?" Caitlin said.
"Yes, yes, it was a great discourtesy," Jihan said, hunched as if expecting a blow. "The shame of it will be on me forever."
Caitlin blinked. "But the Jao had come back. You were right!"
"It does not matter," Jihan said.
"They would rather you be polite than correct?" Caitlin was having a hard time with this.
Tully reappeared. "The place is deserted except for a few vermin that look like a cross between a blue mouse and a grasshopper," he said in English. "Come in and see what you think."
Inside, it smelled musty. Something tiny leaped away as they approached. Stools and benches, some broken, were heaped against one wall and a layer of dust blanketed everything. "This place is larger than Jaolore," Tully said, brushing off his dark-blue uniform trousers. Evidently he'd gotten down on his knees at some point. "If we can find another this big, we'll be able to house the crew of all three ships until Lexington returns."
"Once Pyr brings servants," Jihan said, "we will select another. Then I will check with the Han and see if they have made decision yet."
"Right," Caitlin said, then turned over a battered bench and sat down. The more she heard about the Han and the way things worked here, the more she dreaded the revelation of the reality of the situation concerning the Jao. Exactly where did telling the truth fit in with the Lleix concept of sensho?
That evening, once they had returned to Jaolore, Caitlin decided to level with Jihan. The truth had to come out, especially if they were going to transport these people back to Earth. The Lleix needed to know the situation before they got on the ships, not after. That would only make things worse.
She knew now that Jaolore was indeed very small, consisting of only three full-fledged members, Jihan, Pyr, and a sturdy male named Kajin. The latter spent a lot of time oiling his skin and avoided humans and Jao whenever possible, always leaving a room if any of them entered. A few white-clad permanent servants, as opposed to gray-clad unassigned, worked in the house too, but they never spoke in her presence, not even in the local dialect.
She padded through from room to room, seeking Jihan in the kitchen, the sleeping quarters, the front hall, finally finding her with Kajin in an officelike chamber with viewing machines and stacks of flat recordings. Both were seated on tall stools before screens, studying old files. Kajin gave her a smoldering look and bolted through the closest door.
Caitlin sighed. Obviously, humans were not universally popular around here. "Are you too busy to talk right now?" she asked Jihan.
"No, no," Jihan said. "I practice Jao to speak better."
She already had an amazing command of the language for someone who had only been studying it for weeks, not years. As nearly as Caitlin could tell, though, Jihan had no concept of the vast Jao vocabulary of postures.
"I have something to tell you," Caitlin said, climbing up on the stool next to Jihan and clasping her hands.
"Yes, yes?" the Lleix said, corona standing at attention.
Her heart raced. Damn Wrot and Kaln for putting her in such a position! None of this mess was her lamebrained idea. They should have been the ones who had to fess up and make amends, if such a bungled first contact could ever be made right.
"We have not told you the truth about the situation between the humans and the Jao," she said slowly.
Jihan's black, black eyes narrowed.