The unassigned flocked to Tully as he passed and he spent the rest of the day in the dreadful dochaya. Very few could speak some Jao, though he was still amazed that any of them did. It seemed they traded the alien words among them with the fervent fascination of human children trading baseball cards.
He entered the first barracks he encountered. The interior of the low building was dim, lit only by tiny windows near the ceiling to admit the gray winter sunlight, furnished with nothing but row upon row of sleeping platforms. He sat on one, wrinkling his nose against the musty smell, and spoke to them in English until he was hoarse. They seemed to acquire language much as an infant did, needing only exposure and repetition, so he gave them as much as he could. If they were going to Earth, English would do them more good than Jao.
He talked about the probable upcoming evacuation and how all Lleix deserved to leave, not just the elian. He talked about human history and the theory of advancement by individual effort and hard work, not just social connections. He recited the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as least as much as he could remember, and made up the rest. He recounted the Revolutionary War. He had to restrain himself from depicting the valiant struggle against the Jao conquest and the tenacious resistance thereafter.
The four servants who had accompanied him from the jinau's appropriated elian-house sat on their haunches at his feet and stared up into his face with rapt black eyes. More and more Lleix crowded into the building until finally it was so stuffy he couldn't breathe and retreated back outside. The Lleix scrambled after him, murmuring random phrases to one another in English.
Stiff and cramped, he stretched and saw that the sun was low in the west, red-tinged, about to disappear behind the mountains and realized he had been here all day. His stomach rumbled. He was monstrously hungry and thirsty.
"I must go back," he said hoarsely to the silver faces and their dancing coronas, which were always in motion.
They stiffened in alarm. "No go!" one said and then the words were echoed throughout the ranks. "No go! Speak more English!"
He rubbed a weary hand over his face and felt stubble. In his bad mood that morning, he'd forgotten to shave. He needed a bath, even if it was only with a basin of cold water. "I have work of my own to do."
They stared at him silently then. Work was something they understood and respected.
"Come back?" a tiny Lleix said finally.
"Tomorrow," Tully said. "I will come back tomorrow. Until then, practice your English with one another. Learn all that you can."
"Learn very much best!" one of the original four said. None of them had left his side the entire day. They must be hungry and thirsty too, he thought.
The Lleix was just about his height, so was probably still quite young. "How are you called?" he said.
"This one Lim," it said.
"Are you male or female?" he asked.
The narrow black eyes blinked. Lim did not answer.
Tully sighed. Words, words, words, they all needed more words. "Tomorrow, Lim. We'll find out tomorrow."
He set off toward the elian-house district, huddled into his coat against the chill wind, then pulled his com out of his coat pocket. It was in the Off position. Damn. They'd probably been looking for him all day. If one of his officers had been that careless, he'd have had his ears for breakfast and he could just imagine what Yaut would have done. He keyed it on, then punched in a code. "Miller? How are things going?"
The com crackled. "Major? Thank God. We thought maybe you'd fallen down a hole somewhere."
A rabbit hole, maybe. Like Alice. This place seemed almost as bizarre as the realm of the Red Queen. "I've just been out of touch. Any problems?"
"Minor stuff," Miller said. "Nothing we couldn't handle."
"I'll be at the Jaolore elian-house in ten," he said. "Meet me there."
"Will do." The com crackled off.
The Lleix needed more words, he thought as he strode along in the chilly air. And soldiers loved to talk. He'd bring a handful who didn't have anything better to do with him tomorrow and station one in each of the dochaya barracks. Forget Jao. By the time the Lexington returned, he'd have the whole damn place reciting the Bill of Rights in English.
Caitlin thought Tully looked tired, but oddly exhilarated, when he finally turned up at the Jaolore elian-house and announced he was starving. "Where have you been all day?" she said, handing him a rations bar out of her pack. "Mallu has been trying to contact you for hours."
"I've been at the dochaya," he said, sinking onto a bench in the front room, then biting into the fruit and nut bar. He chewed for a moment. "What did he want?"
She frowned. "He wouldn't say. I'm not one of your jinau, so he told me it would be of no use for me to know."
"Ah, that old excuse," Tully said. "Jao always say that when they mean it's none of your business."
"If I'm Queen of the Universe," she said with a sniff, "everything is my business."
"I don't know how much longer we'll have to keep that up," he said. "The Lexington is bound to come back soon."
"I'm rather getting to like it," she said, though that wasn't the least bit true. "How long do you think it will take Ed to get used to calling me 'Your Highness?' "
He took another bite. "Remind me not to be there for that one."
The door opened, admitting a gust of frigid air along with Krant-Captain Mallu. Dried leaves skirled through in his wake. She suspected a storm was brewing up in the mountains. The big Jao flicked an ear at Tully in acknowledgment-of-rank. "Vaish." I-see-you.
Tully nodded. "Vaist," he said, in the superior-to-inferior mode. You see me. "How did the work on the Lleix ships go?"
"Surprisingly well," Mallu said. "Most of what was needed was beyond my skill, but Senior-Tech Kaln is still there, fiddling with the mechanics of their jump-drive."
"Are their ships space-worthy?" Caitlin asked.
Mallu glanced at her, plainly startled that she had inserted herself into the conversation. Silence stretched out.
"Caitlin Kralik is second only to Wrot's authority on this mission," Tully said. He stood and assumed a stiff, very military stance, shoulders braced, head high, communicating with his body in a way he was sure would make an impression upon the Jao. "You have not been present at all the planning sessions, so you may not have perceived her rank. Terra's Governor, Aille krinnu ava Terra, has every confidence in her judgement, as well as Preceptor Ronz of the Bond. You will heed her orders as you would Wrot's, Ronz's, or mine."
"Their ships?" Caitlin repeated pleasantly, as though there had been no dispute, letting her arms and upper body fall into the graceful curves of respectful-inquiry.
"The situation is alarming," Mallu said. His lines had now gone pretty much neutral, as though he didn't know what to think. "Their vessels are very old and few of them presently function. Kaln believes that most would not complete a jump, even if they could take off from this world and make it into position to try, which is doubtful."
"Then this will be their Last-of-Days," she murmured, "unless we do something."
"They have been hiding here a long time," Mallu said, "and this world is resource poor. They cannot mine the metals they need to fashion replacement parts or construct new ships."
"So they pruned their trees," she said, thinking of the vast parklike city, "and dug their winding little streams, built ornamental bridges, carved faces in their houses, decorated their clothes—and waited for the Ekhat to come and kill them."
"That pretty much sums it up," Tully said in English. "Don't forget to toss in consigning the majority of their population to a lifetime of misery in the dochaya. Nice picture, isn't it? They make the Jao look almost kindly, as hard as that is to imagine."
That night, the winds howled down off the mountains, shaking the dochaya-houses, but Lim was too excited to huddle with her fellow unassigned and sleep. The human had spent the entire day talking to them and it had not taken very long before they began to understand. First, just a word here and there in the stream of sounds, then several together, like pieces fitting together in one of the puzzles from the Children's Court before they had been cast out.
A leaving time was near. Everyone knew that. The dreadful Ekhat had hunted them down to exterminate this colony and the elian would flee. The dochaya would be left behind. They were the unwanted and that was sensho, the way of things.
But Tully said it did not have to be so, that the unassigned could leave too. Such a strange idea, that anyone would care what happened to the denizens of the dochaya. They were the dust of the city, fit only to be swept out of sight. Such startling new thoughts made her eyes stay open, when others had piled onto the platforms to slumber. It made her head go on thinking after the sky had darkened and the wind blasted and pale-blue snow sifted against the windows, piling up outside the doors. It made her—hope.
She remembered hope from the Children's Court, when she and her fellow youngers had played at being chosen by elian. She had always wanted to enter one of the artistic crafts, the Patternmakers, perhaps, or the Stonesculptors, even the Treebinders, just someplace where she could fashion beauty and contribute to the colony's elegant fabric of life. Instead, she had been rebuffed at every door. Her skin was too dull, her aureole unbalanced, her legs positively thin. She would not bring grace to anyone's house. She was, everyone decided, fit only for the dochaya.
So many doors, so many refusals. Remembering those days of trying so very hard to be appealing without success still made her chest ache. But then Pyr, who was equally unappealing in appearance, had been accepted by Jaolore. This was a new thing, escape from hopelessness. Even if Jaolore never accepted another from the dochaya, it had happened once and so became a part of sensho. It might happen again, someday.
And this funny looking human, who was really quite short and thin-shanked itself, said the unassigned should evacuate with the elian, that they could find safety on a faraway world called Urth, then help to build another colony under a new sun. That new colony would need beauty, she was quite sure. Maybe even they would have need of other new elian, like Jaolore. Even if she were not accepted by one of them, as Pyr had been, perhaps she would at least be allowed to serve.
That was more than she'd ever had. She walked up and down the rows of sleeping platforms, softly repeating her new English words: fre-dum . . . rites . . . tir-ran-ee . . . jus-tis.
She did not really know what they meant yet, but Tully had said they were important, that they had once changed everything for a large number of humans. That was an interesting concept. Lleix life went on always the same from world to world, generation to generation, elian to elian. They took solace in preserving the steady course of life in its every aspect, doing their best to see that nothing ever changed. Lim was eager to hear what this Tully would say tomorrow.
Tully went to the dochaya every day after that, leaving Lieutenant Miller and Krant-Captain Mallu to oversee the restoration of the dilapidated elian-houses they had appropriated. He designated Kaln in charge of the techs working on Lleix ships at the landing field and then handpicked twenty human jinau to go with him to the dochaya, ostensibly also to occupy themselves with repairing, but really to speak with the unassigned.
The slum residents labored alongside his troops, seemingly in awe that humans would put their hands to grunt-work in such low-class surroundings when there were unassigned available. As the days passed, the unassigned trailed after him wherever he went, always pestering for "more English, more!"
Higher ranking Lleix turned away when they came across the sight, obviously offended by his attention to those they had long ago designated unworthy. He didn't care. In his opinion, the elian were nothing more than a bunch of arrogant elitists who had cowered here on this barren world for generations, distracting themselves by ornamenting their city while waiting for the Ekhat to hunt them down. Insofar as he had any sympathies for the Lleix, they were bestowed entirely on the inhabitants of the dochaya. The elian could rot in hell, as far as he was concerned—or get fried by the Ekhat.
Many of the Jao under his command also thought his preoccupation with the downtrodden was nuts. In accordance with Jao values, everyone should make himself of use in whatever way benefitted the greater good. Unassigned were not useful so they did not matter.
Mallu, though, was more thoughtful. Over the centuries, Krant had experienced its own measure of social oppression from the other better-situated kochan. The Krant-captain did not fully understand what drew Tully to the Lleix slum, but he was intrigued, and several times even accompanied Tully to the dochaya.
Some of the more enterprising unassigned even organized English classes, which were conducted when Tully and the rest retired at night. Each morning thereafter, he was greeted with a larger audience and better English conversation than the day before. Young Lim, who turned out to be female, was particularly adept at picking up the new language, then teaching it to others. She seemed to have boundless energy.
He supposed the young female was homely in terms of what a Lleix might find attractive, but it was difficult to fathom that some elian hadn't perceived her mental quickness and recruited her anyway.
The subject of "Caitlin, Queen of the Universe" cropped up from time to time because those in the dochaya had gotten the improbable story from Pyr, but, when it did, Tully always just changed the subject. Jihan had decided it wasn't time to reveal the truth, but he was damned if he was going to perpetuate the lie. They were going to have a lot to answer for once the real situation between Jao and humans came out. He didn't see any point in heaping error upon error.
Fifteen days after they had first landed upon Valeron, the dochaya had been transformed. That morning, Tully noted with satisfaction, as he peered into barracks after barracks, the floors were swept clean, the windows repaired, splintered sleeping platforms mended, sanitary facilities spotless, and the formerly ubiquitous trash removed. Once his troops had begun renovations, the unassigned had joined in joyfully. If they weren't about to leave this world, he had a feeling they would be sculpting trees and digging streams next so that the dochaya would resemble the rest of the city.
There had only been one off-putting moment at the start of the clean-up, when a pair of his jinau, Debra Fligor and Gary Young, had broken into an off-key rendition of "Oh, Susannah!" to pass the time while they caulked windows. At the first note, the Lleix had regarded them with obvious horror, then fled the barracks, bawling in alarm.
"Jeez, Major," Gary said, staring after them, his face flushed. His dark-brown eyes blinked. "We weren't that off-key!"
"It's more than that," Tully said. His heart was pounding as he glanced around the barracks. It was deserted, not a single cowering Lleix left in the building. Only dust motes hung in the shafts of thin winter sunlight to mark their passage. "They must have a thing about singing." He realized then he hadn't heard anything remotely like music since landing on this world, and then he remembered the whistling incident when they'd first landed. He'd gotten a similar panicked response.
Cautioning them against further performances, he went to find Jihan and see what the problem was. Unassigned were skulking outside the barracks, their coronas flattened, their hands a-dither. They turned away and did not speak to him.
He located the Jaolore at her elian-house, as always poring over the old records in the back room she called the Duty Chamber. Pyr and Kajin were with her, each absorbed in a viewer. "Something strange just happened in the dochaya," Tully said, shrugging out of his coat. "I am hoping you can explain."
Kajin gave him a sideways look. His eyes were very narrow, which Jihan had told Tully was considered highly attractive. Tully thought it made him look sly. "It does not matter what happens in the dochaya," the Lleix said with a ripple of his corona. "You should not concern yourself with such." He turned back to his viewer.
"Several of my soldiers sang an old song," Tully said, "just something to pass the time, but it upset your people."
With an exclamation, Kajin jerked off his stool and backed against the wall as though Tully had threatened him. Jihan and Pyr turned and stared at Tully, their eyes gone positively wide, which was unusual for a Lleix. "Humans sing?" Jihan said, her voice a strained whisper.
"Yes," Tully said. "Do the Lleix not sing?"
The three Lleix glanced at one another, then Pyr bowed his head, his corona flat around his face. "Ekhat, the great devils, they sing," the youth said.
Kajin straightened, seeming to recall his dignity, then returned to his stool. "Before I became Jaolore," he said, "I had the great honor to be Ekhatlore. I spent my life studying the great devils. They value patterned noise above all else and destroy entire worlds in its name. Their songs are abomination!"
Tully began to get an inkling what was wrong here. "So the Lleix fear music?"
"Music belongs to the great devils who eat the universe," Kajin said. "It is their wicked creation."
"Humans create music too?" Jihan said. She seemed incredulous.
"Yes, they do, but they do not kill in its name," Tully said. "It is—a pleasure to them, a relaxation, even an art, like when the Lleix prune their trees into attractive shapes or carve faces into their houses. If you come to Earth, there will be much music."
"We find all structured noise an abomination," Jihan said. "If humans sing like the Ekhat, does that mean their minds think the same way?" She drooped, making herself small. "I am far too young to think this situation through. This needs the wisdom of Sayr or Grijo."
"No," Tully said. "Do not bother the Eldests with this right now. There is already too much upset over the impending evacuation." He paced the room, trying to decide what to do. "Let me talk the matter over with Caitlin. In the meantime, I will make sure no one else sings while we are on Valeron."
And that had been the end of it for the moment, but it was another unfortunate revelation that had to come out before all was said and done: Humans sang. They loved music and it infiltrated many aspects of their day-to-day lives. If the Lleix came to Earth, as they surely must to survive, they would encounter music over and over. Somehow they would have to learn to cope.
But for now, there could be no careless humming, no tuneless whistling, not even fingers drumming on a table. Their hosts were perhaps understandably phobic about patterned noise of any kind and they would have to respect that.
It was just surprising it hadn't already come up. He had pulled out his com to spread the prohibition, once he understood, and from that moment on, the jinau were careful.