The Course of Empire Read online

  "I found references on 'gambling' as well as 'games of chance.' " He turned his scarred face upward, also studying the stars. "There has been a great deal of trouble on the issue. Of the many things labeled a waste of productive time and initially banned, it seems to have been one dear to human sensibilities. Eventually, it was decided to remove the proscription against it, since enforcement was essentially impossible. The one place it was retained—no logic to this, that I can see—was in the military. Typical Dano," he sniffed. "Always so concerned to look more forceful than even Narvo."

  A troop of jinau jogged by, their stride timed in that curious unison. "But what is 'gambling'?" Aille asked.

  "Now, that is still a bit of a mystery to me. Perhaps there is a religious component to it that I have not detected. If so, it makes Dano's prohibition even more absurd. It never pays to meddle with the customs and superstitions of a subject people, so long as they are obedient."

  The fraghta looked discomfited. "It is apparently a ritual which involves the surrender of valuable goods in varying amounts, but I could not figure out exactly what was provided in return. Most of the time, it seems to be nothing at all, beyond the vagaries of chance. "

  "Yet they obviously enjoy it, enough to take considerable risks." Aille turned his gaze to the black expanse of the sea that glittered out on the horizon under the starlight. The night breeze, rich with spray, surged against his face. "Strange."

  "They are indeed a strange species," Yaut said. "We may never understand them. It is probably more practical merely to teach them to understand us."

  "No, that is not good enough." Aille stood, his ears drinking in the night sounds. "That is the Narvo way. Very effective, often. But it has been tried for twenty years on this planet—and, according to what I was told by the kochanata experts before I left, to no great effect. Terra is unlike any other world we have conquered. The population is immense, and its industry and technology impressive. It has a much deeper past than any previous subject species, all of whom were primitives barely able to form metals. A complex and elaborate culture, far more so than ours in many ways."

  He paused, trying to find the best words to express concepts with which he was still wrestling himself. The kochanata experts had been able to point to Narvo weaknesses, easily enough, but that was a far cry from being able to advance solutions—as they had been the first to admit. So, in the end, they had opted for the time-honored method of the great Jao kochan. Take the most promising scion and send him or her to make the test.

  "The conquest of this planet was far more difficult than any we faced before," he continued, "and took far longer. By all reports, the humans fought like cornered beasts, often very well and always very savagely. If I am going to be an effective commander, I want to use their energy and cunning. Pluthrak has always worked differently than Narvo, in seeking association. But to do that, I have to know more. I need to understand them, as much as possible."

  Yaut's homely face was impassive. "Then I will see what I can arrange."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I would rather not say for now, "Yaut said. "But a proper fraghta always rises to the occasion. I will find a way."

  Though Yaut hadn't been with him long, Aille knew that look already. It would do no good to press him. The get of Jithra, his kochan, were notoriously close-mouthed. Yaut would reveal nothing until he was ready. Which was proper, of course. The relationship between a fraghta and his charge was not one of simple subordination. It could not be, or the fraghta could not function effectively.

  Aille stood and stretched until his joints popped. "What is our schedule tomorrow?"

  "The orders on my board say we are to report to the remanufacturing facility," Yaut said. "There, you will begin to acquaint yourself with the defensive resources of this world. Governor Oppuk wishes you to be thoroughly familiar with this area of operations before you take up specific command responsibilities."

  "Very well."

  Yaut hesitated. "One thing more."

  "Yes?"

  "According to the last postings, there was trouble on the base today, not too long after we touched down. Some sort of fight between Jao and human soldiers. Two humans died outright, one Jao was badly hurt. Commandant Kaul ordered five of the humans involved put down afterward."

  "Did the notation say what the fight was about?"

  "An insult of some sort. The report was not specific."

  Troubling, Aille thought. The penalty, more than the incident itself. Jao officers should be smarter than that. Why put down so many? Clashes between Jao occupying troops and natives were common enough, after all. They had happened on many planets. If extreme penalties were needed, singling out one who had been prominent in the fracas—two, at the most—would surely have been sufficient to restore discipline. Dead natives produced nothing of value, nor fought off any Ekhat. And Aille had learned enough from his studies to know that humans in particular were quick to resent punishment, even when it was properly authorized.

  Another vehicle pulled up and disgorged a company of soldiers burdened with full loads of unfamiliar equipment. "I am going down to the shore and observe the training," he said.

  Yaut keyed the doorfield on, then edged into the lead as any good fraghta would, given the opportunity.

  Chapter 4

  Gabe Tully slipped through the hot, sticky Mississippi night, trailing the new Subcommandant as he left his quarters. This one was a conundrum. Jao just didn't mix with natives or ask about local customs. Above all, they didn't go for unattended, seemingly purposeless strolls. Leisure was not a part of their psychological vocabulary. Unless he was going for a swim, something was definitely up.

  He'd bet a hundred new-bucks that encounter earlier today wasn't a fluke either. The Jao had probably set it up, perhaps even suspected Tully had Resistance ties. For his part, the craps game had been all about gathering intel. Soldiers were much more likely to spill interesting information when their minds were otherwise occupied, and now his own mind was buzzing with what he'd learned since about this particular Jao.

  To begin with, Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak was young, far more so than most Jao officers assigned to the base. And he'd been assigned a plush, high ranking job, even though he'd apparently just completed his training. The "ava" prefix in his name indicated he was a member of the inner circles of one of the root clans, as Tully understood Jao customs. Root clans were serious business in some way the Resistance hadn't quite managed to work out. At any rate, local Jao management had fallen all over themselves, trying to see that everything was perfect: his quarters, his driver, even his first meal. Very strange, since they liked to pretend they were egalitarian, that one Jao was much the same as another and cooperation was their byword.

  That must be why Commandant Kaul had come down so hard after the mess room fracas this afternoon—nervousness about this new Subcommandant. Five men executed for nothing more than a brawl! A bad brawl, sure, but no human commander would have meted out such instant and savage punishment. Even for the Jao, it was extreme.

  Tully hesitated, his back flattened to the wall. Footsteps scraped on the concrete, then several Jao officers walked past just around the corner, neither of them this Pluthrak. He held his breath. Jao had ears like cats, though there was certainly nothing else catlike about them.

  When he dared look again, Pluthrak had disappeared. He decided to keep looking and see if he could pick up the trail. Much as he would have liked to rearrange the Dano's face, doing so would ensure an even higher human death toll in the coming days. Jao discipline was invariably swift, often fatal, and not at all above falling upon civilians, when they couldn't find a guilty party easily at hand. Jao psychology made little provision for anyone learning from his or her mistakes. Their attitude was simple and brutal: kill the one who made the mistake, and let everyone else learn the lesson.

  Tully's mind wandered into speculation. If a Jao had a fatal accident, however, one that couldn't be traced back to a human hand
. . . Kaul was too smart to put himself at risk, but this new Subcommandant was apparently not so cautious. Once Tully caught up with him, something fatal might be arranged. It'd be tricky, of course. For a human to use physical force against a Jao—especially a Jao as big and young and obviously in superb condition as this new one—was a lot easier said than done.

  Tully considered the thought for a moment longer, then shook it off. Leaving aside the difficulties involved, he'd been sent here to gather intelligence, not to risk himself by trying to carry out the assassination of a single Jao officer. He'd had some success in his assignment, and needed to continue before deserting and making his way back to the mountains with his report. The level of anger among human workers and soldiers on this particular Jao base was high, because of the harshness of the local commanders. They were more willing to cooperate with the Resistance than sepoy troops or workers on Jao military projects usually were.

  The Resistance needed that cooperation, as reluctant as many of its members were to work with collaborators. Twenty years after the conquest, Tully knew the situation was grim. The Resistance needed to deepen its roots in the population here in the occupied territories, while people still remembered what it was like to be their own masters. With every passing year, that memory was fading. If they didn't turn the situation around before many more years had passed, their conquerors would be too firmly entrenched and humanity would never take back its own world.

  In the darkness, Tully grimaced. It didn't help that the Resistance was badly factionalized, with groups often falling out and fighting among themselves. Tully had spent most of his life since the conquest holed up in the Rockies with Resistance units under the command of Rob Wiley. Wiley's people were well organized, disciplined, and had the support of the local population. But since Tully had volunteered for the sepoy troops in order to gather intelligence for Riley, he'd been shocked to discover the hostile attitude that many humans in the occupied territories had toward the Resistance. Some of that was because Jao retaliation for Resistance actions often fell on bystanders. But, for the most part, it was because many people had had unpleasant experiences with the Resistance.

  "Unpleasant" was putting it mildly, in some cases. Not all Resistance groups were as motivated and disciplined as the one Tully belonged to. Being honest, Tully admitted that many of them weren't really much more than bandits, who spent far more time and energy extorting and abusing human civilians than they ever did fighting the Jao.

  Tully's mind went back to the young Subcommandant. Why had he bothered to confiscate the dice? And why hadn't the three of them already been punished? Put themselves "on report"? Kaul would never have bothered with that. In the Commandant's current mood, he might well have ordered all three of them immediately executed even for a petty infraction like gambling on the base.

  The issue wasn't really the gambling, anyway, it was the rigid Jao attitude toward obedience. Granted, the Jao had no use for gambling, since it produced nothing beneficial, nor taught or honed any useful military skill. From their viewpoint, it was a worthless and distracting enterprise—like mountain climbing, horse racing, ornamental gardening, fine art painting—the list went on and on. Civilian humans could still do these things, although even they were no longer allowed to allocate major amounts of time and resources to them. Everything of value now belonged to the Jao.

  Tully remembered how effectively the Jao had made their attitude clear. Fifteen years ago, the last expedition to Mount Everest went forward as planned, despite an edict by the Jao Governor of Earth that the expedition was a pointless waste of manpower and resources and therefore banned.

  Thirty minutes after the climbers had begun their final ascent, the top few thousand feet of Everest had been vaporized by a Jao-guided rock from space, the same type of weapon they'd used to obliterate Chicago and New Orleans. The poor devils up on the mountain probably had never known what hit them. But the rest of Earth had, and the Jao had made their point as they always did: very bluntly.

  Tully skirted the last of the Jao living quarters. Still no sight of the Pluthrak, but he could see the sweep of the landing field not far from the shore. The small ship that had come in earlier was still there. That was unusual, because few vessels docked here permanently. This one had evidently arrived with Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak. Was it perhaps still here because it was reserved for his personal use?

  The ship, bathed in beams of blue light, was slim as a needle and looked highly maneuverable, more than any other Jao spacecraft he'd seen. The hair rose on the nape of Tully's neck. If the Jao had many more of these, it could be bad news for the Resistance. Part of their protection now lay in the fact it was too much trouble for the Jao to transport troops back into the Rocky Mountains where they had dug in.

  But, again, Tully shook off the thought. Another thing that had become clear to him since he'd joined the sepoy army—much to his disgruntlement—was that the Jao really didn't take the Resistance too seriously. They would retaliate instantly and savagely against any Resistance actions, true. But they rarely bothered to send expeditions into the mountains to ferret them out so long as the Resistance was quiescent. So it was not likely, all things considered, that the Jao were starting to bring in special ships designed for anti-insurgency warfare. The design of the ship in front of him was probably due to other needs.

  Their mysterious war against the Ekhat, perhaps. The Jao hinted at terrible things lying in wait out there in the universe that justified their harsh rule. The worst was said to be the Ekhat, a species that reportedly made the fiercest Jao look like kindly nannies. They were always predicting destruction that would rain upon everyone, human and Jao alike, if they didn't prepare and prepare and prepare. Most humans, even most collaborators, just thought it was an excuse—self-serving Jao propaganda to justify their conquest and their outrages.

  Tully had thought the same himself, once. Now, he was no longer so sure. In the past few months, he'd gotten to know the Jao much better than he had observing them from a distance. As far as Tully had been able to determine, Jao felt no guilt at all over their brutal excesses. Shame just wasn't part of their psychological makeup. They did whatever they deemed necessary to keep control and made no excuses of any kind. So why would they bother developing elaborate propaganda schemes to keep humans pacified? Their standard "propaganda" method was uncomplicated and straightforward: do as we say or we will kill you.

  Tempted, Tully wondered if he could get close enough to the ship to gather any useful information. He edged across the open tarmac, calculating. Those light beams were security devices, no doubt. Break one and you were probably toast. Still—

  "Being well crafted, is it not?"

  The voice, Jao by its inflection, stopped Tully in his tracks. Wind-borne sand ticked against his face. He spun around, heart thudding in his chest.

  The Jao facing him had that startling band covering his eyes much as a human bandit wore a mask. It was Aille krinnu ava Pluthrak.

  * * *

  Aille watched the Terran soldier, trying to gauge its reaction. Short and fragile though it was, compared to a Jao, it did seem to be male. Was it uneasy, perhaps even worried? He was coming to realize that their faces were much more mobile than he'd thought they would be, from the reports he'd read before arriving, once he mentally adjusted for the lack of whiskers and those tiny, immobile ears. Alien emotions fleeted across its face like waves before the wind.

  Staunch and alert, Yaut moved up to Aille's side, hand on his weapon. "Area of restrict!" he said in crude English. "What doing you here?"

  The human glanced over its shoulder at the landing field. A sweep of red lights outlined the boundaries in all directions while the blue stasis beams protected the Pluthrak courier. The Terran shook its head. "Just what the Subcommandant here said, sir. Admiring that ship."

  "Are you a pilot?" Aille asked, ears twitching.

  "No, sir," the human said, "but I hope to be certified to work on Jao engines one of these days."
It exhaled softly. "I'd sure like to know how that technology works."

  Curiosity was understandable, Aille thought, but still the presence of this one alone out here in the darkness seemed suspicious. Did the species often wander about like this, regardless of regulations?

  "You are male?"

  "Yes, sir," the soldier said and flicked his gaze toward Yaut, who stood between them like a shield.

  "Jao techs are generally female. They having—" Aille searched his newly acquired vocabulary for the right word. "—more affinity for the work." He peered at the man's shirt, trying to decode the unfamiliar glyphs etched on the small plate across the breast, by only the glimmer of starlight. "Were you not one of the gamblingers we apprehending earlier today?"

  The man stiffened. "You must be mistaken, sir."

  But that build, slender yet very strong-looking for a native, seemed familiar. So did the shape of the face and the subtleties of the stance, and the Terran symbols seemed to spell out the same name. And the hair, hadn't it been that same yellowish shade? He turned to Yaut. "Check your board," he said in Jao. "See if this is one of the three."

  "Don't bothering," the Terran said in Jao. "I submitting self for censure."

  "Gabe—Tully," Yaut read out anyway. "PFC."

  "You interest me, PFC Gabe Tully," Aille replied, also in Jao. "Are you not aware of the punishment for intruding into restricted areas of this base?"

  Tully inhaled deeply and locked his arms behind his back. "Yes, sir. It . . . can being very severe."

  "You could be put down for it, if I chose—or if the Commandant chose. And yet you risk coming here, nonetheless. Why?"

  "I wanting to see the ship better, sir."

  "That is irrational." Aille considered. "Are all Terrans this stupid?"

  The Terran made no response. Aille walked around the stiffly braced human, studying him from all angles. The sea breeze rifled the curiously colored hair. "You possess valuable military training?"