The saying meant absolutely nothing to Aille, but it seemed to amuse the veteran.
“Surely you cannot spend all your time engaged in human diversions?”
“Of course not. Most of them are sheer silliness. What they call team sports, I can understand—I actually enjoy ‘football,’ although they won’t let me play—but why would anyone not insane choose to climb a rock cliff? And most of what they call ‘music’ and ‘art’ is awful stuff. Sheer cacophony, painful to the ears, or witless daubs of pigments scattered across a surface to no conceivable purpose. Mind you, many humans share my opinion also.”
His ears flattened with amusement. “No, I mainly occupy myself by teaching. And studying.”
“Teaching?” Aille was puzzled. Retired members of a kochan were often used as instructors, of course, the best of them elevated to fraghta. But, in the nature of things, a bauta had no further obligations to their kochan. “Teach who? And what?”
For a moment, there was a trace of abashed-awkwardness in Wrot’s posture. “I teach humans. There is an institute of instruction in Portland—what humans call a ‘university.’ Since they have no proper kochan, humans substitute these institutes for the purpose of educating their most promising crechelings. This one is small, but very old and prestigious. They call it ‘Reed College.’ Not long after I set up residence in Portland, some of their elders approached me—very diffidently, ha!—and asked me if I would be willing to instruct their crechelings in our language.”
Aille and Yaut stared at each other, both dumbfounded. Aille himself, namth camiti of great Pluthrak, had only invited Wrot to join his personal service with considerable diffidence. That a kochan-less gaggle of humans would have the audacity to so approach a bauta . . .
Wrot stroked the bauta on his cheek. “Crude and coarse Hemm may be, young Pluthrak, but I was taught even as a crecheling that to begin by assuming disrespect is a grave offense against association.”
Aille had been taught the same thing. But he realized now, more fully than he ever had before, the difference between formal instruction and body-learning. This old bauta was wise with wrem-fa, because he had not wasted his life.
“Instruct me,” he murmured.
Wrot was still stroking the mark. “They intended no offense, nor disrespect. By their customs, it was an honor. I took it so, and was intrigued by the idea. So, I accepted—and have not regretted doing so, since. Human crechelings can be quite charming, some of them, and all of them are at least interesting from time to time. They are even more adept than Jao crechelings at getting themselves into complicated little troubles. What humans call ‘a pickle.’ ”
Aille began to pursue the matter, but had to break off the discussion for a later time. The battle in Salem seemed to be reaching a climax, and he turned his attention back to the screens and monitors.
* * *
The climax was brief and violently destructive. Kralik, he now realized, had deftly maneuvered the remaining defenders into a stronghold near the center of the city. It was a large, ornate-looking edifice, apparently the administrative center for the region. What the humans called “the state capitol,” which seemed to have some symbolic significance to them. Perhaps the rebels thought Kralik would hesitate to destroy it.
But, he didn’t. The edifice was isolated from the rest of the city by one of those large expanses of open terrain called “parks” that humans enjoyed—though this one, for no reason Aille could see, was apparently called a “mall.” Kralik was therefore able to attack it ruthlessly, without fear that the destruction might engulf some of the human civilians who were still straggling out of Salem. He did not use his vulnerable infantrymen at all, except at the very end. He simply used his tanks and artillery to pulverize the structure, only sending in the infantry to look for survivors.
There were none, not there. Kralik had turned the building into nothing more than a pile of burning rubble.
* * *
By dawn of the next day, the fighting was all over. The jinau brigade had captured thirty-seven resistance fighters, most injured to some degree, and five more humans who were noncombatants but whom Kralik considered part of the rebellion.