Caitlin pressed a hand to her head, abandoning any pretense at calm-acceptance. Her cheeks had gone fiery red and the breath rasped in her throat. “It’s so hot! I think I’m going to pass out.”
Kralik took her good arm. “Why don’t you go back into the ship?”
“No!” Aille’s voice was much louder than Tully had ever heard it, even in battle. “She must stay. We must all stay. To do anything else would be exceedingly dangerous.”
Tully glanced over his shoulder. Whatever stance the Subcommandant was executing, it sure as hell wasn’t Caitlin’s calm-acceptance. Probably something more like about-to-shit-a-brick, he told himself.
The Ekhat began speaking, both of them at once. The sounds were similar but not identical, as though the creatures were singing an atonal song with separate melody lines and verses. If he had thought the grinding metal noise bad, this was even worse. The cacophonous sound of the clicking and warbling voices felt as if they were being carved into his writhing brain. He had to restrain himself from clasping his hands over his ears.
“We notice you,” a mechanical voice said from behind him in Jao, “infesting this framepoint.”
Tully realized that Aille held a compact device against his chest, probably a mechanical translator.
“We occupy the third planet, not the framepoint,” Aille answered, also in his own language, “but the Interdict has never concerned itself with planets. Do you intend to permeate this system?”
The device screeched out a thunderous translation. Caitlin bit her lip and shuddered.
“This infested coldness!” The closest Ekhat wheeled away as the mechanical translator repeated its words. It resembled a tall, elongated spider on those thin, segmented legs, now striding in a intricate pattern around its fellow. “Unspokenness! Unsaiding!”
It was oddly compelling, Tully thought. Each movement was precise and controlled, yet utterly spontaneous, as though its kind were somehow born dancing. The Jao with their formalized stances looked positively wooden in comparison. But Tully now realized that they’d acquired their obsession with postures from their one-time masters.
The bizarre light show was getting to him, more and more. He concentrated on calm-assurance, the back leg straight, weight distributed just so, fingers curved.
The two Ekhat prowled closer, their legs twitching. Their hides looked soft and pale, the unwholesome color of whey. They spoke again in that odd dual mode that was not unison. A second later the translator bleated, “Interstitial brilliance surfacing.”
“What?” Tully leaned forward, straining to make some sense out of its words, but Yaut jerked him back into place by the shoulder.
The foremost Ekhat stopped, its body pulsating in time with the lights. “Complete Harmony condition of contemplating.”
Aille’s ears swiveled. “We have not detected any sign of the Complete Harmony in this solar region.”
Tully looked at Kralik. “Is that another faction of Ekhat?” he asked in a low voice.
“A competing faction.” Kralik shook his head. “There’s at least four, if I understood the records correctly.”
“Tonal motif unmodulated for this key,” the other Ekhat said. The throb of an organ badly out of tune underlay its voice, before the translator rendered the words into Jao. “Improvisation recommended.”
“Jao motif?” Aille said.
“Full dynamics approach this red place,” the first Ekhat said. “New notes in a condition of blue. Unharvesting. Heeding take.”
“You spoke of the Complete Harmony,” Aille said, returning to one of the few bits of sense Tully had been able to make out. “Is it their motif?”
“True Harmony unharvesting,” the Ekhat said, turning its head so that the circle of immense eyes glowered down at the small group on the ramp. “Complete Harmony unharvesting. Condition of unharvesting all.”
Tully watched the two creatures grow ever more agitated, circling one another as though they were binary suns caught in the wells of one another’s gravity. “What does ‘unharvesting’ mean?”
“I am familiar with the term ‘harvest,’ ” Aille said. His eyes flickered. “It refers to sweeping through a solar system and selecting those species that can make themselves of use. The Interdict, who find all lower lifeforms repulsive, do not harvest at all. Neither does the Melody. But both the Complete Harmony and True Harmony carry out such operations from time to time, depending upon their mood.”