“Then ‘unharvesting’ indicates the opposite?” Caitlin said. “They’re not coming?”
“Far more likely, it means we can expect what some call a ‘weeding,’ ” Aille said. “Extermination of all life in this system.”
“It sounds like they’re trying to warn you, then,” Caitlin said. “If the Complete Harmony is coming, maybe the Interdict wishes to become our ally.”
Aille turned the translator off. “The term ‘ally’ is meaningless, applied to them. Interdict does not concern itself with the fate of lower lifeforms, any more than a human on your world would take an interest in the affairs of carrion flies. All Ekhat are xenophobic, but the Interdict is perhaps more so than any other faction. Their horror of interstellar travel is linked by some scholars to the fact that it exposes Ekhat to pollution by lower species. That they lower themselves to intervene here means only that they are using us in some way to thwart another faction.”
The taller of the two Ekhat fingered the moss on its head with what seemed a nervous motion and Aille switched the translator back on. “Chord completion!” the creature cried and turned toward its partner. “Condition of minimizing!”
“Watch,” Aille said grimly. “What comes next is one of the few common elements in all Interdict parleys.”
The two Ekhat orbited one another in increasingly tighter circles. Their arms were extended as though they would embrace in another second, their movements becoming less graceful, more stilted. Tully suddenly became even more apprehensive. Humans did not belong here, he told himself. In fact, nothing sane belonged here.
Abruptly, the taller alien leaped upon the other and tore one of its legs off. Thick white fluid spurted as the injured Ekhat threw back its head and screamed, a terrifying, shrill cry that vibrated into Tully’s marrow. Then it tackled the first, crashing with it onto the floor, where the two fought like a pair of tyrannosaurs out of Earth’s past, rending gobbets of flesh and casting them aside, bellowing in pain and rage.
Caitlin backed against Kralik and closed her eyes, but Aille and Yaut only watched, their postures identical. “You knew!” Tully said. “You knew this would happen!”
“This is inevitable,” Yaut said stolidly. “Members of the Interdict faction consider themselves irreversibly tainted by any contact with lower lifeforms. After communicating with us, they would never be allowed to rejoin their own kind and taint them as well. This is a form of sterilization.”
“It’s horrible!” Caitlin said. Her face was flushed with the terrible heat, but beneath it, she was as pale as a new moon.
“They are Ekhat,” Aille said. “It is their way.”
“Then let’s leave,” Caitlin said. “They aren’t going to tell us anything more and I can’t bear just standing here while they tear each other to bits.”
“It is required that we watch,” Yaut said.
The fraghta’s gaze was level, his arms positioned carefully. Tully knew he had seen that stance before. Resignation, he wondered, or perhaps aversion?
“It has been well documented that attempting to leave before the matter is concluded,” Aille added, “will trigger them to suspend their attack on one another and effect our deaths first.”
The carnage slowed as the two aliens weakened, but still they fought on in a pool of viscous white fluid, seemingly determined to rend each other limb from limb.
“How—” Caitlin gave a muffled sob, then tried again. “How could they have enslaved the Jao, if they can’t stand even to talk to you?”
“The Complete Harmony advanced the Jao to the point of usefulness, not the Interdict,” Aille said.
The taller of the two Ekhat crashed to the bloodied deck like a felled sequoia and lay twitching, the white of its eyes slowly discoloring to yellow. The other, staggering on only three legs now, continued to disembowel its companion until its strength failed. It then collapsed onto the corpse, where it tore weakly at its own flesh before finally subsiding into unconsciousness or death.
The light flashes had slowed. Aille’s whiskers shifted and he looked around. “We can leave. Indeed, we must.”
Kralik, his arm around Caitlin’s shoulders, strode back up the small ship’s ramp.
Tully hurried to keep up with them. “I never really believed in the existence of the Ekhat,” he said in a low voice as they stepped through the missing hatch. “I thought it was all just Jao propaganda.”