Yes, Yaut was right. Something human.
He turned to Caitlin. “There are some terms I have encountered, studying your history. They puzzled me, and I would ask you to explain them.”
“Yes?”
“The first term is: ‘tyrant.’ The other is ‘despot.’ ”
* * *
Tully watched Aille and the Stockwell girl from a seat further down. For some reason, the Subcommandant seemed especially interested in the President’s daughter, though he wasn’t sure why.
As far as he knew, Jao did not perceive any degree of sexual attractiveness in humans. Whatever other outrages they had committed upon the human population, there had been no instances of rape. Or, indeed, of any kind of sexual interaction. The reason was not simply physical. Jao sexual organs were similar enough to human for intercourse to be possible.
But by all accounts, they mated only with their own kind—and infrequently at that. It wasn’t simply that Jao didn’t consort sexually with humans. They didn’t seem to consort sexually with each other, either, even though their sexes did everything together including toiletry and bathing. There were no Jao young on this planet. In fact, no human had ever reported even seeing one. Jao kept their families, or whatever passed for families among them, strictly off-world. As a result, humans knew less about the personal lives of their conquerors than they knew about the mating habits of jellyfish.
The hard rectangle of the locator’s controls bit into his hip through his back pocket, still in his possession though Yaut had clearly not forgotten about it. He only needed one look at the fraghta’s enigmatic black eyes to know that. He was still testing Tully, and the price of failing would most likely be death.
Tully had faced death many times since his childhood and the Jao invasion. But he sensed another, higher price lurking behind that more obvious consequence—loss of honor. If he took the opportunity to run, he might make it, but he would lose what the Jao called vithrik.
There was no reason he should care what Yaut or any other Jao thought of him, no reason why he should do anything but devote his energies to escape, which was after all the primary duty of all prisoners. He had learned that along with the alphabet and counting numbers back in the rebel camps, had eaten it for breakfast in the frosty gray dawns, then mouthed it as a prayer at night.
Yaut had beaten him, exhibited not the least sense of patience or good will, required things of him that he could not even begin to understand, yet refused to explain, calling it only “wrem-fa,” body-learning. He did not owe him or the Subcommandant a damned thing, and yet—
He pulled the black box out and sat with the hard cool shape in his hands, staring. Finally he put it back in his pocket.
Governor Oppuk was on the rampage. That much was clear. The Pluthrak Subcommandant had . . . done something back there in Oregon. In human terms, he’d “pulled a fast one” on Oppuk. And now, Tully suspected, Aille intended to oppose the Governor still further. Things were tense and bound to get only worse. Maybe the Resistance could find a way to use this to their advantage. And, if so, no one was in a better position than Tully to observe it. Analyze it, even.
He would wait. His “third way” still seemed . . .
Acceptable. Even honorable, to human and Jao alike.
God help me, I’m starting to understand these bastards.
* * *
Caitlin leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes and trying to ignore the pain of her broken arm. She needed to think.
Partly, she needed to think about the feel of the furry Jao hand still cupped over her own. In twenty-four years of life, most of it spent in close proximity to the aliens, this was the first time she’d ever felt anything remotely close to affection for one of them.
“Affection” was the right word, too, and Caitlin was too honest to lie to herself about it. For someone like Aille, she could feel respect—even admiration. But whatever her relationship with Tamt was, or was going to be, there would be genuine warmth to it. On her part, for sure, and she thought it would be reciprocated by Tamt. In whatever way, at least, Jao could feel what humans would consider personal warmth.