* * *
Nath entered Aille’s office in the command center. Even with her superb posture control, Aille immediately detected traces of unease.
“Subcommandant, one from Pluthrak itself wishes to speak with you.”
The initial Pluthrak representatives who had arrived on Terra had paid short visits to Aille. But they had been lesser figures, often simply from affiliated kochan, and had had little to say beyond polite expressions. Aille had thought his own kochan-parents would communicate again soon. Flow in that regard had been feeling almost complete for several solar cycles now. But he had lost himself in all the thousand everyday details of the ongoing refit and pushed the matter to the back of his mind. He straightened and glanced aside at Yaut, who was, as usual these days, doggedly noncommittal. That was Yaut’s own way of disguising worry and uncertainty.
“Have them put the message through in here.”
Her ears wavered, her whiskers went limp. Very unusual, for Nath. “I have not made myself understood. The kochanau himself waits just outside.”
Aille could not process the words. “The kochanau? Outside?” he echoed blankly. “Here?”
“Yes.” Nath’s body was now rigid. “When he made himself known to me, I wished to admit him at once, but he insisted I relay his request.”
“Then—bring him in,” Aille said lamely. He could not wrap his mind around the idea of Meku, kochanau of Pluthrak itself, asking permission of him to do anything.
Aguilera motioned to the other Terrans present. “With your permission, Subcommandant, we will withdraw.”
“I—yes,” Aille managed. “That would be best, but—”
He looked again at the diagrams they had laid before him, his attention drawn back to the tantalizing melding of Jao and Terran tech. It was the plans, still tentative, for a new type of warship specifically designed to fight Ekhat inside solar photospheres. “I wish to see the changes we discussed implemented as soon as possible. Contact me when they are ready.”
Aguilera nodded and Aille thought there was a hint of respectful-concern in the human’s shoulders. The native’s brown eyes narrowed. “Will you be all right, sir? I don’t pretend to understand all that’s going on here, but we will gladly speak on your behalf, if you think it would do any good.”
The doorfield faded and Aille saw, not Meku, as he had expected, but Dau krinnu ava Pluthrak. Dau was a highly venerated and very old Jao who had been kochanau two generations before. Aille had only seen Dau once in his short life, when the elder had been between postings and had returned to Marit An. But the impression of wisdom, of having encountered Pluthrak’s greatest living treasure, had been lasting.
“Vaist,” he said, rising to his feet and performing grateful-welcome in its most classical mode. “I had not expected to see one so illustrious on this world.”
“I have assumed Meku’s responsibilities for now. He felt inadequate to cope with the intricacies of this—” Dau was old, but still vital, his body stringy with age, but not weak. His snout wrinkled as though he scented something peculiar. “This—complex situation. As far as you are concerned, it is but barely begun, but the roots of conflict with Narvo go back through the generations.”
His gaze flicked over the Terrans, his eyes a tranquil black. “So it is true. You do surround yourself with natives.”
“Yes.” Aille read a trace of perception-of-error in Dau’s stance and for an instant, he was a callow, impulsive youth back on Marit An again, observed by Dau as he was being taught to spar through wrem-fa, body learning, the most ancient of their ways, in which nothing was ever explained and conscious thought bypassed altogether. He had been baffled then, when his elders refused to clarify what was expected, and went on trouncing him until on some subconscious level he finally divined the proper response and thereby absorbed the lessons they wished to impart.
He pushed aside the memory. Wrem-fa was a matter of life’s experience, even more than a crecheling’s training. When it came to humans, it was a simple fact that Aille’s wrem-fa now greatly exceeded that of any Jao except Wrot and a few others like him. It was certainly much superior to Dau’s, however wise and venerable the kochanau might be in other regards.