Apparently he was right. The Governor turned his back and reentered the hant on its completed side, without saying another word.
Caitlin Stockwell took a step after him, then stopped, her hands knotted together. “Please don’t hurt them,” she said to Aille in a strangled voice. “There isn’t a base near here. I imagine many of these people have never even seen a Jao. They have no idea what they’re doing!”
She was probably right. Tully stepped forward. “I’ll talk to them,” he said with a sideways glance at Aguilera, “if you’ll unleash me and turn the locator off. Otherwise, I won’t be able to get close enough.”
Yaut wrinkled his muzzle. “I will give it to Aguilera. If they both go, there will not be a problem.” He turned to Tully. “Unless you think to overpower him, and leave with the human mob.”
Tully realized with a start that the possibility of escape had not occurred to him. His jaw tightened. He must be losing his grip. “This isn’t about me. It’s about those poor miserable idiots over there who are about to get their fool heads blown off!”
Aguilera ran a hand back over his disordered hair. “Well, come on, then. We’d better get started. I can’t move too fast with this bum leg.”
Together, they waded through the grass, Tully painfully aware of his blue jinau uniform. Collaborator, he thought angrily. That was exactly what he looked like in this get up.
A hefty fellow with a face of fish-belly white glared as they approached. “A pair of Jao lapdogs!” he said and spat into the sand. “Go back to your masters!”
Aguilera clasped his hands behind his back. “Where are you from?”
“What the hell difference does that make?” The man tightened his grip on a sign that read “Stop the Slaughter on Earth’s Seas!”
“Wherever it is, you probably have homes there,” Tully said, “and families waiting.” With a sudden pang, he thought of the refugee camps back in the Rockies, the only home he had ever known, and a piss-poor one at that. “If you ever want to see them again, you need to hop back in those cars before things get out of control.”
“Or what?” A starved-looking woman with flyaway white hair, who had to be at least sixty, stepped up to the big man’s side. Her sign, carried in arthritic hands, read “Jao Bastards, Go Home!”
Jesus. In spite of the cool sea breeze whipping up over the cliffs, Tully felt as though he’d stood too long in the sun. “Lady, do you want to die for this?” His voice was urgent. “Jao don’t have a sense of humor, and they hate disrespect worse than about anything you can name. They’d just as soon kill you as look at you.”
“You can crawl for them, if you want!” Another woman pushed through the crowd. Her curly red hair hung down over her cheek, partially obscuring her face. “We’re not going to! This is our world!”
He looked at their faces. They were well meaning patriots, just like the people he’d grown up with back in the Rockies, but they didn’t have a clue. Like many humans, living in small out-of-the-way towns, they’d had little if any direct contact with the Jao. This was not a fight they could possibly win.
“Look,” he said, “we all do what we have to in order to survive these days. These stupid signs aren’t going to change anything. You’re just taking a bad situation and making it a hell of a lot worse.” He glanced over his shoulder at Oppuk’s Jao guards, who were prowling back and forth like thwarted sentry dogs, their flickering eyes trained on the crowd of humans. “Believe me, you don’t want to draw the Governor’s attention like this. If you’re going to resist, there are a thousand better ways. Don’t be stupid!”
“You heard what the man said.” Aguilera jerked his head, pointing toward the parked vehicles. “Load back up in those cars and hit the road. It’s just one whale.”
“One whale today!” The woman brushed her red hair out of her face. “And then they’ll get to liking the sport and pretty soon there won’t be any whales at all.”