"We'll see. If I have time, it's a deal."
Over the next several days, however, Tarlac was too busy to teach; he was studying instead, fourteen hours a day, which left him time for little except food and sleep. He didn't mind the hard work; it was interesting, and it would very probably keep him alive—if anything would.
Hovan did leave him time to study the first-contact tape and read the daily news summaries the Supreme had delivered as promised. Neither brought any surprises, though he paid close attention to the tape, trying to find some way the war could have been avoided. Doing so wouldn't solve this situation, but it might help prevent another first-contact disaster.
He didn't find anything. The tape simply confirmed Hovan's account of the first human/Traiti meeting, adding little to Tarlac's knowledge except a sight of the guardship crew's intense horror when they saw women aboard an armed scout, being taken into danger only males should face. The human scouts had followed first-contact procedure, Tarlac found; the problem was the mixed crew, and there was no point in changing that. Anything the Empire did there—except perhaps for crewing all scouts with Irschchans, whose sex was difficult for non-felinoids to distinguish—could be just as bad, depending on the culture being contacted. And that had other practical difficulties. No, the Ranger decided, it was what he'd originally called it: a mutual misunderstanding. What he'd called the Empire's fault, to Daria, had been unavoidable. Neither side could be blamed.
The news summaries reported that the Empire was winning as steadily as ever. It was the casualty reports that bothered Tarlac. The Imperial losses were lighter than predicted, and he knew few individuals in the Empire well enough to feel more than mild regret at their deaths; but the increasingly heavy Traiti casualties upset him with their sheer numbers.
More, some of them hit him very personally. The loss of people from Ch'kara, even people he'd never met, left a void. They were a loss to the entire clan, and it wasn't balanced by the birth of a son to one of the n'ka'ruhar on Norvis—though Tarlac did share the clan's joy at that event.
The losses couldn't intensify his need to end the war, though. Nothing could; it was already the central fact of his existence. So, aside from paying attention to the news summaries and the necessities of life, Tarlac spent all his time on the concentrated study that might keep him alive through the Ordeal.
All the same, it was a welcome break when, just before dinner the evening of his tenth day on Homeworld, Hovan informed him that school was over and invited him to join one of the fighters' discussion groups after eating.
Tarlac pushed himself away from the study unit and stood, stretching luxuriously. "That sounds good, and I could sure use the change. Have you decided when I'm supposed to go out?"
"Tomorrow, or if you prefer, the next day."