Hunter Of Worlds

Chapter 2

THE DAZED STATE gave way to consciousness in the same tentative manner. Aiela was aware of the limits of his own body, of a pain localized in the roof of his mouth and behind his eyes. There was a bitter chemical taste and his brow itched. He could not raise his hand to scratch it. The itch spread to his nose and was utter misery. When he grimaced to relieve it, the effort hurt his head.

He slept again, and wakened a second time enough to try to move, remembering the bracelet that ought to be locked about his wrist. There was none. He lifted his hand—free now—and saw the numbers still stamped there, but faded. His head hurt. He touched his temple and felt a thin rough seam. There was the salt of blood in his mouth toward the back of his palate; his throat was raw. He felt along the length of the incision at his temple and panic began to spread through him like ice.

He hated them. He could still hate; but the concentration it took was tiring—even fear was tiring. He wept, great tears rolling from his eyes, and even then he was fading. Drugs, he thought dimly. He shut his eyes.

A raw soreness persisted, not of the body, but of the mind, a perception, a part of him that could not sleep, like an inner eye that had no power to blink. It burned like a white light at the edge of his awareness, an unfocused field of vision where shadows and colors moved undefined. Then he knew what they had done to him, although he did not know the name of it.

“No!” he screamed, and screamed again and again until his voice was gone. No one came. His senses slipped from him again.

At the third waking he was stronger, breathing normally, and aware of his surroundings. The sore spot was there; when he worried at it the place grew wider and brighter, but when he forced himself to move and think of other things, the color of the wall, anything at all, it ebbed down to a memory, an imagination of presence. He could control it. Whatever had been done to his brain, he remembered, he knew himself. He tested the place nervously, like probing a sore tooth; it reacted predictably, grew and diminished. It had depth, a void that drew at his senses. He pulled his mind from it, crawled from bed and leaned against a chair, fighting to clear his senses.

The room had the look of a comfortable hotel suite, all in blue tones, the lighted white doorway of a tiled bath at the rear—luxury indeed for a starship. His disreputable serviceman’s case rested on the bureau. A bench near the bed had clothing—beige—laid out across it.

His first move was for the case. He leaned on the bureau and opened it. Everything was there but the gun. In its place Was a small card: We regret we cannot permit personal arms without special clearance. It is in storage. For convenience in claiming your property at some later date, please retain this card, 509-3899-345:

He read it several times, numb to what he felt must be a certain grim humor. He wiped at his blurring vision with his fingers and leaned there, absently beginning to unpack, one-handed at first, then with both. His beloved pictures went there, so, facing the chair which he thought he would prefer. He put things in the drawer, arranged clothing, going through motions familiar to a hundred unfamiliar places, years of small outstations, hardrock worlds—occupying his mind and keeping it from horrid reality. He was alive. He could remember. He could resent his situation. And this place, this room, was known, already measured, momentarily safe: it was his, so long as he opened no doors.

When he felt steady on his feet he bathed, dressed in the clothes provided him, paused at the mirror in the bath to look a second time at his reflection, when earlier he had not been able to face it. His silver hair was cropped short; his own face shocked him, marred with the finger-length scar at his temple, but the incision was sealed with plasm and would go away in a few days, traceless. He touched it, wondered, ripped his thoughts back in terror; light flashed in his mind, pain. He stumbled, and came to himself with his face pressed to the cold glass of the mirror and his hands spread on its surface to hold him up.

“Attention please.” The silken voice of the intercom startled him, “Attention. Aiela Lyailleue, you are wanted in the paredre. Kindly wait for one of the staff to guide you.”

He remembered an intercom screen in the main room, and he pushed himself square on his feet and went to it, pressed what he judged was the call button, several times, in increasing anger. A glowing dot raced from one side of the screen to the other, but there was no response.

He struck the plate to open the door, not expecting that to work for him either, but it did; and instead of an ordinary corridor, he faced a concourse as wide as a station dock.

At the far side, stars spun past a wide viewport in the stately procession of the saucer’s rotation. Kallia in beige and other colors came and went here, and but for the luxury of that incredible viewport and the alien design of the shining metal pillars that spread ornate flanged arches across the entire overhead, it might have been an immaculately modern port on Aus Qao. Amaut technicians waddled along at their rolling pace, looking prosperous and happy; a young kalliran couple walked hand in hand; children played. A man of the iduve crossed the concourse, eliciting not a ripple of notice among the noi kame—a tall slim man in black, he demanded and received no special homage. Only one amaut struggling along under the weight of several massive coils of hose brought up short and ducked his head apologetically rather than contest right of way.

At the other end of the concourse an abstract artwork of metal over metal, the pieces of which were many times the size of a man, closed off the columned expanse in high walls. At their inner base and on an upper level, corridors led off into distance so great that the inner curvature of the ship played visual havoc with the senses, door after door of what Aiela judged to be other apartments stretching away into brightly lit sameness.

The iduve was coming toward him.

Panic constricted his heart. He looked to one side and the other, finding no other cause for the iduve’s interest. And then a resolution wholly reckless settled into him. He turned and began at first simply to walk away; but when he looked back, panic won: he gathered his strength and started to run.

Noi kame stared, shocked at the disorder. He shouldered past and broke into a corridor, not knowing where it led—the ship, vast beyond belief, tempted him to believe he could lose himself, find its inward parts, at least understand the sense of things before they found him again and forced then- purposes upon him.

Then the section doors sealed, at either end of the hall.

Noi kame stared at him, dismayed.

“Stand still,” one said to him.

Aiela glanced that way: hands took his arms and he twisted out and ran, but they closed and held him. The first man rash enough to come at him from the front flew backward under the impact of his thin-soled boot; but he could not free himself. An amaut took his arms, a grip he could not break, struggle as he would; and then the doors parted and the iduve arrived with a companion, frowning and businesslike. When Aiela attempted to kick at them, that iduve’s backhand exploded across his face with force enough to black him out: a hypospray against his arm finished his resistance.

He was not entirely unconscious. He tried to walk because the grip on his arms hurt less when he carried his own weight, but it was some little distance before he even cared where they were taking him. For a dizzying moment they rode a lift, and stepped off into another corridor, and then came into a hall. On the left a screen of translucent blue stone carved in scenes of reeds and birds separated a vast dim hall from this narrower chamber.

Then he remembered this place, this hall like a museum, with its beautiful fretted panels and lacquered ceiling, its cases for display, its ornate and alien furnishings. He had stood here once before from the vantage point of his cell, but this was reality. The carpets he walked gave under his boots, and the woman that awaited them was not projection, but flesh and blood.

“Aiela,” she said in her accented voice, “Aiela Lyailleue: I am Chimele, Orithain of Ashanome. And such action is hardly an auspicious introduction, nor at all wise. Takkh-ar-rhei, nasithi.”

Aiela found himself free—dizzied, bruised, thoroughly dispossessed of the recklessness to chance another chastisement at their hands. He moved a step—the iduve behind him moved him back precisely where he had stood.

She spoke to her people, frowning: they answered. Aiela waited, with such a physical terror mounting in him as he had never felt in any circumstances. He could not even shape it in his thoughts. He felt disconnected, smothered, wished at once to run and feared the least movement.

And now Chimele turned from him and returned with the wide band of an idoikkhe open in her indigo fingers—a band of three fingers’ width, with a patchwork of many colors of metal on its inner surface, a thread of black weaving through it all. She held it out for him, expecting him to offer his wrist for it, and now, now was the time if ever he would refuse anything again: He could not breathe, and he felt strongly the threat of violence at his back; his battered nerves refused to carry the right impulses. He saw himself raise an arm that seemed part of another body, heard a sharp click as the cold band locked, felt a weight that was more than he had expected as she took her hands away.

A jewel of milk and fire shone on its face. The asymmetry of iduve artistry flashed in metal worth a man’s life in the darker places of the Esliph. He stared at it, realizing beyond doubt that he had accepted its limits, that no foreign thing in his skull had compelled the lifting of his arm; there was a weakness in Aiela Lyailleue that he had never found before, a shameful, unmanning terror.

It was as if something essential in him had torn away, left behind in Kartos. He feared. For the first tune he knew himself less than other beings. Without dignity he tore at the band, but of the closure no trace remained save a fault diffraction of light—no clasp and no yielding.

“No,” she said, “you cannot remove it.”

And with a gesture she dismissed the others, so that they stood alone in the hall. He was tempted then to murder, the first time he had ever felt a hate so ikas—and then he knew that it was out of fear, female that she was. He gained control of himself with that thought, gathered enough courage to plainly defy her: he spun on his heel to stalk out, to make them use force if they would. That much resolve he still possessed.

The idoikkhe stung him, a dart of pain from his fingertips to his ribs. At the next step it hurt; and he paused, measuring the long distance to the door against the pain that lanced in rising pulses up his arm. A greater shock hit him, waves enough to jolt his heart and shorten his breath.

He jerked about and faced her—not to attack: if he had any thought then it was to stand absolutely still, anything, anything to stop it. The pulse vanished as he did what she wanted, and the ache faded slowly.

“Do not fear the idoikkhe,” said Chimele. “We use it primarily for coded communication, and it will not greatly inconvenience you.”

He was shamed; he jerked aside, hurt at once as the idoikkhe activated, faced her and felt it fade again.

“I do not often resort to that,” said Chimele, who had not yet appeared to do anything. “But there is a fine line between humor and impertinence with us which few m’metanei can safely tread. Come, m’metane-toj, use your intelligence.”

She allowed him time, at least: he recovered his composure and caught his breath, rebuilding the courage it took to anger her.

“So what is the law here?” he asked.

“Do not play the game of vaikka with an iduve.” He tried to outface her with his anger, but Chimele’s whiteless eyes locked on his with an invading directness he did not like. “You are bound to find the wager higher than you are willing to pay. You have not been much harmed, and I have extended you an extraordinary courtesy.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, and knew what to expect for it, knew and waited until his nerves were drawn taut. But Chimele broke from his eyes with a shrug, gestured toward a chair.

“Sit and listen, kameth. Sit and listen. I do not notice your attitude. You are only ignorant. We are using valuable time.”

He hesitated, weighed matters; but the change in her manner was as complete as it was abrupt, almost as if she regretted her anger. He still thought of going for the door; then common sense reasserted itself, and he settled on the chair opposite the one she chose.

Pain hit him, excruciating, lancing through his eyes and the back of his skull at once. He bent over, holding his face, unable to breathe. That sensation passed quickly, leaving a throbbing ache behind his eyes.

“Be quiet,” she said. “Anger is the worst possible response.”

And she brought him a tiny glass of clear liquid. He drank, too shaken to argue, set the empty crystal vessel on the table. He missed the edge with his distorted vision: it toppled off and she imperturbably picked it up off the costly rug and set it securely on the table.

“I am not responsible,” she said when he looked hate at her.

There was something at the edge of his mind, the void now full of something dark that reached up at him, and he fought to shut it out, losing the battle as long as he panicked. Then it ceased, firmly, outside his will.

“What was done to me?” he cried. “What was it?”

“The chiabres, the implant: I would surmise, though I do not do so from experience, that you reacted on a subconscious level and triggered defenses, contacting what was not prepared to receive you. This chiabres of yours has two contacts, mind-links to your asuthi—your companions. One is probably in the process of waking, and I assure you that fighting an asuthe is not profitable.”

“I had rather be dead,” he said. “I would rather die.”

“Tekasuphre. Do not try my patience. I called you here precisely to explain matters to you. I have great personal regard for your asuthi. Do I make myself clear?”

“Am I joined to one of you?”

“No,” she said, suddenly laughing—a merry, gentle sound, but her teeth were white and sharp. “Nature provided for us in our own fashion, m’metane. Kallia and even amaut find asuthithekkhe pleasant, but we would not.”

And the walls closed about them. Aiela sprang to his feet in alarm, while Chimele arose more gracefully. The light had brightened, and beside them was a bed whereon lay a kalliran woman of great beauty. She stirred in her sleep, silvery head turning on the pillow, one azure hand coming to her breast. There was the faint seam of a new scar at her temple.

“She is Isande,” said Chimele. “Your asuthe.”

“Is it—usual—that different sexes—“

Chimele shrugged. “We have not found it of concern.”

“Was she the one I felt a moment ago?”

“It is not reasonable to ask me to venture an opinion on something I have never experienced. But it seems quite possible.”

He looked from Chimele to the sweet-faced being who lay on the bed, the worst of his fears leaving him at once. He felt even an urge to be sorry for Isande, no less than for himself; he wondered if she had consented to this unhappy situation, and -was about to ask Chimele that question.

The walls blinked smaller still, and they stood in a room of padded white, a cell. At their left, leaning against the transparent face of the cell, was that same naked pink-brown creature Aiela remembered lying inert in the corner on his entry into the lab. Now it turned in the rapid dawning of terror: one of the humans of the Esliph, beyond doubt, and as stunned as he had been that day—how long ago?—that Chimele had appeared in his cell. The human stumbled back, hit the wall where there was no wall in his illusion, and pressed himself there because there was no further retreat.

“He is Daniel,” said Chimele. “We think this is a name. That is all we have been able to obtain from him.”

Aiela looked at the hair-matted face in revulsion, heart beating in panic as the human stretched out his hands. The human’s dark eyes stared, white around the edges, but when his hands could not grasp them he collapsed into a knot, arms clenched, sobbing with a very manlike sound.

“This,” said Chimele, “is your other asuthe.”

Aiela had seen it coming. When he looked at Chimele it was without the shock that would have pleased her. He hardened his face against her.

“And you know now,” she continued, unmoved, “how it feels to experience the chiabres without understanding what it is. This will be of use to you with him.”

“I thought,” he recalled, “that you had regard for Isande.”

“Precisely. Asuthithekkhe between species has always failed. I am not willing to risk the honor of Ashanome by endangering one of my most valued kamethi. You are presently expendable. Surgery will be performed on this being in two days. You had that interval to learn to handle the chiabres. Try to approach the human. Perhaps he will respond to you. Amaut are best able to quiet him, but I do not think he finds pleasure in their company or they in his. Those two species demonstrate a strong mutual aversion.”

Aiela nerved himself to take a step toward the being, and another. He went down on one knee and extended his hand.

The creature gave a shuddering sob and scrambled back from any contact, wild eyes locked on his. Of a sudden it sprang for his throat.

The cell vanished, and Aiela had sprung erect in the safety of the Orithain’s own shadowed hall. He still trembled, in his mind unconvinced that the hands that had reached for his throat were insubstantial.

“You are dismissed,” said Chimele.

The nas kame who escorted him simply abandoned him on the concourse and advised him to ask someone if he lost his way again. There was no mention of any threat, as if they judged a man who wore the idoikkhe incapable of any further trouble to anyone.

In effect, he knew, they were right.

He walked away to stand by the immense viewport, watching the stars sweep past, now and again the awesome view of the afterstructure of the ship as the rotation of the saucer carried them under the holding arm, alternate oblivion and rebirth from the dark, rotation after slow rotation, the blaze of Ashanome’s running lights, the dark beneath, the lights, the star-scattered fabric of infinity, a ceaseless rhythm.

Likely none of the thousands of kallia that came and went on the concourse knew much of Aus Qao. They had been born on the ship, would live their lives, bear their children, and die on the ship. Possibly they were even happy. Children came, their bright faces and shrill voices and the rhymes of the games they played the same as generations before had sung, the same as kalliran children everywhere. They flitted off again, their glad voices trailing away into the echoing immensities of the pillared hall. Aiela kept his face toward the viewport, struggling with the tightness in his throat.

Kartos Station would be about business as usual by now, and its people would have cleansed him from their thoughts and their conscience. Aus Qao would do the same; even his family must pick up the threads of their lives, as they would do if he were dead. His reflection stared back out of starry space, beige-clad, slender, crop-headed—indistinguishable from a thousand others that had been born to serve the ship.

He could not blame Kartos. It was a fact as old as civilization in the metrosi, a deep knowledge of helplessness. It was that which had compelled him to take the idoikkhe. Kallia were above all peaceful, patiently stubborn, and knew better how to outwait an enemy that how to fight.

To wait.

There was an Order of things, and it was reasonable and productive. For one nas kame to defy the Orithain and die would accomplish nothing. An unproductive action was not a reasonable action, and an unreasonable action was not virtue, was not kastien.

Should he have died for nothing?

But all reasonable action on Ashanome operated in favor of the Orithain, who understood nothing of kastien.

Until the idoikkhe had locked upon his wrist, he had been a person of some elethia. He had been a man able to walk calmly through Kartos Station under the witness of others. He had even imagined the moment he had just passed, in a hundred different manners. But he had expected oblivion, a canceling of self—a state in which he was innocent.

He had accepted it. He would continue to accept it, every day of his life, and by its weight, that metal now warmed to the temperature of his own body, he would remember what it cost to say no.

He had despised the noi kame. But doubtless their ancestors had resolved the same as he, to live, to wait their chance, which only hid their fear; waiting, they had served the Orithain, and they died, and their children’s children knew nothing else.

Something stabbed at him behind his eyes. He caught at his face and reached for the support of the viewport. Waking. Conscious.

Isande.

It stopped. His vision cleared.

But it was coming. He stood still, waiting—impulses to flight, even to suicide beat along his nerves; but these things were futile, ikas. It was possible—he thought blasphemously—that kastien demanded this patience of kallia because they were otherwise defenseless.

Slowly, slowly, something touched him, became pressure in that zone of his mind that had been opened. He shut his eyes tightly, feeling more secure as long as outside stimuli were limited. This was a being of his own kind, he reminded him-self, a being who surely was in no happier state than himself.

It built in strength.

Different: that was the overwhelming impression, a force that ran over his nerves without his willing it, callous and unfamiliar. It invaded the various centers of his brain, probing one and another with painful rapidity. Light blazed and faded, equilibrium wavered, sounds roared in his ears, hot and cold affected his skin.

Then it invaded his thoughts, his memories, his inmost privacy.

O God! he thought he cried, like a man dying. There was a silence so dark and sudden it was like falling. He was leaning against the viewport, chilled by it. People were staring at him. Some even looked concerned. He straightened and shifted his eyes from the reflection to the stars beyond, to the dark.

“I am Isande.” There grew a voice in his mind that had tone without sound, as a man could imagine the sound of his own voice when it was silent. A flawed dim image of the concourse filled his eyes. He saw the viewport at a distance, marked a slender man who seemed tiny against it—all this overlaid upon his own view of space. He recognized the man for himself, and turned, seeing things from two sides at once. Imposed on his own self now was a distant figure he knew for Isande: he felt her exhaustion, her impatience.

“I’ll meet you in your quarters,” she sent.

Her turning shifted his vision, causing him to stagger off-balance; reflex stopped the image, screened her out. He suddenly realized he had that defense, tried it again—he could not cope with the double vision while either of them was moving. He shut it down, an irregular flutter of on-off. It was hard to will a thing that decisively, that strongly, but it could be done.

And he began to suspect Chimele had been honest when she told him that kamethi found the chiabres no terror. It was a power, a compensation for the idoikkhe, a door one could fling wide or close at will.

Only what territory lay beyond depended entirely on the conscience of another being—on two asuthi, one of whom might be little removed from madness.

He did not touch her mind again until he had opened the door of his quarters: she was seated in his preferred chair in a relaxed attitude as if she had a perfect right to his things. When he realized she was speculating on the pictures on the bureau she pirated the knowledge of his family from his mind, ripped forth a flood of memories that in his disorganization he could not prevent. He reacted with fury, felt her retreat.

“I’m sorry,” she said smoothly, shielding her own thoughts with an expertise his most concentrated effort could not penetrate. She gestured toward the other chair and wished him seated.

“These are my quarters,” he said, still standing. “Or do they move you in with me? Do they assume that too?”

Her mind closed utterly when she felt that, and he could not reach her. He had thought her beautiful when he first saw her asleep; but now that her body moved, now that those blue eyes met his, it was with an arrogance that disturbed him even through the turmoil of his other thoughts. There was a mind behind that pretty facade, strong-willed and powerful, and that was not an impression beautiful women usually chose to send him. He was not sure he liked it.

He was less sure he liked her, despite her physical attractions.

“I have my own quarters,” she said aloud. “And don’t be self-centered. Your choices are limited, and I am not one of them.”

She ruffled through his thoughts with skill against which he had no defense, and met his temper with contempt. He thrust her out, but the least wavering of his determination let her slip through again; it was a continuing battle. He took the other chair, exhausted, beginning to panic, feeling that he was going to lose everything. He would even have struck her—he would have been shamed by that.

And she received that, and mentally backed off in great haste. “Well,” she conceded then, “I am sorry. I am rude. I admit that.”

“You resent me.” He spoke aloud. He was not comfortable with the chiabres. And what she radiated confirmed his impression: she tried to suppress it, succeeded after a moment.

“I wanted what you are assigned to do,” she said, “very badly.”

“I’ll yield you the honor.”

Her mind slammed shut, her lips set. But something escaped her barriers, some deep and private grief that touched him and damped his anger.

“Neither you nor I have that choice,” she said. “Chimele decides. There is no appeal.”

Chimele. He recalled the Orithain’s image with hate in his mind, expected sympathy from Isande’s, and did not receive it. Other images took shape, sendings from Isande, different feelings: he flinched from them.

For nine thousand years Isande’s ancestors had served the Orithain. She took pride in that.

Iduve, she sent, correcting him. Chimele is the Orithain; the people are iduve.

The words were toneless this time, but different from his own knowledge. He tried to push them out.

The ship is Ashanome, she continued, ignoring his awkward attempt to cast her back. WE are Ashanome: five thousand iduve, seven thousand noi kame, and fifteen hundred amaut. The iduve call it a nasul, a clan. The nasul Ashanome is above twelve thousand years old; the ship Ashanome is nine thousand years from her launching, seven thousand years old in this present form. Chimele rules here. That is the law in this world of ours.

He flung himself to his feet, finding in movement, in any distraction, the power to push back Isande’s insistent thoughts. He began to panic: Isande retreated.

“You do not believe,” she said aloud, “that you can stop me. You could, if you believed you could.”

She pitied him. It was a mortification as great as any the iduve had set upon him. He rounded on her with anger ready to pour forth, met a frightened, defensive flutter of her hand, a sealing of her mind he could not penetrate.

“No,” she said. “Aiela—no. You will hurt us both.”

“I have had enough,” he said, “from the iduve—from noi kame in general. They are doing this to me—“

“-to us.”

“Why?”

“Sit down. Please.”

He leaned a moment against the bureau, stubborn and intractable; but she was prepared to wait. Eventually he yielded and settled on the arm of his chair, knowing well enough that she could perceive the distress that burned along his nerves, that threatened the remnant of his self control.

You fear the iduve, she observed. Sensible. But they do not hate; they do not love. I am Chimele’s friend. But Chimele’s language hasn’t a single word for any of those things. Don’t attribute to them motives they can’t have. There is something you must do in Chimele’s service: when you have done it, you will be let alone. Not thanked: let alone. That is the way of things.

“Is it?” he asked bitterly. “Is that all you get from them— to be left alone?”

Memory, swift and involuntary: a dark hall, an iduve face, terror. Thought caught it up, unraveled, explained. Khasif: Chimele’s half-brother. Yes, they feel. But if you are wise, you avoid causing it. Isande had escaped that hall; Chimele had intervened for her. It haunted her nightmares, that encounter, sent tremors over her whenever she must face that man.

To be let alone: Isande sought that diligently.

And something else had been implicit in that instant’s memory, another being’s outrage, another man’s fear for her—as close and as real as his own.

Another asuthe.

Isande shut that off from him, firmly, grieving. “Reha,” she said. “His name was Reha. You could not know me a moment without perceiving him.”

“Where is he?”

“Dead.” Screening fell, mind unfolding, willfully.

Dark, and cold, and pain: a mind dying and still sending, horrified, wide open. Instruments about him, blinding light. Isande had held to him until there was an end, hurting, refusing to let go until the incredible fact of his own death swallowed him up. Aiela felt it with her, her fierce loyalty, Reha’s terror—knew vicariously what it was to die, and sat shivering and sane in his own person afterward.

It was a time before things were solid again, before his fingers found the texture of the chair, his eyes accepted the color of the room, the sober face of Isande. She had given him something so much of herself, so intensely self, that he found his own body strange to him.

Did they kill him? he asked her. He trembled with anger, sharing with her: it was his loss too. But she refused to assign the blame to Chimele. Her enemies were not the iduve of Ashanome. His were.

He drew back from her, knowing with fading panic that it was less and less possible for him to dislike her, to find evil in any woman that had loved with such a strength.

It was, perhaps, the impression she meant to project. But the very suspicion embarrassed him, and became quickly impossible. She unfolded further, admitting him to her most treasured privacy,- to things that she and Reha had shared once upon a time: her asuthe from childhood, Reha. They had played, conspired, shared their loves and their griefs, their total selves, closer by far than the confusion of kinswomen and kinsmen that had little meaning to a nas kame. For Isande there was only Reha: they had been the same individual compartmentalized into two discrete personalities, and half of it still wakened at night reaching for the other. They had not been lovers. It was something far closer.

Something to which Aiela had been rudely, forcibly admitted.

And he was an outsider, who hated the things she and Reha had loved most deeply. Bear with me, she asked of him. Bear with me. Do not attack me. I have not accepted this entirely, but I will. There is no choice. And you are not unlike him. You are honest, whatever else. You are stubborn. I think he would have liked you. I must begin to.

“Isande,” he began, unaccountably distressed for her. “Could I possibly be worse than the human? And you insist you wanted that”

I could shield myself from that—far more skillfully than you can possibly learn to do in two days. And then I would be rid of him. But you—

Rid? He tried to penetrate her meaning in that, shocked and alarmed at once; and encountered defenses, winced under her rejection, heart speeding, breath tight. She turned off her conscience where the human was concerned. He was nothing to her, this creature. Anger, revenge, Reha—the human was not the object of her intentions: he simply stood in the way, and he was alien—alien!—and therefore nothing. Aiela would not draw her into sympathy with that creature. She would not permit it. NO! She had died with one asuthe, and she was not willing to die with another.

Why is he here? Aiela insisted. What do the iduve want with him?

Her screening went up again, hard. The rebuff was almost physical in its strength.

He was not going to obtain that answer. He had to admit it finally. He rose from his place and walked to the bureau, came back and sprawled into the chair, shaking with anger.

There was something astir among iduve, something which he was well sure Isande knew: something that could well cost him his life, and which she chose to withhold from him. And as long as that was so there would be no peace between them, however close the bond.

In that event she would not win any help from him, nor would the iduve.

No, she urged him. Do not be stubborn in this.

“You are Chimele’s servant. You say what you have to say. I still have a choice.”

Liar, she judged sadly, which stung like a slap, the worse because it was true.

Images of Chimele: ancestry more ancient than civilization among iduve, founded in days of tower-holds and warriors; a companion, a child, playing at draughts, elbows-down upon an izhkh carpet, laughing at a m’metane’s cleverness; Orithain—

isolate, powerful: Ashanome’s influence could move full half the nasuli of the induve species to Chimele’s bidding— a power so vast there could be no occasion to invoke it.

Sole heir-descendant of a line more than twelve thousand years old. Vaikka: revenge; honor; dynasty.

Involving this human, Aiela gleaned on another level.

But that was all Isande gave him, and that by way of making peace with him. She was terrified, to have given him only that much.

“Aiela,” she said, “you are involved too, because he is, and you were chosen for him. Even iduve die when they stand between an Orithain and necessity. So did Reha.”

I thought they didn’t kill him.

“Listen to me. I have lived closer to the iduve than most kamethi ever do. If Reha had been asuthe to anyone else but me, he might be alive now, and now you are here, you are Chimele’s because of me; and I am warning you, you will need a great deal of good sense to survive that honor.”

“And you love a being like that.” He could not understand. He refused to understand. That in itself was a victory.

“Listen. Chimele doesn’t ask that you love her. She couldn’t understand it if you did. But she scanned your records and decided you have great chanokhia, great—fineness— for a m’metane. Being admired by any iduve is dangerous; but an Orithain does not make mistakes. Do you understand me, Aiela?”

Fear and love: noi kame lived by carefully prescribed rules and were never harmed—as long as they remembered their place, as long as they remained faceless and obscure to the iduve. The iduve did not insist they do so: on the contrary the iduve admired greatly a m’metane who tried to be more than m’metane.

And killed him.

“There is no reason to be afraid on that score,” Isande assured him. “They do not harm us. That is the reason of the idoikkhei. You will learn what I mean.”

His backlash of resentment was so strong she visibly winced. She simply could not understand his reaction, and though he offered her his thoughts on the matter, she drew back and would not take them. Her world was enough for her.

“I have things to teach you,” he said, and felt her fear like a wall between them.

“You are welcome to your opinions,” she said at last

“Thank you,” he said bitterly enough; but when she opened that wall for a moment he found behind it the sort of gentle being he had seen through Reha’s thoughts, terribly, painfully alone.

Dismayed, she slammed her screening shut with a vengeance, assumed a cynical facade and kept her mind taut, more burning than an oath. “And I will maintain my own,” she said.