Hunter Of Worlds

Chapter 5

ISANDE WAS THERE in the morning. Her cheerful presence burst in enthusiastically while Aiela was putting his boots on, and it was as if a door had opened and someone were standing behind him—where there was neither door nor body.

“Must you be so sudden?” he asked her, and her joy plummeted. He was sorry. Isande had never been so vulnerable before. He was concerned about last night and out of sorts about time wasted and a tight schedule with Daniel.

“I would try to help,” she offered.

His screens tightened; he knew her opinion of the human, her dislike of the creature. If it were not unlike her, he would have suspected her of wishing to harm Daniel: her feelings were that strong.

What do you expect of me? she asked, offended.

Answers. What do they want with him?

And a strange uneasiness was growing in him now that Daniel was on his mind; Isande’s thoughts grew hard to unravel. Daniel was waking; Aiela’s own heart began to speed, his breathing grew constricted in sympathetic reaction.

“Calm!” he cast him. “Calm! It’s Aiela. It’s all right.”

Isande—who is Isande?

Daniel perceived her through him. Aiela’s impulse was to interrupt that link, protecting both of them; but he sensed no harm from either direction, and he hesitated, suffering a strange double-passage of investigation as they probed each other. Then he received quite an unpleasant impression as the human realized Isande was female: curiosity reached for body-sense, to know.

Violently he snapped that connection, at once prey to the outrage of them both.

“I can fend for myself,” Isande voiced to him, seething with offended pride. “He is not of our species, and I’m sure his curiosity means nothing to me.”

But Daniel was too angry to voice. He was embarrassed and furious, and for a moment his temper obscured the fact that he was not equal to a quarrel either with Aiela or with his situation.

Aiela fired back his own feelings upon the instant: frustration with the ungovernable Isande, revulsion at having been made the channel for an alien male’s obscene curiosity— male, not man, not fit to touch a kalliran woman.

Barriers went up against him, fell again. Aiela felt the human’s despair like a plunge into darkness, a hurt mingled with his own guilt. He was too disoriented to prevent its flow to Isande. Her anguish struck him from the other side, coldly doused as she flung up a screen.

“Aiela! The echo—stop it.”

He understood: mind-linked as they were, each brain reacted to the other’s emotions. It was a deadly self-accelerating process. His reaction to Daniel’s offended masculinity had lowered a screen on an ugliness he had not suspected existed in himself.

“Daniel,” he sent, and persisted until the unhappy being acknowledged his presence. It was a terrible flood he received. All screens went, asuthithekkhe, mind-link, defense abandoned. The images came so strongly they washed out vision: amaut, cages, dead faces, grief upon grief. Daniel’s mind was the last citadel and he hurled it wide open, willing to die, at the end of his resistance.

I am sorry, Aiela hurled into that churning confusion like a voice into a gale. Daniel! I was hurt too. Stop this. Please. Listen.

Gradually, gradually, sanity gathered up the pieces again, the broken screens rebuilt themselves into separate silence; and Aiela rested his head in his hands, struggling against a very physical nausea that swelled in his throat His instincts screamed wrong, his hands were cold and sweating at the proximity of a being unutterably twisted, who rejected giyre and kastien, who loathed the things most kalliran.

Aiela. Daniel reached the smallest tendril of thought toward him. He did not understand, but he would seal the memory behind a screen and not let it out again. Dying was not worse than being alone. Whatever the rules Aiela set, he would conform.

I’m sorry, Aiela replied gently. But your perceptions of us are not exactly without prejudice; and you were rude with Isande.

Isande is yours? Daniel snatched at that possibility. It touched something human as well as kalliran. He was anxious to believe he was not hated, that he had only made a mistake.

It was like that, Aiela admitted, embarrassed. He had never expected to have to share such intimate thoughts with the creature. It disturbed him, made him feel unclean; he screened those emotions in, knowing he must dispose of them.

“This arrangement,” Daniel said, scanning the situation to the limit Aiela allowed, “with a woman and the two of us—is not the best possible, is it?”

That was sent with wistful humor. The human foresaw for himself a lifetime of being different, of being alone. Aiela was sorry for him then, deeply sorry, for there was in the being an elethia worth respect.

“We are at the mercy of the iduve,” Aiela said, “who perceive our feelings only at a distance.”

“There are so many things I don’t understand here that I can hardly keep my thoughts collected. There are moments when I think I’m going to—“

“Please. Keep your questions a little longer. I will find it easier to explain when you have seen a little of the ship. Come, get dressed. Food comes before other things. We’ll go out to the mess hall and you can have a look about.”

Daniel was afraid. He had caught an impression of the way they would walk, crowds of kalliran strangers; and when Aiela let him know that there would be amaut too, he looked forward to breakfast with no appetite at all.

“Trust me,” said Aiela. “If the iduve wished you harm, no place would be safe, and if they wish you none, then you are safe anywhere on this ship. They rule all that happens here.”

Daniel acquiesced unhappily to that logic. In a little time they were out on the concourse together, Daniel looking remarkably civilized in his brown clothing—Aiela let that thought slip inadvertently and winced, but Daniel accepted the judgment with wry amusement and little bitterness. He was not a vain man, and the amaut had removed whatever vanity he had had.

It was the mess-hall company he could not abide. As they were eating, two amaut chanced to stand near their table talking, popping and hissing in the odd rhythms of their native tongue. Daniel’s hand began to shake in the midst of carrying a bite to his mouth, and he laid the utensil aside a moment and covered the action by reaching for his cup. When Aiela picked up the thought in his mind, the memory of that cage and his voyage, he nearly lost his own appetite.

“These are decent folk,” Aiela assured him, silently so the amaut would not realize the exchange.

“See how people look at me when they think I am looking away. I had as soon be an exhibit in a zoo. And I know the amaut. I know them; don’t try to tell me otherwise. It doesn’t help my confidence in you.”

Is the human species then without its bandits, its criminals and deviates?

Aiela caught a disturbing flash of human history as Daniel pondered that question; and with a deliberate effort Daniel put the memory of the freighter from his mind. But he still would not look at the amaut.

Aiela. That was Isande, near them. She queried Aiela, did he mind, and when he extended her the invitation, she came into the mess hall, took a hot drink from the dispenser, and joined them. Through Aiela she reached for Daniel’s mind and touched, introducing herself.

Her bright smile (it was a weapon she used consciously) elicited a shy response from Daniel, who was still nervous about Aiela’s reactions; but when Aiela had approved, the human opened up and smiled indeed, the first time Aiela had known any moment of unblighted happiness in the being. Isande’s presence with them was like a sunshine that drowned all the shadows, an assurance to Daniel that here was a healthy, whole world, a normality he had almost forgotten.

“I,” said Daniel aloud, struggling with the unfamiliar sounds of the kalliran language, “I am really very sorry for offending you.”

“You are a kind man,” said Isande, and patted his hand— Aiela was glad he had his own screens up during that moment. He had foreseen this, and knew Isande well enough to know that she would purposely defy him in some way. Poor Daniel looked quite overcome by her, not knowing what to do then; and Aiela dropped his screen on Isande’s contact, letting her know what he thought of her petty vaikka.

Stop it, Isande. Be kallia for once. Feel something.

She had not realized about Daniel, not known him so utterly vulnerable and frightened of them. Now she saw him through Aiela’s eyes.

“Please,” said Daniel, who had not been privy to that small exchange, but was painfully aware of the silence that excluded him. “I am an inconvenience to you both—but save us all embarrassment. Tell me why I have been brought here, why I have been—unwelcomely attached—to you both.”

Isande was dismayed and ashamed; but Aiela looked on the human with as much respect at that moment as he had felt for any man.

“Yes,” said Aiela, “I think it is time we went aside together, the three of us, and did that”

It would have been merciful, Aiela reflected, if Chimele had elected to talk to the human with as little distraction about him as possible. Instead, when he and his two asuthi entered the paredre, there were not only the nasithi-ka-tasakke, but what Isande flashed them in dismay was the entire Melakhis. The blue screen was thrust back, opening up the audience hall, and nearly fifty iduve were there to observe them. Kamethi, Isande sent, are not normally involved before the Melakhis. Iduve together are dangerous. Their tempers can become violent with no apparent reason. Be very careful. Daniel; be extremely careful and respectful.

Chimele met them graciously, gave Aiela a nod of particular courtesy. Then she looked full at Daniel, whose heart was .beating as if he feared murder. ..

Be calm, Aiela advised him. Be calm. Isande and I are here to advise you if you grow confused.

“Please sit,” said Chimele, including them all. She resumed the central chair in the paredre—a ceremonial thing, perhaps of great age, ornate with serpents and alien or mythical beasts worked in wood and gold and amber. “Daniel. Do you understand where you are?”

“Yes,” he answered. “They have explained to me who you are and that I must be honest with you.”

Some of the elder iduve frowned at that; but Chimele heard that naive reply and inclined her head in courtesy.

“Indeed. You are well advised to be so. Where is your home, Daniel, and how did you come into the hands of the amaut of Konut?”

Suspicion ran through Daniel’s mind: attack, plunder— these the agents of it, seeking information. Isande had threshed out the matter with him repeatedly, assuring him of Ashanome’s indifference to the petty matter of his world. Suddenly Daniel was not believing it. Fight-flight-escape ran through his mind, but he did not move from his chair. Aiela seized his arm to be sure that he did not.

“Pardon,” Aiela said to Chimele softly, for he knew her extreme displeasure when Daniel failed to respond. She had shown courtesy to this being before her people; and Daniel for his part looked into those whiteless eyes and met something against which the alienness of the amaut was slight in comparison. They had shown Daniel iduve in his mind; he had even seen Chimele—shadowy and indistinct in his cell; but the living presence of them, the subtle communication of arrogance and their lack of response to emotion, he hated, loathed, feared. Their pattern is different, Aiela sent him. It is affecting you. Don’t let it overcome you. Instinct is not always positive for survival when you are offworld. You are the stranger here.

“M’metane,” Chimele said, labored patience in her voice, “m’metane, what is the difficulty?”

“I—“ Daniel shared a moment into Chimele’s violet eyes and tore his glance away, fixing it unfocused on the panel just beyond her shoulder. “I have no way to know that we are not still in human space, or that this is not the upper part of the ship where I was a prisoner. I have seen amaut on my world. I don’t know who sent them. Perhaps they brought themselves, but on this ship they take your orders.”

There was a great shifting of bodies among the iduve, a dangerous and unpredictable tension; but Chimele leaned her chin on her hand and studied Daniel with heightened interest Of a sudden she smiled, showing her teeth. “Indeed. I hope you have not seen much similarity between the decks of Ashanome and that pestiferous freighter, m’metane. Yet your caution I find admirable. Amaut on your world? And where is your world, Daniel? Surely not in the Esliph.”

“Why?” Daniel asked, though Isande tried to prevent him. “What exactly do you want to know?”

“M’metane, I am informed, perhaps correctly, perhaps not, that your people have been attacked. If this is so, we did not order it. We pursue our own business, and your asuthi will advise you that I am being extraordinarily courteous. Now as you hope for the survival of your species, I advise you not to insult that courtesy by being slow in your answers.”

Does she mean that against all humanity—a threat? Daniel asked them, shaken. Would they declare war? Have they?

In the name of reason don’t try to bargain with her, Aiela flung back. Iduve don’t bluff.

Daniel folded, sick inside, a simple man out of his depth and fearing both alternatives. He took the one advised and began to tell them the things they wanted to know, his origin on a world named Konig, beyond the Esliph, his life there, his brief service in the military, his world’s fall to the amaut The iduve listened with unnerving patience even interrupting him to ask more detail of the history of his people, particularly as it regarded the Esliph frontier.

“We never consented, sir,” he told Rakhi, who had asked about the human retreat from the Esliph worlds. “Those were our farms, our cities. The amaut drove us out with better weapons and we went back to safe worlds across the Belt.”

Rakhi frowned. “Most unfortunate, this human problem,” he said to his nasithi. “Our departure from the metrosi seems to have thrown the amaut and kalliran powers into considerable turmoil. We appear to have served some economic purpose for them. When we withdrew, the amaut seem to have found themselves in particular difficulty. They drew back and abandoned the Esliph. Then the humans discovered it. And, under renewed population pressures, the amaut return, reclaim the Esliph—it is altogether logical for them to use force to take land they already considered theirs, or to use force in meeting competitors. But m’metane, were there not agreements, accommodations?”

“Only that we were let off with our lives,” said Daniel. Of iduve that questioned him, Rakhi drew the most honest responses; and upon this question, centuries ago as the event was, Daniel allowed anger to move him. Amaut, iduve, even kallia blurred into one polity in his image of the forced evacuation of his people, for the invaders had been faceless beings in ships, giving orders; and to the human mind, all nonhumans tended to assume one character. “We were pushed off before we could be properly evacuated, crowded onto inadequate ships. Some refused to board and commit themselves to that; they stayed to fight, and I suppose I know what became of them. The ones that migrated and survived to reach the other side of the belt were about twenty out of a hundred. We landed without enough equipment, hardly with the means to survive the winter. The worlds were undeveloped, bypassed in our first colonization, undesirable. We scratched a living out of sand and rock and lost it to the weather more often than not. Now they’ve come after us there.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Khasif, “as the abandoned humans did not fit the amaut social pattern, indenture became the amaut’s solution for the humans. Beings that cannot interbreed with amaut could not exit indenture by normal legal process, so the humans remain in this status perpetually.”

“Yet,” objected another of Khasifs order, “one wonders why the other humans did not eventually seek better territories, if the worlds in question were so entirely undesirable.”

Answer, Isande flashed, for that was a question to Daniel, stated in the often oblique manner of iduve courtesy. “The Esliph was ours,” Daniel replied, “and we always meant to come and take it back.”

“Prha,” said Chaikhe to that person, “vaikka/tomes-me-lakhia-sa, ekutikkase.”

“We did not so much want revenge,” Daniel responded to the comment, for he had caught the gist of it through Isande, “as we wanted justice, our own land back. Now the amaut have come looking for us, even across the Belt. They’re murdering my people.”

“Why?” asked Chimele.

The sudden harshness of her tone panicked the human; his own murder flashed to mind—the easy, gentle manner of the others’ questions some game they played with him. No! Isande sent him. Stay absolutely still. Don’t move. Answer her.

“I don’t know why. They came—they came. Unprovoked.”

“Human ships had not crossed to the Esliph?”

“No,” he said quickly, surprised by the accusation. “No.”

“How do you know this?”

He did not. He was no one. He had no perfect knowledge of his people’s actions. Aiela sent him an urging to keep still, for Chimele frowned.

“M’metane,” said Chimele, “disputing another’s experience is most difficult. Yet there remains the possibility that the amaut responded to a human intrusion into Esliph space. They are not prone to act recklessly where there is an absence of threat to their own territory, and they are not prone to aggression without the certainty of profit. When there is either motivation, then they move most suddenly and decisively. Our acquaintance with the amaut is long, but I am not satisfied that you know them as well as you believe. Consider every detail of your acquaintance with these uncommon amaut, from the beginning. Let Isande have these thoughts.”

He did so, the image of a ship, of amaut faces, another ship, a city, fire—he flashed backward, seeking the origin, the first intimation of danger to human worlds. Merchant ship, military ship—vanished, only gaseous clouds to mark their passing. Ships grounded. Another vessel. Alien. A human war fleet, drawn from worlds to the interior of human space: this the real defense of their perimeters, large, ships technologically not far from par with the metrosi. Demolished, traceless. Mindless panic among human colonies, wild rumors of landings in the system. A second, local fleet gone, thirty ships at once.

Daniel still sent, but Isande had glanced sharply at Chimele, and Aiela did not need her interpretation to understand. Amaut karshatu maintained weapons on their merchantmen, but they were not capable of disposing of whole warfleets: the karshatu never combined. In that respect they were as solitary as the iduve.

Amaut, Daniel insisted, and there were amautish ships in his mind, such as he had seen onworld, great hulking transports, hardly capable of fighting: carriers of equipment and indentured personnel; smaller ships, trade ships that plied the high-speed supply runs, taking back the only export these raw new worlds would supply as yet, not to make an empty run on either direction: human cargo, profitably removed from a place where their numbers made them a threat to places where they were a commodity. But these amaut were not fighters either. Daniel, confused, searched into dimmer memories.

Darkness, images on a viewing screen, a silver shape in hazy resolution, lost to view almost instantly, pursued in vain. Isande caught at the memory eagerly, drawing more and more detail from Daniel, making him hold the image, concentrate upon it, focus it.

“He has seen an akites,” Isande’s soft voice translated. “Distant, his ship pursued, lacked speed, lost it. He thinks it was amaut, knows—this was what arrived—disorganized the entire human defense. They resisted—mistook it for several ships, not knowing its speed—perhaps—perhaps more than one, I can’t tell—they provoked—they provoked, not knowing what—Daniel, please!”

“Was it yours?” Daniel cried, on his feet, closing screens with abrupt violence. Iduve moved, and Aiela, hardly slower, sprang up to put himself between Daniel and Chimele.

“Sit down,” Aiela exclaimed. “Sit down, Daniel.”

Contempt came across: it was in Daniel’s eyes and burning in his mind. Theirs. Not your kind either, but you crawl at their feet. You come apart inside when they look at you—I’m sorry— He felt Aiela’s pain, and tears came to his eyes. What are you doing to us? Not human. Aiela!”

Aiela seized, held to him, shamed by the emotion, shamed to feel when their observers could not. Isande—she, apart, despising, angry. He gained control of himself and forced the dazed human into a chair, stood over him, his fingers clenched into the man’s shoulder.

Calm, be calm, he kept sending. After a moment Daniel’s muscles relaxed and his mind assumed a quieter level, questioning, terrified.

Why are they asking these things? he kept thinking. Aiela, Aiela, help me—tell me the truth if you know it. And then at the angry touch of Isande’s mind: Who is Tejef?

Terror. She flung herself back, screened so violently Daniel cried out.

And the iduve were utterly still, every eye upon them, the nasithi gathered close about Chimele, with such a look of menace that they seemed to have grown and the room to have shrunk. Indeed more had come, dark faces frowning with anger, unasking and unasked. Still they came, and the concourse began to be crowded with them. None spoke. There was only the sound of steps and the rustling of thousands of bodies.

“Is this aberrance under control?” Chimele wondered quietly, her eyes on Aiela.

It is not aberrance, he wanted to cry at her. Can’t you perceive it? But the iduve could not comprehend. He bowed deeply. “He was alarmed. He perceived a threat to his species.”

Chimele considered that. Iduve faces, whose eyes were almost incapable of moving from side to side, had always a direct, invading stare, communicating little of what processes of thought went on behind them. At last she lifted her hand and the tension in the room ebbed perceptibly.

“This being is capable of a certain elethia,” she said. “But he is not wise to think that Ashanome could not deal with his species more efficiently if their destruction were our purpose. How long ago, o m’metane, did your worlds realize the presence of such ships?”

“I’ve lost count,” Daniel replied: truth. “A year, perhaps—maybe a little less. It seems forever.”

“Do you reckon in human time?”

“Yes.” An impulse rose in him, defiant, suicidal. “Who is Tejef?”

The effect was like a weapon drawn. But this time Chimele refused to be provoked. Interest was in her expression, and she held her nasithi motionless with a quick lift of her fingers.

“Chimele,” said Isande miserably, “he took it from me, when I thought of ships.”

“Are you sure it was only then?”

“I am sure,” she said, but an iduve from the Melakhis stepped into the paredre area: a tall woman, handsome, in black as stark and close-fitting as iduve men usually affected.

“Chimele-Orithain,” said that one. “I have questions I would ask him.”

“Mejakh .sra-Narach, sra-Khasif, you are out of order, though I understand your m’melakhia in this matter. Hold, Mejakh!” Chimele’s voice, soft, snapped like a blow to the face in the stillness, and the woman stopped a second time, facing her.

“This human is not kameth,” said Mejakh, “and I consider that he is out of order, Chimele, and probably in possession of more truth than he is telling.”

“More than he knows how to tell, perhaps;” said Chimele. “But he is mine, o mate of Chaxal. Honor to your m’melakhia. It is well known. Have patience. I am aware of you.”

“Honor to you,” said Khasif softly, drawing that woman to his side. “Honor always, sra-of-mine. But do not notice this ignorant being. He is harmless and only ignorant. Be still. Be still.”

The room grew quiet again. Chimele looked at last upon Daniel and Aiela. “Estimate a human year in Kej-time. Ashakh, assist them.”

It needed some small delay. Daniel inwardly recoiled from Ashakh’s close presence, but with quiet, precise questions, the iduve obtained the comparisons he wanted. In a moment more the computer had the data from the paredre desk console and began to construct a projection. A considerable portion of the hall went to starry space, where moving colored dots haltingly coincided.

“From the records of Kartos Station,” said Ashakh, “we have traced the recent movements of the ships in all zones of the Esliph. This new information seems to be in agreement. See, the movements of amaut commerce, the recent expansion of the lines of this karsh”—the image shifted, a wash of red light at the edge of the Esliph nearest human space—“ by violent absorption of a minor karsh and its lanes; and the sudden shift of commerce here”—another flurry of lights— “indicate a probable direction of origin for that akites our instruments indicate over by Telshanu, directly out of human space. Now, if this being Daniel’s memory is accurate, the time coincides admirably for the intrusion of that akites; again, it falls well into agreement with this person’s account.”

“In all points?” asked Chimele, and when Ashakh agreed: “Indeed.” The image of Esliph space winked into the dim-lighted normalcy of the paredre. “Then we are bound for Telshanu. Advise Chaganokh to await our coming.

“Chimele!” cried Mejakh. “Chimele, we cannot afford more time. This persistence of yours in—“

“It has thus far preserved Ashanome from disaster. You are not noticed, Mejakh. Ashakh, set our course. We are dismissed, my nasithi.”

As silently as they had assembled, the nasul dispersed, the Melakhis and the nasithi-katasakke too; and Chimele leaned back in her chair and stared thoughtfully at Daniel.

“Your species,” she said, “seems to have begun vaikka against one of the nasuli, most probably the vra-nasul Chaganokh. The amaut are a secondary problem, inconsequential by comparison. If you have been wholly truthful, I may perhaps remove the greater danger from human space.

But be advised, m’metane, you came near to great harm. You are indeed kameth to Ashanome, although not all the nasithi seem to acknowledge that fact. Yet for reasons of my own I shall not yet permit you the idoikkhe—and you must therefore govern your own behavior most carefully. I shall not again count you ignorant.”

“You deny you’re responsible for what is happening to Konig?”

“Tekasuphre.” Chimele arose and plainly ignored Daniel, looking instead at Isande. “I think it may be well if you make clear to this person and to Aiela my necessities—and theirs.”

Isande’s quarters, a suite of jewel-like colors and glittering light-panels, had been the place of Daniel’s instruction before the interview; it was their refuge after, Isande curled into her favorite chair, Aiela in the other, Daniel sprawled disconsolate on the couch. Their minds touched. It was Daniel they tried to comfort, but he ignored them, solitary and suicidal in his depression. Regarding the impulse to self-destruction, Aiela was not greatly concerned: it was not consistent with the human’s other attitudes. Daniel was more likely to turn his destructive urges on someone else, but it would not be his asuthi. That was part of his misery. He had no reachable enemies.

“You have done nothing wrong,” said Isande. “You have not hurt your people.”

Silence.

Daniel, Aiela sent, I could not lie to you; you would know it.

I hate the sight of you, Daniel’s subconscious fired out at him; but his upper mind suppressed that behind a confused feeling of shame. “That is not really true,” he said aloud, and again, forcefully: “That is not true. I’m sorry.”

Aiela cast him a feeling of total sympathy, for proximity still triggered a scream of alarm over his nerves and unsettled his stomach; but the reaction was already becoming less and less. Someday he would shudder no longer, and they would have become one monstrous hybrid, neither kalliran nor human. And now it was Isande who recoiled, having caught that thought. She rejected it in horror.

“I don’t blame you,” Daniel answered: somehow it did not seem unnatural that he should respond instead, so deeply was he in link with Aiela. He dropped the contact then, grieving, knowing Isande’s loathing for him.

“We have not used you,” Isande protested.

Daniel touched Aiela’s mind again, reading to a depth Aiela did not like. “And haven’t we all done a little of that?” Daniel wondered bitterly. “And isn’t it only natural, after all?”-Was this the beaten, uneducated creature about whose sentience they had wondered? Aiela looked upon him in uncomfortable surmise, all three minds suddenly touching again. From Daniel came a bitter mirth.

You’ve taught me worlds of things I didn’t know. 1 don’t even remember learning most of it; I just touch your minds and I know. And I suppose you could pass for humans if it weren’t for your looks. But what use do they have for me on Ashanome? Teach me that if you can.

“Our life is a pleasant one,” said Isande.

“With the iduve?” Daniel swung his legs off the couch to sit upright. “They aren’t human, they aren’t even as human as you are, and I believe you when you say they don’t have feelings like we do. It agrees with what I saw in there tonight.”

“They have feelings,” said Isande, letting pass his remark about the humanity of kallia. “Daniel, Chimele wishes you no harm.”

“Prove it.”

She met his challenge with an opening of the mind, from which he retreated in sudden apprehension. Strange, iduve things lay beyond that gate. She remained intent upon it even while she rose and poured them each a glass of marithe, pressing it at both of them. She was seated again, and stared at Daniel.

All right, Daniel sent finally. It was difficult for him, but to please Aiela, desperate to please someone in this strange place, he yielded down all his barriers.

Isande sent, with that rough impatience she knew how to use and Daniel did only by instinct, such a flood of images that for a time here and now did not exist. Even Aiela flinched from it, and then resolved to himself that he would let Isande have her way, trusting her nature if not her present mood.

There were things incredibly ancient, gleaned of tapes, of records inaccessible to outsiders. There was Kej IV under its amber sun, its plains and sullen-hued rivers; tower-holds and warriors of millennia ago, when each nasul had its dhis, its nest-tower, and ghiaka-wielding defenders and attackers raged in battles beyond number—vaikka-dhis, nest-raid, when an invading nasul sought to capture young for its own dhis, sought prisoners of either sex for katasakke, though prisoners often suicided.

Red-robed dhisaisei, females-with-young, kept the inner sanctity of the dhis. Most females gave birth and ignored their offspring, but within the nasul there were always certain maternal females of enormous ferocity who claimed all the young, and guarded and reared them until on a day their dhisais-madness should pass and leave them ready to mate again. Before them even the largest males gave way in terror.

The dhis was the heart and soul of the nasul, and within it was a society no adult male ever saw again—a society rigid in its ranks and privileges. Highest of rank were the orithaikhti, her-children to the Orithain; and lowest in the order, the off-spring-without-a-name: no male could claim parentage without the female’s confirmation, and should she declare of her offspring: Taphrek nasiqh—“I do not know this child”—it went nameless to the lowest rank of the dhis. Such usually perished, either in the dhis, or more cruelly, in adulthood.

It was the object of all conflict, the motive of all existence, the dhis—and yet forbidden to all that had once passed its doors, save for the Guardians, for the dhisaisei, and for the green-robed katasathei—pregnant ones, whose time was near. The katasathe were for the rest of the nasul the most visible symbol of the adored dhis: males full-sra to a katasathei drove her recent mate and all other males from her presence; females of the nasul gave her gifts, and forlorn non-sra males would often leave them where she could find them. Her only possible danger came from a female Orithain who also chanced to be katasathe. Then it was possible that she could be driven out, forbidden the dhis altogether, and her protective sra endangered: the ferocity of an Orithain was terrible where it regarded rival offspring, and even other nasuli gave way before a nasul whose Orithain was katasathe, knowing madness ruled there.

That was the ancient way. Then Cheltaris began to rise, city of the many towers, city of paradox. There had never been government or law; nasuli clustered, co-existed by means of ritual, stabilized, progressed. It was dimly remembered—Cheltaris: empty now, deserted nasul by nasul as the akitomei launched forth; and what curious logic had convinced the nasuli their survival lay starward was something doubtless reasonable to iduve, though to no one else.

Where each dhis was, there was home; and yet, shielded as the dhis had become within each powerful, star-wandering akites, without vaikka-dhis and the captures, inbreeding threatened the nasuli. So there developed the custom of akkhres-nasuli, a union of two akitomei for the sharing of katasakke.

It was, for the two nasuli involved, potentially the most hazardous of all ventures, civilized by oaths, by elaborate ritual, by most strict formalities—and when all else proved vain, by the power and good sense of the two orithainei. Chaxal. Dead now. Father to Chimele.

In his time, far the other side of the metrosi, by a star called Niloqhatas, there had been akkhres-nasuli.

Such a union was rare for Ashanome; it was occasioned by something rarer still—a ceremony of kataberihe. The Orithain Sogdrieni of nasul Tashavodh had chosen Mejakh sra-Narach of Ashanome to become his heir-mate and bear him a child to inherit Tashavodh. The bond between Tashavodh and Ashanome disturbed the iduve, for these were two of the oldest and most fearsome of the nasuli and the exchange they contemplated would make profound changes in status and balance of power among the iduve. Tensions ran abnormally high.

And trouble began with a kameth of Tashavodh who chanced to cross the well-known temper of Mejakh sra-Narach. She killed him.

Mejakh was already aboard Tashavodh in the long purifications before kataberihe. But in rage over the matter Sogdrieni burst into her chambers, drove out her own kamethi, and assaulted her. Perhaps when tempers cooled he would have allowed her to begin purifications again, vaikka having been settled; but it was a tangled situation: Mejakh was almost certainly now with child, conception being almost infallible with a mating. But he misjudged the arastiethe of Mejakh: she killed him and fled the ship.

In confusion, Ashanome and Tashavodh broke apart, Tashavodh stunned by the death of their Orithain, Ashanome satisfied that they had come off to the better in the matter of vaikka. It was in effect a vaikka-dhis, the stealing of young; and to add chanokhia to the vaikka, in the very hour that Mejakh returned to Ashanome she entered katasakke with an iduve of nameless birth.

So she violated purification of her own accord this time, and so blotted out the certainty of her child’s parentage. With the condemnation—taphrek nasiqh—she sent him nameless to the incubators of the dhis of Ashanome—the dishonored heir of Sogdrieni-Orithain.

Of Mejakh’s great vaikka she gained such arastiethe that she met in katasakke with Chaxal-Orithain of Ashanome, and of that mating came Khasif, firstborn of Ashanome’s present ruling sra, but not his heir. Chaxal took for his heir-mate Tusaivre of Iqhanofre, who bore him Chimele before she returned to her own nasul. Other katasakke-mates produced Rakhi, and Ashakh and Chaikhe.

But the nameless child survived within the dhis, and when he emerged he chose to be called Tejef.

Isande’s mind limned him shadowlike, much resembling Khasif, his younger half-brother, but a quiet, frightened man despite his physical strength, who suffered wretchedly the violence of Mejakh and the contempt of Chaxal. Only Chimele, who emerged two years later, treated him with honor, for she saw that it vexed Mejakh—and Mejakh still aspired to a kataberihe with Chaxal, an heir-mating which threatened Chimele.

Until Chaxal died.

New loyalties sorted themselves out; a younger sra came into power with Chimele. There were changes outside the nasul too—all relations with the orith-nasuli, the great clans, must be redefined by new oaths. There must be two years of ceremony at the least, before the accession of Chimele could be fully accomplished.

Death.

The dark of space.

Reha.

Screens went up. Isande flinched from that. Aiela tore back. No, he sent, shielding Daniel. Don’t do that to him.

Isande reached for her glass of marithe and trembled only slightly carrying it to her lips. But what seeped through the screens was ugly, and Daniel would gladly have fled the room, if distance and walls could have separated him from Isande.

“An Orithain cannot assume office fully until all vaikka of the previous Orithain is cleared,” Isande said in a quiet, precise voice, maintaining her screens. “Tashavodh’s Orithain— Kharxanen, full brother to Sogdrieni—had been at great niseth—great disadvantage—for twenty years because Chaxal had eluded all his attempts to settle. But now that Ashanome’s new Orithain was needing to assume office, settlement became possible. Chimele needed it as badly as Kharxanen.

“So Tashavodh and Ashanome met. Something had to be yielded on Ashanome’s side. Kharxanen demanded Mejakh and Tejef; Chimele refused—Mejakh being bhan-sra to her own nas-katasakke Khasif, it struck too closely at her own honor. Even Tashavodh had to recognize that

“But she gave them Tejef.

‘Tejef was stunned. Of course it was the logical solution; but Chimele had always treated him as if he were one of her own nasithi, and he had been devoted to her. Now all those favors were only the preparation of a terrible vaikka on him—worse than anything that had ever been done to him, I imagine. When he heard, he went to Chimele alone and unasked. There was a terrible fight.

“Usually the iduve do not intervene in male-female fights, even if someone is being maimed or killed: mating is usually violent, and violating privacy is e-chanokhia, very improper. But Chimele is no ordinary woman; all the sra of an Orithain have an honorable name, and taphrek-nasiqh is applicable only to paternity: the thing Tejef intended would give his offspring the name he lacked; and if he died in the attempt, it would still spite Chimele, robbing her of her accommodation with Tashavodh.

“But Chimele’s nasithi-katasakke broke into the paredre. What happened then, only they know, but probably there was no mating—there never was a child. Tejef escaped, and when Mejakh put herself in his way trying to keep him from the lift, he overpowered her and took her down to the flight deck. The okkitani-as on duty there knew something terrible was wrong—alarms were sounding, the whole ship on battle alert, for the Orithain was threatened and we sat only a few leagues from Tashavodh. But the amaut are not fighters, and they could do little enough to stop an iduve. They simply cowered on the floor until he had gone and then the bravest of them used the intercom to call for help.

“My asuthe Reha was already on his way to the flight deck by the time I reached Chimele in the paredre. He seized a second shuttlecraft and followed. A kameth has immunity among iduve, even on an alien deck, and he thought if he could attach himself to the situation before Tashavodh could actually claim Mejakh, he could possibly help Chimele recover her and save the arastiethe of Ashanome.

“But they killed him.” Screens held, altogether firm. She sipped at the marithe, furiously barring a human from that privacy of hers; and Daniel earnestly did not want to invade it. “They swore later they didn’t know he was only kameth. It did not occur to them that a kameth would be so rash. When he knew he was dying he fired one shot at Tejef, but Tejef was within their shields already and it had no more effect than if he had attacked Tashavodh with a handgun.

“The iduve—when the stakes are very high—are sensible; it is illogical to them to do anything that endangers nasul survival. And this was highly dangerous. Vaikka had gotten out of hand. Tashavodh was well satisfied with their acquisition of Mejakh and Tejef, but in the death of a kameth of Ashanome, Chimele had a serious claim against them. There is a higher authority: the Orithanhe; and she convoked it for the first time in five hundred years. It meets only in Cheltaris, and the ships were four years gathering.

“When the Orithanhe reached its decision, neither Chimele nor Kharxanen had fully what they had demanded. Mejakh had been forced into katasakke with a kinsman of Kharxanen; and by the Orithanhe’s decision, Tashavodh’s dhis obtained her unborn child for its incubators and Ashanome obtained Mejakh—no great prize. She has never been quite right since. Chimele demanded Tejef back; but the Orithanhe instead declared him out-kindred, outlaw—e-nasuli.

“So by those terms, by very ancient custom, Tejef was due his chance: a Kej year and three days to run. Now Ashanome has its own: two years and six days to hunt him down—or lose rights to him forever.”

“And they have found him?” asked Daniel.

“You—may have found him.” Isande paused to pour herself more marithe. She scarcely drank, ordinarily, but her shaken nerves communicated to such an extent that they all breathed uneasily and struggled with her to push back the thoughts of Reha. Revenge ran cold and sickly through all her thoughts; and grief was there too. Aiela tried to reach her on his own, but at the moment she thought of Reha and did not want even him.

“There is the vra-nasul Chaganokh,” said Isande. “Vassal-clan, a six-hundred-year-old splinter of Tashavodh, nearby and highly suspect. We have sixty-three days left. But you see, Chimele can’t just accuse Chaganokh of having aided Tejef with nothing to support the claim. It’s not a matter of law, but of harachia—seeing. Chaganokh will look to see if she has come merely to secure a small vaikka and annoy them, or if she is in deadly earnest. No Orithain would ever harm them without absolute confidence in being right: or-ithainei do not make mistakes. Chaganokh will therefore base its own behavior on what it sees: by that means they will determine how far Ashanome is prepared to go. If she shows them truth, they will surely bend: it would be suicide for a poor vra-nasul to enter vaikka with the most ancient of all clans—which Ashanome is. They will not resist further.”

“And what does she mean to show them?”

“You,” she said; Aiela instinctively flung the chiabres-link asunder, dismayed by that touch of willful cruelty in Isande: she enjoyed distressing Daniel. The impulse he sent in her direction carried anger, and Isande flinched, and felt shame. “We searched to find you,” she said then to Daniel. “Oh, not you particularly, but it came to Chimele’s attention that humans from beyond the Esliph were turning up—we have followed so many, many leads in recent months, through the iduve, kallia, even the amaut, investigating every anomaly. We traced one such shipment toward Kartos—economical: Chimele knew she would at least find Kartos’ records of value in her search. You were available; and you have pleased her enormously—hence her extraordinary patience with you. Only hope you haven’t misled her.”

“I haven’t led her at all,” Daniel protested. “Amaut were all I ever saw, the ugly little beasts, and I never heard of iduve in my life.” And hidden in his mind were images of what might become of him if he were given to the iduve of Chaganokh for cross-examination, or if thereafter he had no value to the iduve at all.

“You are kameth,” said Isande. “You will not be discarded. But I will tell you something: as far as iduve ever bluff, Chimele is preparing to; and if she is wrong, she will have ruined herself. Three kamethi would hardly be adequate serach—funeral gift—for a dynasty as old and honorable as hers. We three would die; so would her nasithi-katasakke, serach to the fall of a dynasty. The induve could destroy worlds of m’metanei and not feel it as much as they would the passing of Chimele. So be guided by us, by Aiela and by me. If you do in that meeting what you did today—“

Now it was Daniel who screened, shutting off the images from Isande’s mind. She ceased.

Do not be hard with him, Aiela asked of her. There is no need of that, Isande.

She did not respond for a moment; in her mind was hate, the thought of what she would do and how she would deal with the human if Aiela were not the intermediary, and yet in some part she was ashamed of her anger. Asuthi must not hate; with her own clear sense she knew it, and submitted to the fact that he was appended to them. If you fail to restrain him, she sent Aiela, you will lose him. You have fallen into a trap; I had prepared myself to remain distinct from him, but you are caught, you are merging; and because I regard you, I am caught too. Restrain him. Restrain him. If he angers the iduve, three kamethi are the least expensive loss that will result.