Hunter Of Worlds

Chapter 7

AIELA WAS BACK. Daniel clamped down a silence against him, shifted the child’s slight weight in his arms, and felt her arms tighten reflexively about his neck. Above them a star burned, a blaze of white brighter than any star that had ever shown in Priamid skies. When people saw it they thought amaut and shuddered at the presence, aware it was large, but yet having no concept what it was. They might never know. If it swung into tighter orbit it would be the final spectacle in Priamos’ skies, that had of late seen so many comings and goings, the baleful red of amaut ships, the winking white of human craft deploying troops, mercenaries serving the amaut. When Ashanome came it would be one last great sunset over the world at once, the last option of the iduve in a petty quarrel that threatened the existence of his species, that counted one man or one minor civilization nothing against the games that occupied them.

You know better, Aiela sent him. Simultaneous with the words came rage, concern for them, fear of Chimele. Daniel seized wrathfully upon the latter, which Aiela vehemently denied.

Daniel. Think. You don’t know •where you’re going or what you’re going to do with that girl. All right. Defeat. Aiela recognized the loathing Daniel felt for what they had asked him to do. Human as he was, he had been able to cross the face of Priamos unremarked, one of the countless mercenaries that looted and killed in small bands at the amaut’s bidding. He was a rough man, was Daniel: he could use that heavy-barreled primitive gun that hung from his belt. His slender frame could endure the marches, the tent-camps, the appallingly primitive conditions under which the human force operated. But he had no heart for this. He had been rackingly sick after the only killing he had done, and Anderson, the mercenary captain, had put him on the notice he would be made an example if he failed in any order. This threat was nothing. If Daniel could ignore the orders of Chimele of Ashanome, nothing the brutish Anderson could invent was enough; but Anderson fortunately had not realized that.

I can’t help you, Aiela said. That child cried for home, and you lost all your senses, every other bond. Now I suppose I’m the enemy.

No, Daniel thought, irritated by Aiela’s analysis. You aren’t. And: I wish you were—for it was his humanity that was pained.

Listen to me, Daniel. Accept my advice and let me guide you out of this incredible situation.

The word choice might have been Chimele’s. Daniel recognized it. “Kill the girl.” Why don’t you just come out with the idea? “Kill her, one life for the many.” Say it, Aiela. Isn’t that what Chimele wants of me? He hugged the sleeping child so tightly it wakened her, and she cried out in memory and fought.

“Hush,” he told her. “Do you want to walk awhile?”

“”I’ll try,” she said, and he chose a smooth place on the dirt road to set her down, she tugging in nervous modesty at the hem of her tattered gown. Her feet were cut with stubble and, bruised with stones. She limped so it hurt to watch her, and held out her hands to balance on the edges of her feet. He swore and reached out to take her up again, but she resisted and looked at him, her elfin face pale in the moonlight.

“No, I can walk. It’s just sore at first.”

“We’re going to cut west when we reach the other road. Maybe we’ll find a refugee family—there’s got to be somebody left.”

“Are you going to leave those men and not go back?”

The question disturbed him. Aiela pressed him with an echo of the same, and Daniel screened. “They’ll have my hide if they find me now. Maybe I’ll head northwest and pick up with some other band.” That for Aiela. A night’s delay, a day at the most. I can manage it. I’ll think of something. “Or maybe I’ll go west too. I’ll see you safe before I do anything.”

A man alone can’t make it across that country, Aiela insisted. Get rid of her, let her go. No! listen, don’t shut me out. I’ll help you. Your terms. Give me information and I’ll take your part with Chimele.

Daniel swore at him and closed down. Even suggesting harm to the girl tore at Aiela’s heart; but he was afraid. His people had had awe of the iduve fed into them with their mothers’ milk, and he was not human; Daniel knew the kallia so well, and yet there were still dark corners, reactions he could not predict, things that had to do with being kallia and being human. Aiela’s people had no capacity to fight: it was not in the kalliran nature to produce a tyranny, not in a culture where there was no supreme executive, but a hierarchy of councils. One kallia simply lacked the feeling of adequacy to be either tyrant or rebel. Giyre was supposed to be mutual, and he had no idea how to react when trust was betrayed. Kallia were easy prey for the iduve: they always yielded to greater authority. In the kalliran mind it just did not occur that it could be morally wrong, or that the Order in which they believed did not exist off Aus Qao.

Daniel. The quiet touch was back in his mind, offended, as angry as Daniel had ever felt him. The things you do not know about kallia are considerable. You lack any sense about giyre yourself, so I suppose it does not occur to you that I have it for all beings with whom I deal—even for you. I am not human. I do not lie to my friends, destroy what is useless, or break what is whole. I can also accept defeat when I meet it. Abandon the child there. I will get her to safety, I will be responsible, even if I must come to Priamos myself. Just get out of the area. You’ve already created enough trouble for yourself. Don’t finish ruining your cover.

No, Daniel sent. One look at that kalliran face of yours and you would never catch her. Send your ship. But you’ll do things on my terms.

There was no answer. Daniel looked up again at the star that was Ashanome. A second brilliant light had appeared not far from it; and a third, unmoving to the eye. They were simply there, and they had not been.

Aiela, he flung out toward the first star.

But this time Aiela shut him out.

The paredre blazed with light. The farthest side of it, bare of furniture, was suddenly occupied by consoles and screens and panels rippling with color. In the midst of it stood Chimele with her nas-katasakke Rakhi, and they spoke urgently of the startling appearance of two of the akitomei. The image of them hung third-dimensional in the cube of darkness on the table, projection within projection, mirror into mirror.

Suddenly there was only Chimele and the darker reality of the paredre. Aiela met her quick glance uneasily, for kamethi were not admitted to control stations.

“Isande has been summoned,” said Chimele. “Cast her the details of the situation here. Keep screening against Daniel. Are you strong enough to maintain that barrier?”

“Yes. Are we under attack?”

The thought seemed to surprise Chimele. “Attack? No. The nasuli are not prone to such inconsiderate action. This is harathos, the Observance. Tashavodh has come to see vaikka done, and Mijanothe is the neutral Observer, who will declare to all the nasuli that things were done rightly. This is expected, and unexpected. It might have been omitted. It would have pleased me if it had been.”

In his mind, Isande had already started for the door of her apartment, pulled her tousled head through the sweater; the sweater was tugged to rights, her thin-soled boots pattering quickly down the corridor. He fired her what information he could, coherent, condensed, as he had learned to do.

And Daniel? she asked in return. What has happened to him?

Her question almost disrupted his screening. He clamped down against it, too incoherent to screen against Daniel and explain about him at once. Isande understood, and he was about to reply again when he was startled by a projection appearing not a pace from him.

Mejakh! He jerked back even as he flashed the warning to Isande. His dealings with the mother of Khasif and Tejef had been blessedly few, but she came into the paredre more frequently now that other duties had stripped Chimele of the aid of her nasithi-katasakke—for Chaikhe’s pursuit of an iduve mate had rendered her katasathe and barred her from the paredre. Khasif and Ashakh were on Priamos, and poor Rakhi was on watch in the control room trying to manage all the duties of his missing nasithi to Chimele’s demanding satisfaction. Mejakh accordingly asserted her rank as next closest, of an indirectly related sra, for Chimele had no other. Seeing that she had children now adult, she might be forty or more in age, but she had not the apologetic bearing of an aging female. She moved with the insolent grace of a much younger woman, for iduve lived long if they did not die by violence. She was slim and coldly handsome, commanding in her manner, although her attractiveness was spoiled by a rasping voice.

“Chimele,” said Mejakh, “I heard.”

Chimele might have acknowledged the offered support by some courtesy: iduve were normally full of compliments. All Mejakh received was a stare a presumptuous nas kame might have received, and that silence found ominous echo in the failure of Mejakh to lower her eyes. It was not an exchange an outsider would have noted; but Aiela had been long enough among iduve to feel the chill in the air.

“Chimele,” Rakhi said by intercom, “projections incoming from Tashavodh and Mijanothe.” “Nine and ten clear, Rakhi.”

The projections took instant shape, edges blurred together, red background warring against violet. On the left stood a tall, wide-shouldered man, square-faced with frowning brows and a sullen mouth: Kharxanen, Isande read him through Aiela’s eyes, hate flooding with the name, memories of dead Reha, of Tejef, of Mejakh’s dishonor; he was Sogdrieni’s full brother, Tejef’s presumed uncle. The other visitor was a woman seated in a wooden chair, an iduve so old her hair had silvered and her indigo skin had turned fair—a little woman whose high cheekbones, strong nose, and large, brilliant eyes gave her a look of ferocity and immense dignity. She was robed in black; a chromium staff lay across her lap. Somehow it did not seem incongruous that Chimele paid her deference in this her own ship.

“Thiane,” Isande voiced him in a tone of awe. “O be careful not to be noticed, Aiela. This is the president of the Orithanhe.”

“Hail Ashanome,” said Thiane in a soft voice. “Forgive an old woman her suddenness, but I have too few years left to waste long moments in hailings and well-wishing. There is no vaikka. between us.”

“No,” said Chimele, “no, there is not. Thiane, be welcome. And for Thiane’s sake, welcome Kharxanen.”

“Hail Ashanome,” the big man said, bowing stiffly. “Honor to the Orithanhe, whose decrees are to be obeyed. And hail Mejakh, once of Tashavodh, less honored.”

Mejakh hissed delicately and Kharxanen smiled, directing himself back to Chimele.

“The infant the sra of Mejakh prospers,” he said. “The honor of us both has benefited by our agreement. I give you farewell, Ashanome: the call was courtesy. Now you know that I am here.”

“Hail Tashavodh,” Chimele said flatly, while Mejakh also flicked out, vanished with a shriek of rage, leaving Chimele, and Thiane, and Aiela, who stood in the shadows.

“Au,” said Thiane, evidently distressed by this display, and Chimele bowed very low.

“I am ashamed,” said Chimele. “So am I,” said Thiane.

“You are of course most welcome. We are greatly honored that you have made the harathos in person.”

“Chimele, Chimele—you and Kharxanen between you can bring three-quarters of the iduve species face to face in anger, and does that not merit my concern?”

“Eldest of us all, I am overwhelmed by the knowledge of our responsibility.”

“It would be an incalculable disaster. Should something go amiss here, I could bear the dishonor of it for all time.”

“Thiane,” said Chimele, “can you believe I would violate the terms? If I had wished vaikka with Tashavodh to lead to catastrophe, would I have convoked the Orithanhe in the first place?”

“I see only this: that with less than three days remaining, I find you delaying further, I find you with this person Tejef within scan and untouched, and I suspect the presence of Ashanome personnel onworld. Am I incorrect, Chimele sra-Chaxal?”

“You are quite correct, Thiane.”

“Indeed.” Her brows drew down fiercely and her old voice shook with the words. “Simple vaikka will not do, then; and if you do miscalculate, Chimele, what then?”

“I shall take vaikka all the same,” she answered, her face taut with restraint. “Even to the destruction of Priamos. The risk I run is to mine alone, and to do so is my choice, Thiane.”

“Au, you are rash, Chimele. To destroy this world would have sufficed, although it is a faceless vaikka. You have committed yourself too far this time. You will lose everything.”

“That is mine to judge.”

“It is,” Thiane conceded, “until it comes to this point: that there be a day remaining, and you have not yet acted upon your necessities. Then I will blame you, that with Tashavodh standing by in harathos, you would seem deliberately to provoke them to the last, threatening the deadline. There will be no infringement upon that, Chimele, not even in appearance. Any and all of your interference on Priamos will have ceased well ahead of that last instant, so that Tashavodh will know that things were rightly done. I have responsibility to the Orithanhe, to see that this ends without further offense; and should offense occur, with great regret, Cbimele, with great regret, I should have to declare that you had violated the decrees of the Orithanhe that forbade you vaikka upon Tashavodh itself. Ashanome would be compelled to surrender its Orithain into exile or be cast from the kindred into outlawry. You are without issue, Chimele. I need not tell you that if Ashanome loses you, a dynasty more than twelve thousand years old ceases; that Ashanome from being first among the kindred becomes nothing. Is vaikka upon this man Tejef of such importance to you, that you risk so much?”

“This matter has had Ashanome in turmoil from before I left the dhis, o Thiane; and if my methods hazard much, bear in mind that our primacy has been challenged. Does not great gain justify such risk?”

Thiane lowered her eyes and inclined her head respectfully. “Hail Ashanome. May your dhis increase with offspring of your spirit, and may your sra continue in honor. You have my admiration, Chimele. I hope that it may be so at our next meeting.”

“Honor to Mijanothe. May your dhis increase forever.”

The projection vanished, and Chimele surrounded herself with the control room a brief instant, eyes flashing though her face was calm.

“Rakhi. Summon Ashakh up to Ashanome and have him report to me the instant he arrives.”

Rakhi was still in the midst of his acknowledgment when Chimele cut him out and stood once more in the paredre. Isande, who had waited outside rather than break in upon Thiane, was timidly venturing into the room, and Chimele’s sweeping glance included both the kamethi.

“Take over the desk to the rear of the paredre. Review the status and positions of every amaut and mercenary unit on Priamos relative to Tejef’s estimated location. Daniel must be reassigned.”

. Had it been any other iduve, even Ashakh, that so ordered him, Aiela would have cried out a reminder that he had been almost a night and a day without sleep, that he could not possibly do anything requiring any wit at all; but it was Chimele and it was for Daniel’s sake, and Aiela bowed respectfully and went off to do as he was told.

Isande touched his mind, sympathizing. “I can do most of it,” she offered. “Only you sit by me and help a little.”

He sat down at the desk and leaned his head against his hands. He thought again of Daniel, the anger, the hate of the being for him over that child. He could not persuade them apart; he had tried, and probably Daniel would not forgive him. Reason insisted, reason insisted: Daniel’s company itself was supremely dangerous to the child. They were each safer apart. Priamos was safer for it, he and the child hopeless of survival otherwise; leaving her was a risk, but it was a productive one. It was the reasonable, the orderly thing to do; and the human called him murderer, and shut him out, mind locked obstinately into some human logic that sealed him out and hated. His senses blurred. He shivered in a cool wind, realized the slip too late.

Aiela. Isande’s presence drew at him from the other side, worried. He struggled back toward it, felt the physical touch of her hand on his shoulder. The warmth of the paredre closed about him again. Too long in contact, she sent him. Aiela, Aiela, think of here. Let go of him, let go.

“I am all right,” he insisted, pushing aside her fear. But she continued to look at him concernedly for a little time more before she accepted his word for it. Then she reached for the computer contact.

The paredre door shot open, startling them both, and Mejakh’s angry presence stopped Isande’s hand in mid-move. The woman was brusque and rude and utterly tangible. Almost Isande called out to Chimele a frightened appeal, but Chimele looked up from her own desk a distance away and fixed Mejakh with a frown.

“You were not called,” Chimele said.

Mejakh swept a wide gesture toward Aiela and Isande. “Get them out. I have a thing to say to you, Chimele-Orithain, and it is not for the ears of m’metanei.”

“They are aiding me,” said Chimele, bending her head to resume her writing. “You are not. You may leave, Mejakh.”

“You are offended because I quit the meeting. But you had no answer when Kharxanen baited me. You enjoyed it.”

“Your incredible behavior left me little choice.” Chimele looked up in extreme displeasure as Mejakh in her argument came to the front of the desk. Chimele laid aside her pen and came up from her chair with a slow, smooth motion. “You are not noticed, Mejakh. Your presence is ignored, your words forgotten. Go.”

“Ashanome has no honor when it will not defend its own.”

Chimele’s head went back and her face was cold. “You are not of my sra, Mejakh. Once you had honor and Chaxal was compelled to notice you, but in his wisdom he did not take you for kataberihe. You are a troublemaker, Mejakh. You threw away your honor when you let yourself be taken into Tashavodh by Tejef. There was the beginning of our present troubles; and what it has cost us to recover you to the nasul was hardly worth it, o Mejakh, trouble-bringer.”

“You would not say so if Khasif were here to hear it.”

“For Khasif’s sake I have tolerated you. I am done.”

Mejakh struggled for breath. Could iduve have wept she might have done so. Instead she struck the desk top with a crash like an explosion. “Bring them all up! Bring up Khasif, yes, and this human nas kame, all of them! Wipe clean the surface of this world and be done! It is clear, Orithain, that you have more m’melakhia than sorithias. It is your own vaikka you pursue, a vaikka for the insult he did you personally, not for the honor of Ashanome.”

Chimele came around the side of the desk and Isande’s thoughts went white with fear: Rakhi, get Rakhi in here, she flashed to Aiela, and reached for the desk intercom; Aiela launched himself toward the two iduve.

His knees went. Unbelievable pain shot up his arm to his chest and he was on his face on the floor, blood in his mouth, hearing Isande’s sobs only a few feet away. The pain was a dull throb now, but he could not reach Isande. His limbs could not function; he could not summon the strength to move.

After a dark moment Chimele bent beside him and lifted his head, urging him to move. “Up,” she said. “Up, kameth.”

He made the effort, hauled himself up by the side of a chair and levered himself into it, searching desperately with his thoughts for Isande. Her contact was active, faint, stunned, but she was all right. He looked about when his vision had cleared and saw her sitting in a chair, head in her hands, and Rakhi standing behind her.

“Both of them seem all right,” said Rakhi. “What instructions about Mejakh?”

“She is forbidden the paredre,” Chimele said, and looked toward her kamethi. “Mejakh willed your death, but I overrode the impulse. It is a sadness; she had arastiethe once, but her loss of it at Tejef’s hands has disturbed her reason and her sense of chanokhia.”

“She has had misfortune with her young,” said Rakhi. “Against one she seeks vaikka, and for his sake she lost her honor. Her third was taken from her by the Orithanhe. Only in Khasif has she honorable sra, and he is absent from her. Could it be, Chimele, that she is growing dhisais?”

“Make it clear to the dhis-guardians that she must not have access there. You are right. She may be conceiving an impulse in that direction, and with no child in the dhis, there is no predicting what she may do. Her temper is out of all normal bounds. She has been disturbed ever since the Orithanhe returned her to us without her child, and this long waiting with Priamos in view—au, it could happen. Isande, Aiela, I must consider that you are both in mortal danger. Your loss would disturb my plans; that would occur to her, and kamethi have no defense against her.”

“If we were armed—“ Aiela began.

“Au,” Chimele exclaimed, “no, m’metane, your attitude is quite understandable, but you hardly appreciate your limitations. You almost died a moment ago, have you not realized that? The idoikkhei can kill. Chanokhia insists kamethi are exempt from such extreme vaikka, but Mejakh’s sense of chanokhia seems regrettably lacking.”

“But a dhisais,” Aiela objected, “can be years recovering.”

“Yes, and you see the difficulty your attempt to interfere has created. Well, we will untangle the matter somehow, and, I hope, without further vaikka.”

“Chimele,” said Rakhi, “the kameth has a valid point. Mejakh has proved an embarrassment many times in the matter of Tejef. Barring her from the paredre may not prove sufficient restraint.”

“Nevertheless,” said ‘Chimele, “my decision stands.”

“The Orithain cannot make mistakes.”

“But even so,” Chimele observed, “I prefer to proceed toward infallibility at my own unhurried pace, Rakhi. Have you heard from Ashakh yet?”

“He acknowledged. He has left Priamos by now, and he will be here with all possible speed.”

“Good. Go back to your station. Aiela, Isande, if we are to salvage Daniel, you must find him a suitable unit and dispose of that child by some means. I trust you are still keeping your actions shielded from him. His mind is already burdened with too much knowledge. And when I do give you leave to contact him, you may tell him that I am ill pleased.”

“I have already made that clear to him.”

“She is not his,” Chimele objected, still worrying at that thought.

“She attached herself to him for protection. She became his.”

“There is no nasith-tak, no female, no katasathe, no dhisais. Is it reasonable that a male would do this, alone?”

“I am sure it is. An iduve would not?”

That was a presumptuous question. Isande reproved his asking, but Chimele lowered her eyes to show decent shame and then looked up-at him.

“A female would be moved to do what he has done as if she were katasathe and near her time. A male could not, not without the presence of a female with whom he had recently mated. But is not this child-female close to adulthood? Perhaps it is the impulse to katasakke that has taken him.”

“No,” said Aiela, “no, when he thinks of her, it is as a child. That—unworthy thought did cross his mind; he drove it away. He was deeply ashamed.”

He wished he had not said that private thing to Chimele. Had he not been so tired he would have withheld it. But it had given her much to ponder. Bewilderment sat in her eyes.

“She is chanokhia to him,” Aiela said further. “To him she is the whole human race. You and I would not think so, but to him she is infinitely beautiful.”

And he rejoined Isande at the desk, where with trembling hands she began to ply the keyboard again and to call forth the geography of Priamos on the viewer, marking it with the sites of occupied areas, receiving reports from the command center, updating the map. There were red zones for amaut occupation, green for human, and the white pinpricks that were iduve: one at Weissmouth in a red zone, that was Khasif; and one in the continental highlands a hundred lioi from Daniel, which was Tejef at best reckoning.

When Aiela chanced at last to notice Chimele again she was standing by her desk in the front of the paredre, which had expanded to a dizzying perspective of Ashanome’s hangar deck, talking urgently with Ashakh.

It was fast coming up dawn in the Weiss valley. The divergent rhythms of ship and planetary daylight systems were not least among the things that had kept Aiela’s mind off-balance for fifteen days. He thought surely that Daniel would have been compelled by exhaustion to lie down and sleep. He could not possibly have the strength to go much further. But even wondering about Daniel could let information through the screening. Aiela turned his mind away toward the task at hand, sealing against any further contact.

The light was beginning to rise, chasing Priamos’ belt of stars from the sky, and by now Daniel’s steps wandered. Oftentimes he would stop and stare down the long still-descending road, dazed. Aiela’s thoughts were silent in him. He had felt one terrible pain, and then a long silence, so that he had forgotten the importance of his rebellion against Aiela and hurled anxious inquiry at him, whether he were well, what had happened. The silence continued, only an occasional communication of desperation seeping through. It was Chimele’s doing, then, vaikka against Aiela, thoroughly iduve, but against him, against all Priamos, her retaliation would not be so slight.

In cold daylight Daniel knew what he had done, that a world might die because he had not had the stomach to commit one more murder; but he refused steadfastly to think that far ahead, or to believe that even Chimele could carry out a threat so brutally—that he and the little girl would become only two among a million corpses to litter the surface of a dead world.

His ankle turned. He caught himself and the child’s thin arms tightened about his neck. “Please,” she said. “Let me try to walk again.”

His legs and shoulders and back were almost numb, and the absence of her weight was inexpressible relief. Now that the light had come she looked pitifully naked in her thin yellow gown, very small, very dislocated, walking this wilderness all dressed for bed, as if she were the victim of a nightmare that had failed to go away with the dawn. At times she looked as if she feared him most of all, and he could not blame her for that. That same dawn showed her a disreputable man, face stubbled with beard, a man who carried an ugly black gun and an assassin’s gear that must be strange indeed to the eyes of the country child. If her parents had ever warned her of rough men, or men in general—was she old enough to understand such things?—he conformed to every description of what to avoid. He wished that he could assure her he was not to be feared, but he thought that he would stumble hopelessly over any assurances that he might try to give her, and perhaps might frighten her the more.

“What’s your name?” she asked him for the first time.

“Daniel Fitzhugh,” he said. “I come from Konig.”

That was close enough she would have heard of it, and the mention of familiar places seemed to reassure her. “My name is Arle Mar,” she said, and added tremulously: “That was my mother and father’s farm.”

“How old are you?” He wanted to guide the questioning away from recent memory. “Twelve?”

“Ten.” Her nether lip quivered. “I don’t want to go this way. Please take me back home.”

“You know better than that.”

“They might have gotten away.” He thought she must have treasured that hope a long time before she brought it out into the daylight. “Maybe they hid like I did and they’ll be looking for me to come back.”

“No chance. I’m telling you—no.”

She wiped back the tears. “Have you got an idea where we should go? We ought to call the Patrol, find a radio at some house—“

“There’s no more law on Priamos—no soldiers, no police, nothing. We’re all there is—men like me.”

She looked as if she were about to be sick, as if finally all of it had caught up with her. Her face was white and she stood still in the middle of the road looking as if she might faint.

“I’ll carry you,” he offered, about to do so. “No!” If her size had been equal to her anger she would have been fearsome. As it was she simply plumped down in the middle of the road and rested her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. He did not press her further. He sat down crosslegged not far away and rested, fingers laced on the back of his neck, waiting, allowing her the dignity of gathering her courage again. He wanted to touch her, to hug her and let her cry and make her feel protected. He could not make the move. A human could touch, he thought; but he was no longer wholly human. Perhaps she could feel the strangeness in him; if that were so, he did not want to learn it.

Finally she wiped her eyes a last time, arose stiffly, and delicately lifted the hem of her tattered nightgown to examine her skinned knees.

“It looks sore,” he offered. He gathered himself to his feet “It’s all right.” She let fall the hem and gave the choked end of a sob, wiping at her eyes as she surveyed the valley that lay before them in the sun, the gently winding Weiss, the black and burned fields. “All this used to be green,” she said. “Yes,” he said, accepting the implied blame. She looked up at him, squinting against the sun. “Why?” she asked with terrible simplicity. “Why did you need to do that?”

He shrugged. It was beyond his capacity to explain. The truth led worse places than a lie. Instead he offered her his hand. “Come on. We’ve got a long ways to walk.”

She ignored his hand and walked ahead of him. The road was soft and sandy with a grassy center, and she kept to the sand; but the sun heated the ground, and by the time they had descended to the Weiss plain the child was walking on the edges of her feet and wincing.

“Come on,” he said, picking her up willing or not with a sweep of his arm behind her knees. “Maybe I—“

He stopped, hearing a sound very far away, a droning totally unlike the occasional hum of the insects. Arle heard it too and followed his gaze, scanning the blue-white sky for some sign of an aircraft. It passed, a high gleam of light, then circled at the end of the vast plain and came back.

“All right,” he said, keeping his voice casual. Aiela, Aiela, please hear me. “That’s trouble. If they land, Arle, I want you to dive for the high weeds and get down in that ditch.” Aiela! give me some help! “Who are they?” Arle asked.

“Probably friends of mine. Amaut, maybe. Remember, I worked for the other side. I may be picked up as a deserter. You may see some things you won’t like.” O heaven, Aiela, Aiela, listen to me! “I can lie my way out of my own troubles. You, I can’t explain. They’ll skin me alive if they see you, so do me a favor: take care of your own self, whatever you see happen, and stay absolutely still. You can’t do a thing but make matters worse for me, and they have sensors that can find you in a minute if they choose to use them. Once they suspect I’m not alone, you haven’t got a chance to hide from them. You understand me? Stay flat to the ground.”

It was coming lower. Engines beating, it settled, a great silver elongate disc that was of no human make. A jet noise started as they whined to a landing athwart the road, and the sand kicked up in a blinding cloud. Under its cover Daniel set Arle down and trusted her to run, turned his face away and flung up his arms to shield his eyes from the sand until the engines had died away to a lazy throb. The ship shone blinding bright in the sun. A darkness broke its surface, a hatch opened and a ramp touched the ground.

Aiela! Daniel screamed inwardly; and this time there was an answer, a quick probe, an apology.

Amaut, Daniel answered, and cast him the whole picture in an eyeblink, the ship, the amaut on the ramp, the humans descending after. Parker: Anderson’s second in command. Daniel cast in bursts and snatches, abjectly pleading with his asuthe, forgive his insubordination, tell Chimele, promise her anything, do something.

Aiela was doing that; Daniel realized it, was subconsciously aware of the kallia’s fright and Chimele’s rage. It cut away at his courage. He sweated, his hand impelled toward the gun at his hip, his brain telling it no.

Parker stepped off the end of the ramp, joined by two more of the ugly, waddling amaut, and by another mercenary, Quinn.

“Far afield, aren’t you?” Parker asked of him. It was not friendliness.

“I got separated last night, didn’t have any supplies. I decided to hike back riverward, maybe pick up with some other unit. I didn’t think I rated that much excitement from the captain.” It was the best and only lie he could think of under the circumstances. Parker did not believe any of it, and spat expressively into the dust at his feet.

“Search the area,” the amaut said to his fellows. “We had a double reading. There’s another one.”

Daniel went for his pistol. No! Aiela ordered, throwing him off-time, making the movement clumsy.

The amaut fired first. The shot took his left leg from under him and pitched him onto his face in the sand. Arle’s thin scream sounded in his ears—the wrist of his right hand was ground under a booted heel and he lost his gun, had it torn from his fingers. Aiela, driven back by the pain, was trying to hold onto him, babbling nonsense. Daniel could only see— sideways—Arle, struggling in the grip of the other human, kicking and crying. He was hurting her.

Daniel lurched for his feet, screamed hoarsely as a streak of fire hit him in the other leg. When he collapsed writhing on the sand Parker set his foot on his wrist and took deliberate aim at his right arm. The shot hit. Aiela left him, every hope of help left him.

Methodically, as if it were some absorbing problem, Parker took aim for the other arm. The amaut stood by in a group, curiosity on their broad faces. Arle’s shrill scream made Parker’s hand jerk.

“No!” Daniel cried to the amaut, and he had spoken the kalliran word, broken cover. The shot hit.

But the amaut’s interest was pricked. He pulled Parker’s arm down: and no loyalty to the ruthless iduve was worth preserving cover all the way to a miserable death. Daniel gathered his breath and poured forth a stream of oaths, native and kalliran, until he saw the mottled face darken in anger. Then he looked the amaut straight in his froggish eyes, conscious of the fear and anger at war there.

“I am in the service of the iduve,” he said, and repeated it in the iduve language should the amaut have any doubt of it.

“You lay another hand on me or her and there will be cinders where your ship was, and you know it, you gray horror.”

“Hhhunghh.” It was a grunt no human throat could have made. And then he spoke to Parker and Quinn in human language. “No. We take thiss—thiss.” He indicated first Daniel and then Arle. “You, you, walk, report Anderson. Go. Goodbye.”

He was turning the two mercenaries out to walk to their camp. Daniel felt a satisfaction for that which warmed even through the pain: Vaikka? he thought, wondering if it were human to be pleased at that. A hazy bit of yellow hovered near him, and he felt Arle’s small dusty hand on his cheek. The remembrance of her among the amaut brought a fresh effort from him. He tried to think.

Daniel. Aiela’s voice was back, cold, efficient, comforting. Convince them to take you to Weissmouth. Admit you serve the iduve there; that’s all you can do now. Chimele was furious. That leaked through, frightening in its implications. The screen went up again.

“That ship overhead,” Daniel began, eyeing the amaut, drunk with pain, “there’s no place on this world you can hide from that. They have their eye on you this instant.”

The other amaut looked up as if they expected to see destruction raining down on them any second; but the captain rolled his thin lips inward, the amaut method of moistening them, like a human licking his lips.

“We are small folk,” he said, mouth popping on all the explosive consonants, but he spoke the kalliran language with a fair fluency. “One iduve-lord we know. One only we serve. There is safety for us only in being consistent.”

“Listen, you—listen! They’ll destroy this world under you. Get me to the port at Weissmouth. That’s your chance to live.”

“No. And I have finished talking. See to him,” he instructed his subordinates as he began to walk toward the ramp, speaking now in the harsh amaut language. “He must live until the lord in the high plains can question him. The female too.”

“He had no choice,” said Aiela.

Chimele kept her back turned, her arms folded before her. The idoikkhe tingled spasmodically. When she faced him again the tingling had stopped and her whiteless eyes stared at him with some degree of calm. Aiela hurt; even now he hurt, muscles of his limbs sensitive with remembered pain, stomach heaving with shock. Curiously the only thing clear in his mind was that he must not be sick: Chimele would be outraged. He had to sit down. He did so uninvited.

“Is he still unconscious?”

Chimele’s breathing was rapid again, her lip trembling, not the nether lip as a kalliran reaction would have it: Attack! his subconscious read it; but this was Chimele, and she was civilized and to the limit of her capacity she cared for her kamethi. He did not let himself flinch.

“We have a problem,” she said by way of understatement, and hissed softly and sank into the chair behind her desk. “Is the pain leaving?”

“Yes.” Isande—Isande!

His asuthe stood behind him, took his hand, seized upon his mind as well, comforting, interfering between memory and reality. Be still, she told him, be still. I will not let go.

“Could you not have prevented him talking?” Chimele asked.

“He was beyond reason,” Aiela insisted. “He only reacted. He thought he was lost to us.”

“And duty. Where was that?”

“He thought of the child, that she would be alone with them. And he believed you would intervene for him if only he could survive long enough.”

“The m’metane has an extraordinary confidence in his own value.”

“It was not a conscious choice.”

“Explain.”

“Among his kind, life is valued above everything. I know, I know your objections, but grant me for a moment that this is so. It was a confidence so deep he didn’t think it, that if he served beings of arastiethe, they would consider saving his life and the child’s of more value than taking that of Tejef.”

“He is demented,” Chimele said.

Careful, Isande whispered into his mind. Soft, be careful.

“You gave me a human asuthe,” Aiela persisted, “and told me to learn his mind. I’m kallia. I believe kastien is more important than life—but Daniel served you to the limit of his moral endurance.”

“Then he is of no further use,” said Chimele. “I shall have to take steps of my own.”

His heart lurched. “You’ll kill him.”

Chimele sat back, lifted her brows at this protest from .her kameth, but her hand paused at the console. “Do you care to stay asuthithekkhe with him while he is questioned by Tejef? Do not be distressed. It will be sudden; but those who harmed him and interfered with Ashanome will wish they had been stillborn.”

“If you can intervene to kill him, you can intervene to save him.”

“To what purpose?”

Aiela swallowed hard, screened against Isande’s interference. He sweated; the idoikkhe had taught its lesson. “It is not chanokhia to destroy him, any more than it was to use him as you did.”

The pain did not come. Chimele stared into the trembling heart of him. “Are you saying that I have erred?”

“Yes.”

“To correctly assess his abilities was your burden. To assign him was mine. His misuse has no relevance to the fact that his destruction is proper now. Your misguided giyre will cost him needless pain and lessen the arastiethe of Ashanome. If he comes living into the hands of Tejef he may well ask you why you did not let him die; and every moment we delay, intervention becomes that much more difficult.”

“He is kameth. He has that protection. It would not be honorable for Tejef to harm him.”

‘Tejef is arrhei-nasuli, an outcast. It would not be wise to assume he will be observant of nasul-chanokhia. He is not so bound, nor am I with him. He may well choose to harm him. We are wasting time.”

“Then contact that amaut aircraft and demand Daniel and the child.”

‘To what purpose?”

The question disarmed him. He snatched at some logic the iduve might recognize. “He is not useless.”

“How not? Secrecy is impossible now. Tejef will be alerted to the fact that I have a human nas kame; besides, the amaut in the aircraft would probably refuse my order. Tejef is their lord; they said so quite plainly, and amaut are nothing if not consistent. To demand and to be refused would mean that we had suffered vaikka, and I would still have to destroy a kameth of mine, having gained nothing. To risk this to save what I am bound to lose seems a pointless exercise; the odds are too high. I am not sure what you expect of me.”

“Bring him back to Ashanome. Surely you have the power to do it.”

“There is no longer time to consider that alternative. Shall I commit more personnel at Tejef’s boundaries? The risk involved is not reasonable.”

“No!” Aiela cried as she started to turn from him. He rose from his chair and leaned upon her desk, and Chimele looked up at him with that bland patience swiftly evaporating.

“What are you going to do with Priamos when you’ve destroyed him?” Aiela asked. “With three days left, what are you going to do? Blast it to cinders?”

“Contrary to myth, such actions are not pleasurable to us. I perceive you have suffered extreme stress in my service and I have extended you a great deal of patience, Aiela; I also realize you are trying to give me the benefit of your knowledge. But there will be a limit to my patience. Does your experience suggest a solution?”

“Call on Tejef to surrender.”

Chimele gave a startled laugh. “Perhaps I shall. He would be outraged. But there is no time for a m’metane’s humor. Give me something workable. Quickly.”

“Let me keep working with Daniel. You wanted him within reach of Tejef. Now he is, and whatever else, Tejef has no hold over him with the idoikkhe.”

“You m’metanei are fragile people. I know that you have giyre to your asuthe, but to whose advantage is this? Surely not to his.”

“Give me something to bargain with. Daniel will fight if he has something to fight for. Let me assure him you’ll get the amaut off Priamos and give it back to his people. That’s what he wants of you.”

Chimele leaned back once more and hissed softly. “Am I at disadvantage, to need to bargain with this insolent creature?”

“He is human. Deal with him as he understands. Is that not reasonable? Giyre is nothing to him; he doesn’t understand arastiethe. Only one thing makes a difference to him: convince him you care what—“

A probing touch found his consciousness and his stomach turned over at foreknowledge of the pain. He tried to screen against it, but his sympathy made him vulnerable.

“Daniel is conscious.” Isande spoke, for at the moment he had not yet measured the extent of the pain and his mind was busy with that. “He is hearing the amaut talk. The child Arle is beside him. He is concerned for her.”

“Dispense with his concern for her. Tell him you want a report.”

Aiela tried. Tears welled in his eyes, an excess of misery and weariness; the pain of the wounds blurred his senses. Daniel was half-conscious, sending nonsense, babble mixed with vague impressions of his surroundings. He was back on the amaut freighter. There was wire all about. Aiela, Aiela, Aiela, the single thread of consciousness ran, begging help.

I’m here, he sent furiously. So is Chimele. Report.

“’I,’” Aiela heard and said aloud for Chimele, “’I’m afraid I have—penetrated Tejef’s defenses—in a somewhat different way than she had planned. We’re coming down, I think. Stay with me—please, stay with me, if you can stand it. I’ll send you what I—what I can learn.’”

“And he will tell Tejef what Tejef asks, and promise him anything. A creature that so values his own life is dangerous.” Chimele laced her fingers and stared at the backs of them as if she had forgotten the kamethi or dismissed the problem for another. Then she looked up. “Vaikka. Tejef has won a small victory. I have regarded your arguments. Now I cannot intervene without using Ashanome’s heavy armament to pierce his defenses—a quick death to Tejef, ruin to Priamos, and damage to my honor. This is a bitterness to me.”

“Daniel still has resources left,” Aiela insisted. “I can advise him.”

“You are not being reasonable. You are fatigued: your limbs shake, your voice is not natural. Your judgment is becoming highly suspect. I have indeed erred to listen to you.” Chimele gathered the now-useless position report together and put it aside, pushed a button on the desk console, and frowned. “Ashakh: come to the paredre at once. Rakhi: contact Ghiavre in the lab and have him prepare to receive two kamethi for enforced rest.”

Rakhi acknowledged instantly, to Aiela’s intense dismay.

He leaned upon the desk, holding himself up. “No,” he said, “no, I am not going to accept this.”

Chimele pressed her lips together. “If you were rational, you would recognize that you are exceeding your limit in several regards. Since you are not—“

“Send me down to Priamos, if you’re afraid I’ll leak information to Daniel. Set me out down there. I’ll take my chances with the deadline.”

Chimele considered, looked him up and down, estimating. “Break contact with Daniel,” she said. “Shut him out completely.”

He did so. The effort it needed was a great one. Daniel screamed into the back of his mind, his distrust of Chimele finding echo in Aiela’s own thoughts.

“Very well, you may have your chance,” said Chimele. “But you will sleep first, and you will be transported to Priamos under sedation—both of you. Isande is likewise a risk now.”

He opened his mouth again to protest: but Isande’s strong will otherwise silenced him. She was afraid, but she was willing to do this for him. No harm will come to us, she insisted. Chimele will not permit it. Kallia can hardly operate in secrecy on a human world, so we shall go under Ashanome’s protection. Besides, you have already pressed her to the limit of her patience.

He silently acknowledged the force of that argument, and to Chimele he bowed in respect. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it.

Chimele waved a hand in dismissal. “I know this kalliran insanity of joy in being disadvantaged. But it would be improper to let you assume I do this solely to give you pleasure. Do not begin to act rashly or carelessly. as if I were freeing you of bond to Ashanome or responsibility to me. Be circumspect. Maintain our honor.”

“Will we receive orders from you?”

“No.” Again her violet nail touched the button, this time forcefully. “Ashakh! Wherever you are, acknowledge and report to the paredre at once.” She was becoming annoyed; and for Ashakh to be dilatory in a response was not usual.

The door from the corridor opened and Ashakh joined them; he closed the door manually, and looked to have been running.

“There was a problem,” he said, when Chimele’s expression commanded an explanation. “Mejakh is in an argumentative mood.”

“Indeed.”

“Rakhi has now made it clear to her that she is also barred from the control center. What was it you wanted of me?”

‘Take Aiela and Isande to their quarters and let them collect what they need for their comfort on Priamos. Then escort them to the lab; I will give Ghiavre his instructions-while you are at that. Then arrange their transport down to Priamos; and it would not be amiss to provide them arms.”

“I have my own weapon,” said Aiela, “if I have your leave to collect it from storage.”

“Armament can provide you one more effective, I am sure.”

“I am kallia. I’m afraid if I had a lethal weapon in my hands I couldn’t fire it. Give me my own. Otherwise I can’t defend myself as I may need to.”

“Your logic is peculiar to your people, I know, but I perceive your reasoning. Take it, then. And as for instruction, kamethi—I provide you none. I am sure your knowledge of Priamos and of Daniel is thorough, and I trust you to remember your responsibility to Ashanome. One thing I forbid you: do not go to Khasif and do not expect him to compromise himself to aid you. You are dismissed.”

Aiela bowed a final thanks, waited for Isande, and walked as steadily as he could after Ashakh. Isande held his arm. Her mind tried to occupy his, washing it clean of the pain and the weakness. He forbade that furiously, for it hurt her as well.

In his other consciousness he was being handled roughly down a ramp, provided a dizzying view of a daylit sky: he dreaded to think what could happen to Daniel while he was helpless to advise him, and he imagined what Daniel must think, abandoned as he had been without explanation. We’ll be there, Aiela sent, defying orders; hold on, we’re coming; but Daniel was fainting. He stumbled, and Isande hauled up against him with all her strength. -

“Ashakh!”

The tall iduve stopped abruptly at the corridor intersection a pace ahead of them and roughly shoved them back. Mejakh confronted them, disheveled and with a look of wildness in her eyes.

“They are killing me!” she cried hoarsely and lurched at Ashakh. “O nas, they are killing me—“

“Put yourself to order, nasith,” said Ashakh coldly, thrusting off her hands. “There are witnesses.”

Mejakh’s violet eyes rolled aside to Aiela and back again, showing whites at the corners, her lips parted upon her serrate teeth. “What is Chimele up to?” she demanded. “What insanity is she plotting, that she keeps me from controls? Why will no one realize what she is doing to the nasul? O nas, do you not see why she has sent Khasif away? She has attacked me; Khasif is gone. And you have opposed her—do you not see? All that dispute her—all that protest against her intentions—die.”

“Get back,” Ashakh hissed, barring the corridor to her with his arm.

Aiela felt the idoikkhe and doubled; but Ashakh’s will held that off too, and he shouted at the both of them to run for their lives.

Aiela stumbled aside, Jsande’s hand in his, Mejakh’s harsh voice pursuing them. He saw only closed doors ahead, a monitor panel at the corner such as there was at every turning. He reached it and hit the emergency button.

“Security!” he cried, dispensing with location: the board told them that. “Mejakh—!”

Through Isande’s backturned eyes he saw Ashakh recoil in surprise as Mejakh threatened him with a pistol. It burned the wall where Ashakh had been and had he not gone sprawling he would have been a dead man. His control of the idoikkhei faltered. Isande’s scream was half Aiela’s.

The weapon in Mejakh’s hand swung left, drawn from Ashakh by the sound. Down! Aiela shrieked at Isande and they separated by mutual impulse, low. The smell of scorched plastics and ozone attended the shot that missed them.

Ashakh heaved upward, hit Mejakh with his shoulder, sending her into the back wall of the corridor with a thunderous crash; but she did not fall, and locked in a struggle with him, he seeking to wrest the gun from her hand, she seeking to use it. Aiela scrambled across the intervening distance, Isande’s mind wailing terror into his, telling him it was suicide; but Ashakh maintained a tight hold on the idoikkhei now so that Mejakh could not send. Aiela seized Mejakh’s other arm to keep her from using her hand on Ashakh’s throat.

It was like grappling with a machine. Muscles like steel cables dragged irresistibly away from his grip, and when he persisted she struck at him, denting the wall instead and hurting her hand. She swung Ashakh into the way, trying to batter them both against the wall, and Aiela realized to his horror that Isande had thrown herself into the struggle too, trying vainly to distract Mejakh.

Suddenly Mejakh ceased fighting, and so did Ashakh. About them had gathered a number of iduve, male and female, a dhisais in her red robes, three dhis-guardians in their scarlet-bordered black and bearing their antique ghiakai. Mejakh disengaged, backed from them. Ashakh with offended dignity straightened his torn clothing and turned upon her a deliberate stare. It was all that any of them did.

The door of the paredre opened at the other end of the corridor and Chimele was with them. Mejakh had been going in that direction. Now she stopped. She seemed almost to shrink in stature. Her movements hesitated in one direction and the other.

Then with a hiss rising to a shriek she whirled upon Ashakh. The ghiakai of the dhis-guardians whispered from their sheaths, and Aiela seized Isande and pulled her as flat against the wall as they could get, for they were between Mejakh and the others. From the dhisais came a strange keening, a moan that stirred the hair at the napes of their necks.

“Mejakh,” said Chimele, causing her to turn. For a moment there was absolute silence. Then Mejakh crumpled into a knot of limbs, her two arms locked across her face. She began to sway and to moan as if in pain.

The others started forward. Chimele hissed a strong negative, and they paused.

“You have chosen,” said Chimele to Mejakh.

Mejakh twisted her body aside, gathered herself so that her back was to them, and began to. retreat. The retreat became a sidling as she passed the others. Then she ran a few paces, bent over, pausing to look back. There was a terrible stillness in the ship, only Mejakh’s footsteps hurrying more and more quickly, racing away into distant silence.

The others waited still in great solemnity. Ashakh took Aiela and Isande each by an arm and escorted them back to Chimele.

“Are you injured?” Chimele asked in a cold voice.

“No,” said Aiela, finding it difficult to speak in all that silence. He could scarcely hear his own voice. Isande’s contact was almost imperceptible.

“Then pass from this hall as quickly as you may. Do you not see the dhisais? You are in mortal danger. Keep by Ashakh’s side and walk out of here very quietly.”