{"id":2261,"date":"2026-01-03T22:19:27","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/hanan-rebellion-02-hunter-of-worlds-cherryh-c-j\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T22:19:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T22:19:27","slug":"hanan-rebellion-02-hunter-of-worlds-cherryh-c-j","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/hanan-rebellion-02-hunter-of-worlds-cherryh-c-j\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanan Rebellion 02 – Hunter of Worlds – Cherryh, C. J."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Book Preview<\/h3>\n
\n

HUNTER OF WORLDS<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

COPYRIGHT \u00a9, 1977, BY C. J. CHERRYH All Rights
\n Reserved.<\/p>\n

Cover art by John Pound. Frontispiece sketch by the
\n author.<\/p>\n

To my mother, to my father, and to David.<\/p>\n

FIRST DAW PRINTING, AUGUST 1977 3456789<\/p>\n

DAW TRADEMARK\u00a0 REGISTERED U.S PAT.OFF.\u00a0 MARCA
\n REGISTRADA. HECHO EN U.S.A. PRINTED IN\u00a0 U.S.A.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Chapter 1<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

HALFWAY THROUGH the second watch the ship put into
\n Kartos Station-the largest thing ever seen in the zone, a
\n gleaming silver agglomeration of vanes cradling an immense
\n saucer body. It was an Orithain craft, with no markings of
\n nationality or identification: the Orithain disdained such
\n conventions.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It nestled in belly-on, larger than the station itself,
\n positioned beside an amaut freighter off Isthe II that was
\n completely dwarfed by its bulk. The umbilical of the tube,
\n the conveyor-connection, went out to it, scarcely long
\n enough to reach, although the Orithain’s grapples had
\n drawn herself and the Station into relative proximity.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

As soon as that connection was secure, five members of
\n the crew disembarked, four men and a woman. They were
\n kallia, like many of the Station personnel-a race that
\n belonged to Qao V, a tall graceful folk, azure-skinned and
\n silver-haired; but these had never seen the surface of Aus
\n Qao: each bore on the right wrist the platinum bracelet
\n that marked a nas kame, a servant of the Orithain.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The visitors moved at will through the market, where
\n amaut and kalliran commerce linked the civilized worlds,
\n the metrosi, with the Esliph stars. They spoke not at all
\n to each other, but paused together and occasionally
\n designated purchases-lots that depleted whole sections of
\n the market, to be delivered immediately.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The moment the Orithain had entered the zone, the
\n Station office had moved into frantic activity. Station
\n security personnel, both kallia and amaut, were scattered
\n among the regular dock crews in diverse uniforms-not to
\n stop the starlords; that was impossible. They were instead
\n to restrain the Station folk from any unintended offense
\n against them, for the whole of Kartos Station was in
\n jeopardy as long as that silver dread-naught was anywhere
\n in the zone; an Orithain-lord minutely displeased was a bad
\n enemy for a planet, let alone a man-made bubble like
\n Kartos.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And the commanders of Kartos kept otherwise still, and
\n sent no messages of alarm, either inside or outside the
\n Station. There was a hush everywhere. Those that must move,
\n moved quietly.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Ages ago the Orithain had first contacted the kallia,
\n wrenching the folk of Aus Qao out of feudalism and abruptly
\n into star-spanning civilization. Eight thousand years ago
\n the Orithain had reached out to Kesuat, the home star of
\n the amaut-podgy little gray-skinned farmers, broad-bellied
\n and large-eyed, unlikely starfarers; but amaut were
\n scattered now from Kesuat to the Esliph. The metrosi itself
\n was an Orithain creation, modern technology an Orithain
\n gift-but one that came at fearful price, a tyranny
\n unimaginably cruel and irrational.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Then for five hundred years, as inexplicably as they did
\n everything, the Orithain had vanished, even from their home
\n star Kej. Ship-dwellers that they were, they began to
\n voyage outward and elsewhere, and ceased to be seen in the
\n range of kalliran ships or amaut. Some even dared to hope
\n them dead-until seven years ago.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Suddenly Orithain were massing again near Kej. Ship by
\n ship, they were reported coming in, gathering like great
\n birds to the smell of death. The outmost worlds knew it,
\n though the metrosi refused to admit it for fact. There was
\n no defense possible: kallia knew this; no weapon would
\n avail against Orithain ships, and the pride that the
\n Orithain took in inventive cruelty was legendary. It was
\n more comfortable not to acknowledge their existence.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

But at Kartos, bordering the Esliph, the Orithain made
\n their return to the metrosi clear beyond doubt.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

At the end of the new-station docks the noi kame
\n separated. Two, one carrying a small gray case, went up
\n toward the Station office. The other three descended toward
\n the old docks, that place notorious as the Blind Market,
\n where berths and facilities were cheap and crowded, where
\n goods were often traded unobserved by the overworked
\n Station authorities: little freighters, small cargoes,
\n often shoddy goods, damaged lots, pirated merchandise. Most
\n of the ships docked here came from the Esliph, bearing raw
\n materials and buying up necessities and a few civilized
\n vices for the poorer, outermost worlds.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The security personnel who maintained their discreet
\n watcn were alarmed when the noi kame unexpectedly entered
\n that tangle of small berths, and they were perplexed when
\n the noi kame immediately sought the Konut, an ancient
\n freighter from the Esliph fringe. Fat little amaut ran
\n about in its open hold in an agony of panic at their
\n coming, and the captain came waddling up on his short legs,
\n working his wide mouth in an expression of extreme
\n unease.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

At the noi kame’s order the amaut produced the
\n manifest, which the noi kame scanned as they walked with
\n the captain deep into the hold. Incredibly filthy
\n compartments lined this aisle, a stench of unwashed amaut
\n bodies heavy in the air, for the Konut trafficked in
\n indentured labor, ignorant laborers contracted to the
\n purchasing company for the usual ten years on a colonial
\n world in exchange for land there-land, which they desired
\n more than they feared the rigors of the journey. Amaut were
\n at heart farmers and diggers in the earth, and the hope of
\n these forlorn, untidy little folk was a small parcel of
\n land somewhere-anywhere. Most would never achieve it: debt
\n to the company would keep them forever tenant farmers.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And to the rear of the Konut’s second hold was a
\n matter which the captain neglected to report to Station
\n customs: a wire enclosure where humans were transported.
\n Kalliran law forbade traffic in human labor: the creatures
\n were wild and illiterate, unable to make any valid
\n contract-the dregs of the stubborn population left behind
\n when the humans abandoned the Esliph stars and retreated to
\n home space. Their ancestors might have been capable of
\n starflight, but these were not even capable of coherent
\n speech. They were sectioned off from the other hold because
\n the amaut would not abide proximity to them: humans were
\n notorious carriers of disease. One of them at the moment
\n lay stiff and unnatural on the wire mesh flooring, dead
\n perhaps from chill, perhaps from something imported from
\n whatever Esliph world had sent him. Another sat staring,
\n eyes dark and mad.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

This was the place that interested the noi kame. They
\n stopped, consulted the manifest, conferred with the
\n captain. The one human still stared, crouched up very small
\n as if he sought obscurity; but when the others suddenly
\n rushed to the far corner, shrieking and clawing and
\n climbing over one another in their witless panic, this one
\n sat still, eyes following every movement outside the
\n cage.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

When at last the amaut captain turned and pointed at
\n him, that human froze into absolute immobility, resisting
\n the captain’s beckoning.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The sweating captain beckoned at the other humans then,
\n spoke one word several times: chaju-liquor. Suddenly the
\n humans were listening, faces eager; and when the amaut
\n pointed at the human that crouched at the center of the
\n cage, the others shrieked in excitement and descended on
\n the unfortunate creature, dragging him to the side of the
\n cage despite his struggling and his cries of rage. They
\n pressed him against the mesh until an attendant could
\n administer an injection: his nails raked the attendant, who
\n hit his arm and spat a curse, but already the human was
\n sinking: the curiously alert eyes glazed, and he slumped
\n down to the mesh flooring.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

With no further difficulty the attendant entered the
\n cage and dragged the unconscious human out, rewarding the
\n others with a large flask of chaju that was instantly the
\n cause of a fight.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The noi kame distastefully ignored these proceedings.
\n They paid the price of the indenture in silver-weight,
\n named a time for delivery, and walked back the way they had
\n come.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The remaining noi kame, a man and a woman, had entered
\n Station control without a glance at the frightened security
\n personnel or a gesture of courtesy toward the Master. They
\n went to the records center, dislodged the technician from
\n his post, and connected the apparatus in the gray case to
\n the machine.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“It will be necessary,” said the woman to the
\n Master, who hovered uncertainly in the background,
\n “for this technician to follow our
\n instructions.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The Master nodded to the operator, who resumed his post
\n reluctantly and did as he was told. The Station’s
\n records, the log and the personnel files in their entirety,
\n the centuries of accumulated knowledge of Esliph
\n exploration, the patterns of treaties, of lane regulation
\n and zonal government, bled swiftly into the Orithain’s
\n ken.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

When the process was complete, the apparatus was
\n disconnected, the case was closed, and the noi kame turned
\n as one, facing the Master.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“There is a man on this station named Aiela
\n Lyailleue,” said the man. “Deliver his records to
\n us.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“The Master made a helpless gesture. “I have
\n no authority to do that,” he said.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“We do not operate on your authority,” said
\n the nas kame.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The Master gave the order. A section of tape fed out of
\n the machine.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Dispose of the original record,” said the
\n woman, winding the tape about her first finger. “This
\n person Aiela will report to our dock for boarding at 0230
\n Station Time.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Kallia tended to a look of innocence. Their hair was the
\n same whatever their age, pale and silvery, individual
\n strands as translucent as spun glass. The pale azure of
\n their skin intensified to sapphire in the eyes, which,
\n unlike the eyes of amaut, could look left or right without
\n turning the whole head: it gave them a whole range of
\n communication without words, and made it difficult for them
\n to conceal their feelings. They were an emotional folk-not
\n loud, like amaut, who liked disputes and noisy
\n entertainments, but fond of social gatherings. One kallia
\n proverbially never decided anything: it took at least three
\n to reach a decision on the most trivial of matters. To be
\n otherwise was ikas-presumptuous, and a kalliran gentleman
\n was never that.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Security agent Muishiph was amaut, but he had been long
\n enough on Kartos to know the kallia quite well, both the
\n good and the bad in them. He watched the young officer
\n Aiela Lyailleue react to the news-he stood at the door of
\n the kallia’s onstation apartment-and expected some
\n outcry of grief or anger at the order. Muishiph had already
\n nerved himself to resist such appeals-even to defend
\n himself; his own long arms could crush the slender limbs of
\n a kallia, although he certainly did not want to do
\n that.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I?” asked the young officer, and again:
\n “I?” as though he still could not believe it. He
\n looked appallingly young to be a ship’s captain. The
\n records confirmed it: twenty-six years old, son of Deian of
\n the Lyailleue house, aristocrat. Deian was parome of Xolun
\n arethme, and the third councilor in the High Council of Aus
\n Qao, a great weight of power and wealth-probably the means
\n by which young Lyailleue had achieved his premature rank.
\n Aiela’s hands trembled. He jammed them into the pockets
\n of his short jacket to conceal the fact and shook his head
\n rather blankly.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“But do you have any idea why they singled me
\n out?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“The Master said he thought you might know,”
\n said Muishiph, “but I doubt he wants to be told, in
\n any case.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The young man gazed at him with eyes so distant Muishiph
\n knew he hardly saw him; and then intelligence returned, a
\n troubled sadness. “May I pack?” he asked. “I
\n suppose I may need some things. I hope that I
\n will.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“They did not forbid it.” Muishiph thrust his
\n shoulder within the doorframe, for Aiela had begun to lift
\n his hand toward the switch. “But I would not dare
\n leave you unobserved, sir. I am sorry.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela’s eyes raked Muishiph up and down with a
\n curiously regretful expression. At least, Muishiph thought
\n uncomfortably, the Master might have sent a kallia to break
\n the news and to be with him; he braced himself for
\n argument. But Aiela backed away and cleared the doorway to
\n let him enter. Muishiph stopped just inside the door, hands
\n locked behind his thighs, swaying; amaut did that when they
\n were ill at ease.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Please sit down,” Aiela invited him, and
\n Muishiph accepted, accepted again when Aiela poured them
\n each a glass of pinkish marithe. Muishiph downed it all,
\n and took his handkerchief from his belly-pocket to mop at
\n his face. Amaut perspired a great deal and needed
\n prodigious quantities of liquid. It was the first time
\n Muishiph had been in a kalliran residence, and the warm,
\n dry air was unkind to his sensitive skin, the bright light
\n hurt his eyes. He thrust the handkerchief back into his
\n pocket and watched Aiela. The kallia, his own drink
\n ignored, had taken a battered spaceman’s case from the
\n locker and was starting to pack, nervously meticulous.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Muishiph knew the records from the Master, who had sent
\n him. The young kallia captained a small geological survey
\n vessel named Alitaesa, just returned from the moons of Pri,
\n far back on the Esliph fringe. That was amaut territory,
\n but some kallia explored there, seeking mining rights with
\n the permission of the great trading karshatu that ruled
\n amaut commerce. Amaut, natural burrowers, would work as
\n miners; kallia, strongly industrial, would receive the ore
\n and turn it back again in trade-an arrangement old as the
\n metrosi.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

But it was a rare kallia who ventured deep into the
\n Esliph. It was a wild place and wide, with a great gulf
\n beyond. Odd things happened there, strange ships came and
\n went, and law was a matter of local option and available
\n firepower. The amaut karshatu took care of their own, and
\n brooked no intrusion on karsh lanes or karsh worlds: the
\n kallia they tolerated, reckoning them harmless, for they
\n were above all law-loving folk, their major vice merely a
\n desire of wealth, not land, but monetary and imaginary.
\n Kallia worshipped order: their universe was ordered in such
\n a way that one could not determine his own worth save in
\n terms of the respect paid him by others-and money was
\n somehow a measure of this, as primogeniture was among amaut
\n in a karsh. Muishiph looked on the young man and wondered:
\n as he reckoned kallia, they were shallow folk, never
\n seeking power for its own sake. They had no ambitions: they
\n hated responsibility, feeling that there was something
\n sinister and ikas in tampering with destiny. An amaut might
\n dream of having land, of founding a karsh, producing
\n offspring in the dozens; but for a kallia the greatest joy
\n seemed to be to retire into a quiet community, giving
\n genteel parties for small gatherings of all the most
\n honorable people, and being a man to whom others resorted
\n for advice and influence-a safe life, and quiet, and never,
\n never involving solitary decisions.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

If Aiela Lyailleue was a curiosity to the Orithain, he
\n was no less a puzzle to Muishiph: an untypical kallia, a
\n wealthy parome’s son who chose the hazardous life of
\n the military, exploring the Esliph’s backside. It was
\n the hardest and loneliest command any officer, amaut or
\n kallia, could have, out where there was no one to consult
\n and no law to rely on. This was not a kalliran life at
\n all.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela had packed several changes of clothing, everything
\n from the drawers. “Some things are on my ship,”
\n he said. “Surely they will send my other belongings
\n home to my family.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Surely,” Muishiph agreed, miserable in the
\n lie. When a karsh outgrew its territory, the next-born were
\n cast out to fend for themselves. Some founded karshatu of
\n their own, some became bondservants to other karshatu or
\n sought employment by the kallia, and some simply died of
\n grief. What amaut literature there was sang mournfully of
\n the misery of such outcasts, who were cut off and forgotten
\n quickly by their own kind. The kallia talked of his house
\n as if it still existed for him. Muishiph rolled his lips
\n inward and refused to argue with the childish faith.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela gathered his pictures off the desk last of all: an
\n adult-children group that must be his kin, a young girl
\n with flowers in her silver hair-ko shenellis, the
\n coming-of-age: Muishiph had heard of the ceremony and
\n recognized it, wondering if the girl were kinswoman or
\n intended mate. Aiela himself was in the third picture, a
\n younger Aiela in civilian clothes, standing by a smiling
\n youth his own age, the crumbling walls of some ancient
\n kalliran building fluttering with flags in the background.
\n They were perplexing bits and pieces of a life Muishiph
\n could not even imagine, things and persons that had given
\n joy to the kallia, reminders that he once had had
\n roots-things that were important to him even lost as he
\n was. The pictures were turned, one by one, face down on the
\n clothing in the case. With them went a small box of tape
\n cassettes. Aiela closed and locked the case, turned with a
\n gesture of entreaty.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Do you suppose,” he asked, “that there
\n is time to write a letter?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Muishiph doubtfully consulted his watch. “If you
\n do, you must hurry about it.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela bowed his gratitude, a courtesy Muishiph returned
\n on reflex; and he waited on his feet while Aiela opened the
\n desk and sat down, using some of the Station’s
\n paper.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

After a time Muishiph consulted his watch again and
\n coughed delicately. Aiela hastened his writing, working
\n feverishly until a second apologetic cough advised him of
\n Muishiph’s impatience. Then he arose and unfastened his
\n collar, drawing over his head a metal seal on a chain: its
\n embossed impression sealed the message-a house crest.
\n Kalliran aristocrats clung to such symbols, prized relics
\n of the feudal culture that had been theirs before the
\n starlords found them.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And before Muishiph realized his intention, Aiela had
\n thrust the seal into the disposal chute. It would end
\n floating in space, disassociated atoms of precious metals.
\n Muishiph gaped in shock; kalliran matters, those seals, but
\n they were ancient, and the destruction of something so old
\n and familial struck Muishiph’s heart with a physical
\n sickness.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Sir,” he objected, and met sudden coldness in
\n the kallia’s eyes.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“If I had sent it home,” said Aiela, “and
\n it had been lost, it would have been a shame on my family;
\n and it is not right to take it as a prisoner
\n either.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Yes, sir,” Muishiph agreed, embarrassed,
\n uneasy at knowing Aiela doubted Kartos’ intentions of
\n his property. There was more sense to the kallia than he
\n had reckoned. He became the more perturbed when Aiela
\n thrust the letter into his hands.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Send it,” said Aiela. “Private mails. I
\n know it costs-” He took out his wallet and pressed
\n that too into Muishiph’s hand. “There’s more
\n than enough. Please. Keep the rest. You’ll have earned
\n it.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Muishiph stared from the wallet and the letter to
\n Aiela’s anxious face. “Sir, I protest I am an
\n officer of-“<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I know. Break the seal, read it-copy it, I
\n don’t care. Only get it to Aus Qao. My family can
\n reward you. I want them to know what happened to
\n me.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Muishiph considered a moment, his mouth working in
\n distress. Then he slipped the letter into his belly-pocket
\n and patted it flat. But he kept only two of the larger
\n bills from the wallet and cast the wallet down on the
\n table.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Take it all,” said Aiela. “Someone else
\n will, that’s certain.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I don’t dare, sir,” said Muishiph,
\n looking at it a second time regretfully. He put it from his
\n mind once for all with a glance at his watch. “Come,
\n bring your baggage. We have orders to anticipate that
\n deadline. The Station is taking no chances of offending
\n them.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I am sure they would not.” For a moment his
\n odd kalliran eyes fixed painfully on Muishiph, asking
\n something; but Muishiph hurriedly shrugged and showed Aiela
\n out the door, walking beside him as soon as they were in
\n the broad hall. Another security guard, a kallia, met them
\n at the turning: he carried a sheaf of documents and a
\n tape-case.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“My records?” Aiela surmised, at which the
\n kalliran guard looked embarrassed.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Yes, sir,” he admitted. “They are being
\n turned over. Everything is.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela kept his eyes forward and did not look at that man
\n after that, nor the man at him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Muishiph fingered the outline of the letter in his
\n belly-pocket, and carefully extracted his handkerchief and
\n mopped at his face. It was too much to ask. To deceive the
\n lords of karshatu and to cross the Qao High Council were
\n both perilous undertakings, but the starlords were an
\n ancient terror and their reach was long and their knowledge
\n thorough beyond belief. The letter burned like guilt
\n against Muishiph’s belly. Already he began to imagine
\n his position should anyone guess what he had agreed to
\n do.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And then it occurred to him to wonder if Aiela had told
\n the truth of what it contained.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The Orithain vessel itself was not visible from the
\n dock. There was only the entry tube and its conveyor,
\n disappearing constantly upward as the supplies flooded
\n toward the unseen maw of the ship. Aiela stopped with his
\n escort and set his case beside him on the tiled flooring,
\n the three of them conspicuous in an area where no
\n spectators would dare to be. Aiela shivered; his knees felt
\n loose. He hoped it was not evident to those with him.
\n Courage to cross that small area without faltering: that
\n was all he begged of himself.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He was not, he had assured his family in the letter,
\n expecting to die; execution could be accomplished with far
\n more effect in public. He did not know what had drawn the
\n Orithain’s attention to him: he had touched nothing and
\n done nothing that could have accounted for it, to his own
\n knowledge, and what they intended with him he only
\n surmised. He would not return. No one had ever been
\n appropriated by the Orithain and walked out again free; but
\n it would please him if his family would think of him as
\n alive and well. He had saved five thousand lives on Kartos
\n by his compliance with orders: he was well sure of this;
\n there was cause for pride in that fact.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Empty canisters clanged on the dock, the horrid crash
\n rumbling through his senses, dislodging him from his
\n privacy. He looked and saw a frightened amaut crew trying
\n to stop machinery. An amaut had been injured. The minute
\n tragedy occupied him for the moment. None of the bystanders
\n would help. They only stared. Finally the amaut was allowed
\n to lie alone. The others worked feverishly with the lading
\n of canisters, trying to make their deadline. The machinery
\n started again.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

His father would understand, between the lines of what
\n he had written. Parome Deian was on the High Council, and
\n knew the reports that never went to earthsiders. There was
\n an understanding as old as the kallia’s first meeting
\n with the Orithain: their eccentricities were not for
\n comment and their names were not to be uttered; the
\n Orithain homeworld at Kej still lay deserted, legendary
\n cities full of supposed treasure- but metrosi ships avoided
\n that star; for nine thousand years the Orithain had been
\n the central fact of metrosi civilization, but no research
\n delved into their origins, few books so much as mentioned
\n them save in oblique reference to the Domination, and
\n nothing but legend reported their appearance. But they were
\n remembered. In the independence of space the old tales
\n continued to be told, and legends were amplified now with
\n new horrors of Orithain cruelty. Deian was one of nine men
\n on all Aus Qao who received across his desk all the
\n statistics and the rumors.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And if the statistics preceded his letter, Aiela
\n reflected sorrowfully, his father would receive that cold
\n message first. It would be the final cruelty of so many
\n that had passed between them.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

If that were to go first, witnesses would at least say
\n that he had gone with dignity.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

At the end, he could give nothing else to his
\n family.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The lefthand ramp had been clear of traffic for several
\n moments. Now it reversed, and one of the noi kame
\n descended. Aiela bent and picked up his case when the man
\n came toward them; and when they met, the kalliran agent
\n gave into the nas kame’s hands the documents and the
\n tape case-the sum of all records in the zone regarding
\n Aiela and his existence. It was terrible to believe so, but
\n even Qao might follow suit, erasing all records even to his
\n certificate of birth, forbidding mention of him even by his
\n family. Fear of the Orithain was that powerful. Aiela was
\n suddenly bitterly ashamed for his people, for what the
\n starlords had made them be and do. He began to be angry,
\n when before he had felt only grief.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Come,” said the nas kame, accepting the sheaf
\n of documents and the case under his arm. But he looked down
\n in some surprise as the amaut agent suddenly pushed
\n forward, proffering a letter in his trembling hand.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“His too, lord, his too,” said the amaut.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The nas kame took the letter and put it among the
\n documents; and Aiela looked toward the amaut reproachfully,
\n but the amaut bowed his head and stood rocking back and
\n forth, refusing to look up at him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela turned his face instead toward the nas kame,
\n appalled that there was no shame there-eyes as kalliran as
\n his that held no recognition of him and cared nothing for
\n his misery.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The nas kame brought him to the moving ramp and preceded
\n him up, looking back once casually at the scene below,
\n ignoring Aiela. Then the belt set them both into the
\n ship’s hold.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela’s eyes were drawn up by the sheer echoing
\n immensity of the place. This hold, as was usual with supply
\n holds, was filled with frames and canisters of goods, row
\n on row, dated, stamped to be listed in the computer’s
\n memory. But it could have contained an entire ship the size
\n of the one Aiela had lately commanded-without the frames
\n and the clutter. No doubt there were other holds that did
\n hold such things as transfer ships and shuttles available
\n at need. It staggered the mind.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The nas kame took his case from him and handed it to an
\n amaut, who waddled ahead of them to a counter and had it
\n stamped and listed and thrust up a conveyor to disappear.
\n Aiela looked after it with a sinking heart, for among his
\n folded clothing he had put his service pistol-nonlethal,
\n like all the weapons of the kalliran service. He had
\n debated it; he had done it, terrified in the act and
\n terrified to go defenseless, without it. But there were no
\n defenses. Standing where he was now, with all Kartos so
\n small and fragile a place beneath them, he realized it for
\n a selfish and cowardly thing to do.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“There was a weapon in that,” he said to the
\n nas kame.\u00a0\u00a0 \u2022<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The nas kame took notice of him directly for the first
\n time, regarding him with mild surprise. He had just put the
\n documents and the tape case on the counter to be similarly
\n stamped and sent up the conveyor. Then he shrugged.
\n “Security will deal with it,” he said, and took
\n Aiela’s arm and held his hand on the counter,
\n compelling him to accept a stamp on the back of his hand,
\n like the other baggage.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela received it with so deep a confusion that he
\n failed to protest; but afterward, with the nas kame holding
\n his arm and guiding him rapidly through the echoing hold, a
\n wave of such shame and outrage came over him that he was
\n almost shaking. He should have said something; he should
\n have done something. He worked his fingers, staring at the
\n purple symbols that rippled across the bones of his hand,
\n and was only gathering the words to object to the indignity
\n when the nas kame roughly turned him and thrust him toward
\n a personnel lift. He went, turned once inside, and expected
\n the nas kame to step in too; but the door slid shut and he
\n was hurtled elsewhere on his own. The controls resisted his
\n attempt to regain the loading deck.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

In an instant the lift came to a cushioned halt and
\n opened on a cargo area adapted to the reception of live
\n goods; there were a score or more individual cells and
\n animal pens, some with bare flooring and some padded on all
\n surfaces. Gray-smocked noi kame and amaut in green were
\n waiting for him, took charge of him as he stepped out. One
\n noted the number from his hand onto a slate, then gestured
\n him to move.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

As he walked the aisle of compartments he saw one
\n lighted, its facing wall transparent; and his flesh crawled
\n at the sight of the naked pink-brown tangle of limbs that
\n crouched at the rear of it. It looked moribund, whatever it
\n had been-the Orithain ranged far: perhaps it was only one
\n of the forgotten humans of the Esliph; perhaps it was some
\n more dangerous and exotic specimen from the other end of
\n the galaxy, where no metrosi ship had ever gone. He
\n delayed, looked more closely; a nas kame pushed him between
\n the shoulders and moved him on, and by now he was
\n completely overwhelmed, dazed and beyond any understanding
\n of what to do. He walked. No one spoke to him. He might
\n have been a nonsentient they were handling.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Physicians took him-at least so he reckoned them-kallia
\n and amaut, who ordered him to strip, and examined him until
\n he was exhausted by their thoroughness, the cold, and the
\n endless waiting. He was beyond shame. When at last they
\n thrust his wadded clothing at him and put him into one of
\n the padded cells to wait, he stood there blankly for some
\n few moments before the cold finally urged him to dress.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He shivered convulsively afterward, walking to lean
\n against one and another of the walls. Finally he knelt down
\n on the floor to rest, limbs tucked up for warmth, his
\n muscles still racked with shivers. There was no view, only
\n white walls and a blank, padded door-cold, white light. He
\n heard nothing to tell him what passed outside until the
\n gentle shock of uncoupling threw him off-balance: they were
\n moving, Kartos would be dropping astern at ever-increasing
\n speed.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It was irrevocable.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He was dead, so far as his own species was concerned, so
\n far as anything he had known was concerned. There were no
\n more familiar reference points.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He was only beginning to come to grips with that, when
\n the room vanished.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He was suddenly kneeling on a carpeted floor that still
\n felt strangely like the padded plastics of the cell. The
\n lights were dim, the walls expanded into an immense dark
\n chamber of carven screens and panels of alien design. A
\n woman in black and diaphanous violet stood before him, a
\n woman of the Orithain, of the indigo-skinned iduve race.
\n Her hair was black: it hung like fine silk, thick and even
\n at the level of her shapely jaw. Her brows were dark, her
\n eyes amethyst-hued, without whites, and rimmed with dark
\n along the edge of the lid. Her nose was arched but
\n delicate, her mouth sensuous, frosted with lavender, the
\n whole of her face framed with the absolute darkness of her
\n hair. The draperies hinted at a slim and female body; her
\n complexion, though dusky from the kalliran view, had a
\n lustrous sheen, as though dust of violet glistened there,
\n as if she walked in another light than ordinary mortals, a
\n universe where suns were violet and skies were of shadowy
\n hue.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He rose and, because it was elethia, he gave her a
\n proper bow for meeting despite their races: she was female,
\n though she was an enemy. She smiled and gave a nod of her
\n graceful head.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Be welcome, m’metane,” she said.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Who was it who had me brought here?” he
\n demanded, anger springing out of his voice to cover his
\n fear. “And why did you ask for me?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Vaikka,” she said, and when he did not
\n understand, she shrugged and seemed amused. “Au,
\n m’metane, you are ignorant and anoikhte, two conditions
\n impossible to maintain aboard Ashanome. We carry no
\n passengers. You will be in my service.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“No.” The answer burst out of him before he
\n even reckoned the consequences, but she shrugged again and
\n smiled.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“We might return to Kartos,” she said.
\n “You might be set off there to advise them of your
\n objections.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“And what then?”<\/p>\n

“I would prefer otherwise.”,<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He drew a long breath, let it go again. “I see. So
\n why do you come offering me choices? Noi kame can’t
\n make any, can they?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I have scanned your records. I find your decision
\n expected. And as for your assumption of noi kame-no:
\n kamethi have considerable initiative; they would be useless
\n otherwise.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Would you have destroyed Kartos?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

His angry question seemed for the first time to perplex
\n the Orithain, whose gentle manner persisted. “When we
\n threaten, m’metane, we do so because of another’s
\n weakness, never of our own. It was highly likely that you
\n would choose to come: elethia forbids you should refuse. If
\n you would not, surely fear would compel them to bring you.
\n Likewise it is certain that I would have destroyed Kartos
\n had it refused. Any other basis for making the statement
\n would have been highly unreasonable.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Was it you?” he asked. “Why did you
\n choose me?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Vaikka-a matter of honor. You are of birth such
\n that your loss will be noticed among kallia: that has a
\n certain incidental value. And I have use for such as you:
\n world-born, but experienced of outer worlds.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He hated her, hated her quiet voice and her evident
\n delight in his misery. “Well,” he said,
\n “you’ll regret that particular choice.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Her amethyst eyes darkened perceptibly. There was no
\n longer a smile on her face. “Kutikkase-metane,”
\n she said. “At the moment you are no more than sentient
\n raw material, and it is useless to attempt rational
\n conversation with you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And with blinding swiftness the white light of the cell
\n was about him again, yielding white plastic on all sides,
\n narrow walls, white glare. He flinched and covered his
\n eyes, and fell to his knees again in the loneliness of that
\n cubicle.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Then, not for the first time in the recent hour, he
\n thought of self-destruction; but he had no convenient
\n means, and he had still to fear her retaliation against
\n Kartos. He slowly realized how ridiculous he had made
\n himself with his threat against her, and was ashamed. His
\n entire species was powerless against the likes of her,
\n powerless because, like Kartos, like him, they would always
\n find the alternative unthinkably costly.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He came docilely enough when they brought him out into
\n the laboratory, expecting that they would simply lock about
\n his wrist the idoikkhe, such as they themselves wore-that
\n ornate platinum band that observers long ago theorized
\n provided the Orithain their means of control over the noi
\n kame.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Such was not the case. They had him dress in a white
\n wrap about his waist and lie down again on the table, after
\n which they forcibly administered a drug that made his
\n senses swim, dispersing his panic to a vague,
\n all-encompassing uneasiness.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He realized by now that becoming nas kame involved more
\n than accepting that piece of jewelry-that he was going
\n under and that he would not wake the same man. In his
\n drugged despair he begged, he invoked deity, he pleaded
\n with them as fellow kallia to consider what they were doing
\n to him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

But they ignored his raving and with an economy of
\n effort, slipped him to a movable table and put him under
\n restraint. From that point his perceptions underwent a
\n rapid deterioration. He was conscious, but he could not
\n tell what he was seeing or hearing, and eventually passed
\n over the brink.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Chapter 2<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“No!” he screamed, and screamed again and
\n again until his voice was gone. No one came. His senses
\n slipped from him again.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

The iduve was coming toward him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Then the section doors sealed, at either end of the
\n hall.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Noi kame stared at him, dismayed.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Stand still,” one said to him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“No,” she said, “you cannot remove
\n it.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“Do not fear the idoikkhe,” said Chimele.
\n “We use it primarily for coded communication, and it
\n will not greatly inconvenience you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He was shamed; he jerked aside, hurt at once as the
\n idoikkhe activated, faced her and felt it fade again.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“So what is the law here?” he asked.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“Sit and listen, kameth. Sit and listen. I do not
\n notice your attitude. You are only ignorant. We are using
\n valuable time.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“Be quiet,” she said. “Anger is the worst
\n possible response.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“I am not responsible,” she said when he
\n looked hate at her.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“What was done to me?” he cried. “What
\n was it?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“I had rather be dead,” he said. “I would
\n rather die.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Tekasuphre. Do not try my patience. I called you
\n here precisely to explain matters to you. I have great
\n personal regard for your asuthe. Do I make myself
\n clear?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Am I joined to one of you?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“She is Isande,” said Chimele. “Your
\n asuthe.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Is it-usual-that different sexes-“<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Chimele shrugged. “We have not found it of
\n concern.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Was she the one I felt a moment ago?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“This,” said Chimele, “is your other
\n asuthe.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“I thought,” he recalled, “that you had
\n regard for Isande.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Aiela nerved himself to take a step toward the being,
\n and another. He went down on one knee and extended his
\n hand.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“You are dismissed,” said Chimele.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

In effect, he knew, they were right.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

To wait.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Should he have died for nothing?<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

But all reasonable action on Ashanome operated in favor
\n of the Orithain, who understood nothing of kastien.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Something stabbed at him behind his eyes. He caught at
\n his face and reached for the support of the viewport.
\n Waking. Conscious.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Isande.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It stopped. His vision cleared.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

It built in strength.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Then it invaded his thoughts, his memories, his inmost
\n privacy.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“I’ll meet you in your quarters,” she
\n sent.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Only what territory lay beyond depended entirely on the
\n conscience of another being-on two asuthi, one of whom
\n might be little removed from madness.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

He was less sure he liked her, despite her physical
\n attractions.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

And she received that, and mentally backed off in great
\n haste. “Well,” she conceded then, “I am
\n sorry. I am rude. I admit that.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“I wanted what you are assigned to do,” she
\n said, “very badly.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I’ll yield you the honor.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“Neither you nor I have that choice,” she
\n said. “Chimele decides. There is no appeal.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

For nine thousand years Isande’s ancestors had
\n served the Orithain. She took pride in that.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Iduve, she sent, correcting him. Chimele is the
\n Orithain; the people are iduve.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The words were toneless this time, but different from
\n his own knowledge. He tried to push them out<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“You do not believe,” she said aloud,
\n “that you can stop me. You could, if you believed you
\n could.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“No,” she said. “Aiela-no. You will hurt
\n us both.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I have had enough,” he said, “from the
\n iduve-from noi kame in general. They are doing this to
\n me-“<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“-to us.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Why?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Sit down. Please.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“Is it?” he asked bitterly. “Is that all
\n you get from them- to be left alone?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

To be let alone: Isande sought that diligently.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And something else had been implicit in that
\n instant’s memory, another being’s outrage, another
\n man’s fear for her-as close and as real as his own.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Another asuthe.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“Where is he?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Dead.” Screening fell, mind unfolding,
\n willfully.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Something to which Aiela had been rudely, forcibly
\n admitted.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

I could shield myself from that-far more skillfully than
\n you can possibly learn to do in two days. And then I would
\n be rid of him. But you-<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Why is he here? Aiela insisted. What do the iduve want
\n with him?<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Her screening went up again, hard. The rebuff was almost
\n physical in its strength.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

In that event she would not win any help from him, nor
\n would the iduve.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

No, she urged him. Do not be stubborn in this.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You are Chimele’s servant. You say what you
\n have to say. I still have a choice.”<\/p>\n

Liar, she judged sadly, which stung like a slap, the
\n worse because it was true.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

-isolate, powerful: Ashanome’s influence could move
\n full half the nasuli of the induve species to Chimele’s
\n bidding- a power so vast there could be no occasion to
\n invoke it.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Sole heir-descendant of a line more than twelve thousand
\n years old. Vaikka: revenge; honor; dynasty.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Involving this human, Aiela gleaned on another
\n level.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

But that was all Isande gave him, and that by way of
\n making peace with him. She was terrified, to have given him
\n only that much.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

I thought they didn’t kill him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“And you love a being like that.” He could not
\n understand. He refused to understand. That in itself was a
\n victory.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

And killed him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

“I have things to teach you,” he said, and
\n felt her fear like a wall between them.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You are welcome to your opinions,” she said
\n at last<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

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



<\/p>\n

Chapter 3<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

TWO DAYS COULD not prepare him, not for this.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He looked on the sleeping human and still, despite the
\n hours he had spent with Isande, observing this being by
\n monitor, a feeling of revulsion went through him. The
\n attendants had done their aesthetic best for the human, but
\n the sheeted form on the bed still looked alien-pale
\n coloring, earth-brown hair trimmed to the skull-fitting
\n style of the noi kame, beard removed. He never shuddered at
\n amaut: they were cheerful, comic fellows, whose
\n peculiarities never mattered because they never competed
\n with kallia; but this-this-was bound to his own mind.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And there was no Isande.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He had assumed-they had both assumed in their plans-
\n that she would be with him. He had come to rely on her in a
\n strange fashion that had nothing to do with duty: with her,
\n he knew Ashanome, he knew the folk he met, and people
\n deferred to his orders as if Isande had given them. She had
\n been with him, a voice continually in his mind, a presence
\n at his side; at times they had argued; at others they had
\n even found reason to be awed by each other’s worlds.
\n With her, he had begun to believe that he could succeed,
\n that he could afterward settle into obscurity among the
\n kamethi and survive.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He had in two days almost forgotten the weight of the
\n bracelet upon his wrist, had absorbed images enough of the
\n iduve that they became for him individual, and less
\n terrible. He knew his way, which iduve to avoid most
\n zealously, and which were reckoned safe and almost gentle.
\n He knew the places open to him, and those forbidden; and if
\n he was a prisoner, at least he owned a fellow-being who
\n cared very much for his comfort-it was her own.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

They were two: Ashanome was vast: and it was true that
\n kamethi were not troubled by iduve in their daily lives. He
\n saw no cruelty, no evident fear-himself a curiosity among
\n Isande’s acquaintances because of his origins: and no
\n one forbade him, whatever he wished to say. But sometimes
\n he saw in others’ eyes that they pitied him, as if some
\n mark were on him that they could read.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It was the human.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

As this went, he would live or die; and at the last
\n moment, Chimele had recalled Isande, ordering her sedated
\n for her own protection. I value you, Chimele had said. No.
\n The risk is considerable. I do not permit it.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Isande had protested, furiously; and that in a kameth
\n was great bravery and desperation. But Chimele had not used
\n the idoikkhe; she had simply stared at Isande with that
\n terrible fixed expression, until the wretched nas kame had
\n gone, weeping, to surrender herself to the laboratory,
\n there to sleep until it was clear whether he would survive.
\n The iduve would destroy a kameth that was beyond help; she
\n feared to wake to silence, such a silence as Reha had left.
\n She tried to hide this from him, fearing that she would
\n destroy him with her own fear; she feared the human, such
\n that it would have taxed all her courage to have been in
\n his place now-but she would have done it, for her own
\n reasons. She would have stood by him too-that was the
\n nature of Isande: honor impelled her to loyalty. It had
\n touched him beyond anything she could say or do, that she
\n had argued with Chimele for his sake; that she had lost was
\n only expected: it was the law of her world.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Take no chances,” she had wished him as she
\n sank into dark. “Touch the language centers only,
\n until I am with you again. Do not let the iduve urge you
\n otherwise. And do not sympathize with that creature. You
\n trust too much; it’s a disease with you. Feelings such
\n as we understand do not reside in all sentient life. The
\n iduve are proof enough of that. And who understands the
\n amaut?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

What do they want of him? he had tried to ask. But she
\n had left him then, and in that place that was hers there
\n was quiet<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Now something else stirred.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He felt it beginning, harshly ordered medical attendants
\n out: they obeyed. He closed the door. There was only the
\n rush of air whispering in the ducts, all other sound
\n muffled.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The darkness spotted across his vision, dimming
\n senses.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The human stirred, and light hazed where the dark had
\n been. Then he discovered the restraints and panicked.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela flung up barriers quickly. His heart was pounding
\n against his ribs from the mere touch of that communication.
\n He bent over the human, seized his straining shoulders and
\n held him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Be still! Daniel, Daniel-be still.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The human’s gasps for breath ebbed down to a series
\n of panting sobs. The dark eyes cleared and focused on his.
\n Because touch was the only safe communication he had, Aiela
\n relaxed his grip and patted the human’s shoulder. The
\n human endured it: he reminded Aiela of an animal soothed
\n against its will, a wild thing that would kill, given the
\n chance.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela settled on the edge of the cot, feeling the human
\n flinch. He spoke softly, tried amautish and kalliran words
\n with him without success, and when he at last thought the
\n human calm again, he ventured a mind-touch.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

A miasma of undefined feeling came back:
\n pain-panic-confusion. The human whimpered in fright and
\n moved, and Aiela snatched his mind back. His own hands were
\n trembling, It was several moments before the human’s
\n breathing rate returned to normal.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He tried talking to him once more, for a long time
\n nothing more than that. The human’s eyes continually
\n locked on his, animal and intense; at times emotion went
\n through them visibly-a look of anxiety, of perplexity.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

At last the being seemed calmer, closed his eyes for a
\n few moments and seemed to slip away, exhausted. Aiela let
\n him. In a little time more the brown eyes opened again,
\n fixed upon his: the human’s face contracted a little in
\n pain-his hand: tensed\u00a0 against\u00a0 the\u00a0
\n restraints.\u00a0 Then\u00a0 he\u00a0 grew quiet\u00a0
\n again, breathing almost normally; he suffered the situation
\n with a tranquillity that tempted Aiela to try mind-touch
\n again, but he refrained, instead left the bedside and
\n returned with a cup of water.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The human lifted his head, trusted himself to
\n Aiela’s arm for support while he drained the cup, and
\n .then sank back with a shortness of breath that had no
\n connection with the effort. He wanted something. His lips
\n contracted to a white line. He babbled something that had
\n to do with amaut.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He did speak, then. Aiela set the cup down and looked
\n down on him with some relief. “Is there pain?” he
\n asked in the amautish tongue, as nearly as kalliran lips
\n could shape the sounds. There was no evidence of
\n comprehension. He sat down again on the edge.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The human stared at him, still breathing hard. Then a
\n glance flicked down to the restraints, up again,
\n pleading-repeated the gesture. When Aiela did nothing, the
\n human’s eyes slid away from him, toward the wall. That
\n was clear enough too.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It was madness to take such a chance. He knew that it
\n was. The human could injure himself and kill him, quite
\n easily.-<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He grew like Isande, who hated the creature, who would
\n deal with him harshly; like the iduve, who created the
\n idoikkhei and maintained matters on their terms, who could
\n see something suffer and remain unmoved.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Better to die than yield to such logic. Better to admit
\n that there was little difference between this wretched
\n creature that at least tried to maintain its dignity, and a
\n kalliran officer who walked about carrying iduve ownership
\n locked upon his wrist.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Come,” he said, loosed one restraint and the
\n others in quick succession, dismissing iduve, dismissing
\n Isande’s distress for his sake. He chose, he chose for
\n himself what he would do, and if he would die it was easier
\n than carrying out iduve orders, terrifying this unhappy
\n being. He lifted the human to sit, steadied him on the
\n edge, found those pale strong hands locked on his arms and
\n the human staring into his face in confusion.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Terror.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Daniel winced, grimaced and clutched at his head,
\n discovered the incision and panicked. He hurled himself up,
\n sprawled on the tiles, and lay there clutching his head and
\n moaning, sobbing words of nonsense.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Daniel.” Aiela caught his own breath,
\n -screening heavily: he knew well enough what the human was
\n experiencing, that first horrible realization of the
\n chiabres, the knowledge that his very self had been
\n tampered with, that there was something else with him in
\n his skull. Aiela felt pressure at his defenses, a dark
\n force that clawed blindly at the edges of his mind,
\n helpless and monstrous and utterly vulnerable at this
\n moment, like something newborn.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He let the human explore that for himself, measure it,
\n discover at last that it was partially responsive to his
\n will. Aiela sat still, tautly screened, sweat coursing over
\n his ribs; he would not admit it, he would not admit it-it
\n was dangerous, unformed as it was. It moved all about the
\n walls of his mind, sensing something, seeking, aggressive
\n and frightened at once. It acquired nightmare shape. Aiela
\n snapped his vision back to now and destroyed the image,
\n refusing it admittance, saw the human wince and
\n collapse.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He was not unconscious. Aiela knew it as he knew his own
\n waking. He simply lay still, waiting, waiting-perhaps
\n gathering his abused senses into some kind of order.
\n Perhaps he was wishing to die. Aiela understood such a
\n reaction.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Several times more the ugliness activated itself to
\n prowl the edges of his mind. Each time it fled back, as if
\n it had learned caution.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Are you all right?” Aiela asked aloud. He
\n used the tone, not the words. He put concern into it.
\n “I will not touch you. Are you all right?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The human made a sound like a sob, rolled onto an arm,
\n and then, as if he suddenly realized his lack of elethia
\n before a man who was still calmly seated and waiting for
\n him, he made several awkward moves and dragged himself to a
\n seated posture, dropped his head onto his arms for a
\n moment, and then gathered himself to try to rise.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela moved to help him. It was a mistake. The human
\n flinched and stumbled into the wall, into the corner, very
\n like the attitude he had maintained in the cell.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I am sorry.” Aiela bowed and retreated back
\n to his seat on the edge of the bed.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The human straightened then, stood upright, released a
\n shaken breath. He reached again for the scar on his temple:
\n Aiela felt the pressure at once, felt it stop as Daniel
\n pulled his mind back.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Daniel,” he said; and when Daniel looked at
\n him curiously, suspiciously, he turned his head to the side
\n and let Daniel see the scar that faintly showed on his own
\n temple.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Then he opened a contact from his own direction,
\n intending the slightest touch.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Daniel’s eyes widened. The ugliness reared up,
\n terrible in its shape, Vision went. He screamed, battered
\n himself against the door, then hurled himself at Aiela, mad
\n with fear. Aiela seized him by the wrists, pressing at his
\n mind, trying to ignore the terror that was feeding back
\n into him. One of them knew how to control the chiabres:
\n uncontrolled, it could do unthinkable harm. Aiela fought,
\n losing contact with his own body: sweat poured over him,
\n making his grip slide; his muscles began to shake, so that
\n he could not maintain his hold at all; he knew himself in
\n physical danger, but that inside was worse. He hurled sense
\n after sense into play, seeking what he wanted, reading the
\n result in pain that fed back into him, nightmare
\n shapes.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And suddenly the necessary barrier crashed between them,
\n so painful that he cried out: in instinctive reaction, the
\n human had screened. There was separation. There was
\n self-distinction.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He slowly disengaged himself from the human’s grip;
\n the human, capable of attack, did not move, only stared at
\n him, as injured as he. Perhaps the outcry had shocked him.
\n Aiela felt after the human’s wrist, gripped it not
\n threateningly, but as a gesture of comfort.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He forced a smile, a nod of satisfaction, and
\n uncertainly Daniel’s hand closed-of a sudden the human
\n gave a puzzled look, a half-laugh, half-sob.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He understood.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Yes,” Aiela answered, almost laughed himself
\n from sheer relief. It opened barriers, that sharing.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And he cried out in pain from what force the human sent
\n He caught at his head, signed that he was hurt.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Daniel tried to stop. The mental pressure came in spurts
\n and silences, flashes of light and floods of emotion. The
\n darkness sorted itself into less horrid form. It was not an
\n attack. The human wanted; so long alone, so long helpless
\n to tell-he wanted. He wept hysterically and held his hands
\n back, trembling in dread and desire to touch, to lay hold
\n on anyone who offered help.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Barriers tumbled.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela ceased trying to resist. Exhaustion claimed him.
\n Like a man rushing downhill against his will he dared not
\n risk trying to stop; he concentrated only on preserving his
\n balance, threading his way through half-explored contacts,
\n unfamiliar patterns at too great a speed. Contacts
\n multiplied, wove into pattern; sensations began to sort
\n themselves into order, perceptions to arrange themselves
\n into comprehensible form: body-sense, touch, equilibrium,
\n vision-the room writhed out of darkness and took form about
\n them.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Suddenly deeper senses were seeking structure. Aiela
\n surrendered himself to Daniel’s frame of reference,
\n where right was human-hued and wrong was different, where
\n morality and normality took shapes he could hardly bear
\n without a shudder. He reached desperately for the speech
\n centers for wider patterns, establishing a contact
\n desperately needed.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I,” he said silently in human speech.
\n “Aiela-I. Stop. Stop. Think slowly. Think of now. Hold
\n back your thoughts to the pace of your words. Think the
\n words, Daniel: my language, yours, no difference.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“What-” the first response attempted. Apart
\n from Aiela’s mind the sound had no meaning for the
\n human.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Go on. You understand me. You can use my language
\n as I use yours. Our symbolizing facility is
\n merged.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“What-” Death was in his mind, gnawing doubt
\n that almost forced them apart. “What is going to
\n happen to me? What are you?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

His communication was a babble of kalliran and human
\n language, amaut mixed in, voiced and thought, echoes upon
\n echoes. He was sending on at least three levels at once and
\n unaware which was dominant. Home, help, home kept running
\n beneath everything.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Be calm,” Aiela said. “You’re all
\n right. You’re not hurt.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I have-come a long way, a very long way from home.
\n I don’t even know where I am or why. I know-” No,
\n no, not accusation; soft with him, soft, don’t make him
\n angry. “I know that you are being kind, that I-am
\n being treated well-” Cages were in his mind; he
\n thought them only out of sight on the other side of the
\n wall, shrieks and hideous noise and darkness. At least he
\n looks human, the second level ran. Looks. Looks. Seems.
\n Isn’t. God, help me.” Aiela, I-understand. I am
\n grateful, Aiela-“<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Daniel tried desperately to screen in his fear. It was a
\n terrible effort. Under it all, nonverbal, there was fear of
\n a horrible kind, fear of oblivion, fear of losing his mind
\n altogether; but he would yield, he would merge, anything,
\n anything but lose this chance. It was dangerous. It pulled
\n at both of them. Aiela screened briefly, stopping it.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I don’t know how to help you,” Aiela told
\n him gently.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“But I assure you I don’t want to harm you. You
\n are safe. Be calm.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Information-they want-home came to mind, far distant, a
\n world of red stone and blue skies. The memory met
\n Aiela’s surmise, the burrows of amaut worlds, human
\n laborers, and confused Daniel greatly. Past or future,
\n Daniel wondered. Mine? Is this mine? Is this what I’m
\n going to?<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela drew back, trying to sort the human thoughts from
\n his own. Nausea assailed him. The human’s terrors began
\n to seem his, sinister things, alien; and the amaut were at
\n the center of all the nightmares.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“How did you come here, then?” Aiela asked.
\n “Where did you come from, if not from the amaut
\n worlds?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And where is here and what are you? the human responded
\n inwardly; but in the lightning-sequencing of memory,
\n answers came, random at first, then deliberate-remembrances
\n of that little world that had been home: poverty, other
\n humans, anger, a displaced folk yearning toward a green and
\n beautiful home that had no resemblance to the red
\n desolation in which they now lived: an urge toward ships,
\n and voyaging, homecoming and revenge.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Years reeled backward and forward again: strange suns,
\n worlds, service in many ships, machinery appallingly
\n primitive, backbreaking labor-but among humans, human
\n ships, human ports, scant resources, sordid pleasures.
\n Above all a regret for that sandy homeland, and finally a
\n homecoming- to a home dissolved, a farm gone to dust; more
\n port cities, more misery, a life without ties and without
\n purpose. The thoughts ran aimlessly into places so alien
\n they were madness.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

These were not the Esliph worlds. Amaut did not belong
\n there. Human space, then, human worlds, where kalliran and
\n amaut trade had never gone.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Amaut. Daniel’s mind seized on the memory with hate.
\n Horrible images of death, bodies twisted, stacked in heaps-
\n prisoners-humans-gathered into camps, half-starved and
\n dying, others hunted, slaughtered horribly and hung up for
\n warnings, the hunters humankind too; but among them moved
\n dark, large-eyed shapes with shambling gait and leering
\n faces-amaut seen through human eyes. Events tumbled one
\n over the other, and Aiela resisted, unknowing what terrible
\n place he was being led next; but Daniel sent, forcefully,
\n no random images now-hate, hate of aliens, of him, who was
\n part of this.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Himself. A city’s dark streets, a deserted way,
\n night, fire leaping up against the horizon, strange hulking
\n shapes looming above the crumbling buildings-a game of
\n hunter and hunted, himself the quarry, and those same dread
\n shapes loping, ungainly behind him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Ambush-unconsciousness-death?-smothered and torn by a
\n press of bodies, alien smells, the cutting discomfort of
\n wire mesh under his naked body, echoing crashes of
\n machinery in great vastness, cold and glaring light. Others
\n like himself, humans, frightened, silent for days and
\n nights of cold and misery and sinister amaut moving
\n saucer-eyed beyond the perimeter of the lights-cold and
\n hunger, until in increasing numbers the others ended as
\n stiff corpses on the mesh.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

More crashes of machinery, panic, spurts of memory
\n interspersed with nightmare and strangely tranquil dreams
\n of childhood: drugs and pain, now gabbling faces thrust
\n close to his, shaggy, different humans incapable of speech
\n as he knew it, overwhelming stench, dirty-nailed fingers
\n tearing at him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela jerked back from the contact and bowed his head
\n into his hands, nauseated; but worse seeped in after:
\n cages, transfer to another ship, being herded into yet
\n filthier confinement, the horror of seeing fellow beings
\n reduced to mouthing animals, constant fear and frequent
\n abuse-himself the victim almost always, because he was
\n different, because he could not speak, because he did not
\n react as they did-the cunning humor of the savages, who
\n would wait until he slept and then spring on him, who would
\n goad him into a rage and then press him into a corner of
\n that cage, tormenting him for their amusement until his
\n screams brought the attendants running to break it up.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

At last, strangers, kallia; his transfer, drugged, to
\n yet another wakening and another prison. Aiela saw himself
\n and Chimele as alien and shadowy beings invading the cell:
\n Daniel’s distorted memory did not even recognize him
\n until he met the answering memory in Aiela’s mind.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Enemy. Enemy. Interrogator. Part of him, enemy. The
\n terror boiled into the poor human’s brain and created
\n panic, violence echoing and re-echoing in their joined
\n mind, division that went suicidal, multiplying by the
\n second.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela broke contact, sick and trembling with reaction.
\n Daniel was similarly affected, and for a moment neither of
\n them moved.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

No matter, no matter, came into Daniel’s mind,
\n remembrance of kindness, reception of Aiela’s pity for
\n him. Any conditions, anything. He realized that Aiela was
\n receiving that thought, and hurt pride screened it in.
\n “I am sorry,” he concentrated the words. “I
\n don’t hate you. Aiela, help me. I want to go
\n home.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“From what I have seen, Daniel, I much fear there
\n is no home for you to return to.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Am I alone? Am I the only human here?<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The thought terrified Daniel; and yet it promised no
\n more of the human cages; held out other images, himself
\n alone forever, victim to strangers-amaut, kallia, aliens
\n muddled together in his mind.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You are safe,” Aiela assured him; and was
\n immediately conscious it was a forgetful lie. In that
\n instant memory escaped its confinement.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

They. They-Daniel snatched a thought and an image of the
\n iduve, darkly beautiful, ancient and evil, and all the fear
\n that was bound up in kalliran legend. He associated it with
\n the shadowy figure he had seen in the cell, doubly panicked
\n as Aiela tried to screen. No! What have you agreed to do
\n for them? Aiela!<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“No.” Aiela fought against the currents of
\n terror. “No. Quiet. I’m going to have you
\n sedated-No! Stop that!-so that your mind can rest. I’m
\n tired. So are you. You will be safe, and I’ll come back
\n later when you’ve rested.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

You’re going to report to them-and to lie there-The
\n human remembered other wakings, strangers’ hands on
\n him, his fellow humans’ cruel humor. Nausea hit his
\n stomach, fear so deep there was no reasoning. There were
\n amaut on the ship: he dreaded them touching him while he
\n was unconscious.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You will be moved,” Aiela persisted.
\n “You’ll wake in a comfortable place next to my
\n rooms, and you’ll be free when you wake, completely
\n safe, I promise it. I’ll have the amaut stay completely
\n away from you if that will make you feel any
\n better.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Daniel listened, wanting to believe, but he could not.
\n Mercifully the attendant on duty was both kalliran and
\n gentle of manner, and soon the human was settled into bed
\n again, sliding down the mental brink of unconsciousness. He
\n still stretched out his thoughts to Aiela, wanting to trust
\n him, fearing he would wake in some more incredible
\n nightmare.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I will be close by,” Aiela assured him, but
\n he was not sure the human received that, for the contact
\n went dark and numb like Isande’s.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He felt strangely amputated then, utterly on his own
\n and-a thing he would never have credited-wishing for the
\n touch of his asuthe, her familiar, kalliran mind, her
\n capacity to make light of his worst fears. If he were
\n severed from the human this moment and never needed touch
\n that mind again, he knew that he would remember to the end
\n of his days that he had for a few moments been human.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He had harmed himself. He knew it, desperately wished it
\n undone, and feared not even Isande’s experience could
\n help him. She had tried to warn him. In defiance of her
\n advice he had extended himself to the human, reckoning no
\n dangers but the obvious, doing things his own way, with
\n kastien toward a hurt and desolate creature.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He had chosen. He could no more bear harm to Isande than
\n he could prefer pain for himself: iduvish as she was, he
\n knew her to the depth of her stubborn heart, knew the
\n elethia of her and her loyalty, and she in no wise deserved
\n harm from anyone.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Neither did the human. Someone meant to use him, .to
\n wring some use from him, and discard him or destroy him
\n afterward-be rid of him, Isande had said, even she callous
\n toward him-and there was in that alien shell a being that
\n had not deserved either fate.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It is not reasonable to ask me to venture an opinion on
\n something I have never experienced, Chimele had told him at
\n the outset. She did not understand kalliran emotion and she
\n had never felt the chiabres. Of a sudden he feared not even
\n Chimele might have anticipated what she was creating of
\n them, and that she would deal ruthlessly with the result-a
\n kameth whose loyalty was half-human.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He was kallia, kallia!-and of a sudden he felt his hold
\n on that claim becoming tenuous. It was not right, what he
\n had done-even to the human.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Isande, he pleaded, hoping against all knowledge to the
\n contrary for a response from that other, that blessedly
\n kalliran mind. Isande, Isande.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“But his senses perceived only darkness from that
\n quarter.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

In the next moment he felt a mild pulse from the
\n idoikkhe, the coded flutter that meant paredre.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Chimele was sending for him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

There was the matter of an accounting.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Chapter 4<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

CHIMELE WAS PERTURBED. It was evident in her brooding
\n expression and her attitude as she leaned in the corner of
\n her chair; she was not pleased; and she was not alone for
\n this audience: four other iduve were with her, and with
\n that curious sense of deja vu Isande’s instruction
\n imparted, Aiela knew them. They were Chimele’s
\n nasithi-katasakke, her half-brothers and -sister by
\n common-mating.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The woman Chaikhe was youngest: an Artist, a singer of
\n songs; by kalliran standards Chaikhe was too thin to be
\n beautiful, but she was gentle and thoughtful toward the
\n kamethi. She had also thought of him with interest: Isande
\n had warned him of it; but Chimele had said no, and that
\n ended it. Chaikhe was becoming interested in katasakke, in
\n common-mating, the presumable cause of restlessness; but an
\n iduve with that urge would rapidly lose all interest in
\n m’metanei. Beside Chaikhe, eyeing him fixedly, sat her
\n full brother Ashakh, a long-faced man, exceedingly tall and
\n thin. Ashakh was renowned for intelligence and coldness to
\n emotion even among iduve. He was Ashanome’s chief
\n Navigator and master of much of the ship’s actual
\n operation, from its terrible armament to the computers that
\n were the heart of the ship’s machinery and memory. He
\n did not impress one as a man who made mistakes, nor as one
\n to be crossed with impunity. And next to Ashakh, leaning on
\n one arm of the chair, sat Rakhi, the brother that Chimele
\n most regarded. Rakhi was of no great beauty, and for an
\n iduve he was a little plump. Also he had a shameful bent
\n toward kutikkase-a taste for physical comfort too great to
\n be honorable among iduve. But he was devoted to Chimele,
\n and he was extraordinarily kind to the noi kame and even to
\n the seldom-noticed amaut, who adored him as their personal
\n patron. Besides, at the heart of this soft, often-smiling
\n fellow was a heart of greater bravery than most
\n suspected.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The third of the brothers was eldest: Khasif, a giant of
\n a man, strikingly handsome, sullen-eyed-older than Chimele,
\n but under her authority. He was of the order of Scientists,
\n a xenoarchaeologist. He had a keen m’melakhia-an
\n impelling hunger for new experience-and noi kame made
\n themselves scarce when he was about, for he had killed on
\n two occasions. This was the man Isande so feared,
\n although-she had admitted-she did not think he was
\n consciously cruel. Khasif was impatient and energetic in
\n his solutions, a trait much honored among iduve, as long as
\n it was tempered with refinement, with chanokhia. He had the
\n reputation of being a very dangerous man, but in
\n Isande’s memory he had never been a petty one.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“How fares Daniel?” asked Chimele. “Why
\n did you ask sedation so early? Who gave you leave for
\n this?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“We were tiring,” said Aiela. “You gave
\n me leave to order what I thought best, and we were tired,
\n we-“<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Aiela-kameth,” Chaikhe intervened gently.
\n “Is there progress?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Yes.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Will complete asuthithekkhe be possible with this
\n being? Can you reach that state with him, that you can be
\n one with him?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I don’t-I don’t think it is safe. No. I
\n don’t want that.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Is this yours to decide?” Ashakh’s tones
\n were like icewater on the silken voice of Chaikhe.
\n “Kameth-you were instructed.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He wanted to tell them. The memory of that contact was
\n still vivid in his mind, such that he still shuddered. But
\n there was no patience in Ashakh’s thin-lipped face,
\n neither patience nor mercy nor understanding of weakness.
\n “We are different,” he found himself saying, to
\n fill the silence. Ashakh only stared. “Give me
\n time,” he said again.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“We are on a schedule,” Ashakh said.
\n “This should have been made clear to you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Yes, sir.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Specify the points of difference.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Ethics, experience. He isn’t hostile, not yet.
\n He mistrusts-he mistrusts me, this place, all things
\n alien.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Is it not your burden to reconcile these
\n differences?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Sir.” Aiela’s hands sweated and he folded
\n his arms, pressing his palms against his sides. He did not
\n like to look Ashakh in the face, but the iduve stared at
\n him unblinkingly. “Sir, we are able to communicate.
\n But he is not gullible, and I’m running out of answers
\n that will satisfy him. That was why I resorted to the
\n sedative. He’s beginning to ask questions. I had no
\n more easy answers. What am I supposed to tell
\n him?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Aiela.” Khasif drew his attention to the
\n left. “What is your personal reaction to the
\n being?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I don’t know.” His mouth was dry. He
\n looked into Khasif s face, that was the substance of
\n Isande’s nightmares, perfect and cold. “I try-I
\n try to avoid offending him-“<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“What is the ethical pattern, the social structure?
\n Does he recognize kalliran patterns?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Close to kallia. But not the same. I can’t
\n tell you: not the same at all.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Be more precise.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Am I supposed to have learned something in
\n particular?” Aiela burst out, harried and regretting
\n his tone at once. The idoikkhe pulsed painlessly, once,
\n twice: he looked from one to the other of them, not knowing
\n who had done it, knowing it for a warning. “I’m
\n sorry, but I don’t understand. I was primed to study
\n this man, but no one will tell me just what I was looking
\n for. Now you’ve taken Isande away from me too. How am I
\n to know what questions to start with?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

His answer caused a little ruffling among the iduve, and
\n merry Rakhi laughed outright and looked sidelong at
\n Chimele. “Au, this one has a sting, Chimele.” He
\n looked back at Aiela. “And what have you learned, thus
\n ignorant of your purpose, o m’metane?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“That the amaut have intruded into human space,
\n which they swore in a treaty with the Halliran Idai they
\n would never do. This man came from human space. They lost
\n most of his shipment because these humans weren’t
\n acclimated to the kind of abuse they received. Is that what
\n you want to hear? Until you tell me what you mean to do
\n with him, I’m afraid I can’t do much
\n more.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Chimele had not been amused. She frowned and stirred in
\n her chair, placing her hands on its arms. “Can you,
\n Aiela, prepare this human for our own examination by
\n tomorrow?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“That’s impossible. No. And what kind
\n of-?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“By tomorrow evening.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“If you want something, then make it clear what it
\n is and maybe I can learn it. But he wants answers. He has
\n questions, and I can’t keep putting him off, not
\n without creating you an enemy-or do you care?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You will have to-put him off, as you express
\n it.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I’m not going to lie to him, even by omission.
\n What are you going to do with him?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I prefer that this human not be admitted to our
\n presence with the promise of anything. Do you understand
\n me, Aiela? If you promise this being anything, it will be
\n the burden of your honor to pay for it; make sure your
\n resources are adequate. I will not consider myself or the
\n nasul bound by your ignorant and unauthorized generosity.
\n Go back to your quarters.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I will not lie to him for you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Go back to your quarters. You are not
\n noticed.” This time there was no softness at all in
\n her tone, and he knew he dared not dispute with her
\n further. Even Rakhi took the smile from his face and
\n straightened in his chair. Aiela omitted the bow of
\n courtesy, turned on his heel and walked out.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He had ruined matters. When he was stressed his voice
\n rose, and he had let it happen, had lost his case for it.
\n He had felt when he walked in that Chimele was not in a
\n mood for patience; and he realized in hindsight that the
\n nasithi had tried to avert disaster: Rakhi, he thought,
\n Rakhi, who had always been kind to Isande, had wished to
\n stop him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He returned to the kamethi level in utmost dejection,
\n realized the late hour and considered returning to the lab
\n and requesting to have a sedative for himself. His nerves
\n could bear no more. But he had never liked such things,
\n liked less to deal with Ghiavre, the iduve first Surgeon;
\n and it occurred to him that Daniel might wake prematurely
\n and need him. He decided against it.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He went to his quarters and prepared for bed, settled in
\n with notebook and pen and diverted his thoughts to
\n record-keeping on Daniel, then, upon the sudden cold
\n thought that the iduve might not respect the sanctity of
\n his belongings, he tore up everything and threw it into the
\n disposal. The suspicion distressed him. As a kallia he had
\n never thought of such things; he had never needed to
\n suspect such ikastien on the part of his superiors.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Daniel had learned such suspicion. It was human.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

With that distressing thought he turned out the lights
\n and lay still until his muddled thoughts drifted into
\n sleep.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The idoikkhe jolted him, brutally, so that he woke with
\n an outcry and clawed his way up to the nearest chair.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Isande, he had cast, the reflex of two days of
\n dependency; and to his surprised relief there was a
\n response, albeit a muzzy one.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela, she responded, remembered Daniel, instantly tried
\n to learn his health and began to pick up the immediate
\n present: Chimele, summoning him, angry; and Daniel-What
\n have you done? she sent back, shivering with fear; but he
\n prodded her toward the moment, thrusting through the
\n flutter of her drug-hazed thoughts.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“This is Chimele’s sleep cycle too,” he
\n sent. “Does she always exercise her tempers in the
\n middle of the night?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The idoikkhe stung him again, momentarily disrupting
\n their communication. Aiela reached for his clothes and
\n pulled them on, while Isande’s thoughts threaded back
\n into his mind. She scanned enough to blame him for matters,
\n and she was distressed enough to let it seep through; but
\n she had the grace to keep that feeling down. Now was
\n important. He was important. He had to take her advice now;
\n he could be hurt, badly.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Chimele’s hours are seldom predictable,”
\n she informed him, her outermost thoughts calm and ordered.
\n But what lay under it was a peculiar physical fear that
\n unstrung his nerves.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He looked at the time: it was well past midnight, and
\n Chimele, like Ashakh, did not impress him as one who took
\n the leisure for whimsy. He pulled his sweater over his
\n head, started for the door, but he paused to hurl at Isande
\n the demand that she drop her screening, guide him. He felt
\n her reticence; when it melted, he almost wished
\n otherwise.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Fear came, nightmares of Khasif, chilling and sexual at
\n once. Few things could cause an iduve to act irrationally,-
\n but there was one outstanding exception, and iduve when
\n irritated with kamethi were prone to it.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He stopped square in the doorway, blood leaving his face
\n and returning in a hot rush. Her urgency prodded him into
\n motion again, her anger and her terror like ice in his
\n belly. No, he insisted again and again. Isande had been
\n terrified once and long ago: she was scarred by the
\n experience and dwelled on it excessively-it embarrassed
\n him, that he had to express that thought: he knew it for
\n truth. He wished her still.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“It happens,” Isande insisted, with such
\n firmness that it shook his conviction. “It is
\n katasukke-pleasure-mating.” And quickly, without
\n preface, apology, or overmuch delicacy, she fed across what
\n she knew or guessed of the iduve’s intimate
\n habits-alienness only remotely communicated in katasukke
\n with noi kame, a union between iduve in katasakke that was
\n fraught with violence and shielded in ritual and secrecy.
\n Katasukke was gentler: sensible noi kame were treated with
\n casual indulgence or casual negligence according to the
\n mood of the iduve in question; but cruelty was e-chanokhia,
\n highly improper, whatever unknown and violent things they
\n did among themselves. But both katasakke and katasukke
\n triggered dangerous emotions in the ordinarily
\n dispassionate iduve. Vaikka was somehow involved in mating,
\n and it was not uncommon that someone was killed. In
\n Isande’s mind any irrationality in the iduve emanated
\n from that one urge: it was the one thing that could undo
\n their common sense, and when it was undone, it was a
\n madness as alien as their normal calm.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He shook off these things, hurried through the corridors
\n while Isande’s anxious presence thrust into his mind
\n behaviors and apologies, fawning kameth graces meant to
\n appease Chimele. Vaikka with a nas kame had this for an
\n expected result, and if he provoked her further now he
\n would be lucky to escape with his life.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He rejected Isande and her opinions, prideful and
\n offended, and knew that Isande was crying, and frustrated
\n with him and furious. Her anger grew so desperate that he
\n had to screen against her, and bade her leave him alone. He
\n was ashamed enough at this disgraceful situation without
\n having her lodged as resident observer in his mind. He knew
\n her hysterical upon the subject, and even so could not help
\n fearing he was walking into something he did not want to
\n contemplate.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

With Isande aware, mind-bound to him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Leave me alone! he raged at her..<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

She went; and then he was sorry for the silence.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Chimele was waiting for him, seated in her accustomed
\n chair as a tape unreeled on the wall screen with dizzying
\n rapidity: the day’s reports, quite probably. She cut it
\n off, using a manual control instead of the mental ones of
\n which the iduve were capable-a choice, he had learned,
\n which betokened an iduve with mind already occupied.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You took an unseemly amount of time
\n responding,” she said.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I was asleep.” Fear added, shaming him:
\n “I’m sorry.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You did not expect, then, to be called?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“No,” he said: and doubled over as the
\n idoikkhe hit him with overwhelming pain. He was surprised
\n into an outcry, but bit it off and straightened,
\n furious.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Well, consider it settled, then,” she said,
\n “and cheaply so. Be wiser in the future. Return to
\n your quarters.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“All of you are demented,” he cried, and it
\n struck, this time enough to gray the senses, and the pain
\n quite washed his mind of everything. When it stopped he was
\n on his face on the floor, and to his horror he felt
\n Isande’s hurt presence in him, holding to him, trying
\n to absorb the pain and reason with him to stay down.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Aiela,” said Chimele, “you clearly fail
\n to understand me.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I don’t want-” the idoikkhe stung him
\n again, a gentle reproof compared with what had touched him
\n a moment before. It jolted raw nerves and made him cringe
\n physically in dread: the cowardice it instilled made him
\n both ashamed and angry; and there was Isande’s anxious
\n intrusion again. The two-sided assault was too much. He
\n clutched his head and begged his asuthe to leave him, even
\n while he stumbled to his feet, unwilling to be treated
\n so.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

She can destroy you, Isande sent him hysterically. She
\n has her honor to think of. Vaikka, Aiela, vaikka!<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Is it Isande?” asked Chimele. “Is it she
\n that troubles you?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“She’s being hurt. She won’t go away.
\n Please stop it.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And then he knew that Isande’s idoikkhe had pained
\n her, once, twice, with increasing severity, and the
\n mournful and loyal presence fled.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Aiela,” said Chimele, “all my life I
\n have dealt gently with my kamethi. Why will you persist in
\n provoking me? Is it ignorance or is it design?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“It’s my nature,” he said, which further
\n offended her; but this time she only scowled and regarded
\n him with deep dissatisfaction.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Your ignorance of us has not been noticed: the
\n nearest equivalent is ‘forgiven.’ It will be a
\n serious error on your part to assume this will continue
\n without limit.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I honestly,” he insisted, “do not
\n understand you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“We are not in the habit of patience with
\n metane-tekasu-phre. Nor do we make evident our discomforts.
\n Au, m’metane, I should have the hide from you.”
\n There was self-control; and under it there was a rage that
\n made his skin cold: run now, he thought, and become like
\n the others-no. She would deal with him, explaining matters;
\n he would stand there until she did so.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

For a long moment he stood still, expected the touch of
\n the idoikkhe for it; she did not move either.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Aiela,” she said then, in a greatly
\n controlled voice, “I was disadvantaged before my
\n nasithi-katasakke.” And when he only stared at her,
\n helplessly unenlightened: “For three thousand years
\n Ashanome has taken no outsider-m’metane aboard,”
\n she said. “I have never dealt with the likes of
\n you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“What am I supposed to say?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You disputed with my nasithi. Then you turned the
\n same discourtesy on me. Had you no perception?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I had cause,” he declared in temper too
\n deep-running to reckon of her anger, and his hand went to
\n the idoikkhe on reflex. “This doesn’t turn off my
\n mind or my conscience, and I still want to know what you
\n intend with the man Daniel.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Chimele literally trembled with rage. He had never seen
\n so dangerous a look on any sane and sentient face, but the
\n pain he expected did not come. She stilled her anger with
\n an evident effort.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Nas-suphres,” she said in a tone of cosmic
\n contempt. “You are hopeless, m’metane”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“How so?” he responded. “How
\n so-ignorant?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Because you provoke me and trust my forbearance.
\n This is the act of a stupid or an ignorant being. And did I
\n truly believe you capable of vaikka, you would find
\n yourself woefully outmatched. You are not irreplaceable,
\n m’metane, and you are perilously close to extinction at
\n this moment.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I have no confidence at all in your forbearance,
\n and I well know you mean your threats.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“The clumsiness of your language makes rational
\n conversation impossible. You are nothing, and I could wipe
\n you out with a thought. I should think the reputedly
\n ordered processes of the kalliran mind would dictate
\n caution. I fail to perceive why you attack me.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Mad, he thought in panic, remembering at the same time
\n that she had mental control of the idoikkhe. He wanted to
\n leave. He could not think how. “I have not attacked
\n you,” he said in a quiet, reasoning voice, as one
\n would talk to the insane. “I know better.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

She arose and moved away from him in great vexation,
\n then looked back with some semblance of control restored.
\n “I warned you once, Aiela, do not play at vaikka with
\n us. You are incredibly ignorant, but you have a courage
\n which I respect above all metane-traits. Do you not
\n understand I must maintain sorithias-that I have the
\n dignity of my office to consider?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Au, this is impossible. Perhaps Isande can make it
\n clear.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“No! No, let her alone. I want none of her
\n explanations. I have my mind clear enough without need of
\n her rationalizations.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You are incredible,” Chimele exclaimed
\n indignantly, and returned to him, seized both his hands,
\n and made him sit down opposite her, a contact he hated, and
\n she seemed to realize it. “Aiela. Do not press me. I
\n must retaliate. We delight to be generous to our kamethi,
\n but we will not have gifts demanded of us. We will not be
\n pressed and not retaliate, we will not be affronted and do
\n nothing. It is physically impossible. Can you not
\n comprehend that?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Her hands trembled. He felt it and remembered
\n Isande’s warning of iduve violence, the irrational and
\n uncontrollable rages of which these cold beings were
\n capable. But Chimele seemed yet in control, and her
\n amethyst eyes locked with his in deep earnest, so plain a
\n look it was almost like the touch of his asuthi. She let
\n him go.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I cannot protect you, poor m’metane, if you
\n will persist in playing games of anger with us, if you
\n persist in incurring punishment and fighting back when you
\n receive the consequences of your impudence. You do not want
\n to live under our law; you are not capable of it. And if
\n you were wise, you would have left when I told you to
\n go.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I do not understand,” he said. “I simply
\n do not understand.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Aiela-” Her indigo face showed stress. His
\n hand still rested across his knee as he leaned forward, too
\n tense to move. Now she took it back into hers, her slim
\n fingers moving lightly across the back of it as if she
\n found its color or the texture of his skin something
\n remarkably fascinating. Pride and anger notwithstanding, he
\n sensed nothing insulting in that touch, rather that Chimele
\n drew a certain calm from that contact, that her mood
\n shifted back to reason, and that it would be a perilous
\n move if he jerked his hand away. He sweated with fear, not
\n of iduve science or power-his rational faculty feared that;
\n but something else worked in him, something subconscious
\n that recognized Chimele and shuddered instinctively. He
\n wished himself out that door with many doors between them;
\n but her hand still moved over his, and her violet eyes
\n stared into him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“If you had been born among the kamethi,” said
\n Chimele softly, “you would never have run afoul of me,
\n for no nas kame would ever have provoked me so far. He
\n would have had the sense to run away and wait until I had
\n called him again. You are different, and I have allowed for
\n that-this far. And so that you will understand, ignorant
\n kameth: you were impertinent with others and impertinent
\n exceedingly with me-and being Orithain, I dispense
\n judgments to the nasithi. How then shall I descend to
\n publicly chastise a nas kame? They wished to persuade me to
\n be patient; and I chose to be patient, remembering what you
\n are; but then, au, after trading words with my nasithi, you
\n must ignore my direct order and debate me what disposition
\n I am to make of this human.” She drew breath: when she
\n went on it was in a calmer voice. “Rakhi could not
\n reprimand my kameth in my presence; I could not do so in
\n theirs. And there you stood, gambling with five of us in
\n the mistaken confidence that your life was too valuable for
\n me to waste. Were you iduve, I should say that were an
\n extremely hazardous form of vaikka. Were you iduve, you
\n would have lost that game. But because you are
\n m’metane, you were allowed to do what an iduve would
\n have died for doing.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“And is iduve pride that vulnerable,
\n then?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Stop challenging me!”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It was a cry of anguish. Chimele herself looked
\n terrified, reminding him for all the world of an
\n essentially friendly animal being provoked beyond
\n endurance, a creature teased to the point of madness by
\n some child it loved, shivering with taut nerves and
\n repressed instincts. She could not help it, as an animal
\n could not resist a move from its prey.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Vaikka.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He grasped it then-a game that was indeed for iduve
\n only, a name that shielded a most terrifying instinct, one
\n that the iduve themselves must fear, for it tore apart all
\n their careful rationality. The compulsion must indeed be
\n involved in their matings-intricate, unkalliran instinct.
\n It was reasonable that the noi kame feared above all the
\n iduve’s affections, feared closeness. A kallia quite
\n literally did not have a nervous system attuned to that
\n kind of contest. A kallia would want to play the game part
\n of the way and then quit before someone was hurt; but there
\n was a point past which the iduve could not quit.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“It is possible,” he said carefully,
\n “that I did not use good judgment.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

She grew perceptibly calmer at that slight retreat,
\n slowed her breathing, patted his arm with the thoughtless
\n affection one might show a pet, and then drew back her hand
\n as if mindful of his inward shudder. “Surely
\n then,” she said, “understanding your nature and
\n ours, you need not stand so straight or stare so insolently
\n when that irrepressible tongue of yours brings you afoul of
\n our tempers.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I was not educated as kameth.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I perceive your difficulty. But do not seek to
\n live by our law. You cannot. And it is not reasonable for
\n you to expect us to bear all the burden of self-restraint.
\n I thrust you into close contact with us, a contact most
\n kameth-born scarcely know. It cannot be remedied. I trusted
\n your common sense and forgot kalliran-I know not whether to
\n say obstinacy or elethia, an admirable trait-but that and
\n our aggressiveness, our m’melakhia, is a very volatile
\n combination.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I begin to see that.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Go back to your quarters this night, for your
\n safety’s sake. I will respect your m’melakhia,
\n your-protection-of your human asuthe as much as I can, and
\n I will not remember this conversation to your hurt. You are
\n wiser than you were. I advise you to make it apparent to my
\n nasithi-ka-tasakke that vaikka has been settled.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“How?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“By your amended attitude and increased discretion
\n in our presence.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I understand,” he said, hesitated awkwardly
\n until an impatient gesture made clear his dismissal. Almost
\n he delayed to thank her, but looking again into her eyes
\n chilled the impulse into silence: he bowed, turned, felt
\n her eyes on his back the whole long distance to the
\n door.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The safety of the hall, the sealing of the door behind
\n him, brought a physical relief. He lowered his eyes and
\n flinched past an iduve who was passing, secured the lift
\n alone, and was glad to find the kamethi level, where kallia
\n thronged the concourse-the alternate day-cycle, whose
\n waking was his night.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He knew the iduve finally.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Predators.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Outsiders had never understood the end of the
\n Domination, the Sundering of the iduve empire. He began
\n to.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

They were hunters from their very origins-a species for
\n whom all else that moved was prey, for whom others of their
\n own kind were intolerable. They had hunted the metrosi to
\n exhaustion and drifted elsewhere. Now they were back. The
\n enormity of the surmise grew in him like a sickly
\n chill.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The nasul-jealously controlling its territory.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Perhaps even the iduve themselves had forgotten what
\n they were; the pride of ritual and ceremony shielded their
\n instincts, civilized them, as civilization had dealt with
\n the instincts of kallia, who had been the natural prey of
\n other hunters in packs, on the plains of prehistoric Aus
\n Qao. Subtle reactions, a tensing of muscles, an interchange
\n of movements, the steadiness of the eyes-these defined
\n hunter and hunted. That was the thing he had looked in the
\n face when he had stared into Chimele’s at close range.
\n He had wished to run and had instinctively known
\n better-that if he stayed very, very still, it might pad
\n softly away.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He shivered, the hair rising at the nape of his neck as
\n if she still watched him. When he felt Isande’s
\n frightened presence beginning to creep back into his mind,
\n he screened heavily, for he still was shaken, and he was
\n ashamed for her to know the extent of it.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

You nearly killed yourself, she accused him. I warned
\n you, I warned you-<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Not well enough,” he returned. “You have
\n a blind spot. Or you do not understand them.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I have lived my whole life among them,” she
\n retorted, “and I have never seen what you saw
\n tonight-not even from Khasif.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He accepted that for truth. Likely kamethi had been
\n taught never to draw such responses. But he was world-born;
\n he himself had sat by fires at night in the wilds of Lelle,
\n with a ring of light to guard his sleep, and he knew
\n Chimele in all the atavistic fears of his species.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

A predator who had assumed civilization.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Who had touched him gently and refrained, despite his
\n best attempt to provoke her-ignorant, she had called him,
\n and justly.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Chimele is iduve,” Isande hurled against the
\n warmth of that thought, forcefully, for she hated worse
\n than anything to have her advice ignored. “And you
\n will live longer if you remember that we are only kamethi,
\n and avoid provoking her and avoid attracting her notice to
\n yourself.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

This from Isande, Isande who loved Chimele, who
\n willingly served the iduve: who trembled in her heart each
\n time she dealt with Chimele’s temper. It was a
\n sorrowful life she had accepted: he let that slip and was
\n sorry, for Isande flared, hot and unshielded.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Am I nothing, she fired at him, because I was born
\n kameth? My world-born friend, I have been places you have
\n not dreamed of, and seen things you cannot understand. And
\n as it regards the iduve, my friend, I have lived among
\n them, and what of their language you know, you lifted from
\n my mind, what of their customs you understand you have
\n learned from me, and what consideration you had from
\n Chimele you have because of me, so do not lecture me as an
\n expert on the iduve. If you were not so ikas, you would not
\n have had so dangerous an experience.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Well, he returned, I hardly seem to have a monopoly on
\n vanity or selfishness or arrogance, do I?<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And the resentments that echoed back and forth, too much
\n truth, sent both personalities reeling apart, hurt.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Isande was first to touch again, grieving.
\n “Aiela,” she pleaded, “Asuthi must not
\n quarrel. Please, Aiela.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I am vain and arrogant,” he admitted,
\n “and I have had almost all the damage my sanity can
\n stand tonight, Isande. I’m tired. Go away.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Daniel, she remembered, dismay and regret sharp in her;
\n she remembered other things she had gleaned of his mind,
\n and riffled through all the memory he left unscreened,
\n gathering this and that with a rising feeling of distress,
\n of outrage. He felt her, poised to blame him for
\n everything, to accuse him of things the worse because they
\n were just.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And she did not. He was so tired his legs shook under
\n him, and he felt himself very lonely, even in her presence:
\n he had disregarded everything she had meant to protect them
\n both, and now that she had utmost cause to rage against him
\n she pitied him too much to accuse him. She knew his nature
\n and his incapacity, and she pitied him.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Leave me alone, he wished her. And then furiously: Leave
\n me alone, will you?<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

She fled.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He undressed, washed, went through all the ritual of
\n preparing for bed, and tried to sleep. It was impossible.
\n Reaction still had his muscles in knots. When he closed his
\n eyes he saw the paredre, Chimele-cages.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He arose and walked the floor, tried listening to his
\n old tapes, that he had brought from Kartos. It was worse
\n than the silence. He cut off the sound, idly cut in on the
\n monitor that was preset for Daniel’s next-door
\n apartment. The human was still blissfully unconscious.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And the memory returned, how it had felt to live in that
\n envelope of alien flesh. He broke the connection, dizzied
\n and disoriented, wandered back to the bath, drifting as he
\n had a dozen times, to the full-length mirror. It contained
\n all in Ashanome that was familiar, that was known.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

His image stared back at him, naked of everything but
\n the idoikkhe that circled his wrist like some bizarre
\n barbaric ornament. His silver hair was beginning a slow
\n recovery from the surgeons’ unimaginative barbering,
\n and he had grown accustomed to the change. His features
\n among kallia were considered proper: straight silver brows,
\n a straight nose with a little flare to the nostrils, a
\n mouth wide enough to show generosity, a chin prominent as
\n with all the Lyailleues. He fingered the high prominence of
\n his cheekbone and the hollow beneath, staring into his own
\n eyes closely in the mirror, wondering how much of the iduve
\n eye was iris. Was it all? And could.they see color as
\n kallia could? Humans did. He knew that. He considered the
\n rest of himself, 7.8 meis in stature, a little taller than
\n the average, broad-shouldered and slim at the hips, with
\n the slender, well-muscled limbs of an athlete, the flat
\n belly and muscular girdle of a runner, a hard-trained body
\n that had no particular faults. He had never known serious
\n illness, had suffered no wounds, had never known privation
\n that was not his own choice. He was parome Deian’s only
\n son; if he had had any faults at birth, no money would have
\n been spared to mend them. If he had lacked any in wit,
\n parome Deian’s money would have purchased every known
\n aid to teach him and improve his mind. When he grew bored,
\n there had instantly been toys and games and hunts and
\n athletics, and when he became a young man, there had been
\n all the loveliest and most proper girls, the most exclusive
\n parties. There were private instructors, the most proper
\n and demanding schools; and there had been family despair
\n when he insisted on pursuing athletics to the detriment of
\n his studies, on risking his life in hunts, on turning down
\n a career in district politics that was calculated to lead
\n to the highest levels of government-a lack of family and
\n filial giyre that his father refused to understand
\n (“Ikas,” Deian had said, “and
\n ungrateful.” “Am I ikas,” he had answered,
\n eighteen and all-knowing, “because it is not my
\n pattern to be like you?” “There have been
\n Lyailleues on the High Council for two hundred years,
\n honoring Xolun and this house. My son will not take it on
\n himself to end that tradition.”)<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Once that year he had thought of hurling his plane (a
\n luxury model) in a pyrotechnic finish at Mount Ryi, in full
\n view of all the fashionable estates and the Xolun zone
\n capitol. The news services would be buzzing with wonder for
\n days: Son of Deian, Suicide; and people would be shaking
\n their heads and making small noises of despair and secretly
\n hating him, thinking if only they had had his advantages
\n they would not have thrown them away. When he was nineteen
\n he had quit school so that his father Deian would
\n disinherit him and his mother and sister would give him up;
\n but he also saw it broke their hearts, and his few passages
\n with the pleasures of the metrosi’s darker side left
\n him disgusted and embarrassed, for these things were also
\n available in the estates in the shadow of Ryi-without the
\n filth and the fear. In the end he had surrendered and
\n returned home to the respectability planned for him, to
\n learn the business of government.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

(“Son, it is always necessary to compromise.
\n That’s how things are done.” “Even when one
\n is right, sir?” “Right- right; you always assume
\n you know exactly where that is, don’t you? I’m sure
\n I don’t. If you go on like that, no one could ever
\n agree. Compromise. Sometimes you have to yield a little to
\n win a little later on.”)<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He had tried.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

A year later he had sought the anonymity of the service,
\n and even that had proved no refuge secure from Deian’s
\n money and influence. Perhaps, he thought, it was his
\n father’s way of setting him free; or perhaps Deian
\n still believed he would have come home, older, wiser. He
\n would have come home, sooner or later. He had spent his
\n life pursuing the elusive hope of adequacy, a constant
\n struggle for breath in the rarified atmosphere of his
\n father’s ambitions and the giyre of his ancient
\n family.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

(“I would have come home someday,” he had
\n written in that final letter. “I have gained the good
\n sense to honor your wisdom and experience, Father, and I
\n have gained enough wisdom of my own to have kept on in my
\n own path. What giyre I had of my crew, I earned; and that
\n is important to me. What giyre I gave, I chose to give, and
\n that was important too. I honor you, very much; but I would
\n not have left the service.”)<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It was irony. He closed his hand about the idoikkhe and
\n reminded himself what he was worth at the end of all his
\n father’s planning and his resisting: a being scantly
\n adequate to serve the iduve, equal to a gracious (if vain)
\n young woman and a battered bit of human freight off an
\n amaut transport. He had lived with the sky overhead to be
\n reached, whether or not he chose to try, and whether or not
\n he had realized it before, he had been an arrogant and a
\n stubborn man. Now he had been shown where the sky stopped,
\n and it was a shattering experience.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

He imagined Daniel’s image in the glass. The skin
\n went shades of brown and pink, the silver hair turned dark,
\n the eyes shadowed and hunted, his body slight with hunger,
\n crossed with red and purple scars from untreated wounds,
\n feet lacerated by the cruel mesh. His mind held memories of
\n absolute horror, cages, brutality unimagined in the
\n Halliran Idai. Even before those, there were memories of
\n hunger, a childhood in a dark, cement-walled house beside a
\n trickling canal, summers of sandstorms that blasted crops,
\n dunes that year by year encroached upon fields, advanced
\n upon the house, threatened the life-giving canal. At some
\n time-Aiela had inherited the memories in bits and
\n .snatches-Daniel had left that world for the military, and
\n he had served as a technician of limited skills. He had
\n known a great many primitive human ports, until the life
\n sickened him and he went home again, only to find his
\n father dead, his mother remarried, his brothers gone
\n offworld, the farm buried under dunes.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

War. Shipping lanes closed, merchantmen commandeered for
\n military service. Daniel-senior now over inexperienced
\n recruits, wearing the crisp blue of a technician on a
\n decent ship, well fed, with money promised to his account.
\n That had lasted seven days, until two stunning defeats had
\n driven the human forces into retreat and then into rout,
\n and men were required by martial law to seek their home
\n ports and keep order there as the panic spread.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

That was the way fortune operated for Daniel. His hands
\n had been emptied every time he had them full; but being
\n Daniel, he would shrug perplexedly, get down on his knees
\n and begin picking up the pieces. He was uneducated, but he
\n had a keen intuition, an intelligence that sucked in
\n information like a vacuum drawing air, omnivorously, taking
\n scrap and debris along with the pure, sorting, analyzing.
\n He had never been anyone, he had never had anything; but he
\n was not going to stop living until he was sure there was
\n nothing to be had. That was Daniel-a man who had always
\n been hungry. M’melakhia, Chimele would call it.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

And Daniel’s desire was the fevered dream of his
\n half-sensible interludes in the cage, when the fields were
\n green and the canal pure and full and orchards bloomed
\n beside a white-walled house. He asked nothing more nor less
\n than that-except the company of others of his kind. He had
\n never deserved to be appropriated to Ashanome, swallowed
\n whole by the pride of a Lyailleue and linked to a kalliran
\n woman who had never learned to be kallia, who was more than
\n a little iduve.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Aiela, Isande’s thought reproved him, sorrowing.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

How long have you been with me? He flushed with anger,
\n for he had been deep in his own concerns and Isande’s
\n skill was such that he did not always perceive her touch.
\n It was not the visual sense that embarrassed him: she knew
\n his body as he knew hers, for that was a part of
\n self-concept. It was his mind’s privacy that he did not
\n like thus exposed, and he knew at once from the backspill
\n that she had caught rather more than she thought he would
\n like.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Dear Aiela,” her silent voice came echoing.
\n “No, don’t screen me out. I am sorry for
\n quarreling. I know I offend you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I am sorry,” he sent, the merest surface of
\n his thoughts, “for a great many things.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You are not sure you can handle me,” she
\n said. “That troubles you. You are not accustomed to
\n that. You are not half so cruel or fierce as I am, I know
\n it; but you are twice as brave-too much so, sometimes, when
\n that terrible pride of yours is touched.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I have no pride,” he said. “Not since
\n Kartos.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

She was amused, which stung. “No. No. It is there;
\n but you have had it bruised-” the amusement faded,
\n regretting his offense, and yet she knew herself right by
\n his very reaction: right, and self-confident.
\n “Chimele-the iduve in general-have touched it. You are
\n just now realizing that this is forever, and it frightens
\n you terribly.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Her words stung, and a feeling wholly ikas rose up in
\n him. “I don’t need to live on your terms. I will
\n not.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

She was silent for a time, sifting matters. “You do
\n not understand Ashanome. Tonight you saw the chanokhia of
\n Chimele, and I am afraid you have begun to love her. No-
\n no, I know: not in that way. It is something worse. It is
\n m’melakhia-love. It is arastiethe you want from
\n her-iduve honor; and no m’metane can ever have
\n that”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“You can’t even think like a kallia, can
\n you?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Aiela, Aiela, you are dealing with an iduve.
\n Realize it. You are reacting to her as she is. You are
\n thinking giyre, but Chimele cannot give you what she cannot
\n even understand. For her there is only arastiethe, and the
\n honor of an iduve demands too much of us. It costs too
\n much, Aiela.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“She might be capable of understanding. Isande, she
\n tried-“<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Avoid her!”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Screens dropped. Loneliness, a dead asuthe, years of
\n silence. There was still loneliness, an asuthe who rejected
\n her advice, who blindly, obstinately sought what had killed
\n the other. Was the fault in her? Was it she that killed?
\n She loved Chimele, and gave and gave, and the iduve knew
\n only how to take. Reha had loved Chimele: asuthe to
\n herself, how could he have helped it? He would be alive
\n now, but that he had learned to love Chimele. She would not
\n teach another.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Darkness. Cold. Screens tumbled. Aiela flinched and she
\n snatched the memory away, recovering herself, smothering it
\n as she had learned to do.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

You denied, he reminded her gently, That Ashanome killed
\n him. Was Chimele responsible, after all?<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The screens stayed in place. Only the words came
\n through, carefully controlled. “She was not
\n responsible. Honor is all she can give. To the nasithi,
\n that is everything. But what is it worth to a
\n m’metane?”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Yet you do love her, Aiela sent, and sad laughter
\n bubbled back.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Listen-she tried with all her iduvish heart to
\n make me happy. Three times she asked me to take another
\n asuthe. ‘He is like you,’ she said this time.
\n ‘He is intelligent, he is of great chanokhia for a
\n m’metane. Can you work with this one?’ I consented.
\n She risked a great deal to offer me that choice. You would
\n have to know the iduve to realize how difficult that was
\n for her-to try a thing when she has only reason to help
\n her. She does feel-something. I am not sure what. After all
\n these years, I am not sure what. Maybe we m’metanei try
\n to read into them what we wish were there. Perhaps that is
\n why we keep giving, when we know better.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Let me alone,” he wished her. “If
\n I’m to make a mistake, then let it be my
\n mistake.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“And when you make it,” she said, “we
\n will both pay for it. That is the way this arrangement
\n works, Aiela.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

It was truth; he recognized it-resented her being
\n female. It was an unfair obligation. “I am
\n sorry,” he said after a moment. “Then it will
\n happen. I will not be held by you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“I disturb you.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“In several senses.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

She snatched a thought half-born from his mind, the
\n suspicion that the iduve knew enough of kalliran emotion to
\n use it, to manipulate it at will. Isande was beautiful: he
\n had eyes to notice that. He kept noticing it, again and
\n again. That she constantly knew it, embarrassed him; he
\n knew that she was not willing to think of him in that way.
\n But, he sent her, if she were in the ungraceful position of
\n having to share a man’s inmost thoughts, she might
\n receive things even more direct from time to time. Or had
\n Reha been immune to such things?<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

The screen closed tightly on those memories, as it
\n always had: the privacy she had shared with Reha was not
\n for him. “He and I began so young we were like one
\n mind; there could never be that between us. Asuthi ought
\n never to share that part of their lives: some illusions
\n have to be maintained. I am not for games, not for your
\n amusement, nor are you for mine, dear friend. There is an
\n end of it. You came too close to that being, you refuse my
\n warnings about the iduve, and I see I can’t help you:
\n you resent being advised by a woman. But I can at least
\n exercise the good sense to keep my distance from you when
\n it happens.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Hurt feelings. Bitterly hurt feelings.<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

“Don’t,” he said, reaching out to her
\n retreating mind-. And when she lingered, questioning, he
\n searched for something to say. “If you’re not
\n going to sleep, stay awhile. It’s miserably quiet
\n here.”<\/p>\n



<\/p>\n

Softness touched his mind. He had pleased her by asking.
\n Her spirits brightened and amusement rippled from her, to
\n think that he found in her the power to deal with the
\n nightmares that troubled him: human ghosts and iduve went
\n flitting into retreat at her kalliran presence.<\/p>\n



<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Read the full book by downloading it below.<\/p>\n

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Book Preview HUNTER OF WORLDS COPYRIGHT \u00a9, 1977, BY C. J. CHERRYH All Rights Reserved. Cover art by John Pound. Frontispiece sketch by the author. To my mother, to my father, and to David. FIRST DAW PRINTING, AUGUST 1977 3456789 DAW TRADEMARK\u00a0 REGISTERED U.S PAT.OFF.\u00a0 MARCA REGISTRADA. HECHO EN U.S.A. PRINTED IN\u00a0 U.S.A. Chapter 1 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[138],"class_list":["post-2261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-c-j-cherryh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}