Daniel.Aiela’s voice was back, cold, efficient, comforting. Convince them to take you to Weissmouth. Admit you serve the iduve there; that’s all you can do now.Chimele was furious. That leaked through, frightening in its implications. The screen went up again.
“That ship overhead,” Daniel began, eyeing the amaut, drunk with pain, “there’s no place on this world you can hide from that. They have their eye on you this instant.”
The other amaut looked up as if they expected to see destruction raining down on them any second; but the captain rolled his thin lips inward, the amaut method of moistening them, like a human licking his lips.
“We are small folk,” he said, mouth popping on all the explosive consonants, but he spoke the kalliran language with a fair fluency. “One iduve-lord we know. One only we serve. There is safety for us only in being consistent.”
“Listen, you—listen! They’ll destroy this world under you. Get me to the port at Weissmouth. That’s your chance to live.”
“No. And I have finished talking. See to him,” he instructed his subordinates as he began to walk toward the ramp, speaking now in the harsh amaut language. “He must live until the lord in the high plains can question him. The female too.”
“He had no choice,” said Aiela.
Chimele kept her back turned, her arms folded before her. The idoikkhetingled spasmodically. When she faced him again the tingling had stopped and her whiteless eyes stared at him with some degree of calm. Aiela hurt; even now he hurt, muscles of his limbs sensitive with remembered pain, stomach heaving with shock. Curiously the only thing clear in his mind was that he must not be sick: Chimele would be outraged. He had to sit down. He did so uninvited.
“Is he still unconscious?”
Chimele’s breathing was rapid again, her lip trembling, not the nether lip as a kalliran reaction would have it: Attack!his subconscious read it; but this was Chimele, and she was civilized and to the limit of her capacity she cared for her kamethi. He did not let himself flinch.
“We have a problem,” she said by way of understatement, and hissed softly and sank into the chair behind her desk. “Is the pain leaving?”
“Yes.” Isande—Isande!
His asuthe stood behind him, took his hand, seized upon his mind as well, comforting, interfering between memory and reality. Be still,she told him, be still. I will not let go.
“Could you not have prevented him talking?” Chimele asked.
“He was beyond reason,” Aiela insisted. “He only reacted. He thought he was lost to us.”
“And duty. Where was that?”
“He thought of the child, that she would be alone with them. And he believed you would intervene for him if only he could survive long enough.”
“The m’metanehas an extraordinary confidence in his own value.”
“It was not a conscious choice.”
“Explain.”
“Among his kind, life is valued above everything. I know, I know your objections, but grant me for a moment that this is so. It was a confidence so deep he didn’t think it, that if he served beings of arastiethe,they would consider saving his life and the child’s of more value than taking that of Tejef.”
“He is demented,” Chimele said.
Careful,Isande whispered into his mind. Soft, be careful.
“You gave me a human asuthe,” Aiela persisted, “and told me to learn his mind. I’m kallia. I believe kastienis more important than life—but Daniel served you to the limit of his moral endurance.”
“Then he is of no further use,” said Chimele. “I shall have to take steps of my own.”
His heart lurched. “You’ll kill him.”
Chimele sat back, lifted her brows at this protest from her kameth, but her hand paused at the console. “Do you care to stay asuthithekkhewith him while he is questioned by Tejef? Do not be distressed. It will be sudden; but those who harmed him and interfered with Ashanomewill wish they had been stillborn.”
“If you can intervene to kill him, you can intervene to save him.”
“To what purpose?”
Aiela swallowed hard, screened against Isande’s interference. He sweated; the idoikkhehad taught its lesson. “It is not chanokhiato destroy him, any more than it was to use him as you did.”
The pain did not come. Chimele stared into the trembling heart of him. “Are you saying that I have erred?”
“Yes.”
“To correctly assess his abilities was your burden. To assign him was mine. His misuse has no relevance to the fact that his destruction is proper now. Your misguided giyrewill cost him needless pain and lessen the arastietheof Ashanome.If he comes living into the hands of Tejef he may well ask you why you did not let him die; and every moment we delay, intervention becomes that much more difficult.”
“He is kameth. He has that protection. It would not be honorable for Tejef to harm him.”
“Tejef is arrhei-nasuli,an outcast. It would not be wise to assume he will be observant of nasul-chanokhia.He is not so bound, nor am I with him. He may well choose to harm him. We are wasting time.”
“Then contact that amaut aircraft and demand Daniel and the child.”
“To what purpose?”
The question disarmed him. He snatched at some logic the iduve might recognize. “He is not useless.”
“How not? Secrecy is impossible now. Tejef will be alerted to the fact that I have a human nas kame; besides, the amaut in the aircraft would probably refuse my order. Tejef is their lord; they said so quite plainly, and amaut are nothing if not consistent. To demand and to be refused would mean that we had suffered vaikka,and I would still have to destroy a kameth of mine, having gained nothing. To risk this to save what I am bound to lose seems a pointless exercise; the odds are too high. I am not sure what you expect of me.”
“Bring him back to Ashanome.Surely you have the power to do it.”
“There is no longer time to consider that alternative. Shall I commit more personnel at Tejef s boundaries? The risk involved is not reasonable.”
“No!” Aiela cried as she started to turn from him. He rose from his chair and leaned upon her desk, and Chimele looked up at him with that bland patience swiftly evaporating.
“What are you going to do with Priamos when you’ve destroyed him?” Aiela asked. “With three days left, what are you going to do? Blast it to cinders?”
“Contrary to myth, such actions are not pleasurable to us. I perceive you have suffered extreme stress in my service and I have extended you a great deal of patience, Aiela; I also realize you are trying to give me the benefit of our knowledge. But there will be a limit to my patience. Does your experience suggest a solution?”
“Call on Tejef to surrender.”
Chimele gave a startled laugh. “Perhaps I shall. He would be outraged. But there is no time for a m’metane’shumor. Give me something workable. Quickly.”
“Let me keep working with Daniel. You wanted him within reach of Tejef. Now he is, and whatever else, Tejef has no hold over him with the idoikkhe.”
“You m’metaneiare fragile people. I know that you have giyreto your asuthe, but to whose advantage is this? Surely not to his.”
“Give me something to bargain with. Daniel will fight if he has something to fight for. Let me assure him you’ll get the amaut off Priamos and give it back to his people. That’s what he wants of you.”
Chimele leaned back once more and hissed softly. “Am I at disadvantage, to need to bargain with this insolent creature?”
“He is human. Deal with him as he understands. Is that not reasonable? Giyreis nothing to him; he doesn’t understand arastiethe.Only one thing makes a difference to him: convince him you care what—”