“Hush,” he said, setting her back and making her straighten her shoulders. “They make him live. You—come with me.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
His hand moved to strike; he would have done so had a youngish iduve been insubordinate. But the shock and incomprehension on her face stopped him, and he quickly disguised the gesture, twice embarrassed before the okkitani-as.Instead he seized her arm—carefully, for m’metaneiwere inclined to fragility and she was as insubstantial as a stem of grass. He marched her irresistibly from the infirmary and down the corridor.
A human attendant was just outside the section. The child looked up at the being of her own species in tearful appeal, but she made no attempt to flee to him.
“Call Margaret to the dhis,” Tejef ordered the man, and continued on his way, slowing his step when he realized how the child was having to hurry to keep up with him.
“Where are we going?” she asked him.
“I will find proper—a proper—place for you. What is your name, m’metane?”
“Arle. Please let go my arm. I’ll come.”
He did so, giving her a little nod of approval. “Arle. I am Tejef. Who is your companion? Is he—a relative?”
“No.” She shook her head violently. “But he’s my friend. I want him to be all right—please—I don’t want him to be alone with them.”
“With the amaut? He is safe. Friend:I understand this idea. I have learned it.”
“What are you?” she asked him plainly. “And what are the amaut and why did they treat Daniel like that?”
The questions were overwhelming. He struggled to think in her language and abandoned the effort. “I am iduve,” he said. “Ask your kind. I don’t know enough words.” He paused at the entrance of the lift and set his hand on her shoulder, causing her to look up. It was a fine face, an impossibly delicate body. A creature of air and light, he thought in his own language, and rejected it as an expression more appropriate to Chaikhe than to one of his order. As an iduve this little creature would scarcely have survived the dhis,where the strength to take meant the right to eat and a nasof small stature or nameless birth needed extraordinary wit and will to live. He had survived despite the active persecution of the dhisaiseiand of Mejakh, and he had done so by a determination out of proportion to his origins. He prized such a trait wherever he found it.
“Are you going to help us?” she asked him.
He took her into the lift and started it moving downward.
“You are mine, you, your friend. You must obey and I must take care for you. You stand straight, have no fear for amaut or human. I take care for you.” The door opened and let them out on the level of what had been the dhis,sealed and dark until now.
There was Margaret, whom he had not seen in two days. He did not smile at her, being put off by her instant attachment to the child, for she exclaimed aloud and opened her arms to the child, petting her and making much of her with all the protective tenderness of a dhisaistoward young.
In some measure Tejef was relieved, for he had not been sure how Margaret would react. In another way he was troubled, for her accepting the child made her inappropriate as a mate and made final a parting he still was not sure he wanted. Margaret was the most handsome of the human females, with a glorious mane of fire-colored hair that made her at once the most alien and the most attractive. He had taken her many times in katasukke,but she troubled him by her insistence on touching him when they were not alone, and in her display of feelings when they were. She had wept when he admitted at last at great disadvantage that he did not understand the emotions of her kind in this regard, and did not know what she expected of him. He had been compelled to dismiss her from the khara-dhisafter that, troubled by the heat and violence she evoked in him, by the emotions she expected of him. She certainly could not hold her own if he forgot himself and treated her as nas.He would surely kill her, and when he came to himself he would regret it bitterly, for her irritating concern was well-meant, and he had a deep regard for her, almost as if she were indeed one of his own kind. That was the closest he dared come to what she wanted of him.
“Margaret,” he said with great dignity, “she is Arle.”
“The poor child.” She had her arms about the bedraggled girl and petted her solicitously. “How did she come here?”
“Ask her. I want to know. She is a child, yes? No?”
“Yes.”
He looked upon the pair of them, women that had been his first mate and this immature being of her own species, and was deeply disturbed. He knew it was very wrong to have brought this pale creature to the dhisinstead of assigning her among the kamethi, but now that it was done it was good to know that the dhisheld at least one life, and that Margaret, whom he must put away, had the child he could not give her. It was an honorable solution for Margaret. It was hard to give her up. Desire still stirred in him when he looked at her, nor could she understand why he suddenly rejected her. Hurt pleaded with him out of her eyes.
“She is yours,” he told her. “I give her. You will transfer your belongings here. She is your responsibility—yes?”
“All right,” she said.
He turned away abruptly, not to be troubled more by the harachiaof them. He knew that the door opened and closed, that the dhis,where no male and no nas kame or amaut might ever go, had been possessed by humans at his own bidding. He was ashamed of what he had done, but it was done now, and a strange furtive elation overrode the sense of shame. He had acquired a certain small vaikka,not alone in the disadvantaging of Chimele, but in the acquisition of the arastietheshe had decided to take from him. The dhisthat had remained dark and desolate now held light, life, and takei—females; his little ship had a comfort for him now it had lacked before those lights went on and that door sealed.
The sensible part of him insisted that he had plumbed the depths of disgrace in letting this happen; but those who decreed the traditions of honor could not understand the loneliness of an arrhei-nasuliand the sweetness there was in knowing he had worth in the sight of his kamethi. It lightened his spirit, and he told himself knowingly a great lie: that he had arastietheand a takkhenoisadequate to all events. He clutched to himself what he knew was a greater lie: that he might yet outwit Ashanomeand live. Like a gust of wind he stepped from the lift, grinned cheerfully at some of his startled kamethi and went on to the paredre.There were plans to make, resources to inventory.
“My lord.” Halph, assistant to the surgeon, came waddling after, operating gown and all. He bobbed his head many times in nervous respect.
“Report, Halph.”
“The chiabresis indeed present, lord Tejef. The honorable surgeon Dlechish will attempt to remove it if you wish, but removing it intact is beyond his knowledge.”
“No,” he said, for the human prisoner would be irreparably damaged by amaut probing at the chiabresif he allowed it. The human was a danger, but properly used, he could be of advantage. Kameth though he was, Chimele had most likely intended him as a spy or an assassin: against an arrhei-nasulithe neutrality of kamethi did not apply, and Chimele was not one to ignore an opportunity; the intricacy of the attempt against him that had failed delighted him. “You have not exposed it, have you?”
“No, no, my lord. We would not presume.”
“Of course. You are always very conscientious to consult me. Go back to Dlechish and tell him to leave the chiabresalone, and to take special care of the human. Remember that he can understand all that you say. If it can be done safely in his weakened condition, hold him under sedation.”