“From what I have seen, Daniel, I much fear there is no home for you to return to.”
Am I alone? Am I the only human here?
The thought terrified Daniel; and yet it promised no more of the human cages; held out other images, himself alone forever, victim to strangers—amaut, kallia, aliens muddled together in his mind.
“You are safe,” Aiela assured him; and was immediately conscious it was a forgetful lie. In that instant memory escaped its confinement.
They. They—Daniel snatched a thought and an image of the iduve, darkly beautiful, ancient and evil, and all the fear that was bound up in kalliran legend. He associated it with the shadowy figure he had seen in the cell, doubly panicked as Aiela tried to screen. No! What have you agreed to do for them? Aiela!
“No.” Aiela fought against the currents of tenor. “No. Quiet. I’m going to have you sedated— No!Stop that!—so that your mind can rest. I’m tired. So are you. You will be safe, and I’ll come back later when you’ve rested.”
You’re going to report to them—and to lie there—The human remembered other wakings, strangers’ hands on him, his fellow humans’ cruel humor. Nausea hit his stomach, fear so deep there was no reasoning. There were amaut on the ship: he dreaded them touching him while he was unconscious.
“You will be moved,” Aiela persisted. “You’ll wake in a comfortable place next to my rooms, and you’ll be free when you wake, completely safe, I promise it. I’ll have the amaut stay completely away from you if that will make you feel any better.”
Daniel listened, wanting to believe, but he could not. Mercifully the attendant on duty was both kalliran and gentle of manner, and soon the human was settled into bed again, sliding down the mental brink of unconsciousness. He still stretched out his thoughts to Aiela, wanting to trust him, fearing he would wake in some more incredible nightmare.
“I will be close by,” Aiela assured him, but he was not sure the human received that, for the contact went dark and numb like Isande’s.
He felt strangely amputated then, utterly on his own and—a thing he would never have credited—wishing for the touch of his asuthe, her familiar, kalliran mind, her capacity to make light of his worst fears. If he were severed from the human this moment and never needed touch that mind again, he knew that he would remember to the end of his days that he had for a few moments beenhuman.
He had harmed himself. He knew it, desperately wished it undone, and feared not even Isande’s experience could help him. She had tried to warn him. In defiance of her advice he had extended himself to the human, reckoning no dangers but the obvious, doing things his own way, with kastientoward a hurt and desolate creature.
He had chosen. He could no more bear harm to Isande than he could prefer pain for himself: iduvish as she was, he knew her to the depth of her stubborn heart, knew the elethiaof her and her loyalty, and she in no wise deserved harm from anyone.
Neither did the human. Someone meant to use him, to wring some use from him, and discard him or destroy him afterward— be rid of him,Isande had said, even she callous toward him—and there was in that alien shell a being that had not deserved either fate.
It is not reasonable to ask me to venture an opinion on something I have never experienced,Chimele had told him at the outset. She did not understand kalliran emotion and she had never felt the chiabres.Of a sudden he feared not even Chimele might have anticipated what she was creating of them, and that she would deal ruthlessly with the result—a kameth whose loyalty was half-human.
He was kallia, kallia!—and of a sudden he felt his hold on that claim becoming tenuous. It was not right, what he had done—even to the human.
Isande,he pleaded, hoping against all knowledge to the contrary for a response from that other, that blessedly kalliran mind. Isande, Isande.
But his senses perceived only darkness from that quarter.
In the next moment he felt a mild pulse from the idoikkhe,the coded flutter that meant paredre.
Chimele was sending for him.
There was the matter of an accounting.
4
Chimele was perturbed. It was evident in her brooding expression and her attitude as she leaned in the corner of her chair; she was not pleased; and she was not alone for this audience: four other iduve were with her, and with that curious sense of déjà vuIsande’s instruction imparted, Aiela knew them. They were Chimele’s nasithi-katasakke,her half-brothers and -sister by common-mating.
The woman Chaikhe was youngest: an Artist, a singer of songs; by kalliran standards Chaikhe was too thin to be beautiful, but she was gentle and thoughtful toward the kamethi. She had also thought of him with interest: Isande had warned him of it; but Chimele had said no, and that ended it. Chaikhe was becoming interested in katasakke,in common-mating, the presumable cause of restlessness; but an iduve with that urge would rapidly lose all interest in m’metanei.
Beside Chaikhe, eyeing him fixedly, sat her full brother Ashakh, a long-faced man, exceedingly tall and thin. Ashakh was renowned for intelligence and coldness to emotion even among iduve. He was Ashanome’s Chief Navigator and master of much of the ship’s actual operation, from its terrible armament to the computers that were the heart of the ship’s machinery and memory. He did not impress one as a man who made mistakes, nor as one to be crossed with impunity. And next to Ashakh, leaning on one arm of the chair, sat Rakhi, the brother that Chimele most regarded. Rakhi was of no great beauty, and for an iduve he was a little plump. Also he had a shameful bent toward kutikkase—a taste for physical comfort too great to be honorable among iduve. But he was devoted to Chimele, and he was extraordinarily kind to the noi kame and even to the seldom-noticed amaut, who adored him as their personal patron. Besides, at the heart of this soft, often-smiling fellow was a heart of greater bravery than most suspected.
The third of the brothers was eldest: Khasif, a giant of a man, strikingly handsome, sullen-eyed—older than Chimele, but under her authority. He was of the order of Scientists, a xenoarchaeologist. He had a keen m’melakhia—an impelling hunger for new experience—and noi kame made themselves scarce when he was about, for he had killed on two occasions. This was the man Isande so feared, although—she had admitted—she did not think he was consciously cruel. Khasif was impatient and energetic in his solutions, a trait much honored among iduve, as long as it was tempered with refinement, with chanokhia.He had the reputation of being a very dangerous man, but in Isande’s memory he had never been a petty one.
“How fares Daniel?” asked Chimele. “Why did you ask sedation so early? Who gave you leave for this?”
“We were tiring,” said Aiela. “You gave me leave to order what I thought best, and we were tired, we—”
“Aiela-kameth,” Chaikhe intervened gently. “Is there progress?”
“Yes.”
“Will complete asuthithekkhebe possible with this being? Can you reach that state with him, that you can be one with him?”
“I don’t—I don’t think it is safe. No. I don’t want that.”
“Is this yours to decide?” Ashakh’s tones were like icewater on the silken voice of Chaikhe. “Kameth—you were instructed.”
He wanted to tell them. The memory of that contact was still vivid in his mind, such that he still shuddered. But there was no patience in Ashakh’s thin-lipped face, neither patience nor mercy nor understanding of weakness. “We are different,” he found himself saying, to fill the silence. Ashakh only stared. “Give me time,” he said again.