“We are on a schedule,” Ashakh said. “This should have been made clear to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Specify the points of difference.”
“Ethics, experience. He isn’t hostile, not yet. He mistrusts—he mistrusts me, this place, all things alien.”
“Is it not your burden to reconcile these differences?”
“Sir.” Aiela’s hands sweated and he folded his arms, pressing his palms against his sides. He did not like to look Ashakh in the face, but the iduve stared at him unblinkingly. “Sir, we are able to communicate. But he is not gullible, and I’m running out of answers that will satisfy him. That was why I resorted to the sedative. He’s beginning to ask questions. I had no more easy answers. What am I supposed to tell him?”
“Aiela.” Khasif drew his attention to the left. “What is your personal reaction to the being?”
“I don’t know.” His mouth was dry. He looked into Khasif’s face, that was the substance of Isande’s nightmares, perfect and cold. “I try—I try to avoid offending him—”
“What is the ethical pattern, the social structure? Does he recognize kalliran patterns?”
“Close to kallia. But not the same. I can’t tell you: not the same at all.”
“Be more precise.”
“Am I supposed to have learned something in particular?” Aiela burst out, harried and regretting his tone at once. The idoikkhepulsed painlessly, once, twice: he looked from one to the other of them, not knowing who had done it, knowing it for a warning. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. I was primed to study this man, but no one will tell me just what I was looking for. Now you’ve taken Isande away from me too. How am I to know what questions to start with?”
His answer caused a little ruffling among the iduve, and merry Rakhi laughed outright and looked sidelong at Chimele. “ Au,this one has a sting, Chimele.” He looked back at Aiela. “And what have you learned, thus ignorant of your purpose, o m’metane?”
“That the amaut have intruded into human space, which they swore in a treaty with the Halliran Idaithey would never do. This man came from human space. They lost most of his shipment because these humans weren’t acclimated to the kind of abuse they received. Is that what you want to hear? Until you tell me what you mean to do with him, I’m afraid I can’t do much more.”
Chimele had not been amused. She frowned and stirred in her chair, placing her hands on its arms. “Can you, Aiela, prepare this human for our own examination by tomorrow?”
“That’s impossible. No. And what kind of—?”
“By tomorrow evening.”
“If you want something, then make it clear what it is and maybe I can learn it. But he wants answers. He has questions, and I can’t keep putting him off, not without creating you an enemy—or do you care?”
“You will have to—put him off, as you express it.”
“I’m not going to lie to him, even by omission. What are you going to do with him?”
“I prefer that this human not be admitted to our presence with the promise of anything. Do you understand me, Aiela? If you promise this being anything, it will be the burden of your honor to pay for it; make sure your resources are adequate. I will not consider myself or the nasulbound by your ignorant and unauthorized generosity. Go back to your quarters.”
“I will not lie to him for you.”
“Go back to your quarters. You are not noticed.” This time there was no softness at all in her tone, and he knew he dared not dispute with her further. Even Rakhi took the smile from his face and straightened in his chair. Aiela omitted the bow of courtesy, turned on his heel and walked out.
He had ruined matters. When he was stressed his voice rose, and he had let it happen, had lost his case for it. He had felt when he walked in that Chimele was not in a mood for patience; and he realized in hindsight that the nasithihad tried to avert disaster: Rakhi, he thought, Rakhi, who had always been kind to Isande, had wished to stop him.
He returned to the kamethi level in utmost dejection, realized the late hour and considered returning to the lab and requesting to have a sedative for himself. His nerves could bear no more. But he had never liked such things, liked less to deal with Ghiavre, the iduve first Surgeon; and it occurred to him that Daniel might wake prematurely and need him. He decided against it.
He went to his quarters and prepared for bed, settled in with notebook and pen and diverted his thoughts to record-keeping on Daniel, then, upon the sudden cold thought that the iduve might not respect the sanctity of his belongings, he tore up everything and threw it into the disposal. The suspicion distressed him. As a kallia he had never thought of such things; he had never needed to suspect such ikastienon the part of his superiors.
Daniel had learned such suspicion. It was human.
With that distressing thought he turned out the lights and lay still until his muddled thoughts drifted into sleep.
The idoikkhejolted him, brutally, so that he woke with an outcry and clawed his way up to the nearest chair.
Isande,he had cast, the reflex of two days of dependency; and to his surprised relief there was a response, albeit a muzzy one.
Aiela,she responded, remembered Daniel, instantly tried to learn his health and began to pick up the immediate present: Chimele, summoning him, angry; and Daniel— What have you done?she sent back, shivering with fear; but he prodded her toward the moment, thrusting through the gutter of her drug-hazed thoughts.
“This is Chimele’s sleep cycle too,” he sent. “Does she always exercise her tempers in the middle of the night?”
The idoikkhestung him again, momentarily disrupting their communication. Aiela reached for his clothes and pulled them on, while Isande’s thoughts threaded back into his mind. She scanned enough to blame him for matters, and she was distressed enough to let it seep through; but she had the grace to keep that feeling down. Now was important. He was important. He had to take her advice now; he could be hurt, badly.
“Chimele’s hours are seldom predictable,” she informed him, her outermost thoughts calm and ordered. But what lay under it was a peculiar physical fear that unstrung his nerves.
He looked at the time: it was well past midnight, and Chimele, like Ashakh, did not impress him as one who took the leisure for whimsy. He pulled his sweater over his head, started for the door, but he paused to hurl at Isande the demand that she drop her screening, guide him. He felt her reticence; when it melted, he almost wished otherwise.
Fear came, nightmares of Khasif, chilling and sexual at once. Few things could cause an iduve to act irrationally, but there was one outstanding exception, and iduve when irritated with kamethi were prone to it.
He stopped square in the doorway, blood leaving his face and returning in a hot rush. Her urgency prodded him into motion again, her anger and her terror like ice in his belly. No,he insisted again and again. Isande had been terrified once and long ago: she was scarred by the experience and dwelled on it excessively—it embarrassed him, that he had to express that thought: he knew it for truth. He wished her still.
“It happens,” Isande insisted, with such firmness that it shook his conviction. “It is katasukke—pleasure-mating.” And quickly, without preface, apology, or overmuch delicacy, she fed across what she knew or guessed of the iduve’s intimate habits—alienness only remotely communicated in katasukkewith noi kame, a union between iduve in katasakkethat was fraught with violence and shielded in ritual and secrecy. Katasukkewas gentler: sensible noi kame were treated with casual indulgence or casual negligence according to the mood of the iduve in question; but cruelty was e-chanokhia,highly improper, whatever unknown and violent things they did among themselves. But both katasakkeand katasukketriggered dangerous emotions in the ordinarily dispassionate iduve. Vaikkawas somehow involved in mating, and it was not uncommon that someone was killed. In Isande’s mind any irrationality in the iduve emanated from that one urge: it was the one thing that could undo their common sense, and when it was undone, it was a madness as alien as their normal calm.