At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (47 page)

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 Idai
they 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
nasul
bound 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
nasithi
had 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
ikastien
on 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
idoikkhe
jolted 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
idoikkhe
stung 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
katasukke
with noi kame, a union between iduve in
katasakke
that was fraught with violence and shielded in ritual and secrecy.
Katasukke
was 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
katasakke
and
katasukke
triggered dangerous emotions in the ordinarily dispassionate iduve.
Vaikka
was 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.

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

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

With Isande aware, mind-bound to him.

Leave me alone!
he raged at her.

She went; and then he was sorry for the silence.

 

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

“You took an unseemly amount of time responding,” she said.

“I was asleep.” Fear added, shaming him: “I’m sorry.”

“You did not expect, then, to be called?”

“No,” he said; and doubled over as the
idoikkhe
hit him with overwhelming pain. He was surprised into an outcry, but bit it off and straightened, furious.

“Well, consider it settled, then,” she said, “and cheaply so. Be wiser in the future. Return to your quarters.”

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

“Aiela,” said Chimele, “you clearly fail to understand me.”

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

She can destroy you,
Isande sent him hysterically.
She has her honor to think of.
Vaikka,
Aiela,
vaikka!

“Is it Isande?” asked Chimele. “Is it she that troubles you?”

“She’s being hurt. She won’t go away. Please stop it.”

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

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

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

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

“I honestly,” he insisted, “do not understand you.”

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

For a long moment he stood still, expected the touch of the
idoikkhe
for it; she did not move either.

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

“What am I supposed to say?”

“You disputed with my
nasithi.
Then you turned the same discourtesy on me. Had you no perception?”

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

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

“
Nas-suphres,
” she said in a tone of cosmic contempt. “You are hopeless,
m’metane.
”

“How so?” he responded. “How so—
ignorant?
”

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

“I have no confidence at all in your forbearance, and I well know you mean your threats.”

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

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

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

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“
Au,
this is impossible. Perhaps Isande can make it clear.”

“
No!
No, let her alone. I want none of her explanations. I have my mind clear enough without need of her rationalizations.”

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