At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (50 page)

He understood: mind-linked as they were, each brain reacted to the other’s emotions. It was a deadly self-accelerating process. His reaction to Daniel’s offended masculinity had lowered a screen on an ugliness he had not suspected existed in himself.

“Daniel,” he sent, and persisted until the unhappy being acknowledged his presence. It was a terrible flood he received. All screens went,
asuthithekkhe,
mind-link, defense abandoned. The images came so strongly they washed out vision: amaut, cages, dead faces, grief upon grief. Daniel’s mind was the last citadel and he hurled it wide open, willing to die, at the end of his resistance.

I am sorry,
Aiela hurled into that churning confusion like a voice into a gale.
Daniel! I was hurt too. Stop this. Please. Listen.

Gradually, gradually, sanity gathered up the pieces again, the broken screens rebuilt themselves into separate silence; and Aiela rested his head in his hands, struggling against a very physical nausea that swelled in his throat. His instincts screamed
wrong,
his hands were cold and sweating at the proximity of a being unutterably twisted, who rejected
giyre
and
kastien,
who loathed the things most kalliran.

Aiela.
Daniel reached the smallest tendril of thought toward him. He did not understand, but he would seal the memory behind a screen and not let it out again. Dying was not worse than being alone. Whatever the rules Aiela set, he would conform.

I’m sorry,
Aiela replied gently.
But your perceptions of us are not exactly without prejudice; and you were rude with Isande.

Isande is yours?
Daniel snatched at that possibility. It touched something human as well as kalliran. He was anxious to believe he was not hated, that he had only made a mistake.

It was like that, Aiela admitted, embarrassed. He had never expected to have to share such intimate thoughts with the creature. It disturbed him, made him feel unclean; he screened those emotions in, knowing he must dispose of them.

“This arrangement,” Daniel said, scanning the situation to the limit Aiela allowed, “with a woman and the two of us—is not the best possible, is it?”

That was sent with wistful humor. The human foresaw for himself a lifetime of being different, of being alone. Aiela was sorry for him then, deeply sorry, for there was in the being an
elethia
worth respect.

“We are at the mercy of the iduve,” Aiela said, “who perceive our feelings only at a distance.”

“There are so many things I don’t understand here that I can hardly keep my thoughts collected. There are moments when I think I’m going to—”

“Please. Keep your questions a little longer. I will find it easier to explain when you have seen a little of the ship. Come, get dressed. Food comes before other things. We’ll go out to the mess hall and you can have a look about.”

Daniel was afraid. He had caught an impression of the way they would walk, crowds of kalliran strangers; and when Aiela let him know that there would be amaut too, he looked forward to breakfast with no appetite at all.

“Trust me,” said Aiela. “If the iduve wished you harm, no place would be safe, and if they wish you none, then you are safe anywhere on this ship. They rule all that happens here.”

Daniel acquiesced unhappily to that logic. In a little time they were out on the concourse together, Daniel looking remarkably civilized in his brown clothing—Aiela let that thought slip inadvertently and winced, but Daniel accepted the judgment with wry amusement and little bitterness. He was not a vain man, and the amaut had removed whatever vanity he had had.

It was the mess-hall company he could not abide. As they were eating, two amaut chanced to stand near their table talking, popping and hissing in the odd rhythms of their native tongue. Daniel’s hand began to shake in the midst of carrying a bite to his mouth, and he laid the utensil aside a moment and covered the action by reaching for his cup. When Aiela picked up the thought in his mind, the memory of that cage and his voyage, he nearly lost his own appetite.

“These are decent folk,” Aiela assured him, silently so the amaut would not realize the exchange.

“See how people look at me when they think I am looking away. I had as soon be an exhibit in a zoo. And I know the amaut. I know them; don’t try to tell me otherwise. It doesn’t help my confidence in you.”

Aiela caught a disturbing flash of human history as Daniel pondered that question; and with a deliberate effort Daniel put the memory of the freighter from his mind. But he still would not look at the amaut.

Aiela.
That was Isande, near them. She queried Aiela, did he mind, and when he extended her the invitation, she came into the mess hall, took a hot drink from the dispenser, and joined them. Through Aiela she reached for Daniel’s mind and touched, introducing herself.

Her bright smile (it was a weapon she used consciously) elicited a shy response from Daniel, who was still nervous about Aiela’s reactions; but when Aiela had approved, the human opened up and smiled indeed, the first time Aiela had known any moment of unblighted happiness in the being. Isande’s presence with them was like a sunshine that drowned all the shadows, an assurance to Daniel that here was a healthy, whole world, a normality he had almost forgotten.

“I,” said Daniel aloud, struggling with the unfamiliar sounds of the kalliran language, “I am really very sorry for offending you.”

“You are a kind man,” said Isande, and patted his hand—Aiela was glad he had his own screens up during that moment. He had foreseen this, and knew Isande well enough to know that she would purposely defy him in some way. Poor Daniel looked quite overcome by her, not knowing what to do then; and Aiela dropped his screen on Isande’s contact, letting her know what he thought of her petty
vaikka.

She had not realized about Daniel, not known him so utterly vulnerable and frightened of them. Now she saw him through Aiela’s eyes.

“Please,” said Daniel, who had not been privy to that small exchange, but was painfully aware of the silence that excluded him. “I am an inconvenience to you both—but save us all embarrassment. Tell me why I have been brought here, why I have been—unwelcomely attached—to you both.”

Isande was dismayed and ashamed; but Aiela looked on the human with as much respect at that moment as he had felt for any man.

“Yes,” said Aiela, “I think it is time we went aside together, the three of us, and did that.”

 

It would have been merciful, Aiela reflected, if Chimele had elected to talk to the human with as little distraction about him as possible. Instead, when he and his two asuthi entered the
paredre,
there were not only the
nasithi-katasakke,
but what Isande flashed them in dismay was the entire
Melakhis.
The blue screen was thrust back, opening up the audience hall, and nearly fifty iduve were there to observe them.
Kamethi,
Isande sent,
are not normally involved before the Melakhis. Iduve together are dangerous. Their tempers can become violent with no apparent reason. Be very careful, Daniel; be extremely careful and respectful.

Chimele met them graciously, gave Aiela a nod of particular courtesy. Then she looked full at Daniel, whose heart was beating as if he feared murder.

Be calm,
Aiela advised him.
Be calm. Isande and I are here to advise you if you grow confused.

“Please sit,” said Chimele, including them all. She resumed the central chair in the
paredre
—a ceremonial thing, perhaps of great age, ornate with serpents and alien or mythical beasts worked in wood and gold and amber. “Daniel. Do you understand where you are?”

“Yes,” he answered. “They have explained to me who you are and that I must be honest with you.”

Some of the elder iduve frowned at that; but Chimele heard that naive reply and inclined her head in courtesy. “Indeed. You are well advised to be so. Where is your home, Daniel, and how did you come into the hands of the amaut of
Konut?
”

Suspicion ran through Daniel’s mind: attack, plunder—these the agents of it, seeking information. Isande had threshed out the matter with him repeatedly, assuring him of
Ashanome’
s indifference to the petty matter of his world. Suddenly Daniel was not believing it. Fight-flight-escape ran through his mind, but he did not move from his chair. Aiela seized his arm to be sure that he did not.

“Pardon,” Aiela said to Chimele softly, for he knew her extreme displeasure when Daniel failed to respond. She had shown courtesy to this being before her people; and Daniel for his part looked into those whiteless eyes and met something against which the alienness of the amaut was slight in comparison. They had shown Daniel iduve in his mind; he had even seen Chimele—shadowy and indistinct in his cell; but the living presence of them, the subtle communication of arrogance and their lack of response to emotion, he hated, loathed, feared.
Their pattern is different,
Aiela sent him.
It is affecting you. Don’t let it overcome you. Instinct is not always positive for survival when you are offworld. You are the stranger here.

“
M’metane,
” Chimele said, labored patience in her voice, “
m’metane,
what is the difficulty?”

“I—” Daniel stared a moment into Chimele’s violet eyes and tore his glance away, fixing it unfocused on the panel just beyond her shoulder. “I have no way to know that we are not still in human space, or that this is not the upper part of the ship where I was a prisoner. I have seen amaut on my world. I don’t know who sent them. Perhaps they brought themselves, but on this ship they take your orders.”

There was a great shifting of bodies among the iduve, a dangerous and unpredictable tension; but Chimele leaned her chin on her hand and studied Daniel with heightened interest. Of a sudden she smiled, showing her teeth. “Indeed. I hope you have not seen much similarity between the decks of
Ashanome
and that pestiferous freighter,
m’metane.
Yet your caution I find admirable. Amaut on your world? And where is your world, Daniel? Surely not in the Esliph.”

“Why?” Daniel asked, though Isande tried to prevent him. “What exactly do you want to know?”

“
M’metane,
I am informed, perhaps correctly, perhaps not, that your people have been attacked. If this is so, we did not order it. We pursue our own business, and your asuthi will advise you that I am being extraordinarily courteous. Now as you hope for the survival of your species, I advise you not to insult that courtesy by being slow in your answers.”

Does she mean that against all humanity—a threat?
Daniel asked them, shaken.
Would they declare war? Have they?

In the name of reason don’t try to bargain with her,
Aiela flung back.
Iduve don’t bluff.

Daniel folded, sick inside, a simple man out of his depth and fearing both alternatives. He took the one advised and began to tell them the things they wanted to know, his origin on a world named Konig, beyond the Esliph, his life there, his brief service in the military, his world’s fall to the amaut. The iduve listened with unnerving patience, even interrupting him to ask more detail of the history of his people, particularly as it regarded the Esliph frontier.

“We never consented, sir,” he told Rakhi, who had asked about the human retreat from the Esliph worlds. “Those were our farms, our cities. The amaut drove us out with better weapons and we went back to safe worlds across the Belt.”

Rakhi frowned. “Most unfortunate, this human problem,” he said to his
nasithi.
“Our departure from the
metrosi
seems to have thrown the amaut and kalliran powers into considerable turmoil. We appear to have served some economic purpose for them. When we withdrew, the amaut seem to have found themselves in particular difficulty. They drew back and abandoned the Esliph. Then the humans discovered it. And, under renewed population pressures, the amaut return, reclaim the Esliph—it is altogether logical for them to use force to take land they already considered theirs, or to use force in meeting competitors. But
m’metane,
were there not agreements, accommodations?”

“Only that we were let off with our lives,” said Daniel. Of iduve that questioned him, Rakhi drew the most honest responses ; and upon this question, centuries ago as the event was, Daniel allowed anger to move him. Amaut, iduve, even kallia blurred into one polity in his image of the forced evacuation of his people, for the invaders had been faceless beings in ships, giving orders; and to the human mind, all nonhumans tended to assume one character. “We were pushed off before we could be properly evacuated, crowded onto inadequate ships. Some refused to board and commit themselves to that; they stayed to fight, and I suppose I know what became of them. The ones that migrated and survived to reach the other side of the Belt were about twenty out of a hundred. We landed without enough equipment, hardly with the means to survive the winter. The worlds were undeveloped, bypassed in our first colonization, undesirable. We scratched a living out of sand and rock and lost it to the weather more often than not. Now they’ve come after us there.”

“Undoubtedly,” said Khasif, “as the abandoned humans did not fit the amaut social pattern, indenture became the amaut’s solution for the humans. Beings that cannot interbreed with amaut could not exit indenture by normal legal process, so the humans remain in this status perpetually.”

“Yet,” objected another of Khasif’s order, “one wonders why the other humans did not eventually seek better territories, if the worlds in question were so entirely undesirable.”

Answer,
Isande flashed, for that was a question to Daniel, stated in the often oblique manner of iduve courtesy. “The Esliph was ours,” Daniel replied, “and we always meant to come and take it back.”