At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (57 page)

“Make it clear to the
dhis
-guardians that she must not have access there. You are right. She may be conceiving an impulse in that direction, and with no child in the
dhis,
there is no predicting what she may do. Her temper is out of all normal bounds. She has been disturbed ever since the Orithanhe returned her to us without her child, and this long waiting with Priamos in view—
au,
it could happen. Isande, Aiela, I must consider that you are both in mortal danger. Your loss would disturb my plans; that would occur to her, and kamethi have no defense against her.”

“If we were armed—” Aiela began.

“
Au,
” Chimele exclaimed, “no,
m’metane,
your attitude is quite understandable, but you hardly appreciate your limitations. You almost died a moment ago, have you not realized that? The
idoikkhei
can kill.
Chanokhia
insists kamethi are exempt from such extreme
vaikka,
but Mejakh’s sense of
chanokhia
seems regrettably lacking.”

“But a
dhisais,
” Aiela objected, “can be years recovering.”

“Yes, and you see the difficulty your attempt to interfere has created. Well, we will untangle the matter somehow, and, I hope, without further
vaikka.
”

“Chimele,” said Rakhi, “the kameth has a valid point. Mejakh has proved an embarrassment many times in the matter of Tejef. Barring her from the
paredre
may not prove sufficient restraint.”

“Nevertheless,” said Chimele, “my decision stands.”

“The Orithain cannot make mistakes.”

“But even so,” Chimele observed, “I prefer to proceed toward infallibility at my own unhurried pace, Rakhi. Have you heard from Ashakh yet?”

“He acknowledged. He has left Priamos by now, and he will be here with all possible speed.”

“Good. Go back to your station. Aiela, Isande, if we are to salvage Daniel, you must find him a suitable unit and dispose of that child by some means. I trust you are still keeping your actions shielded from him. His mind is already burdened with too much knowledge. And when I do give you leave to contact him, you may tell him that I am ill pleased.”

“I have already made that clear to him.”

“She is not his,” Chimele objected, still worrying at that thought.

“She attached herself to him for protection. She became his.”

“There is no
nasith-tak,
no female, no
katasathe,
no
dhisais.
Is it reasonable that a male would do this, alone?”

“I am sure it is. An iduve would not?”

That was a presumptuous question. Isande reproved his asking, but Chimele lowered her eyes to show decent shame and then looked up at him.

“A female would be moved to do what he has done as if she were
katasathe
and near her time. A male could not, not without the presence of a female with whom he had recently mated. But is not this child-female close to adulthood? Perhaps it is the impulse to
katasakke
that has taken him.”

“No,” said Aiela, “no, when he thinks of her, it is as a child. That—unworthy thought did cross his mind; he drove it away. He was deeply ashamed.”

He wished he had not said that private thing to Chimele. Had he not been so tired he would have withheld it. But it had given her much to ponder. Bewilderment sat in her eyes.

“She is
chanokhia
to him,” Aiela said further. “To him she is the whole human race. You and I would not think so, but to him she is infinitely beautiful.”

And he rejoined Isande at the desk, where with trembling hands she began to ply the keyboard again and to call forth the geography of Priamos on the viewer, marking it with the sites of occupied areas, receiving reports from the command center, updating the map. There were red zones for amaut occupation, green for human, and the white pinpricks that were iduve: one at Weissmouth in a red zone, that was Khasif; and one in the continental highlands a hundred
lioi
from Daniel, which was Tejef at best reckoning.

When Aiela chanced at last to notice Chimele again she was standing by her desk in the front of the
paredre,
which had expanded to a dizzying perspective of
Ashanome’
s hangar deck, talking urgently with Ashakh.

It was fast coming up dawn in the Weiss valley. The divergent rhythms of ship and planetary daylight systems were not least among the things that had kept Aiela’s mind off-balance for fifteen days. He thought surely that Daniel would have been compelled by exhaustion to lie down and sleep. He could not possibly have the strength to go much further. But even wondering about Daniel could let information through the screening. Aiela turned his mind away toward the task at hand, sealing against any further contact.

The light was beginning to rise, chasing Priamos’ belt of stars from the sky, and by now Daniel’s steps wandered. Oftentimes he would stop and stare down the long still-descending road, dazed. Aiela’s thoughts were silent in him. He had felt one terrible pain, and then a long silence, so that he had forgotten the importance of his rebellion against Aiela and hurled anxious inquiry at him, whether he were well, what had happened. The silence continued, only an occasional communication of desperation seeping through. It was Chimele’s doing, then,
vaikka
against Aiela, thoroughly iduve, but against him, against all Priamos, her retaliation would not be so slight.

In cold daylight Daniel knew what he had done, that a world might die because he had not had the stomach to commit one more murder; but he refused steadfastly to think that far ahead, or to believe that even Chimele could carry out a threat so brutally—that he and the little girl would become only two among a million corpses to litter the surface of a dead world.

His ankle turned. He caught himself and the child’s thin arms tightened about his neck. “Please,” she said. “Let me try to walk again.”

His legs and shoulders and back were almost numb, and the absence of her weight was inexpressible relief. Now that the light had come she looked pitifully naked in her thin yellow gown, very small, very dislocated, walking this wilderness all dressed for bed, as if she were the victim of a nightmare that had failed to go away with the dawn. At times she looked as if she feared him most of all, and he could not blame her for that. That same dawn showed her a disreputable man, face stubbled with beard, a man who carried an ugly black gun and an assassin’s gear that must be strange indeed to the eyes of the country child. If her parents had ever warned her of rough men, or men in general—was she old enough to understand such things?—he conformed to every description of what to avoid. He wished that he could assure her he was not to be feared, but he thought that he would stumble hopelessly over any assurances that he might try to give her, and perhaps might frighten her the more.

“What’s your name?” she asked him for the first time.

“Daniel Fitzhugh,” he said. “I come from Konig.”

That was close enough she would have heard of it, and the mention of familiar places seemed to reassure her. “My name is Arle Mar,” she said, and added tremulously: “That was my mother and father’s farm.”

“How old are you?” He wanted to guide the questioning away from recent memory. “Twelve?”

“Ten.” Her nether lip quivered. “I don’t want to go this way. Please take me back home.”

“You know better than that.”

“They might have gotten away.” He thought she must have treasured that hope a long time before she brought it out into the daylight. “Maybe they hid like I did and they’ll be looking for me to come back.”

“No chance. I’m telling you—no.”

She wiped back the tears. “Have you got an idea where we should go? We ought to call the Patrol, find a radio at some house—”

“There’s no more law on Priamos—no soldiers, no police, nothing. We’re all there is—men like me.”

She looked as if she were about to be sick, as if finally all of it had caught up with her. Her face was white and she stood still in the middle of the road looking as if she might faint.

“I’ll carry you,” he offered, about to do so.

“
No!
” If her size had been equal to her anger she would have been fearsome. As it was she simply plumped down in the middle of the road and rested her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. He did not press her further. He sat down cross-legged not far away and rested, fingers laced on the back of his neck, waiting, allowing her the dignity of gathering her courage again. He wanted to touch her, to hug her and let her cry and make her feel protected. He could not make the move. A human could touch, he thought; but he was no longer wholly human. Perhaps she could feel the strangeness in him; if that were so, he did not want to learn it.

Finally she wiped her eyes a last time, arose stiffly, and delicately lifted the hem of her tattered nightgown to examine her skinned knees.

“It looks sore,” he offered. He gathered himself to his feet.

“It’s all right.” She let fall the hem and gave the choked end of a sob, wiping at her eyes as she surveyed the valley that lay before them in the sun, the gently winding Weiss, the black and burned fields. “All this used to be green,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, accepting the implied blame.

She looked up at him, squinting against the sun. “Why?” she asked with terrible simplicity. “Why did you need to do that?”

He shrugged. It was beyond his capacity to explain. The truth led worse places than a lie. Instead he offered her his hand. “Come on. We’ve got a long way to walk.”

She ignored his hand and walked ahead of him. The road was soft and sandy with a grassy center, and she kept to the sand; but the sun heated the ground, and by the time they had descended to the Weiss plain the child was walking on the edges of her feet and wincing.

“Come on,” he said, picking her up willing or not with a sweep of his arm behind her knees. “Maybe I—”

He stopped, hearing a sound very far away, a droning totally unlike the occasional hum of the insects. Arle heard it too and followed his gaze, scanning the blue-white sky for some sign of an aircraft. It passed, a high gleam of light, then circled at the end of the vast plain and came back.

“All right,” he said, keeping his voice casual.
Aiela, Aiela, please hear me.
“That’s trouble. If they land, Arle, I want you to dive for the high weeds and get down in that ditch.”
Aiela! give me some help!

“Who are they?” Arle asked.

“Probably friends of mine. Amaut, maybe. Remember, I worked for the other side. I may be picked up as a deserter. You may see some things you won’t like.”
O heaven, Aiela, Aiela, listen to me!
“I can lie my way out of my own troubles. You, I can’t explain. They’ll skin me alive if they see you, so do me a favor: take care of your own self, whatever you see happen, and stay absolutely still. You can’t do a thing but make matters worse for me, and they have sensors that can find you in a minute if they choose to use them. Once they suspect I’m not alone, you haven’t got a chance to hide from them. You understand me? Stay flat to the ground.”

It was coming lower. Engines beating, it settled, a great silver elongated disc that was of no human make. A jet noise started as they whined to a landing athwart the road, and the sand kicked up in a blinding cloud. Under its cover Daniel set Arle down and trusted her to run, turned his face away and flung up his arms to shield his eyes from the sand until the engines had died away to a lazy throb. The ship shone blinding bright in the sun. A darkness broke its surface, a hatch opened and a ramp touched the ground.

Aiela!
Daniel screamed inwardly; and this time there was an answer, a quick probe, an apology.

Amaut,
Daniel answered, and cast him the whole picture in an eyeblink, the ship, the amaut on the ramp, the humans descending after.
Parker: Anderson’s second in command.
Daniel cast in bursts and snatches, abjectly pleading with his asuthe, forgive his insubordination, tell Chimele, promise her anything, do something.

Aiela was doing that; Daniel realized it, was subconsciously aware of the kallia’s fright and Chimele’s rage. It cut away at his courage. He sweated, his hand impelled toward the gun at his hip, his brain telling it no.

Parker stepped off the end of the ramp, joined by two more of the ugly, waddling amaut, and by another mercenary, Quinn.

“Far afield, aren’t you?” Parker asked of him. It was not friendliness.

“I got separated last night, didn’t have any supplies. I decided to hike back riverward, maybe pick up with some other unit. I didn’t think I rated that much excitement from the captain.” It was the best and only lie he could think of under the circumstances. Parker did not believe any of it, and spat expressively into the dust at his feet.

“Search the area,” the amaut said to his fellows. “We had a double reading. There’s another one.”