At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (67 page)

Khasif reached it, Daniel running after, Aiela urging him to get Isande out of the way—clenching his sweating hands, trying to penetrate Isande’s screening to warn her.

She gave way: Tejef’s face blurred in double vision over Daniel’s sight of the door. Khasif’s ominous tall form outlined in insane face and back overlay, receding and advancing at once. Isande cried out in pain as Khasif tore her from Tejef and hurled her out the door into Daniel’s arms: Daniel’s face superimposed over Khasif’s back, and then nothing, for Isande buried her face against the being that had lately been so loathsome to her, and clung to him; and Daniel, shaken, held to her with the same drowning desperation.

Metal crashed, and little by little Khasif was giving ground, until he was battling only to hold Tejef within the room.

Ship’s controls!
Aiela screamed at his asuthi.

They tried. Section doors prevented them, and amaut guards and humans converged from all sides, forcing them into retreat. Khasif stood as helpless as they under the threat of a dozen weapons.

Tejef occupied the hallway, a dark smear of blood on his temple. He gave curt orders to the armed humans to hold the
nasith
for him at the end of the hall. Aiela shuddered as he found that look resting next on Isande and on Daniel.

“Go to your quarters,” Tejef said very quietly. But when Daniel started to obey, too, Tejef tilted his head back and looked at him from eyes that had gone to mere slits. “No,” he said, “not you.”

Aiela,
Isande appealed,
Aiela, help him, oh help him!
For she knew what Daniel had done for her.

Do as Tejef tells you,
said Aiela.
Daniel—give in, whatever happens: no temper. No resistance. They react to resistance. They lose interest otherwise.

“Sir,” said Daniel in a voice that needed no dissembling to carry a tremor, “sir—I acted not against you. For Isande, for her. Please.”

The iduve stared at him for a long cold moment. Then he let go a hissing breath. “Get out of my sight. Go to your quarters, and stay there or I will kill you.”

Go!
Aiela hurled at Daniel:
Bow your head and don’t look him in the eyes! Go!
And blessedly the human ignored his own instincts, took the advice, and edged away carefully.
He’s all right, he’s all right,
Aiela said then to Isande, who collapsed in the wreckage of her quarters, crying. He probed gently to know if she were much hurt.

No,
she flung back.
No.
Fear leaked through, shame, the ultimate certainty of defeat.
Go away, go away,
she kept thinking,
o go away, reach the ship and leave. I learned to survive after losing Reha. It’s your turn. We’ve lost whatever chance we had because of me, because I started it, I did, I did, nothing gained.

It’s all right,
came Daniel’s unbidden intervention. He shook all over, he was so afraid, alone in his quarters. It was a terrible thing for a man of his kind to yield down screens at such a moment: but along with the fear another process was taking place: he was gathering his mental forces to replot another attack. Of a sudden this humanish stubbornness, so different from kalliran methodical process, came to Isande as a thing of
elethia.
She wept, knowing his blind determination; and she appealed to Aiela to reason with him.

Luck,
said Aiela,
is what humans wish each other when they are in that frame of mind. I do not believe in luck:
kastien
forbids. But trust him, Isande. You’re going to be all right.

And that was a hope as irrational as Daniel’s, and as little honest. He did not want to tear his mind away, but the triple flood of thoughts distorted his perceptions and tore at his emotions. At last he had to let them both go, for he, like Daniel, was determined to try; and he knew what they would both say to that.

He had come at last near the streets of the occupied quarter. The sounds and smells of a
habish
told him so, and guided him down the alley. It lacked some few hours until daylight, but by now even most of the night-loving amaut had given up and gone home. The place was quiet.

Thus, at the most one other street lay between him and the safety of headquarters, but far more effort would be needed to thread the maze of Weissmouth’s alleys, with their turnings often running into the impassable rubble of a ruined building. Aiela had no stomach for recklessness at this stage; but neither had he much more strength to spend on needless effort. He tried the handle of the
habish’s
alley door, jerked it open, and walked through, to the startled outcries of the few drunken patrons remaining.

He closed the front door after him and found to his dismay that it was not the headquarters street after all: but at least it was clear and in the right section of town. He knew his way from here. The headquarters lay uphill and he set out in that direction, walking rapidly, hating the spots of light thrown by the occasional streetlamps.

A dark cross-street presented itself. He took it, hurrying yet faster. Footsteps sounded behind him, silent men, running. He gasped for air and gathered himself to run too, racing for what he hoped was the security of the main thoroughfare.

He rounded the corner and had sight of the bulk of the headquarters budding to his left, but those behind him were closing. He jerked out his gun as he ran, almost dropping it, whirled to fire.

A hurtling body threw him skidding to the pavement. Human bodies wrestled with him, beat the gun from his hand and pounded his head against the pavement until he was half-conscious. Then the several of them hauled him up and forced him to the side of the street where the shadows were thick.

He went where they made him go, not attempting further resistance until his head should clear. They held him by both arms and for half a block he walked unsteadily, loose-jointed. They were going toward the headquarters.

Then they headed him for a dark stairs into the basement door of some shop.

He had hoped in spite of everything that they were mercenaries in the employ of the amaut authorities that had muddled their instructions or simply seized the opportunity to vent their hate on an alien of any species at all. He could not blame them for that. But this put a grimmer face on matters.

He lunged forward, spilling them all, fought his way out of the tangle at the bottom of the steps, kneed in the belly the man quickest to try to hold him. Other hands caught at him: he hit another man in the throat and scrambled up the stairs running for his life, expecting a shot between the shoulders at any moment.

The headquarters steps were ahead. For that awful moment he was under the floodlights that illumined the front of the building, and rattling and pounding at the glass doors.

An amaut sentry waddled into the foyer and blinked at him, then hastened to open. Aiela pushed his way past, cleared the exposed position of the doors, leaned against the wall to catch his breath, staggered left again toward
bnesych
Gerlach’s darkened office door, blazoned with the symbols of
karsh
Gomek authority.

“Most honorable sir,” the sentry protested, scurrying along at his side, “the
bnesych
will be called.” He searched among his keys for that of the office and opened it. “Please sit down, sir. I will make the call myself.”

Aiela sank down gratefully upon the soft-cushioned low bench in the outer office while the sentry used the secretary’s phone to call the
bnesych.
He shook in reaction, and shivered in the lack of heating.

“Sir,” said the sentry, “the
bnesych
has expressed his profound joy at your safe return. He is on his way. He begs your patience.”

Aiela thrust himself to his feet and leaned upon the desk, took the receiver and pushed the call button. The operator’s amaut-language response rasped in his ear.

“Get me contact with the iduve ship in the port,” he ordered in that language, and when the operator protested in alarm: “I am nas kame and I am asking you to contact my ship or answer to them.”

Again the operator protested a lack of clearance, and Aiela swore in frustration, paused open-mouthed as an amaut appeared in the doorway and bowed three times in respect. It was Toshi.

“Lord Aiela,” said the young woman, bowing again. “Thank you, Aphash. Resume your post. May I offer you help, most honorable lord nas kame?”

“Put me in contact with my ship. The operator refuses to recognize me.”

Toshi bowed, her long hands folded at her breast. “Our profound apologies. But this is not a secure contact. Please come with me to my own duty station next door and I will be honored to authorize the port operator to make that contact for you with no delay. Also I will provide you an excellent flask of
marithe.
You seem in need of it.”

Her procedures seemed improbable and he stood still, not liking any of it; but Toshi kept her hands placidly folded and her gray-green eyes utterly innocent. Of a sudden he welcomed the excuse to get past her and into the lighted lobby; but if he should move violently she would likely prove only a very startled young woman. He took a firmer grip on his nerves.

“I should be honored,” he said, and she bowed herself aside to let him precede her. She indicated the left-hand corridor as he paused in the lobby, and he could see that the second office was open with the light on. It seemed then credible, and he yielded to the offering motion of her hand and walked on with her, she waddling half a pace behind.

It was a communications station. He breathed a sigh of relief and returned the bow of the technician who arose from his post to greet them.

And a hard object in Toshi’s hand bore into his side. He did not need her whispered threat to stand still. The technician unhurriedly produced a length of wire from his coveralls and waddled around behind him, drawing his wrists back.

Aiela made no resistance, enduring in bitter silence, for if Toshi were willing to use that gun, he would be forever useless to his asuthi. He was surely going to join Isande and Daniel, and all that he could do now was take care that he arrived in condition to be of use to them. It was by no means necessary to Tejef that he survive.

They faced him about and took him out the door, down a stairs and to a side exit. Toshi produced a key and unlocked it, locked it again behind them when they stood on the steps of some dark side of the building.

Fire erupted out of the dark. The technician fell, bubbling in agony. Toshi crumpled with a whimper and scuttled off the steps against the building, while Aiela flung himself off, fell, struggled to his feet and sprinted in blind desperation for the lights of the main street.

Faster steps sounded behind him and a blow in the back threw him down, helpless to save himself. His shoulder hit the pavement as he twisted to shield his head, and humans surrounded him, hauled him up, and dragged him away with them. Aiela knew one of them by his cropped hair: they were the same men.

They took him far down the side street away from the lights and pulled him into an alley. Here Aiela balked, but a knee doubled him over, repaying a debt, and they forced him down into the basement of a darkened building. When they came to the bottom of the steps, he began to struggle, using knee and shoulders where he could; and all it won him was to be beaten down and kicked.

A dim light swung in the damp-breathing dark, a globe-lamp at the wrist of an amaut, casting hideous leaping shadows about them. Aiela heaved to gain his feet and scrambled for the stairs, but they kicked him down again. He saw the amaut thrust papers into the hands of one of the humans, snatching the stolen kalliran pistol from the man’s belt before he expected it and putting it into his own capacious pocket.

“Ffife ppasss,” the amaut said in human speech. “All ffree, all run country, go goodbpye.”

“How do we know what they say what you promised?” one made bold to ask.

“Go goodbpye,” the amaut repeated. “Go upplandss, ffree, no more amautss, goodbpye.”

The humans debated no longer, but fled, and the amaut went up and closed the street door after them, waddling down the steps holding up his wrist to cast a light that included Aiela upon the floor.

It was Kleph, his ugly face more than usually sinister in the dim lighting. Cold air and damp breathed out from some dark hole beyond the light, an amaut burrow, tunnels of earth that would twist and meet many times beneath the surface of Weissmouth. Aiela had not been aware that this maze yet existed, but it was expected. He knew too that one hapless kallia could be slain and buried in this earthen maze, forever lost from sight and knowledge save for the
idoikkhe
on his wrist, and amaut ingenuity could solve that as well.

“What are you after?” Aiela asked him. “Are you here to cover your high command’s mistakes?”

“Most honorable sir, I am devastated. You were given into my hands to protect.”

Aiela let go a small breath of relief, for the fellow did not reasonably need to deceive him; but it was still in his mind that Kleph had access to humans such as had attacked them at the port, and had just evidenced it. The little fellow waddled over and freed him, put his arm about him, helping him and compelling him at once as they sought the depths of the tunnel. Shadows rippled insanely over the rudimentary plaster of the interior, the beginnings of masonry.

“Kleph,” Aiela protested, “Kleph, I have to find a way to contact my ship.”

“Impossible, sir, altogether impossible.”

The squat little amaut forced him around a corner despite his resistance; and there Aiela wrenched free and sought to run, striking the plaster wall in the dark, turning and running again, following the rough wall with his hands.

He did not come to the entrance when he expected it, and after a moment he knew that he was utterly, hopelessly lost. He sank down on the earthen floor gasping for breath, and leaned his shoulders against the chill wall, perceiving the bobbing glow of Kleph’s lamp coming nearer. In a moment more Kleph’s ugly face materialized at close quarters around the corner, and he made a bubbling sound of irritation as he squatted down opposite.