“Kta wishes you come back to Elas,” she said.
“I doubt I will be allowed to,” he said.
“Then why would the Methi send you here?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps to satisfy Kta for a time. Perhaps so I’ll find the Afen the worse by comparison.”
“Kta will not let harm come to you.”
“Kta had better stay out of it. Tell him so, Mim. He could make the Methi his enemy that way. He had better forget it.”
He was afraid. He had lived with that nagging fear from the beginning, and now that Mim touched nerves, he found it difficult to speak with the calm that the nemet called dignity. The unsteadiness of his voice made him greatly ashamed.
And Mim’s eyes inexplicably filled with tears-fierce little Mim, unhuman Mim, who would have been interestingly female to Kurt but for her alien face. He did not know if any other being would ever care enough to cry over him, and suddenly leaving Elas was unbearable.
He took her slim golden hands in his, knew at once he should not have, for she was nemet and she shivered at the very touch of him. But she looked up at him and did not show offense. Her hands pressed his very gently in return.
“Kurt-ifhan,” she said, “I will tell lord Kta what you say, because it is good advice. But I don’t think he will listen to me. Elas will speak for you. I am sure of it. The Methi has listened before to Elas. She knows that we speak with the power of the Families. Please go to breakfast. I have made you late. I am sorry.”
He nodded and started to the door, looked back again. “Mim,” he said, because he wanted her to look up. He wanted her face to think of, as he wanted everything in Elas fixed in his mind. But then he was embarrassed, for he could think of nothing to say.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and quickly left.
IV
All the way to the Afen, Kurt had balanced his chances of rounding on his three nemet guards and making good his escape. The streets of Nephane were twisting and torturous, and if he could remain free until dark, he thought, he might possibly find a way out into the fields and forests.
But Nym himself had given him into the hands of the guards and evidently charged them to treat him well, for they showed him the greatest courtesy. Elas continued to support him, and for the sake of Elas, he dared not do what his own instincts screamed to do: to run, to kill if need be.
They passed into the cold halls of the Afen itself and it was too late. The stairs led them up to the third level, that of the Methi.
Djan waited for him alone in the modern hall, wearing the modest chatem and pelan of a nemet lady, her auburn hair braided at the crown of her head, laced with gold.
She dismissed the guards, then turned to him. It was strange, as she had foretold, to see a human face after so long among the nemet. He began to understand what it had been for her, alone, slipping gradually from human reality into nemet. He noticed things about human faces he had never seen before, how curiously level the planes of the face, how pale her eyes, how metal-bright her hair. The war, the enmity between them, even these seemed for the moment welcome, part of a familiar frame of reference. Elas faded in this place of metal and synthetics.
He fought it back into focus.
“Welcome back,” she greeted him, and sank into the nearest chair, gestured him welcome to the other. “Elas wants you,” she advised him then. “I am impressed.”
“And I,” he said, “would like to go back to Elas.”
“I did not promise that,” she said. “But your presence there has not proved particularly troublesome.” She rose again abruptly, went to the cabinet against the near wall, opened it. “Care for a drink, Mr. Morgan?”
“Anything,” he said, “thank you.”
She poured them each a little glass and brought one to him. It was telise. She sat down again, leaned back and sipped at her own. “Let me make a few points clear to you,” she said. “First, this is my city; I intend it should remain so. Second, this is a nemet city, and that will remain so too, Our species has had its chance. It’s finished. We’ve done it. Pylos, my world Aeolus-both cinders. It’s insane. I spent these last months waiting to die for not following orders, wondering what would become of the nemet when the probe ship returned with the authority and the firepower to deal