“Be silent,” said Aiela, “and stop pretending you have forgotten what we want. Whatever your personal preference, we had better come out near the port, and quickly.”
Kleph’s ugly face contorted in the swaying light, making his grimace worse than usual. He bubbled in his throat and edged past them without looking either of them in the eyes, retracing his steps to a tunnel they had bypassed. It angled faintly upward.
“O great lords,” Kleph mourned in audible undertone, “your enemies are so great and so many, and I am not a fighter, my lords, I could not hurt anyone. Please remember that.”
Ashakh hit him—no cuff, but a blow that hurled the little fellow stunned into the turning wall of the corridor; and Kleph cowered there on his knees and covered his head, shrilling a warble of alarm, a thin, sickly note. Aiela seized the amaut’s shoulder, frightened by the violence, no less frightening when he looked back at Ashakh. The iduve leaned against the stone wall, clinging by his fingers to the surface. His rose-reflecting eyes were half-lidded and pale, showing no pupil at all.
A scramble of gravel beside him warned Aiela. He spun about and whipped out his gun. Kleph froze in the act of rising.
“If you douse that light,” Aiela warned him, “I can still stop you before you get to the exit. I’ve stood between you and Ashakh until now. Don’t press my generosity any further.”
“Keep him away,” Kleph bubbled in his own language. “Keep him away.”
Aiela glanced at Ashakh, feeling his own skin crawl as he looked on that cold, mindless face: Ashakh, most brilliant of the nasithi, cerebral master of Ashanome’s computers and director of her course—bereft of reason. Kallia though he was, he felt takkhenes, the awareness of the internal force of that man, a life-force let loose with them into that narrow darkness, at enmity with all that was not nas.
A slow pulse began from the idoikkhe, panic multiplying in Aiela’s brain as the pulse matched the pounding of his own heart; his asuthi knew, tried to hold to him. He thrust them away, his knees in contact with the ground, the gravel burning his hands, his paralyzed right hand losing its grip on the gun. Kleph was beside him, gray-green eyes wide, his hand reaching for the abandoned gun.
The pain ceased. Aiela struck left-handed at the amaut and Kleph cowered back against the wall, protesting he had only meant to help.
Aiela, Aiela, his asuthi sent, wondering whether he was all right But he ignored them and lurched to his feet, for Ashakh still hung against the wall, his face stricken; and Aiela sensed somehow that he was not the origin of the pain, rather that Ashakh had saved him from it. He seized the iduve, felt that lean, heavy body shudder and almost collapse. Ashakh gripped his arms in return, holding until it shut the blood from his hands, and all the while the whiteless eyes were inward and blank.
“Chaikhe,” he murmured, “Chaikhe, nasith-tak, prha-Ashanome-ta-e-takkhe, au, Chaikhe—Aiela, Aiela-kameth—”
“Here. I am here.”
“A being—whose feel is Ashanome, but a stranger, a stranger to me—he, he, reaching—hypothesis: Tejef, Tejef one-and-not-one, Khasif—Chaikhe—Chaikhe, operating machinery, extended, mindless life-force—e-takkhe, e-takkhe, e-tak-khe!”
Stop him! Isande cried in agony. Stop him! He is deranged, he can die—
He—needing something? Daniel wondered. He hated Ashakh to the depth of all that was human. Tejef had a little compassion. Ashakh was as remorseless as Ashanome’s machines. In a perverse way it pleased Daniel to see him suffer something.
Daniel, what is the matter with you? Isande exclaimed in horror.
Aiela broke them asunder, for their quarreling was like to drive him mad. Isande’s presence remained on the one side, stunned, fearing Daniel; and Daniel’s on the other, hating the iduve of Ashanome, hating dying. That was at the center of it—hating dying, hating being sent to it by beings like Ashakh and Chimele, who loved nothing and feared nothing and needed no one.
“Ashakh.” Aiela thrust that yielding body hard against the wall and the impact seemed to reach the iduve; but moments passed before the glazed look left his eyes and he seemed to know himself again. Then he looked embarrassed and brushed off Aiela’s hands and straightened his clothing.