“Up,” Aiela ordered him, hauling on his collar, and the amaut obediently rose, but would not look him in the face, making little hisses and thuds in his throat.
“This person is untouchable,” said Ashakh; and in his language the word was e-takkhe, out of takkhenes. No closer word to enemy existed in the iduve vocabulary, and the killing impulse burned in Ashakh’s normally placid eyes,
“I have a bond on him,” Aiela said.
“Be sure,” Ashakh replied, no more than that: iduve manners frowned on idle dispute as well as on interference with another’s considered decisions.
What do you think you are? Isande cried, slipping through his screening. Aiela, what do you think you’re doing?
He shut her out with a mental wince. Not fair, not fair, her retreating consciousness insisted. Aiela, listen!
He seized poor Kleph by the arm and shook at the heavy little fellow. “Kleph: now do you believe I meant what I said? Does it offend your precious sensibilities, all this fine world gone to cinders? If you have any other plans for it, then get us to the port. Maybe we can stop it. Do you understand me this time?”
“Yes,” said Kleph, and for the first time since Ashakh’s arrival the saucer eyes met his squarely. “Yes, sir.”
Kleph edged past him to take the lead. His low brow furrowed into a multiplication of wrinkles so that his eyes were fringed by his colorless hair. His thin lips rolled in and out rapidly. How much he honestly could understand, Aiela was not sure. Almost he wished the little amaut would contrive to escape as soon as they made the port.
Aiela, Isande sent, what are you doing? Why are you screening?
Aiela shut her out entirely. Pity was dangerous. Let it begin and screens tumbled one after the other. He had to become for a little time as cold as the iduve, able to kill.
His mind fled back to the safe and orderly civilization of Aus Qao, where crime was usually a matter of personal disorder, where theft was a thing done by offworlders and the clever rich, and where murder was an act of aberration that destined one for restructuring. No kalliran officer had fired a lethal weapon on Aus Qao in five thousand years.
He was not sure that he could. Ashakh could do so without even perceiving the problem: he only reacted to the urgings of takkhenes, of the two of them the more innocent. A kallia must somehow, Aiela thought, summon up the violence of hate before he could act.
He could not kill. The growing realization panicked him. Conscience insisted that he tell his iduve companion of this weakness in himself before it cost Ashakh his life. Something—arastiethe or fear, he knew not which—kept him silent. Giyre was impossible with this being: did he try to explain, Ashakh would send him away. All that he could do •was to expend everything, conscience and kastien as well, and stay beside the iduve as far as his efforts could carry him.
CHAPTER 14
RAKHI SWEATED. Great beads of perspiration rolled down the sides of his face, and the serenity of the paredre of Ashanome flashed in and out with the nervous flicker of a half-hearted mind-touch at the projection apparatus. But it was not projection. Between pulses the air was close and stank of burning; he occupied a woman’s body, felt the urge to takkenes with the life within it, a strangeness of yearning where there was yet neither movement nor fully mind—only the most primitive sort of life, but selfed, and precious. Rage surged coldly over his nerves: lights dimmed, lights flashed, screens flared and went dark. He dared do nothing but ride it out, joined, aware, occasionally guiding Chaikhe’s tired mind when she faltered in reaction. His body had limbs of vast size, his mind extended into a hundred circuits; he felt with her as her mind touched and manipulated contacts, shunted power from one system to another with a coordination as smooth as that of a living body.
And he perceived the hammering of Tejef’s weapons against the ship/body, the flow of energies on the shields, a debilitating drainage of power that required a great effort to balance defense between weakness and waste and destruction to the city. It began to be evident: Tejef’s ship, a small akites, had Chaikhe’s power supply from two lesser ships at a disadvantage. Chaikhe could, by skill and efficient management, prolong the struggle, but she was incapable of offensive action. Tejef could not down her shields, for probe and transfer ships such as Chaikhe commanded were heavily shielded, but their combined weaponry, while adequate to level a city, had no effect against an akites. The chronometer continued its relentless progress, ticking off the moments as Ashanome-time proceeded toward main-dark, and Kej, light-years away, had fled the ambered sea of Thiphrel: shadow flooded the coastal plain to the east of Mount Im, advancing toward ancient Cheltaris. Priamos-time, on the inner track, went more slowly, but had less time to run. Nine hours had passed since midnight. When three more had gone, Priamos would blaze like a novaed star and die.