“I will be close by,” Aiela assured him, but he was not sure the human received that, for the contact went dark and numb like Isande’s.
He felt strangely amputated then, utterly on his own and—a thing he would never have credited—wishing for the touch of his asuthe, her familiar, kalliran mind, her capacity to make light of his worst fears. If he were severed from the human this moment and never needed touch that mind again, he knew that he would remember to the end of his days that he had for a few moments been human.
He had harmed himself. He knew it, desperately wished it undone, and feared not even Isande’s experience could help him. She had tried to warn him. In defiance of her advice he had extended himself to the human, reckoning no dangers but the obvious, doing things his own way, with kastien toward a hurt and desolate creature.
He had chosen. He could no more bear harm to Isande than he could prefer pain for himself: iduvish as she was, he knew her to the depth of her stubborn heart, knew the elethia of her and her loyalty, and she in no wise deserved harm from anyone.
Neither did the human. Someone meant to use him,.to wring some use from him, and discard him or destroy him afterward—be rid of him, Isande had said, even she callous toward him—and there was in that alien shell a being that had not deserved either fate.
It is not reasonable to ask me to venture an opinion on something I have never experienced, Chimele had told him at the outset. She did not understand kalliran emotion and she had never felt the chiabres. Of a sudden he feared not even Chimele might have anticipated what she was creating of them, and that she would deal ruthlessly with the result—a kameth whose loyalty was half-human.
He was kallia, kallia!—and of a sudden he felt his hold on that claim becoming tenuous. It was not right, what he had done—even to the human.
Isande, he pleaded, hoping against all knowledge to the contrary for a response from that other, that blessedly kalliran mind. Isande, Isande.
“But his senses perceived only darkness from that quarter.
In the next moment he felt a mild pulse from the idoikkhe, the coded flutter that meant paredre.
Chimele was sending for him.
There was the matter of an accounting.
CHAPTER 4
CHIMELE WAS PERTURBED. It was evident in her brooding expression and her attitude as she leaned in the corner of her chair; she was not pleased; and she was not alone for this audience: four other iduve were with her, and with that curious sense of deja vu Isande’s instruction imparted, Aiela knew them. They were Chimele’s nasithi-katasakke, her half-brothers and -sister by common-mating.
The woman Chaikhe was youngest: an Artist, a singer of songs; by kalliran standards Chaikhe was too thin to be beautiful, but she was gentle and thoughtful toward the kamethi. She had also thought of him with interest: Isande had warned him of it; but Chimele had said no, and that ended it. Chaikhe was becoming interested in katasakke, in common-mating, the presumable cause of restlessness; but an iduve with that urge would rapidly lose all interest in m’metanei. Beside Chaikhe, eyeing him fixedly, sat her full brother Ashakh, a long-faced man, exceedingly tall and thin. Ashakh was renowned for intelligence and coldness to emotion even among iduve. He was Ashanome’s chief Navigator and master of much of the ship’s actual operation, from its terrible armament to the computers that were the heart of the ship’s machinery and memory. He did not impress one as a man who made mistakes, nor as one to be crossed with impunity. And next to Ashakh, leaning on one arm of the chair, sat Rakhi, the brother that Chimele most regarded. Rakhi was of no great beauty, and for an iduve he was a little plump. Also he had a shameful bent toward kutikkase—a taste for physical comfort too great to be honorable among iduve. But he was devoted to Chimele, and he was extraordinarily kind to the noi kame and even to the seldom-noticed amaut, who adored him as their personal patron. Besides, at the heart of this soft, often-smiling fellow was a heart of greater bravery than most suspected.