She can destroy you, Isande sent him hysterically. She has her honor to think of. Vaikka, Aiela, vaikka!
“Is it Isande?” asked Chimele. “Is it she that troubles you?”
“She’s being hurt. She won’t go away. Please stop it.”
And then he knew that Isande’s idoikkhe had pained her, once, twice, with increasing severity, and the mournful and loyal presence fled.
“Aiela,” said Chimele, “all my life I have dealt gently with my kamethi. Why will you persist in provoking me? Is it ignorance or is it design?”
“It’s my nature,” he said, which further offended her; but this time she only scowled and regarded him with deep dissatisfaction.
“Your ignorance of us has not been noticed: the nearest equivalent is ‘forgiven.’ It will be a serious error on your part to assume this will continue without limit.”
“I honestly,” he insisted, “do not understand you.”
“We are not in the habit of patience with metane-tekasu-phre. Nor do we make evident our discomforts. Au, m’metane, I should have the hide from you.” There was self-control; and under it there was a rage that made his skin cold: run now, he thought, and become like the others—no. She would deal with him, explaining matters; he would stand there until she did so.
For a long moment he stood still, expected the touch of the idoikkhe for it; she did not move either.
“Aiela,” she said then, in a greatly controlled voice, “I was disadvantaged before my nasithi-katasakke.” And when he only stared at her, helplessly unenlightened: “For three thousand years Ashanome has taken no outsider-m’metane aboard,” she said. “I have never dealt with the likes of you.”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“You disputed with my nasithi. Then you turned the same discourtesy on me. Had you no perception?”
“I had cause,” he declared in temper too deep-running to reckon of her anger, and his hand went to the idoikkhe on reflex. “This doesn’t turn off my mind or my conscience, and I still want to know what you intend with the man Daniel.”
Chimele literally trembled with rage. He had never seen so dangerous a look on any sane and sentient face, but the pain he expected did not come. She stilled her anger with an evident effort.
“Nas-suphres,” she said in a tone of cosmic contempt. “You are hopeless, m’metane”
“How so?” he responded. “How so—ignorant?”
“Because you provoke me and trust my forbearance. This is the act of a stupid or an ignorant being. And did I truly believe you capable of vaikka, you would find yourself woefully outmatched. You are not irreplaceable, m’metane, and you are perilously close to extinction at this moment.”
“I have no confidence at all in your forbearance, and I well know you mean your threats.”
“The clumsiness of your language makes rational conversation impossible. You are nothing, and I could wipe you out with a thought. I should think the reputedly ordered processes of the kalliran mind would dictate caution. I fail to perceive why you attack me.”
Mad, he thought in panic, remembering at the same time that she had mental control of the idoikkhe. He wanted to leave. He could not think how. “I have not attacked you,” he said in a quiet, reasoning voice, as one would talk to the insane. “I know better.”
She arose and moved away from him in great vexation, then looked back with some semblance of control restored. “I warned you once, Aiela, do not play at vaikka with us. You are incredibly ignorant, but you have a courage which I respect above all metane-traits. Do you not understand I must maintain sorithias—that I have the dignity of my office to consider?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Au, this is impossible. Perhaps Isande can make it clear.”
“No! No, let her alone. I want none of her explanations. I have my mind clear enough without need of her rationalizations.”
“You are incredible,” Chimele exclaimed indignantly, and returned to him, seized both his hands, and made him sit down opposite her, a contact he hated, and she seemed to realize it. “Aiela. Do not press me. I must retaliate. We delight to be generous to our kamethi, but we will not have gifts demanded of us. We will not be pressed and not retaliate, we will not be affronted and do nothing. It is physically impossible. Can you not comprehend that?”