“We do not operate on your authority,” said the nas kame.
The Master gave the order. A section of tape fed out of the machine.
“Dispose of the original record,” said the woman, winding the tape about her first finger. “This person Aiela will report to our dock for boarding at 0230 Station Time.”
Kallia tended to a look of innocence. Their hair was the same whatever their age, pale and silvery, individual strands as translucent as spun glass. The pale azure of their skin intensified to sapphire in the eyes, which, unlike the eyes of amaut, could look left or right without turning the whole head: it gave them a whole range of communication without words, and made it difficult for them to conceal their feelings. They were an emotional folk—not loud, like amaut, who liked disputes and noisy entertainments, but fond of social gatherings. One kallia proverbially never decided anything: it took at least three to reach a decision on the most trivial of matters. To be otherwise was ikas—presumptuous, and a kalliran gentleman was never that.
Security agent Muishiph was amaut, but he had been long enough on Kartos to know the kallia quite well, both the good and the bad in them. He watched the young officer Aiela Lyailleue react to the news—he stood at the door of the kallia’s onstation apartment—and expected some outcry of grief or anger at the order. Muishiph had already nerved himself to resist such appeals—even to defend himself; his own long arms could crush the slender limbs of a kallia, although he certainly did not want to do that.
“I?” asked the young officer, and again: “I?” as though he still could not believe it. He looked appallingly young to be a ship’s captain. The records confirmed it: twenty-six years old, son of Deian of the Lyailleue house, aristocrat. Deian was parome of Xolun arethme, and the third councilor in the High Council of Aus Qao, a great weight of power and wealth—probably the means by which young Lyailleue had achieved his premature rank. Aiela’s hands trembled. He jammed them into the pockets of his short jacket to conceal the fact and shook his head rather blankly.
“But do you have any idea why they singled me out?”
“The Master said he thought you might know,” said Muishiph, “but I doubt he wants to be told, in any case.”
The young man gazed at him with eyes so distant Muishiph knew he hardly saw him; and then intelligence returned, a troubled sadness. “May I pack?” he asked. “I suppose I may need some things. I hope that I will.”
“They did not forbid it.” Muishiph thrust his shoulder within the doorframe, for Aiela had begun to lift his hand toward the switch. “But I would not dare leave you unobserved, sir. I am sorry.”
Aiela’s eyes raked Muishiph up and down with a curiously regretful expression. At least, Muishiph thought uncomfortably, the Master might have sent a kallia to break the news and to be with him; he braced himself for argument. But Aiela backed away and cleared the doorway to let him enter. Muishiph stopped just inside the door, hands locked behind his thighs, swaying; amaut did that when they were ill at ease.
“Please sit down,” Aiela invited him, and Muishiph accepted, accepted again when Aiela poured them each a glass of pinkish marithe. Muishiph downed it all, and took his handkerchief from his belly-pocket to mop at his face. Amaut perspired a great deal and needed prodigious quantities of liquid. It was the first time Muishiph had been in a kalliran residence, and the warm, dry air was unkind to his sensitive skin, the bright light hurt his eyes. He thrust the handkerchief back into his pocket and watched Aiela. The kallia, his own drink ignored, had taken a battered spaceman’s case from the locker and was starting to pack, nervously meticulous.
Muishiph knew the records from the Master, who had sent him. The young kallia captained a small geological survey vessel named Alitaesa, just returned from the moons of Pri, far back on the Esliph fringe. That was amaut territory, but some kallia explored there, seeking mining rights with the permission of the great trading karshatu that ruled amaut commerce. Amaut, natural burrowers, would work as miners; kallia, strongly industrial, would receive the ore and turn it back again in trade—an arrangement old as the metrosi.