But it was a rare kallia who ventured deep into the Esliph. It was a wild place and wide, with a great gulf beyond. Odd things happened there, strange ships came and went, and law was a matter of local option and available firepower. The amaut karshatu took care of their own, and brooked no intrusion on karsh lanes or karsh worlds: the kallia they tolerated, reckoning them harmless, for they were above all law-loving folk, their major vice merely a desire of wealth, not land, but monetary and imaginary. Kallia worshipped order: their universe was ordered in such a way that one could not determine his own worth save in terms of the respect paid him by others—and money was somehow a measure of this, as primogeniture was among amaut in a karsh. Muishiph looked on the young man and wondered: as he reckoned kallia, they were shallow folk, never seeking power for its own sake. They had no ambitions: they hated responsibility, feeling that there was something sinister and ikas in tampering with destiny. An amaut might dream of having land, of founding a karsh, producing offspring in the dozens; but for a kallia the greatest joy seemed to be to retire into a quiet community, giving genteel parties for small gatherings of all the most honorable people, and being a man to whom others resorted for advice and influence—a safe life, and quiet, and never, never involving solitary decisions.
If Aiela Lyailleue was a curiosity to the Orithain, he was no less a puzzle to Muishiph: an untypical kallia, a wealthy parome’s son who chose the hazardous life of the military, exploring the Esliph’s backside. It was the hardest and loneliest command any officer, amaut or kallia, could have, out where there was no one to consult and no law to rely on. This was not a kalliran life at all.
Aiela had packed several changes of clothing, everything from the drawers. “Some things are on my ship,” he said. “Surely they will send my other belongings home to my family.”
“Surely,” Muishiph agreed, miserable in the lie. When a karsh outgrew its territory, the next-born were cast out to fend for themselves. Some founded karshatu of their own, some became bondservants to other karshatu or sought employment by the kallia, and some simply died of grief. What amaut literature there was sang mournfully of the misery of such outcasts, who were cut off and forgotten quickly by their own kind. The kallia talked of his house as if it still existed for him. Muishiph rolled his lips inward and refused to argue with the childish faith.
Aiela gathered his pictures off the desk last of all: an adult-children group that must be his kin, a young girl with flowers in her silver hair—ko shenellis, the coming-of-age: Muishiph had heard of the ceremony and recognized it, wondering if the girl were kinswoman or intended mate. Aiela himself was in the third picture, a younger Aiela in civilian clothes, standing by a smiling youth his own age, the crumbling walls of some ancient kalliran building fluttering with flags in the background. They were perplexing bits and pieces of a life Muishiph could not even imagine, things and persons that had given joy to the kallia, reminders that he once had had roots—things that were important to him even lost as he was. The pictures were turned, one by one, face down on the clothing in the case. With them went a small box of tape cassettes. Aiela closed and locked the case, turned with a gesture of entreaty.
“Do you suppose,” he asked, “that there is time to write a letter?”
Muishiph doubtfully consulted his watch. “If you do, you must hurry about it.”
Aiela bowed his gratitude, a courtesy Muishiph returned on reflex; and he waited on his feet while Aiela opened the desk and sat down, using some of the Station’s paper.
After a time Muishiph consulted his watch again and coughed delicately. Aiela hastened his writing, working feverishly until a second apologetic cough advised him of Muishiph’s impatience. Then he arose and unfastened his collar, drawing over his head a metal seal on a chain: its embossed impression sealed the message—a house crest. Kalliran aristocrats clung to such symbols, prized relics of the feudal culture that had been theirs before the starlords found them.