HUNTER OF WORLDS BY C. J. CHERRYH

“Your species,” she said, “seems to have begun vaikka against one of the nasuli, most probably the vra-nasul Chaganokh. The amaut are a secondary problem, inconsequential by comparison. If you have been wholly truthful, I may perhaps remove the greater danger from human space.

But be advised, m’metane, you came near to great harm. You are indeed kameth to Ashanome, although not all the nasithi seem to acknowledge that fact. Yet for reasons of my own I shall not yet permit you the idoikkhe—and you must therefore govern your own behavior most carefully. I shall not again count you ignorant.”

“You deny you’re responsible for what is happening to Konig?”

“Tekasuphre.” Chimele arose and plainly ignored Daniel, looking instead at Isande. “I think it may be well if you make clear to this person and to Aiela my necessities—and theirs.”

Isande’s quarters, a suite of jewel-like colors and glittering light-panels, had been the place of Daniel’s instruction before the interview; it was their refuge after, Isande curled into her favorite chair, Aiela in the other, Daniel sprawled disconsolate on the couch. Their minds touched. It was Daniel they tried to comfort, but he ignored them, solitary and suicidal in his depression. Regarding the impulse to self-destruction, Aiela was not greatly concerned: it was not consistent with the human’s other attitudes. Daniel was more likely to turn his destructive urges on someone else, but it would not be his asuthi. That was part of his misery. He had no reachable enemies.

“You have done nothing wrong,” said Isande. “You have not hurt your people.”

Silence.

Daniel, Aiela sent, I could not lie to you; you would know it.

I hate the sight of you, Daniel’s subconscious fired out at him; but his upper mind suppressed that behind a confused feeling of shame. “That is not really true,” he said aloud, and again, forcefully: “That is not true. I’m sorry.”

Aiela cast him a feeling of total sympathy, for proximity still triggered a scream of alarm over his nerves and unsettled his stomach; but the reaction was already becoming less and less. Someday he would shudder no longer, and they would have become one monstrous hybrid, neither kalliran nor human. And now it was Isande who recoiled, having caught that thought. She rejected it in horror.

“I don’t blame you,” Daniel answered: somehow it did not seem unnatural that he should respond instead, so deeply was he in link with Aiela. He dropped the contact then, grieving, knowing Isande’s loathing for him.

“We have not used you,” Isande protested.

Daniel touched Aiela’s mind again, reading to a depth Aiela did not like. “And haven’t we all done a little of that?” Daniel wondered bitterly. “And isn’t it only natural, after all?”-Was this the beaten, uneducated creature about whose sentience they had wondered? Aiela looked upon him in uncomfortable surmise, all three minds suddenly touching agan. From Daniel came a bitter mirth.

You’ve taught me worlds of things I didn’t know. 1 don’t even remember learning most of it; I just touch your minds and I know. And I suppose you could pass for humans if it weren’t for your looks. But what use do they have for me on Ashanome? Teach me that if you can.

“Our life is a pleasant one,” said Isande.

“With the iduve?” Daniel swung his legs off the couch to sit upright. “They aren’t human, they aren’t even as human as you are, and I believe you when you say they don’t have feelings like we do. It agrees with what I saw in there tonight.”

“They have feelings,” said Isande, letting pass his remark about the humanity of kallia. “Daniel, Chimele wishes you no harm.”

“Prove it.”

She met his challenge with an opening of the mind, from which he retreated in sudden apprehension. Strange, iduve things lay beyond that gate. She remained intent upon it even while she rose and poured them each a glass of marithe, pressing it at both of them. She was seated again, and stared at Daniel.

All right, Daniel sent finally. It was difficult for him, but to please Aiela, desperate to please someone in this strange place, he yielded down all his barriers.

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