“Yes.” Isande—Isande!
His asuthe stood behind him, took his hand, seized upon his mind as well, comforting, interfering between memory and reality. Be still, she told him, be still. I will not let go.
“Could you not have prevented him talking?” Chimele asked.
“He was beyond reason,” Aiela insisted. “He only reacted. He thought he was lost to us.”
“And duty. Where was that?”
“He thought of the child, that she would be alone with them. And he believed you would intervene for him if only he could survive long enough.”
“The m’metane has an extraordinary confidence in his own value.”
“It was not a conscious choice.”
“Explain.”
“Among his kind, life is valued above everything. I know, I know your objections, but grant me for a moment that this is so. It was a confidence so deep he didn’t think it, that if he served beings of arastiethe, they would consider saving his life and the child’s of more value than taking that of Tejef.”
“He is demented,” Chimele said.
Careful, Isande whispered into his mind. Soft, be careful.
“You gave me a human asuthe,” Aiela persisted, “and told me to learn his mind. I’m kallia. I believe kastien is more important than life—but Daniel served you to the limit of his moral endurance.”
“Then he is of no further use,” said Chimele. “I shall have to take steps of my own.”
His heart lurched. “You’ll kill him.”
Chimele sat back, lifted her brows at this protest from.her kameth, but her hand paused at the console. “Do you care to stay asuthithekkhe with him while he is questioned by Tejef? Do not be distressed. It will be sudden; but those who harmed him and interfered with Ashanome will wish they had been stillborn.”
“If you can intervene to kill him, you can intervene to save him.”
“To what purpose?”
Aiela swallowed hard, screened against Isande’s interference. He sweated; the idoikkhe had taught its lesson. “It is not chanokhia to destroy him, any more than it was to use him as you did.”
The pain did not come. Chimele stared into the trembling heart of him. “Are you saying that I have erred?”
“Yes.”
“To correctly assess his abilities was your burden. To assign him was mine. His misuse has no relevance to the fact that his destruction is proper now. Your misguided giyre will cost him needless pain and lessen the arastiethe of Ashanome. If he comes living into the hands of Tejef he may well ask you why you did not let him die; and every moment we delay, intervention becomes that much more difficult.”
“He is kameth. He has that protection. It would not be honorable for Tejef to harm him.”
‘Tejef is arrhei-nasuli, an outcast. It would not be wise to assume he will be observant of nasul-chanokhia. He is not so bound, nor am I with him. He may well choose to harm him. We are wasting time.”
“Then contact that amaut aircraft and demand Daniel and the child.”
‘To what purpose?”
The question disarmed him. He snatched at some logic the iduve might recognize. “He is not useless.”
“How not? Secrecy is impossible now. Tejef will be alerted to the fact that I have a human nas kame; besides, the amaut in the aircraft would probably refuse my order. Tejef is their lord; they said so quite plainly, and amaut are nothing if not consistent. To demand and to be refused would mean that we had suffered vaikka, and I would still have to destroy a kameth of mine, having gained nothing. To risk this to save what I am bound to lose seems a pointless exercise; the odds are too high. I am not sure what you expect of me.”
“Bring him back to Ashanome. Surely you have the power to do it.”
“There is no longer time to consider that alternative. Shall I commit more personnel at Tejef’s boundaries? The risk involved is not reasonable.”
“No!” Aiela cried as she started to turn from him. He rose from his chair and leaned upon her desk, and Chimele looked up at him with that bland patience swiftly evaporating.
“What are you going to do with Priamos when you’ve destroyed him?” Aiela asked. “With three days left, what are you going to do? Blast it to cinders?”