Suddenly he doubted Chimele had meant for him to succeed. He was no longer even sure her arastiethe would permit her to rescue a pair of lost kamethi before the world turned to cinders. If he defied her and ran through the streets crying the doom to come, it would save no one: the amaut could not evacuate in time. He must witness all of it. Bitterly he lamented that the idoikkhei could not send. He would beg, he would implore Chimele to take Isande home at least.
She will not desert us, Isande sent him. But doubt was in it. Chimele did not do things carelessly: it was not negligence that had set them, unconscious and helpless, among amaut. Motives with iduve were always difficult to reckon.
Aiela’s pulse quickened with anger that Isande tried to damp, frightened as she always was at defiance of the iduve. But there was one iduve ship at hand, one that would have to leave before the attack. At that remembrance, purpose crystallized in his mind; and Isande clung to the bedpost and radiated terror.
Send me to him? Blast you, no, Aiela! No!
Aiela shut out her objections, returned to the bedside and opened his case, donned a jacket against the cool of evening, and strapped on his service pistol. Isande’s rage washed at him, frustrated by his relief at having found help for her.
She sent memories: a younger Khasif seen through the eyes of a frightened kalliran girl, attentions that had gone far beyond what she had ever admitted to anyone—being touched, trapped in a small space with an iduve whose intentions were far more dangerous than katasukke. She made him feel these things: it embarrassed them both.
“Chimele forbade us to go to Khasif,” she said, foreknowing failure. He would have a vaikka to suffer for that: he reckoned that and hoped that he would even have the chance. His mind already drifted away from her, toward the dark of Daniel’s consciousness, toward the thing he had come to do.
He is HUMAN! The word shrieked through her thoughts with a naked ugliness from which even Isande recoiled in shame.
You see why I cannot touch you, Aiela said, and hated himself for that unnecessary honesty. She could not help it: something there was that set her inner defenses working when she found Daniel coming close to her, though she strove on the surface to be amiable with him. Male and alien, her reactions screamed, and in that order.
Did Khasif do that to you? Aiela wondered, not meaning her to catch it; perhaps it was too accurate—she threw up screens and would not yield them down. Her hands sought his, her mind inaccessible.
“How do you think you can help him?” she asked aloud.
“There are all the resources of Weissmouth. Out of the amaut and the human mercenary forces, there has to be some reasonable chance of finding a way to him.”
What she thought of those chances leaked through, dismal and doomsaying. Dutifully she tried to suppress it.
“Khasif favors me,” she said. “Greatly. He will listen to me. And I am going to seal myself somewhere I won’t compromise his security or Chimele’s, so that you can communicate with Ashanome through me—instantly, if you need to. Maybe Chimele will tolerate it—and maybe we’re lucky it’s Khasif: outside the harachia of Chimele he can be a very stubborn and independent man; he may decide to help us.”
He might be stubborn about other matters: she feared that too, but she would risk that to influence him to Aiela’s help. Aiela caught that thought in dismay, almost dissuaded from his plans. But there was no other way for Isande, no other hope at all. He took her small valise from the bureau and helped her, arm about her waist, toward the door. Her faint hope that mobility would overcome the sensation of falling vanished at once: it was no better at all, and she dreaded above all to be in open spaces, with the sky yawning bottomless overhead.
Aiela expected Kleph outside. To his dismay there were three amaut, bowing and bobbing in courtesy: Kleph had acquired companions. He was surprised to see the gold disc of command on the collar of one, a tall amaut of middling years and considerable girth. That one bowed very deeply indeed.