He rose and, because it was elethia, he gave her a proper bow for meeting despite their races: she was female, though she was an enemy. She smiled and gave a nod of her graceful head.
“Be welcome, m’metane,” she said.
“Who was it who had me brought here?” he demanded, anger springing out of his voice to cover his fear. “And why did you ask for me?”
“Vaikka,” she said, and when he did not understand, she shrugged and seemed amused. “Au, m’metane, you are ignorant and anoikhte, two conditions impossible to maintain aboard Ashanome. We carry no passengers. You will be in my service.”
“No.” The answer burst out of him before he even reckoned the consequences, but she shrugged again and smiled.
“We might return to Kartos,” she said. “You might be set off there to advise them of your objections.”
“And what then?”
“I would prefer otherwise.”,
He drew a long breath, let it go again. “I see. So why do you come offering me choices? Noi kame can’t make any, can they?”
“I have scanned your records. I find your decision expected. And as for your assumption of noi kame—no: kamethi have considerable initiative; they would be useless otherwise.”
“Would you have destroyed Kartos?”
His angry question seemed for the first time to perplex the Orithain, whose gentle manner persisted. “When we threaten, m’metane, we do so because of another’s weakness, never of our own. It was highly likely that you would choose to come: elethia forbids you should refuse. If you would not, surely fear would compel them to bring you. Likewise it is certain that I would have destroyed Kartos had it refused. Any other basis for making the statement would have been highly unreasonable.”
“Was it you?” he asked. “Why did you choose me?”
“Vaikka—a matter of honor. You are of birth such that your loss will be noticed among kallia: that has a certain incidental value. And I have use for such as you: world-born, but experienced of outer worlds.”
He hated her, hated her quiet voice and her evident delight in his misery. “Well,” he said, “you’ll regret that particular choice.”
Her amethyst eyes darkened perceptibly. There was no longer a smile on her face. “Kutikkase-metane,” she said. “At the moment you are no more than sentient raw material, and it is useless to attempt rational conversation with you.”
And with blinding swiftness the white light of the cell was about him again, yielding white plastic on all sides, narrow walls, white glare. He flinched and covered his eyes, and fell to his knees again in the loneliness of that cubicle.
Then, not for the first time in the recent hour, he thought of self-destruction; but he had no convenient means, and he had still to fear her retaliation against Kartos. He slowly realized how ridiculous he had made himself with his threat against her, and was ashamed. His entire species was powerless against the likes of her, powerless because, like Kartos, like him, they would always find the alternative unthinkably costly.
He came docilely enough when they brought him out into the laboratory, expecting that they would simply lock about his wrist the idoikkhe, such as they themselves wore—that ornate platinum band that observers long ago theorized provided the Orithain their means of control over the noi kame.
Such was not the case. They had him dress in a white wrap about his waist and lie down again on the table, after which they forcibly administered a drug that made his senses swim, dispersing his panic to a vague, all-encompassing uneasiness.
He realized by now that becoming nas kame involved more than accepting that piece of jewelry—that he was going under and that he would not wake the same man. In his drugged despair he begged, he invoked deity, he pleaded with them as fellow kallia to consider what they were doing to him.
But they ignored his raving and with an economy of effort, slipped him to a movable table and put him under restraint. From that point his perceptions underwent a rapid deterioration. He was conscious, but he could not tell what he was seeing or hearing, and eventually passed over the brink.