“Send me down to Priamos, if you’re afraid I’ll leak information to Daniel. Set me out down there. I’ll take my chances with the deadline.”

Chimele considered, looked him up and down, estimating. “Break contact with Daniel,” she said. “Shut him out completely.”

He did so. The effort it needed was a great one. Daniel screamed into the back of his mind, his distrust of Chimele finding echo in Aiela’s own thoughts.

“Very well, you may have your chance,” said Chimele. “But you will sleep first, and you will be transported to Priamos under sedation—both of you. Isande is likewise a risk now.”

He opened his mouth again to protest: but Isande’s strong will otherwise silenced him. She was afraid, but she was willing to do this for him. No harm will come to us,she insisted. Chimele will not permit it. Kallia can hardly operate in secrecy on a human world, so we shall go underAshanome’ s protection. Besides, you have already pressed her to the limit of her patience.

He silently acknowledged the force of that argument, and to Chimele he bowed in respect. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it.

Chimele waved a hand in dismissal. “I know this kalliran insanity of joy in being disadvantaged. But it would be improper to let you assume I do this solely to give you pleasure. Do not begin to act rashly or carelessly, as if I were freeing you of bond to Ashanomeor responsibility to me. Be circumspect. Maintain our honor.”

“Will we receive orders from you?”

“No.” Again her violet nail touched the button, this time forcefully, “Ashakh! Wherever you are, acknowledge and report to the paredreat once.” She was becoming annoyed; and for Ashakh to be dilatory in a response was not usual.

The door from the corridor opened and Ashakh joined them; he closed the door manually, and looked to have been running.

“There was a problem,” he said, when Chimele’s expression commanded an explanation. “Mejakh is in an argumentative mood.”

“Indeed.”

“Rakhi has now made it clear to her that she is also barred from the control center. What was it you wanted of me?”

“Take Aiela and Isande to their quarters and let them collect what they need for their comfort on Priamos. Then escort them to the lab; I will give Ghiavre his instructions while you are at that. Then arrange their transport down to Priamos; and it would not be amiss to provide them arms.”

“I have my own weapon,” said Aiela, “if I have your leave to collect it from storage.”

“Armament can provide you one more effective, I am sure.”

“I am kallia. I’m afraid if I had a lethal weapon in my hands I couldn’t fire it. Give me my own. Otherwise I can’t defend myself as I may need to.”

“Your logic is peculiar to your people, I know, but I perceive your reasoning. Take it, then. And as for instruction, kamethi—I provide you none. I am sure your knowledge of Priamos and of Daniel is thorough, and I trust you to remember your responsibility to Ashanome.One thing I forbid you: do not go to Khasif and do not expect him to compromise himself to aid you. You are dismissed.”

Aiela bowed a final thanks, waited for Isande, and walked as steadily as he could after Ashakh. Isande held his arm. Her mind tried to occupy his, washing it clean of the pain and the weakness. He forbade that furiously, for it hurt her as well.

In his other consciousness he was being handled roughly down a ramp, provided a dizzying view of a daylit sky: he dreaded to think what could happen to Daniel while he was helpless to advise him, and he imagined what Daniel must think, abandoned as he had been without explanation. We’ll be there,Aiela sent, defying orders; hold on, we’re coming;but Daniel was fainting. He stumbled, and Isande hauled up against him with all her strength.

“Ashakh!”

The tall iduve stopped abruptly at the corridor intersection a pace ahead of them and roughly shoved them back. Mejakh confronted them, disheveled and with a look of wildness in her eyes.

“They are killing me!” she cried hoarsely and lurched at Ashakh. “O nas,they are killing me—”

“Put yourself to order, nasith,” said Ashakh coldly, thrusting off her hands. “There are witnesses.”

Mejakh’s violet eyes rolled aside to Aiela and back again, showing whites at the corners, her lips parted upon her serrate teeth. “What is Chimele up to?” she demanded. “What insanity is she plotting, that she keeps me from controls? Why will no one realize what she is doing to the nasul? O nas,do you not see why she has sent Khasif away? She has attacked me; Khasif is gone. And you have opposed her—do you not see? All that dispute her—all that protest against her intentions—die.”

“Get back,” Ashakh hissed, barring the corridor to her with his arm.

Aiela felt the idoikkheand doubled; but Ashakh’s will held that off too, and he shouted at the both of them to run for their lives.

Aiela stumbled aside, Isande’s hand in his, Mejakh’s harsh voice pursuing them. He saw only closed doors ahead, a monitor panel at the corner such as there was at every turning. He reached it and hit the emergency button.

“Security!” he cried, dispensing with location: the board told them that. “Mejakh—!”

Through Isande’s backturned eyes he saw Ashakh recoil in surprise as Mejakh threatened him with a pistol. It burned the wall where Ashakh had been and had he not gone sprawling he would have been a dead man. His control of the idoikkheifaltered. Isande’s scream was half Aiela’s.

The weapon in Mejakh’s hand swung left, drawn from Ashakh by the sound. Down!Aiela shrieked at Isande and they separated by mutual impulse, low. The smell of scorched plastics and ozone attended the shot that missed them.

Ashakh heaved upward, hit Mejakh with his shoulder, sending her into the back wall of the corridor with a thunderous crash; but she did not fall, and locked in a struggle with him, he seeking to wrest the gun from her hand, she seeking to use it. Aiela scrambled across the intervening distance, Isande’s mind wailing terror into his, telling him it was suicide; but Ashakh maintained a tight hold on the idoikkheinow so that Mejakh could not send. Aiela seized Mejakh’s other arm to keep her from using her hand on Ashakh’s throat.

It was like grappling with a machine. Muscles like steel cables dragged irresistibly away from his grip, and when he persisted she struck at him, denting the wall instead and hurting her hand. She swung Ashakh into the way, trying to batter them both against the wall, and Aiela realized to his horror that Isande had thrown herself into the struggle too, trying vainly to distract Mejakh.

Suddenly Mejakh ceased fighting, and so did Ashakh. About them had gathered a number of iduve, male and female, a dhisaisin her red robes, three dhis-guardians in their scarlet-bordered black and bearing their antique ghiakai.Mejakh disengaged, backed from them. Ashakh with offended dignity straightened his torn clothing and turned upon her a deliberate stare. It was all that any of them did.

The door of the paredreopened at the other end of the corridor and Chimele was with them. Mejakh had been going in that direction. Now she stopped. She seemed almost to shrink in stature. Her movements hesitated in one direction and the other.

Then with a hiss rising to a shriek she whirled upon Ashakh. The ghiakaiof the dhis-guardians whispered from their sheaths, and Aiela seized Isande and pulled her as flat against the wall as they could get, for they were between Mejakh and the others. From the dhisaiscame a strange keening, a moan that stirred the hair at the napes of their necks.

“Mejakh,” said Chimele, causing her to turn. For a moment there was absolute silence. Then Mejakh crumpled into a knot of limbs, her two arms locked across her face. She began to sway and to moan as if is pain.