The others started forward. Chimele hissed a strong negative, and they paused.

“You have chosen,” said Chimele to Mejakh.

Mejakh twisted her body aside, gathered herself so that her back was to them, and began to retreat. The retreat became a sidling as she passed the others. Then she ran a few paces, bent over, pausing to look back. There was a terrible stillness in the ship, only Mejakh’s footsteps hurrying more and more quickly, racing away into distant silence.

The others waited still in great solemnity. Ashakh took Aiela and Isande each by an arm and escorted them back to Chimele.

“Are you injured?” Chimele asked in a cold voice.

“No,” said Aiela, finding it difficult to speak in all that silence. He could scarcely hear his own voice. Isande’s contact was almost imperceptible.

“Then pass from this hall as quickly as you may. Do you not see the dhisais?You are in mortal danger. Keep by Ashakh’s side and walk out of here very quietly.”

8

It was done at last. From his vantage point behind the glass Tejef watched the human grow still under the anesthetic and trusted him to the workmanlike mercies of the amaut physician—not an auspicious prospect if the wounds were much worse, if there were shattered joints or pieces missing. Then it would need the artistry of an iduve of the Physicians’ order. Tejef himself had only a passing acquaintance with the apparatus that equipped his ship’s surgery, a patch-and-hope adequacy that had been able to save a few human lives on Priamos. He had not sought them out, of course, but occasionally the okkitani-asbrought them in, and a few rash humans had actually come begging asylum, desperate and thirsty in the grasslands that surrounded the ship. Most injured that Tejef had treated lived, and acknowledged themselves mortally disadvantaged, and, in the curious custom of their kind, bound themselves earnestly to serve him. He was proud of this. He had gathered twenty-three humans in this way. They were not kamethi in the usual sense, for he had no access to chiabresor idoikkhei;still he reasoned that their service gave him a certain arastiethe,and although it was improper to hold m’metaneiby no honorable bond of loyalty, but only their own acknowledged disadvantage, that was the way of these beings, and he accepted the offering. He had also a hundred of the amaut attending him as okkitani-as,and had others dispersed into every center of amaut authority on Priamos. The amaut knew indeed that there was an iduve among them and they took him into account when they made their plans. In fact, he had directly applied pressure on their high command to give him this surgeon, for it was not proper that he practice publicly what was to him only an amateurish skill. He had been of the order of Science, and although it was his doom to perish world-bound, he still had some pride left in his order, not to soil his hands with work inexpertly done.

As his glance swept the small surgery his attention came again to the small yellow person who had defended the man so bravely. He remembered her hovering on this side and on that of the wounded man as he was borne across the field to the ship, darting one way and the other among the irritated amaut to keep sight of him while they brought him in, actually attacking one—a mottled, thick-necked fellow—who tried to keep her out of the surgery. She had gone for him with her teeth, that being all she had for weapons, and being batted aside, she darted under his reach and ensconced herself on a cabinet top in the corner, defying them all. Tejef had laughed to see it, although he laughed but seldom these days.

Now the wretched little creature sat watching the surgeon work, her face gone a sickly color even for a human. Her hand clutched her rag of a garment to her flat chest; her feet and knees were bloody and incredibly filthy—by no means proper for the surgery. She had not stopped fighting. She fairly bristled each time one of the amaut came near her in his ministrations, and then her eyes would dart again mistrustfully to see what the surgeon was doing with the man.

Tejef opened the door, signed the amaut not to notice him. Her eyes took him in too, seeming to debate whether he needed to be fought also.

“It’s all right,” he told her, exercising his scant command of her language. She looked at him doubtfully, then unwound her thin legs and came off the countertop, her lips trembling. When he beckoned her she ran to him, and to his dismay she flung her thin dirty arms about him and pressed her damp face against his ribs: he recoiled slightly, ashamed to be so treated before the amaut, who wisely pretended not to notice. The child poured at him a veritable flood of words, much more rapidly than he could comprehend, but she seemed by her actions to expect his protection.

“Much slower,” he said. “I can’t understand you.”

“Will he be all right?” she asked of him. “Please, please help us.”

Perhaps, he thought, it was because there was a certain physical similarity between iduve and human: perhaps to her desperate need he looked to be of her kind. He had schooled himself to a certain patience with humans. She was very young and it was doubtless a great shock to her to be hurled out of the security of the dhisinto this frightening profusion of faces and events. Even young iduve had been known to behave with less chanokhia.

“Hush,” he said, setting her back and making her straighten her shoulders. “They make him live. You—come with me.”

“No. I don’t want to.”

His hand moved to strike; he would have done so had a youngish iduve been insubordinate. But the shock and incomprehension on her face stopped him, and he quickly disguised the gesture, twice embarrassed before the okkitani-as.Instead he seized her arm—carefully, for m’metaneiwere inclined to fragility and she was as insubstantial as a stem of grass. He marched her irresistibly from the infirmary and down the corridor.

A human attendant was just outside the section. The child looked up at the being of her own species in tearful appeal, but she made no attempt to flee to him.

“Call Margaret to the dhis,” Tejef ordered the man, and continued on his way, slowing his step when he realized how the child was having to hurry to keep up with him.

“Where are we going?” she asked him.

“I will find proper—a proper—place for you. What is your name, m’metane?”

“Arle. Please let go my arm. I’ll come.”

He did so, giving her a little nod of approval. “Arle. I am Tejef. Who is your companion? Is he—a relative?”

“No.” She shook her head violently. “But he’s my friend. I want him to be all right—please—I don’t want him to be alone with them.”

“With the amaut? He is safe. Friend:I understand this idea. I have learned it.”

“What are you?” she asked him plainly. “And what are the amaut and why did they treat Daniel like that?”

The questions were overwhelming. He struggled to think in her language and abandoned the effort. “I am iduve,” he said. “Ask your kind. I don’t know enough words.” He paused at the entrance of the lift and set his hand on her shoulder, causing her to look up. It was a fine face, an impossibly delicate body. A creature of air and light, he thought in his own language, and rejected it as an expression more appropriate to Chaikhe than to one of his order. As an iduve this little creature would scarcely have survived the dhis,where the strength to take meant the right to eat and a nasof small stature or nameless birth needed extraordinary wit and will to live. He had survived despite the active persecution of the dhisaiseiand of Mejakh, and he had done so by a determination out of proportion to his origins. He prized such a trait wherever he found it.