The feeling of wrongness persisted. Her world had been perceptibly concave, revolving in perceptible cycles, millennium upon millennium. The great convexity of Priamos seemed terrifyingly stationary, defying reason and gravity at once, and science and her senses warred.

“How can I be of use,” she cried, “when all my mind can give yours is vertigo? O Aiela, Aiela, it happens to some of us, it happens—but oh, why me? Of all people, why me?”

“Hush.” He brought her again to the bed and let her down upon it, propping her with pillows. He sat beside her, her small waist under the bridge of his arm. In deep tenderness he touched her face and wiped her angry tears and let his hand trail to her shoulder, feeling again an old familiar longing for this woman, muted by circumstances and their own distress; but he would hurt with her pain and be glad of her comfort for a reason in which the chiabreswas only incidental.

My selfishness,he thought bitterly, my cursed selfishness in bringing you here;and he felt her mind open as it had never opened, reaching at him, terrified—she would not be put away, would not be forgotten while he chased after human phantoms, would not find him dying and unreachable again.

He sealed against her. It took great effort.

Daniel,she read in tearful fury, jealousy: Daniel, Daniel, his thoughts, he—

Human beings: human ethics, human foulness—the experience of an alien being who had known the worst of his own species and of the amaut, things she had known of, but that only he had owned: the attitudes, the habits, the feelingof being human. Asuthithekkhewith Daniel had been too long, too deep; with all the darknesses left, the secrets—to a devastating degree he washuman.

“Aiela,” she pleaded, put her arms about his neck and touched face to face, one side and the other. Humans showed tenderness for each other differently. Even at such a moment he had to be aware of it, and took her hands from him—too forcefully: he touched his fingers to her cheek, trembling.

A human might have cursed, or struck at something, even at her. Aiela removed himself to the foot of the bed and sat there with his back to her, his hands laced until his azure knuckles paled; and for several moments he strove to gather up the fragments of his kastien.To strike was unproductive. To hate was unproductive. To resent Daniel, perfect in his humanity, was disorderly; for Order had drawn firm lines between their species: it was the iduve that had muddled the two of them into one, and the iduve, following their own ethic, were highly orderly.

He felt Isande stir, and foreknew that her slim hand would reach for him; and she, that he would refuse it. It is notelethia to shut me out,she sent at him. No. You think you are going to leave me and do things your own way, but I will follow you, even if my mind is all I can send.

Stop it.He arose, shut out her thoughts, and went out to the balcony.

Ashanomeburned aloft like the earliest star of evening, a star of ill omen for Priamos, ineluctable destruction. A time ago he had been a ship’s captain in what now seemed the safety of the Esliph, a giyrehardly complicated. Now he was the emissary of the Orithain, holding things the amaut could in no wise know: a day lost, the night advancing, his asuthe crippled, a mission that he could not possibly fulfill. The next noon would see the deadline expire.

Suddenly he doubted Chimele had meant for him to succeed. He was no longer even sure her arastiethewould 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 idoikkheicould 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 vaikkato 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 Ashanomethrough me—instantly, if you need to. Maybe Chimele will tolerate it—and maybe we’re lucky it’s Khasif: outside the harachiaof 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.

“Lord and lady,” the amaut exclaimed. “ Sushai.”

“ Sushai-khruuss,” Aiela responded to the courtesy. “ BnesychGerlach?”