“For my own kamethi,” Tejef admitted, “I have great regret. But I shall not regret having a few of Chimele’s for serach.”

“There’s no sense in all these people dying. Where is the arastiethein that? Give up.”

“Hopelessly irrational, m’metane. Arastietheis to possess and not to yield. I am iduve. Express me that thought of yours in my own language, if you can.”

That set the human back, for of course it was a contradiction and could not be translated to mean the same thing. “But,” Daniel persisted, “you iduve claim to be the most intelligent of species—and can’t you and Chimele resolve a quarrel short of this?”

“Yet your species fights wars,” said Tejef, “and mine does not. I have a great m’melakhiafor your kind, human, I truly do. I do not willingly harm you, and if I were able, I would spend time among your worlds learning what you are. But you know my people, however lately you are kameth and asuthe. I think you know enough to understand. There is vaikkainvolved; and to yield is to die; morally and physically, it is to die. One cannot survive without arastiethe.”

“And what arastiethehave you,” Daniel cried, “if you are unable to save even your own kamethi, that trust you?”

“They are mine,” Tejef answered, lost in Daniel’s tangled logic.

“Because you have taken advantage of them, because you hold the truth from them—because they trust you’re going to protect them.”

“Daniel!” Arle cried, alarmed by the shouting if not the knowledge of what he had said. That was what saved him, for she thrust herself between, and her high, thin voice chilled the air.

Tejef turned away abruptly, painfully aware of the illogicalities at war in him. His pulse raced, the skin at the base of his scalp tightened, his respiration quickened. He knew that he must remove himself from the harachiaof these beings before he lost his dignity entirely. Khasif’s takkhenoisand the harachiaof Mejakh’s corpse had upset him: the nearness of other iduve reminded him of reality, of forgotten chanokhia.He had set humans in the dhis;and now he had lost control of them. The child should not have come out. He himself had brought a strange male to them, reckoning human chanokhiadifferent: but he had erred. He had been disadvantaged, had affronted the honor of Margaret, who was almost nas,and this child he had given to her he had allowed to be seen—to be touched—by this m’metane-toj.All his careful manipulation of humans lost its important in the face of simple decency. Harachiatore at his senses, almost as if they three, human: male, female, and child, possessed a takkhenesunited against him—when m’metaneicould possess no such thing. Hewas the one who had given them power against him. Perverted, the kalliran language expressed it: his own had not even the concept to lend shape to his fears about himself.

“Tejef.” Margaret’s light steps came up behind him; her hand caught his arm. “Tejef? What’s wrong? What did he say?”

“Go back!” he cried at her, realizing with a tightening of his stomach she had abandoned Arle and the open dhisto Daniel. “Go!”

“What’s wrong?” she asked insistently. “Tejef—”

He had wanted this female, still wanted her; and her contaminating touch brought a swell of rage into his throat. What else she said he did not hear, and only half realized the reflexive sweep of his arm, her shriek of terror abruptly silenced. It shocked the anger out of him, that cry: he was already turning, saw her hit the wall and the wall bow before she slid down, and the child screamed like an echo of Margaret. He fell to his knees beside her, touched her face and tried to ease the limbs that were twisted and broken, strained by the way she was lying.

Daniel grasped his shoulder to jerk him back, and Tejef hit him with a violence that meant to kill: but the human was quick and only the side of his arm connected, casting him sprawling across the polished floor. He rolled and scrambled up to the attack.

“No!” Arle wailed, stopping him, wisely stopping him; and Tejef turned his attention back to Margaret.

She was conscious, and sobbed in pain as he tried to ease her legs straight; and Tejef jerked back his hands, wiping them on his thighs, desiring to turn and kill the human for witnessing this, for causing it. But Arle was between them, and when Margaret began to cry Daniel moved the child aside and knelt down disregarding Tejef, comforting Margaret in her own language with far more fluency than Tejef could use.

Tejef seized Daniel’s wrist when he ventured to touch her, but the human only stared at him as if he realized the aberrance of an iduve who could not rule his own temper.

The amaut must be called. Tejef arose and did so, and in a mercifully little time they had Margaret bundled neatly onto a stretcher and on her way to Dlechish and the surgery. Tejef watched, wanting to accompany them, ill content to wait and not to know; but he would not be further shamed before the amaut, and he would not go.

He felt Arle’s light fingers on his hand and looked down into her earnest face.

“Can I please go with her, sir?”

“No,” said Tejef; and her small features contracted into tears. He cast a look over her head, appealing to Daniel. “What is your custom?” he asked in desperation. “What is right?”

Daniel came then, hugged Arle to him and quieted her sobs, saying all the proper and fluent human things that comforted her. “Perhaps,” he said to her insistence, “perhaps they’ll let you come up and sit with her later, when she’s able to know you’re there. But she’ll be asleep in a moment. Now go on, go on back into your apartments and wash your face. Come on, come on now, stop the tears.”

She hugged him tightly a moment, and then ran away inside, into the echoing hall of the dhiswhere neither of them could follow.

“I will honor your promises to her,” Tejef told Daniel with great restraint. “Now go up to surgery. I want someone with her who can translate for the amaut. Dlechish does not have great fluency in human speech.”

“And what happens,” Daniel asked, “when you lose your temper with Arle the way you just did with her?”

Tejef drew a quick breath, choking down his anger. “I had no wish to harm my kamethi.”

Daniel only stared at him, thinking, or perhaps receiving something from his asuthe. Then he nodded slowly. “You care for them,” he observed, as if this were a highly significant thing.

“ M’melakhiadoes not apply. They aremine already.” He did not know why he felt compelled to argue with a m’metane,except that the human had puzzled him with that word. He felt suddenly the gulf of language, and wished anew that he understood metanebehavior. Arastiethewould not let him ask.

“Call Ashanome,” Daniel said softly. “Surrender. The kamethi do not have to die.”

Tejef felt a chill, for the human’s persistent suggestion quite lost its humor; he meant it seriously. It was human to do such a thing, to give up one’s own arastietheand become nothing. The inverted logic that permitted such thinking seemed for the moment frighteningly real.

“Did I ask your advice?” Tejef replied. “Go up to surgery.”

“She might take it kindly if you came. That is our arastiethe,knowing someone cares. We also tend to die when we are denied it.”

Tejef pondered that, for it explained much, and posed more questions. Was that caring,he wondered; and did it always demand that one yield arastietheby demonstrating concern? But if human honor were measured by gathering concern to one’s self, then it was by seeking and accepting favors: the perversity of the idea turned reason itself inside out. In that realization the cleanliness of death at the hands of Ashanomeseemed almost an attractive prospect. His own honor was not safe in the hands of humans; and perhaps he wounded his own kamethi—and Margaret—in the same way.