It built in strength.
Different:that was the overwhelming impression, a force that ran over his nerves without his willing it, callous and unfamiliar. It invaded the various centers of his brain, probing one and another with painful rapidity. Light blazed and faded, equilibrium wavered, sounds roared in his ears, hot and cold affected his skin.
Then it invaded his thoughts, his memories, his inmost privacy.
O God!he thought he cried, like a man dying. There was a silence so dark and sudden it was like falling. He was leaning against the viewport, chilled by it. People were staring at him. Some even looked concerned. He straightened and shifted his eyes from the reflection to the stars beyond, to the dark.
“I am Isande.” There grew a voice in his mind that had tone without sound, as a man could imagine the sound of his own voice when it was silent. A flawed dim image of the concourse filled his eyes. He saw the viewport at a distance, marked a slender man who seemed tiny against it—all this overlaid upon his own view of space. He recognized the man for himself, and turned, seeing things from two sides at once. Imposed on his own self now was a distant figure he knew for Isande: he felt her exhaustion, her impatience.
“I’ll meet you in your quarters,” she sent.
Her turning shifted his vision, causing him to stagger off-balance; reflex stopped the image, screened her out. He suddenly realized he had that defense, tried it again—he could not cope with the double vision while either of them was moving. He shut it down, an irregular flutter of on-off. It was hard to will a thing that decisively, that strongly, but it could be done.
And he began to suspect Chimele had been honest when she told him that kamethi found the chiabresno terror. It was a power, a compensation for the idoikkhe,a door one could fling wide or close at will.
Only what territory lay beyond depended entirely on the conscience of another being—on two asuthi, one of whom might be little removed from madness.
He did not touch her mind again until he had opened the door of his quarters: she was seated in his preferred chair in a relaxed attitude as if she had a perfect right to his things. When he realized she was speculating on the pictures on the bureau she pirated the knowledge of his family from his mind, ripped forth a flood of memories that in his disorganization he could not prevent. He reacted with fury, felt her retreat.
“I’m sorry,” she said smoothly, shielding her own thoughts with an expertise his most concentrated effort could not penetrate. She gestured toward the other chair and wished him seated.
“These are my quarters,” he said, still standing. “Or do they move you in with me? Do they assume that too?”
Her mind closed utterly when she felt that, and he could not reach her. He had thought her beautiful when he first saw her asleep; but now that her body moved, now that those blue eyes met his, it was with an arrogance that disturbed him even through the turmoil of his other thoughts. There was a mind behind that pretty façade, strong-willed and powerful, and that was not an impression beautiful women usually chose to send him. He was not sure he liked it.
He was less sure he liked her, despite her physical attractions.
“I have my own quarters,” she said aloud. “And don’t be self-centered. Your choices are limited, and Iam not one of them.”
She ruffled through his thoughts with skill against which he had no defense, and met his temper with contempt. He thrust her out, but the least wavering of his determination let her slip through again; it was a continuing battle. He took the other chair, exhausted, beginning to panic, feeling that he was going to lose everything. He would even have struck her—he would have been shamed by that.
And she received that, and mentally backed off in great haste. “Well,” she conceded then, “I am sorry. I am rude. I admit that.”
“You resent me.” He spoke aloud. He was not comfortable with the chiabres.And what she radiated confirmed his impression: she tried to suppress it, succeeded after a moment.
“I wanted what you are assigned to do,” she said, “very badly.”
“I’ll yield you the honor.”
Her mind slammed shut, her lips set. But something escaped her barriers, some deep and private grief that touched him and damped his anger.
“Neither you nor I have that choice,” she said. “Chimele decides. There is no appeal.”
Chimele.He recalled the Orithain’s image with hate in his mind, expected sympathy from Isande’s, and did not receive it. Other images took shape, sendings from Isande, different feelings: he flinched from them.
For nine thousand years Isande’s ancestors had served the Orithain. She took pride in that.
Iduve,she sent, correcting him. Chimele isthe Orithain; the people are iduve.
The words were toneless this time, but different from his own knowledge. He tried to push them out.
The ship isAshanome, she continued, ignoring his awkward attempt to cast her back. WE areAshanome: five thousand iduve, seven thousand noi kame, and fifteen hundred amaut. The iduve call it a nasul, a clan. Thenasul Ashanome is above twelve thousand years old; the shipAshanome is nine thousand years from her launching, seven thousand years old in this present form. Chimele rules here. That is the law in this world of ours.
He flung himself to his feet, finding in movement, in any distraction, the power to push back Isande’s insistent thoughts. He began to panic: Isande retreated.
“You do not believe,” she said aloud, “that you can stop me. You could, if you believed you could.”
She pitiedhim. It was a mortification as great as any the iduve had set upon him. He rounded on her with anger ready to pour forth, met a frightened, defensive flutter of her hand, a sealing of her mind he could not penetrate.
“No,” she said. “Aiela—no. You will hurt us both.”
“I have had enough,” he said, “from the iduve—from noi kame in general. They are doing this to me—”
“—to us.”
“Why?”
“Sit down. Please.”
He leaned a moment against the bureau, stubborn and intractable; but she was prepared to wait. Eventually he yielded and settled on the arm of his chair, knowing well enough that she could perceive the distress that burned along his nerves, that threatened the remnant of his self control.
You fear the iduve,she observed. Sensible. But they do not hate; they do not love. I am Chimele’s friend. But Chimele’s language hasn’t a single word for any of those things. Don’t attribute to them motives they can’t have. There is something you must do in Chimele’s service: when you have done it, you will be let alone. Not thanked: let alone. That is the way of things.
“Is it?” he asked bitterly. “Is that all you get from them—to be left alone?”
Memory, swift and involuntary: a dark hall, an iduve face, terror. Thought caught it up, unraveled, explained. Khasif: Chimele’s half-brother. Yes, they feel. But if you are wise, you avoid causing it.Isande had escaped that hall; Chimele had intervened for her. It haunted her nightmares, that encounter, sent tremors over her whenever she must face that man.
To be let alone: Isande sought that diligently.
And something else had been implicit in that instant’s memory, another being’s outrage, another man’s fear for her—as close and as real as his own.
Another asuthe.
Isande shut that off from him, firmly, grieving. “Reha,” she said. “His name was Reha. You could not know me a moment without perceiving him.”
“Where is he?”
“Dead.” Screening fell, mind unfolding, willfully.
Dark, and cold, and pain: a mind dying and still sending, horrified, wide open. Instruments about him, blinding light. Isande had held to him until there was an end, hurting, refusing to let go until the incredible fact of his own death swallowed him up. Aiela felt it with her, her fierce loyalty, Reha’s terror—knew vicariously what it was to die, and sat shivering and sane in his own person afterward.