At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (64 page)

“I should prefer to reason with you,” said Tejef.

“If
that’s
your aim, try reasoning with Chimele. Haven’t you sense enough to know you’re going to get yourself killed?”

“Then it is important,” said Tejef, “to do so properly, is it not? What does your asuthe say to that?”

Daniel told him, plainly; and Tejef laughed.

“Please,” Daniel pleaded. “Where is Arle? Is she all right?”

“Yes. Quite safe.”

“Please let me see her.”

“No,” said Tejef; but he knew his anger on the subject was, in human terms, irrational. The child herself incessantly begged for this meeting, and, child of the
dhis
as she was, she was human, only human, and knew Daniel for
nas
—a friend, as she put it. It was not the same as if she had been iduve young, and it was well for him to remember it.

Then it occurred to him that a human according to his peculiar ethic would feel a certain obligation for the favor:
nisethkame,
paradoxical as the term was.

“Arle is not from
Ashanome,
” Daniel persisted. “She is no possible harm to you.”

Tejef reasoned away his disgust, reminding himself that sometimes it was necessary to deal with
m’metanei
as
m’metanei,
expecting no
arastiethe
in them.

“I shall take you where she is,” said Tejef.

Margaret answered the call to the door of the
dhis,
but Arle was not far behind her, and Tejef was quite unprepared for the child’s wild shout and her plunge out the door into Daniel’s arms. The man embraced her tightly, asking over and over again was she well, until she had lost her breath and he set her back. But then the child turned to Tejef and wanted to embrace him too. He stiffened at the thought, but as he recoiled she remembered her manners and refrained, hands still open as if she did not know what else to do with them.

“You see,” Tejef told her. “Daniel walks; he is well. Be not so uncontrolled, Arle.”

She dried her face dutifully and crept back to the shelter of Daniel’s arm: the touch between them frayed at Tejef’s sensibilities.

“He hasn’t hurt you—he hasn’t touched you?” Daniel insisted to know, and when Arle protested that she had been treated very well indeed, Daniel seemed both confused and relieved. He caressed the side of her face with the edge of his hand and gave a slight nod of courtesy to Margaret and to Tejef. “Thank you,” he said in the kalliran tongue. “But when your time is up and Chimele attacks—what is your kindness to her worth?”

“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
arastiethe
in that? Give up.”

“Hopelessly irrational,
m’metane. Arastiethe
is 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’melakhia
for 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
vaikka
involved; and to yield is to die; morally and physically, it is to die. One cannot survive without
arastiethe.
”

“And what
arastiethe
have 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
harachia
of these beings before he lost his dignity entirely. Khasif’s
takkhenois
and the
harachia
of 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
chanokhia
different: 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.
Harachia
tore at his senses, almost as if they three, human: male, female, and child, possessed a
takkhenes
united against him—when
m’metanei
could possess no such thing.
He
was 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
dhis
to 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
dhis
where 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’melakhia
does not apply. They
are
mine 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
metane
behavior.
Arastiethe
would 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
arastiethe
and 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
arastiethe
by 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
Ashanome
seemed 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.

“Will you come up?” Daniel asked.

“Go,” Tejef ordered. “Put yourself in the hands of one of the kamethi and he will escort you there at your asking.”

“Yes, sir.” Daniel bowed with quiet courtesy and walked away to the lift. It was kalliran, Tejef realized belatedly, and was warmed by the fact that Daniel had chosen to pay him that respect, for humans did not generally use that custom. It filled him with regret for the clean spaciousness of
Ashanome,
for familiar folk of honorable habits and predictable nature.

The lift ascended, and Tejef turned away toward the door of the
dhis,
troubled by the
harachia
of the place where Margaret had lain, a dent in the metal paneling where her fragile body had hit. She had often disadvantaged him, held him from
vaikka
against humans and amaut, shamed him by her attentions. It was not the deference of a kameth but the tenacious
m’melakhia
of a
nasith-tak
—but of course there was no
takkhenes,
no oneness in it; and it depended not at all on him. She simply chose to belong to him and him to belong to her, and the solitary determination of her had an
arastiethe
about it which made him suspect that he was the recipient of a
vaikka
he could only dimly comprehend.

He was bitterly ashamed of the grief his perverted emotion had brought her in all things, for in one private part of his thoughts he knew absolutely what he had done, saw through his own pretenses, and began now to suspect that he had hurt her in ways no iduve could comprehend. For the first time he felt the full helplessness of himself among a people who could not pay him the
arastiethe
his heart needed, and he felt fouled and grieved at the offering they did give him. The contradictions were madness; they gathered about him like a great darkness, in which nothing was understandable.

“Sir?” Arle was in the doorway again, looking up at him with great concern (
arastiethe? Vaikka?
) in her kallia-like eyes. “Sir, where’s Daniel?”

“Gone. Up. With Margaret. With Dlechish. He can talk for her. She has great avoidance for amaut: I think all humans have this. But Dlechish—he cares for her; and Daniel will stay with her.” It was one of the longest explanations in the human language he had attempted with anyone but Margaret or Gordon. He saw the anger in the child’s eyes soften and yield to tears, and he did not know whether that was a good sign or ill. Humans wept for so many causes.

“Is she going to die?”

“Maybe.”

The honest answer seemed to startle the child; yet he did not know why. Plainly the injuries were serious. Perhaps it was his tone. The tears broke.

“Why did you have to hit her?” she cried.

He frowned helplessly. He could not have spoken that aloud had he been fluent. And out of the plenitude of contradictions that made up humans, the child reached for him.

He recoiled, and she laced her fingers together as if the compulsion to touch were overwhelming. She gulped down the tears. “She loves you,” she said. “She said you would never want to hurt anybody.”

“I don’t understand,” he protested; but he thought that some gesture of courtesy was appropriate to her distress. Because it was what Margaret would have done, he reached out to her and touched her gently. “Go back to the
dhis.
”