At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) (70 page)

Suddenly Kleph thrust his light within the belly-pocket of his coveralls and Ashakh made a move for him that threw Aiela against the earthen wall, bruised; the little fellow hissed like a steam leak in the grip of the iduve, the wrong sound to make with an angry starlord; but he tried to gabble out words amid his hissing sounds of pain, and Aiela groped in the dark to try to stop the iduve from killing the creature.

“Stop, ai, stop,” wailed Kleph, when Ashakh let up enough that he could speak. He restored a bit of light from his pocket: his face was contorted with anguish. “No trick, sir, no trick—please, we are coming to an inhabited section. O be still, sirs, please.”

“Are there no other paths?” asked Ashakh.

“No, lord, not if my lord wishes to go to the port. Only a short distance through. All are sleeping. We post no guards. No humans dare come down. They hate the deeps.”

Ashakh looked at Aiela for an answer, putting the burden of judging Kleph on his shoulders, treating him as
nas;
and he would be treated as
nas
if he erred, Aiela realized with a sinking feeling; but refusing would lower him forever in this iduve’s sight. Suddenly he comprehended
arastiethe,
the compulsion to take, and not to yield:
giyre
in truth did not apply with Ashakh: one did not abdicate responsibility to the next highest—one assumed, and assumed to the limit of one’s ability, and paid for errors dearly.
Arastiethe
was in one’s self, and had great cost.

“I’ll deal with Kleph, sir,” said Aiela, “either for good or for ill, I’ll deal with him, and he had better know it.”

“I do not mean to lead you astray,” Kleph protested again in a whisper, and he pointed and doused the wan light. There appeared in the distance a faint, almost illusory glow.

Aiela kept a firm hold on Kleph’s arm while they went, and now they trod on stone, and a masonry ceiling arched overhead high enough that Ashakh might straighten without fear for his head. They came to a place where light came from dim globes mounted along the ceiling—a path that broadened into a hall, and rimmed a descending trail that wound down and down past amaut residences, side-by-side dwellings cut into the stone of the city’s foundations. A chill damp breathed out from that pit, a musty scent of water. Aiela imagined that did he find a pebble to dislodge on the rim of that place, it would fall a great way and then—as it reached the level of the river and the water table—it would splash. They were still on the heights of Weissmouth, where the tunnels could reach to great depth. In amaut reckoning, it was a fine residential area, a pleasant place of cool dark and damp. And a sound from Kleph now would bring thousands of startled sleepers awake. It occurred to Aiela that Kleph’s strength would easily suffice to hurl him to his death in the pit, were it not fear of an armed starlord behind him.

They passed on to a closer tunnel, still one where they had headroom, and where lights glowed at the intersection of all the lesser tunnels, so that they had no need of Kleph’s little globe.

And around a corner came a startled party of amaut, who carried picks upon their shoulders and light-globes on their wrists, and who scattered shrieking and hissing in terror when they saw what was among them. In a moment all the tunnels were resounding with alarm, mad echoes pealing up and down the depths, and Aiela looked back at Ashakh, who was grimly returning his weapon to his belt.

“They would not understand nor would it stop the alarm,” said Ashakh. He turned on Kleph a look that withered. “Redeem your error. Get us to safety.”

Kleph was willing. He seized Aiela’s arm to make him hurry, but shrank from contact with Ashakh, whom he urged with gestures, and took them off into one of the side corridors. The light-globe glowed into new life, their only source of illumination now, Kleph leading them where they knew not, further and further, until Aiela refused to follow more and backed the little fellow into a wall. Kleph gave a shrieking hiss and tried to vanish into another passage, but Ashakh brought his struggling to an end by his fingers laid on Kleph’s broad chest and a look that would freeze water.

“Where do you intend to take us?” Aiela demanded, seeing that Ashakh waited his intent with the creature. “I feel us going down and down.”

“Necessary, necessary, o lord nas kame. We are near the river, descending—listen! Hear the pumps working?”

It was true. In an interval of deep silence there was a faint pulsing, like a giant’s heartbeat within the maze. When they did not move, nowhere was there another sound but that. The alarm and the shouting had long since died away. Wherever they were, it seemed unlikely that this was a main corridor.

“Is there no quicker way?” Aiela asked.

“But the great lord said to take you to safety, and I have been doing that. See, there is no alarm.”

“Be silent,” said Aiela, “and stop pretending you have forgotten what we want. Whatever your personal preference, we had better come out near the port, and quickly.”

Kleph’s ugly face contorted in the swaying light, making his grimace worse than usual. He bubbled in his throat and edged past them without looking either of them in the eyes, retracing his steps to a tunnel they had bypassed. It angled faintly upward.

“O great lords,” Kleph mourned in audible undertone, “your enemies are so great and so many, and I am not a fighter, my lords, I could not hurt anyone. Please remember that.”

Ashakh hit him—no cuff, but a blow that hurled the little fellow stunned into the turning wall of the corridor; and Kleph cowered there on his knees and covered his head, shrilling a warble of alarm, a thin, sickly note. Aiela seized the amaut’s shoulder, frightened by the violence, no less frightening when he looked back at Ashakh. The iduve leaned against the stone wall, clinging by his fingers to the surface. His rose-reflecting eyes were half-lidded and pale, showing no pupil at all.

A scramble of gravel beside him warned Aiela. He spun about and whipped out his gun. Kleph froze in the act of rising.

“If you douse that light,” Aiela warned him, “I can still stop you before you get to the exit. I’ve stood between you and Ashakh until now. Don’t press my generosity any further.”

“Keep him away,” Kleph bubbled in his own language. “Keep him away.”

Aiela glanced at Ashakh, feeling his own skin crawl as he looked on that cold, mindless face: Ashakh, most brilliant of the
nasithi,
cerebral master of
Ashanome’
s computers and director of her course—bereft of reason. Kallia though he was, he felt
takkhenes,
the awareness of the internal force of that man, a life-force let loose with them into that narrow darkness, at enmity with all that was not
nas.

A slow pulse began from the
idoikkhe,
panic multiplying in Aiela’s brain as the pulse matched the pounding of his own heart; his asuthi knew, tried to hold to him. He thrust them away, his knees in contact with the ground, the gravel burning his hands, his paralyzed right hand losing its grip on the gun. Kleph was beside him, gray-green eyes wide, his hand reaching for the abandoned gun.

The pain ceased. Aiela struck left-handed at the amaut and Kleph cowered back against the wall, protesting he had only meant to help.

Aiela, Aiela,
his asuthi sent, wondering whether he was all right. But he ignored them and lurched to his feet, for Ashakh still hung against the wall, his face stricken; and Aiela sensed somehow that he was not the origin of the pain, rather that Ashakh had saved him from it. He seized the iduve, felt that lean, heavy body shudder and almost collapse. Ashakh gripped his arms in return, holding until it shut the blood from his hands, and all the while the whiteless eyes were inward and blank.

“Chaikhe,” he murmured, “Chaikhe,
nasith-tak, prha-Ashanome-ta-e-takkhe, au,
Chaikhe—Aiela, Aiela-
kameth—
”

“Here. I am here.”

“A being—whose feel is
Ashanome,
but a stranger, a stranger to me—
he,
he, reaching—hypothesis: Tejef, Tejef one-and-not-one, Khasif—Chaikhe—Chaikhe, operating machinery, extended, mindless life-force—
e-takkhe, e-takkhe, e-takkhe!
”

Stop him!
Isande cried in agony.
Stop him! He is deranged, he can die—

He—needing something?
Daniel wondered. He hated Ashakh to the depth of all that was human. Tejef had a little compassion. Ashakh was as remorseless as
Ashanome’
s machines. In a perverse way it pleased Daniel to see him suffer something.

Daniel, what is the matter with you?
Isande exclaimed in horror.

Aiela broke them asunder, for their quarreling was like to drive him mad. Isande’s presence remained on the one side, stunned, fearing Daniel; and Daniel’s on the other, hating the iduve of
Ashanome,
hating dying. That was at the center of it—hating dying, hating being sent to it by beings like Ashakh and Chimele, who loved nothing and feared nothing and needed no one.

“Ashakh.” Aiela thrust that yielding body hard against the wall and the impact seemed to reach the iduve; but moments passed before the gazed look left his eyes and he seemed to know himself again. Then he looked embarrassed and brushed off Aiela’s hands and straightened his clothing.

“
Niseth,
” he said, avoiding Aiela’s eyes. “I am disadvantaged before you.”

“No, sir,” said Aiela. “You saved my life, I think.”

Ashakh inclined his head in appreciation of that courtesy and felt of the weapon at his belt, looking thoughtfully at the amaut. It could not comfort Ashakh in the least that an outsider had witnessed his collapse, and if Kleph could have known it, he was very close to dying in that moment. But Kleph instinctively did the right thing in crouching down very small and appearing not at all to joy in the situation.

“You are correct,” said Ashakh to Aiela. “You were in danger, but it was side effect, a scattering of impulses. I feel—even yet—a disconnection, a disharmony without resolution. Tejef turned his mind to us and he is stronger than ever I felt him. He is—almost an outsider, not—outsider in the sense of
e-nasuli
but
e-iduve.
I cannot sort the minds out; they—he—Chaikhe—are involved with the machines—their impulses—hard to untangle. The strangeness burns—it confuses—”

“Perhaps,” said Aiela, ignoring Daniel’s silent indignation, “perhaps he has been too long among humans.”

Ashakh frowned. “You are
m’metane,
and you are not expected to go further in this. Tejef is a formidable man, and whatever Chimele’s orders, you are free of bond to me. It is not reasonable to waste you where there is no cause, and I doubt I shall have to face Chimele’s anger for disobeying her. Could you really aid me in some way, it would be different, but Tejef’s arrival in the city has altered the situation. She did not anticipate this when she instructed you.”

“My asuthi are aboard that ship.”

“
Au,
kameth, what do you expect to do? I shall be hard put to defend myself, and I can hardly hold him from you forever. Should I fall in the attempt, as I doubtless will, there you will stand with
that
upon your wrist and that ridiculous weapon of yours, quite helpless. In the first place you will hinder me, and in the second event, you will die for nothing.”

Aiela rested his hand on the offending pistol and looked up at the iduve with a hard set to his jaw. “My people are not killers,” he said, “but it doesn’t mean we can’t fend for ourselves.”

Ashakh hissed in contempt. “
Au.
Kallia have had the luxury to be so sparing of life ever since we came and brought order to your worlds. But Tejef will bend every effort to destroy me. If he succeeds, you are disarmed. I would cheerfully give you this weapon of mine instead, but see, there is no external control, and you can neither calibrate nor fire it. No, Chimele gave her orders, and I assume she is casting me away as she did Khasif. She forbade me to seek out Chaikhe, but you are under no such bond. I do not require you for
serach,
though it would do me honor; and I should prefer to have you providing Chaikhe contact with your asuthi aboard Tejef’s ship.”

Listen to him,
Isande urged, joy and relief flooding over her. But her happiness died when she met his determined resistance.

“No, sir,” said Aiela. “I’m going with you.”

He half expected a touch of the
idoikkhe
for his impudence, but Ashakh merely frowned.

“
Tekasuphre,
” the iduve judged. “Chimele said you were prone to unpredictable action.”

“But I am going,” Aiela said, “unless you stop me.”

Ashakh broke into a sudden grin, a thing more terrible than his frown. “A
vaikka-dhis,
then, kameth. We will do what we can do, and he will notice us before Chimele burns this wretched world to cinders.”

“Ai, sir!” wailed Kleph, and applied his hands to his mouth in dismay at his own outburst.

In the next moment he had doused the light and attempted flight. Aiela snatched at him and seized only cloth, but Ashakh’s arm stopped the amaut short, restoring light that flashed wildly about the tunnel with the flailing of Kleph’s arms, and he had the being by the throat, close to crushing it, had Aiela not intervened. Ashakh simply dropped the little wretch, and Kleph tucked himself up in a ball and moaned and rocked in misery.

“Up,” Aiela ordered him, hauling on his collar, and the amaut obediently rose, but would not look him in the face, making little hisses and thuds in his throat.

“This person is untouchable,” said Ashakh; and in his language the word was
e-takkhe,
out of
takkhenes.
No closer word to enemy existed in the iduve vocabulary, and the killing impulse burned in Ashakh’s normally placid eyes.

“I have a bond on him,” Aiela said.

“Be sure,” Ashakh replied, no more than that: iduve manners frowned on idle dispute as well as on interference with another’s considered decisions.