He took her hand again, a dry, strong grip that frightened her, for he could crush the bones if he closed down harder. “And where would you go after? There’s not going to be anything left back there.”
“I want to go home.”
“You can’t. Think. Think of some place safe I could leave you.”
“I don’t know any.”
“If I left you right here, could you walk down from the heights to the river? Could you walk that far?”
She looked at him in dismay. The river was visible from the heights, far, far down in the valley. When they went, it meant taking the truck and going a long distance down the road. She could not imagine how long it would take to walk it, and it was hot in the daytime—and there were men like him on the roads. She began to cry, not alone for that, for everything, and she cried so hard she was about to be sick. But he shook her roughly and slapped her face. The hurt was already so much inside that she hardly knew the pain, except that she was afraid of them and she was going to be sick at her stomach. Out of fear she swallowed down the tears and the sickness with them.
“You have to think of somewhere I can put you. Stop that sniffling and think.”
“I want to go home,” she cried, at which he looked at her strangely and his grip lessened on her arm. He smoothed her hair and touched her face.
“I know you do. I know. You can’t.”
“Let me go.”
“They’re dead back there, can’t you understand that? If they catch either one of us now they’ll skin us alive. I have to get rid of you.”
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Then she thought he would hit her. She screamed and flinched back. But instead he put his arms about her, picked her up, hugged her head down into his shoulder, rocking her in his arms as if she had been an infant. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Aiela took the corridor to the paredre, his mind boiling with frustration and smothered kalliran and human obscenities, and raged at Isande’s gentle presence in his thoughts until she let him alone. For fifteen precious days he had monitored Daniel’s every movement. The human language began to come more readily than the kalliran: human filth and human images poured constantly through his senses, blurring his own perception of what passed about him, cannibalizing his own life, his own separate thoughts.
Now, confronted by an iduve at the door of the paredre, he could scarcely gather enough fluency to explain his presence in any civilized language. The iduve looked at him sharply, for his behavior showed a mental disorder that was suspect, but Chimele had given standing orders and the man relented.
“Aiela?” Chimele arose from her desk across the room, her brows lifted in the iduve approximation of alarm. Aiela bowed very low. Courtesy demanded it, considering the news he bore.
“Daniel has encountered a difficulty,” he said.
“Be precise.” Chimele took a chair with a mate opposite and gestured him to sit.
“The Upweiss raid,” Aiela began hoarsely: Chimele insisted upon the chronological essentials of a thing. He forced his mind into order, screened against the random. impulses that fed from Daniel’s mind and the anxious sympathy from Isande’s. “It went as scheduled. Anderson’s unit hit the Mar estate. Daniel hung back—“
“He was not to do so,” Chimele said.
“I warned him; I warned him strongly. He knows Anderson’s suspicions of him. But Daniel can’t do the things these men do. His conscience—his honor” he amended, trying to choose words that had clear meaning for Chimele—“is offended over the killings. He had to kill a man in the last raid.”
Chimele made a dismissing move of her hand. “He was attacked.”
“I could explain the human ethical—“
“Explain what is at hand.”
‘There was a child—a girl. It was a crisis. I tried to reason with him. He shut me out and took her away. He is still going, deserting Anderson—and us.”
There were no curses in the iduve language. Possibly that contributed to their fierceness. Chimele said nothing.
“I’m trying to reason with him,” Aiela said. “He’s exhausted—drained. He hasn’t slept in twenty hours. He lay awake last night, sick over the prospect of this raid. He’s going on little sleep, no water, no food. He can’t expect to find water as he’s heading, not until the river. They can’t make it.”
“This is not a rational human response.” That was a question. Chimele’s voice had an utter calm, not a good sign in an iduve.
“It is a human response, but it is not rational.”
Chimele hissed and rose, hands on her hips. “Is it not your duty to anticipate such responses and deal with them?”
“I don’t blame him,” he said. Then, from his heart: ‘Tin only afraid I might have done otherwise.” And that thought so depressed him he felt tears rise. Chimele looked down on him in incredulity.
“Au, by what am I served? Explain. I am patient. Is this a predictable response?”
Aiela could have screamed aloud. The paredre faded. He shivered in the cold of a Priamid night, the glory of spiraling ribbons of stars overhead, the fragile sweet warmth of another being in his arms. Tears filled his eyes; his breath caught.
“Aiela,” Chimele said. The iduve could not cry; they lacked the reflex. The remembrance of that made him ashamed in her sight.
“The reaction,” he said, “is probably instinct. I—have grown so much into him I—cannot tell. I cannot judge what he does any longer. It seems right to me.”
“Is it dhis-instinct, a response to this child?”
“Something like that,” he said, grateful for her attempt at equation. Chimele considered that for a moment, her eyes more perplexed now than angry.
“It is difficult to rely on such unknown quantities. I offer my regret for what you must be feeling, though I am not sure I can comprehend it. Other humans—like Anderson—are immune to this emotion where the young are concerned. Why does Daniel succumb?”
“I don’t live inside Anderson. I don’t know what goes on in his twisted mind. I only know Daniel—this night—could not have done otherwise.”
“Kindly explain to Daniel that we have approximately three days left, his time. That Priamos itself has scarcely that long to live, and that he and the child will be among a million beings perishing if we have to resort to massive attack on this world.”
“I’ve tried. He knows these things, intellectually, but he shuts me out. He refuses to think of that.”
“Then we have wasted fifteen valuable days.”
“Is that all?”
There was hysteria in his voice; and it elicited from Chimele a curious look, the embarrassment of an observer who had no impulse to what he felt.
“You are exhausted,” she judged. “You can be sedated for the rest of the world’s night. You can do nothing more with this person and I know how long you have worked without true rest.”
“No.” He assumed a taut control of his voice and slowed his breathing. “I know Daniel. Good sense will come back to him after he has run awhile. That area is swarming with trouble in all forms. He will need me.”
“I honor your persistence. Stay in the paredre. If you are going to attempt to advise him I should prefer to know how you are faring. If you change your mind about the sedation, tell me; if we are to lose Daniel, your own knowledge of humans becomes twice valuable. I do not want to risk your health. I leave matters in your hands; rest, if you can.”
“Thank you.” He drew himself to his feet, bowed, and moved away. “Aiela.” He looked back.
“When you have found an explanation for his behavior, give it to me. I shall be interested.”
He bowed once more, struggling between loathing and love for the iduve, and decided for the moment on love. She did try. She tried with her mind where her heart was inadequate, but she wanted to know.