C. J. Cherryh - Hunter of Worlds

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HUNTER OF WORLDS
COPYRIGHT ©, 1977, BY C. J. CHERRYH All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by John Pound. Frontispiece sketch by the author.
To my mother, to my father, and to David.
FIRST DAW PRINTING, AUGUST 1977 3456789
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S PAT.OFF. MARCA REGISTRADA. HECHO EN U.S.A. PRINTED IN U.S.A.
Chapter 1
HALFWAY THROUGH the second watch the ship put into Kartos Station—the largest thing ever seen in
the zone, a gleaming silver agglomeration of vanes cradling an immense saucer body. It was an
Orithain craft, with no markings of nationality or identification: the Orithain disdained such
conventions.
It nestled in belly-on, larger than the station itself, positioned beside an amaut freighter off
Isthe II that was completely dwarfed by its bulk. The umbilical of the tube, the conveyor-
connection, went out to it, scarcely long enough to reach, although the Orithain's grapples had
drawn herself and the Station into relative proximity.
As soon as that connection was secure, five members of the crew disembarked, four men and a woman.
They were kallia, like many of the Station personnel—a race that belonged to Qao V, a tall
graceful folk, azure-skinned and silver-haired; but these had never seen the surface of Aus Qao:
each bore on the right wrist the platinum bracelet that marked a nas kame, a servant of the
Orithain.
The visitors moved at will through the market, where amaut and kalliran commerce linked the
civilized worlds, the metrosi, with the Esliph stars. They spoke not at all to each other, but
paused together and occasionally designated purchases—lots that depleted whole sections of the
market, to be delivered immediately.
The moment the Orithain had entered the zone, the Station office had moved into frantic activity.
Station security personnel, both kallia and amaut, were scattered among the regular dock crews in
diverse uniforms—not to stop the starlords; that was impossible. They were instead to restrain the
Station folk from any unintended offense against them, for the whole of Kartos Station was in
jeopardy as long as that silver dread-naught was anywhere in the zone; an Orithain-lord minutely
displeased was a bad enemy for a planet, let alone a man-made bubble like Kartos.
And the commanders of Kartos kept otherwise still, and sent no messages of alarm, either inside or
outside the Station. There was a hush everywhere. Those that must move, moved quietly.
Ages ago the Orithain had first contacted the kallia, wrenching the folk of Aus Qao out of
feudalism and abruptly into star-spanning civilization. Eight thousand years ago the Orithain had
reached out to Kesuat, the home star of the amaut—podgy little gray-skinned farmers, broad-bellied
and large-eyed, unlikely starfarers; but amaut were scattered now from Kesuat to the Esliph. The
metrosi itself was an Orithain creation, modern technology an Orithain gift—but one that came at
fearful price, a tyranny unimaginably cruel and irrational.
Then for five hundred years, as inexplicably as they did everything, the Orithain had vanished,
even from their home star Kej. Ship-dwellers that they were, they began to voyage outward and
elsewhere, and ceased to be seen in the range of kalliran ships or amaut. Some even dared to hope
them dead—until seven years ago.
Suddenly Orithain were massing again near Kej. Ship by ship, they were reported coming in,
gathering like great birds to the smell of death. The outmost worlds knew it, though the metrosi
refused to admit it for fact. There was no defense possible: kallia knew this; no weapon would
avail against Orithain ships, and the pride that the Orithain took in inventive cruelty was
legendary. It was more comfortable not to acknowledge their existence.
But at Kartos, bordering the Esliph, the Orithain made their return to the metrosi clear beyond
doubt.
At the end of the new-station docks the noi kame separated. Two, one carrying a small gray case,
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went up toward the Station office. The other three descended toward the old docks, that place
notorious as the Blind Market, where berths and facilities were cheap and crowded, where goods
were often traded unobserved by the overworked Station authorities: little freighters, small
cargoes, often shoddy goods, damaged lots, pirated merchandise. Most of the ships docked here came
from the Esliph, bearing raw materials and buying up necessities and a few civilized vices for the
poorer, outermost worlds.
The security personnel who maintained their discreet watcn were alarmed when the noi kame
unexpectedly entered that tangle of small berths, and they were perplexed when the noi kame
immediately sought the Konut, an ancient freighter from the Esliph fringe. Fat little amaut ran
about in its open hold in an agony of panic at their coming, and the captain came waddling up on
his short legs, working his wide mouth in an expression of extreme unease.
At the noi kame's order the amaut produced the manifest, which the noi kame scanned as they walked
with the captain deep into the hold. Incredibly filthy compartments lined this aisle, a stench of
unwashed amaut bodies heavy in the air, for the Konut trafficked in indentured labor, ignorant
laborers contracted to the purchasing company for the usual ten years on a colonial world in
exchange for land there—land, which they desired more than they feared the rigors of the journey.
Amaut were at heart farmers and diggers in the earth, and the hope of these forlorn, untidy little
folk was a small parcel of land somewhere—anywhere. Most would never achieve it: debt to the
company would keep them forever tenant farmers.
And to the rear of the Konut's second hold was a matter which the captain neglected to report to
Station customs: a wire enclosure where humans were transported. Kalliran law forbade traffic in
human labor: the creatures were wild and illiterate, unable to make any valid contract—the dregs
of the stubborn population left behind when the humans abandoned the Esliph stars and retreated to
home space. Their ancestors might have been capable of starflight, but these were not even capable
of coherent speech. They were sectioned off from the other hold because the amaut would not abide
proximity to them: humans were notorious carriers of disease. One of them at the moment lay stiff
and unnatural on the wire mesh flooring, dead perhaps from chill, perhaps from something imported
from whatever Esliph world had sent him. Another sat staring, eyes dark and mad.
This was the place that interested the noi kame. They stopped, consulted the manifest, conferred
with the captain. The one human still stared, crouched up very small as if he sought obscurity;
but when the others suddenly rushed to the far corner, shrieking and clawing and climbing over one
another in their witless panic, this one sat still, eyes following every movement outside the
cage.
When at last the amaut captain turned and pointed at him, that human froze into absolute
immobility, resisting the captain's beckoning.
The sweating captain beckoned at the other humans then, spoke one word several times:
chaju—liquor. Suddenly the humans were listening, faces eager; and when the amaut pointed at the
human that crouched at the center of the cage, the others shrieked in excitement and descended on
the unfortunate creature, dragging him to the side of the cage despite his struggling and his
cries of rage. They pressed him against the mesh until an attendant could administer an injection:
his nails raked the attendant, who hit his arm and spat a curse, but already the human was
sinking: the curiously alert eyes glazed, and he slumped down to the mesh flooring.
With no further difficulty the attendant entered the cage and dragged the unconscious human out,
rewarding the others with a large flask of chaju that was instantly the cause of a fight.
The noi kame distastefully ignored these proceedings. They paid the price of the indenture in
silver-weight, named a time for delivery, and walked back the way they had come.
The remaining noi kame, a man and a woman, had entered Station control without a glance at the
frightened security personnel or a gesture of courtesy toward the Master. They went to the records
center, dislodged the technician from his post, and connected the apparatus in the gray case to
the machine.
"It will be necessary," said the woman to the Master, who hovered uncertainly in the background,
"for this technician to follow our instructions."
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The Master nodded to the operator, who resumed his post reluctantly and did as he was told. The
Station's records, the log and the personnel files in their entirety, the centuries of accumulated
knowledge of Esliph exploration, the patterns of treaties, of lane regulation and zonal
government, bled swiftly into the Orithain's ken.
When the process was complete, the apparatus was disconnected, the case was closed, and the noi
kame turned as one, facing the Master.
"There is a man on this station named Aiela Lyailleue," said the man. "Deliver his records to us."
"The Master made a helpless gesture. "I have no authority to do that," he said.
"We do not operate on your authority," said the nas kame.
The Master gave the order. A section of tape fed out of the machine.
"Dispose of the original record," said the woman, winding the tape about her first finger. "This
person Aiela will report to our dock for boarding at 0230 Station Time."
Kallia tended to a look of innocence. Their hair was the same whatever their age, pale and
silvery, individual strands as translucent as spun glass. The pale azure of their skin intensified
to sapphire in the eyes, which, unlike the eyes of amaut, could look left or right without turning
the whole head: it gave them a whole range of communication without words, and made it difficult
for them to conceal their feelings. They were an emotional folk—not loud, like amaut, who liked
disputes and noisy entertainments, but fond of social gatherings. One kallia proverbially never
decided anything: it took at least three to reach a decision on the most trivial of matters. To be
otherwise was ikas—presumptuous, and a kalliran gentleman was never that.
Security agent Muishiph was amaut, but he had been long enough on Kartos to know the kallia quite
well, both the good and the bad in them. He watched the young officer Aiela Lyailleue react to the
news—he stood at the door of the kallia's onstation apartment—and expected some outcry of grief or
anger at the order. Muishiph had already nerved himself to resist such appeals—even to defend
himself; his own long arms could crush the slender limbs of a kallia, although he certainly did
not want to do that.
"I?" asked the young officer, and again: "I?" as though he still could not believe it. He looked
appallingly young to be a ship's captain. The records confirmed it: twenty-six years old, son of
Deian of the Lyailleue house, aristocrat. Deian was parome of Xolun arethme, and the third
councilor in the High Council of Aus Qao, a great weight of power and wealth—probably the means by
which young Lyailleue had achieved his premature rank. Aiela's hands trembled. He jammed them into
the pockets of his short jacket to conceal the fact and shook his head rather blankly.
"But do you have any idea why they singled me out?"
"The Master said he thought you might know," said Muishiph, "but I doubt he wants to be told, in
any case."
The young man gazed at him with eyes so distant Muishiph knew he hardly saw him; and then
intelligence returned, a troubled sadness. "May I pack?" he asked. "I suppose I may need some
things. I hope that I will."
"They did not forbid it." Muishiph thrust his shoulder within the doorframe, for Aiela had begun
to lift his hand toward the switch. "But I would not dare leave you unobserved, sir. I am sorry."
Aiela's eyes raked Muishiph up and down with a curiously regretful expression. At least, Muishiph
thought uncomfortably, the Master might have sent a kallia to break the news and to be with him;
he braced himself for argument. But Aiela backed away and cleared the doorway to let him enter.
Muishiph stopped just inside the door, hands locked behind his thighs, swaying; amaut did that
when they were ill at ease.
"Please sit down," Aiela invited him, and Muishiph accepted, accepted again when Aiela poured them
each a glass of pinkish marithe. Muishiph downed it all, and took his handkerchief from his belly-
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pocket to mop at his face. Amaut perspired a great deal and needed prodigious quantities of
liquid. It was the first time Muishiph had been in a kalliran residence, and the warm, dry air was
unkind to his sensitive skin, the bright light hurt his eyes. He thrust the handkerchief back into
his pocket and watched Aiela. The kallia, his own drink ignored, had taken a battered spaceman's
case from the locker and was starting to pack, nervously meticulous.
Muishiph knew the records from the Master, who had sent him. The young kallia captained a small
geological survey vessel named Alitaesa, just returned from the moons of Pri, far back on the
Esliph fringe. That was amaut territory, but some kallia explored there, seeking mining rights
with the permission of the great trading karshatu that ruled amaut commerce. Amaut, natural
burrowers, would work as miners; kallia, strongly industrial, would receive the ore and turn it
back again in trade—an arrangement old as the metrosi.
But it was a rare kallia who ventured deep into the Esliph. It was a wild place and wide, with a
great gulf beyond. Odd things happened there, strange ships came and went, and law was a matter of
local option and available firepower. The amaut karshatu took care of their own, and brooked no
intrusion on karsh lanes or karsh worlds: the kallia they tolerated, reckoning them harmless, for
they were above all law-loving folk, their major vice merely a desire of wealth, not land, but
monetary and imaginary. Kallia worshipped order: their universe was ordered in such a way that one
could not determine his own worth save in terms of the respect paid him by others—and money was
somehow a measure of this, as primogeniture was among amaut in a karsh. Muishiph looked on the
young man and wondered: as he reckoned kallia, they were shallow folk, never seeking power for its
own sake. They had no ambitions: they hated responsibility, feeling that there was something
sinister and ikas in tampering with destiny. An amaut might dream of having land, of founding a
karsh, producing offspring in the dozens; but for a kallia the greatest joy seemed to be to retire
into a quiet community, giving genteel parties for small gatherings of all the most honorable
people, and being a man to whom others resorted for advice and influence—a safe life, and quiet,
and never, never involving solitary decisions.
If Aiela Lyailleue was a curiosity to the Orithain, he was no less a puzzle to Muishiph: an
untypical kallia, a wealthy parome's son who chose the hazardous life of the military, exploring
the Esliph's backside. It was the hardest and loneliest command any officer, amaut or kallia,
could have, out where there was no one to consult and no law to rely on. This was not a kalliran
life at all.
Aiela had packed several changes of clothing, everything from the drawers. "Some things are on my
ship," he said. "Surely they will send my other belongings home to my family."
"Surely," Muishiph agreed, miserable in the lie. When a karsh outgrew its territory, the next-born
were cast out to fend for themselves. Some founded karshatu of their own, some became bondservants
to other karshatu or sought employment by the kallia, and some simply died of grief. What amaut
literature there was sang mournfully of the misery of such outcasts, who were cut off and
forgotten quickly by their own kind. The kallia talked of his house as if it still existed for
him. Muishiph rolled his lips inward and refused to argue with the childish faith.
Aiela gathered his pictures off the desk last of all: an adult-children group that must be his
kin, a young girl with flowers in her silver hair—ko shenellis, the coming-of-age: Muishiph had
heard of the ceremony and recognized it, wondering if the girl were kinswoman or intended mate.
Aiela himself was in the third picture, a younger Aiela in civilian clothes, standing by a smiling
youth his own age, the crumbling walls of some ancient kalliran building fluttering with flags in
the background. They were perplexing bits and pieces of a life Muishiph could not even imagine,
things and persons that had given joy to the kallia, reminders that he once had had roots—things
that were important to him even lost as he was. The pictures were turned, one by one, face down on
the clothing in the case. With them went a small box of tape cassettes. Aiela closed and locked
the case, turned with a gesture of entreaty.
"Do you suppose," he asked, "that there is time to write a letter?"
Muishiph doubtfully consulted his watch. "If you do, you must hurry about it."
Aiela bowed his gratitude, a courtesy Muishiph returned on reflex; and he waited on his feet while
Aiela opened the desk and sat down, using some of the Station's paper.
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After a time Muishiph consulted his watch again and coughed delicately. Aiela hastened his
writing, working feverishly until a second apologetic cough advised him of Muishiph's impatience.
Then he arose and unfastened his collar, drawing over his head a metal seal on a chain: its
embossed impression sealed the message—a house crest. Kalliran aristocrats clung to such symbols,
prized relics of the feudal culture that had been theirs before the starlords found them.
And before Muishiph realized his intention, Aiela had thrust the seal into the disposal chute. It
would end floating in space, disassociated atoms of precious metals. Muishiph gaped in shock;
kalliran matters, those seals, but they were ancient, and the destruction of something so old and
familial struck Muishiph's heart with a physical sickness.
"Sir," he objected, and met sudden coldness in the kallia's eyes.
"If I had sent it home," said Aiela, "and it had been lost, it would have been a shame on my
family; and it is not right to take it as a prisoner either."
"Yes, sir," Muishiph agreed, embarrassed, uneasy at knowing Aiela doubted Kartos' intentions of
his property. There was more sense to the kallia than he had reckoned. He became the more
perturbed when Aiela thrust the letter into his hands.
"Send it," said Aiela. "Private mails. I know it costs—" He took out his wallet and pressed that
too into Muishiph's hand. "There's more than enough. Please. Keep the rest. You'll have earned
it."
Muishiph stared from the wallet and the letter to Aiela's anxious face. "Sir, I protest I am an
officer of—"
"I know. Break the seal, read it—copy it, I don't care. Only get it to Aus Qao. My family can
reward you. I want them to know what happened to me."
Muishiph considered a moment, his mouth working in distress. Then he slipped the letter into his
belly-pocket and patted it flat. But he kept only two of the larger bills from the wallet and cast
the wallet down on the table.
"Take it all," said Aiela. "Someone else will, that's certain."
"I don't dare, sir," said Muishiph, looking at it a second time regretfully. He put it from his
mind once for all with a glance at his watch. "Come, bring your baggage. We have orders to
anticipate that deadline. The Station is taking no chances of offending them."
"I am sure they would not." For a moment his odd kalliran eyes fixed painfully on Muishiph, asking
something; but Muishiph hurriedly shrugged and showed Aiela out the door, walking beside him as
soon as they were in the broad hall. Another security guard, a kallia, met them at the turning: he
carried a sheaf of documents and a tape-case.
"My records?" Aiela surmised, at which the kalliran guard looked embarrassed.
"Yes, sir," he admitted. "They are being turned over. Everything is."
Aiela kept his eyes forward and did not look at that man after that, nor the man at him.
Muishiph fingered the outline of the letter in his belly-pocket, and carefully extracted his
handkerchief and mopped at his face. It was too much to ask. To deceive the lords of karshatu and
to cross the Qao High Council were both perilous undertakings, but the starlords were an ancient
terror and their reach was long and their knowledge thorough beyond belief. The letter burned like
guilt against Muishiph's belly. Already he began to imagine his position should anyone guess what
he had agreed to do.
And then it occurred to him to wonder if Aiela had told the truth of what it contained.
The Orithain vessel itself was not visible from the dock. There was only the entry tube and its
conveyor, disappearing constantly upward as the supplies flooded toward the unseen maw of the
ship. Aiela stopped with his escort and set his case beside him on the tiled flooring, the three
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of them conspicuous in an area where no spectators would dare to be. Aiela shivered; his knees
felt loose. He hoped it was not evident to those with him. Courage to cross that small area
without faltering: that was all he begged of himself.
He was not, he had assured his family in the letter, expecting to die; execution could be
accomplished with far more effect in public. He did not know what had drawn the Orithain's
attention to him: he had touched nothing and done nothing that could have accounted for it, to his
own knowledge, and what they intended with him he only surmised. He would not return. No one had
ever been appropriated by the Orithain and walked out again free; but it would please him if his
family would think of him as alive and well. He had saved five thousand lives on Kartos by his
compliance with orders: he was well sure of this; there was cause for pride in that fact.
Empty canisters clanged on the dock, the horrid crash rumbling through his senses, dislodging him
from his privacy. He looked and saw a frightened amaut crew trying to stop machinery. An amaut had
been injured. The minute tragedy occupied him for the moment. None of the bystanders would help.
They only stared. Finally the amaut was allowed to lie alone. The others worked feverishly with
the lading of canisters, trying to make their deadline. The machinery started again.
His father would understand, between the lines of what he had written. Parome Deian was on the
High Council, and knew the reports that never went to earthsiders. There was an understanding as
old as the kallia's first meeting with the Orithain: their eccentricities were not for comment and
their names were not to be uttered; the Orithain homeworld at Kej still lay deserted, legendary
cities full of supposed treasure— but metrosi ships avoided that star; for nine thousand years the
Orithain had been the central fact of metrosi civilization, but no research delved into their
origins, few books so much as mentioned them save in oblique reference to the Domination, and
nothing but legend reported their appearance. But they were remembered. In the independence of
space the old tales continued to be told, and legends were amplified now with new horrors of
Orithain cruelty. Deian was one of nine men on all Aus Qao who received across his desk all the
statistics and the rumors.
And if the statistics preceded his letter, Aiela reflected sorrowfully, his father would receive
that cold message first. It would be the final cruelty of so many that had passed between them.
If that were to go first, witnesses would at least say that he had gone with dignity.
At the end, he could give nothing else to his family.
The lefthand ramp had been clear of traffic for several moments. Now it reversed, and one of the
noi kame descended. Aiela bent and picked up his case when the man came toward them; and when they
met, the kalliran agent gave into the nas kame's hands the documents and the tape case—the sum of
all records in the zone regarding Aiela and his existence. It was terrible to believe so, but even
Qao might follow suit, erasing all records even to his certificate of birth, forbidding mention of
him even by his family. Fear of the Orithain was that powerful. Aiela was suddenly bitterly
ashamed for his people, for what the starlords had made them be and do. He began to be angry, when
before he had felt only grief.
"Come," said the nas kame, accepting the sheaf of documents and the case under his arm. But he
looked down in some surprise as the amaut agent suddenly pushed forward, proffering a letter in
his trembling hand.
"His too, lord, his too," said the amaut.
The nas kame took the letter and put it among the documents; and Aiela looked toward the amaut
reproachfully, but the amaut bowed his head and stood rocking back and forth, refusing to look up
at him.
Aiela turned his face instead toward the nas kame, appalled that there was no shame there—eyes as
kalliran as his that held no recognition of him and cared nothing for his misery.
The nas kame brought him to the moving ramp and preceded him up, looking back once casually at the
scene below, ignoring Aiela. Then the belt set them both into the ship's hold.
Aiela's eyes were drawn up by the sheer echoing immensity of the place. This hold, as was usual
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with supply holds, was filled with frames and canisters of goods, row on row, dated, stamped to be
listed in the computer's memory. But it could have contained an entire ship the size of the one
Aiela had lately commanded—without the frames and the clutter. No doubt there were other holds
that did hold such things as transfer ships and shuttles available at need. It staggered the mind.
The nas kame took his case from him and handed it to an amaut, who waddled ahead of them to a
counter and had it stamped and listed and thrust up a conveyor to disappear. Aiela looked after it
with a sinking heart, for among his folded clothing he had put his service pistol—nonlethal, like
all the weapons of the kalliran service. He had debated it; he had done it, terrified in the act
and terrified to go defenseless, without it. But there were no defenses. Standing where he was
now, with all Kartos so small and fragile a place beneath them, he realized it for a selfish and
cowardly thing to do.
"There was a weapon in that," he said to the nas kame. •
The nas kame took notice of him directly for the first time, regarding him with mild surprise. He
had just put the documents and the tape case on the counter to be similarly stamped and sent up
the conveyor. Then he shrugged. "Security will deal with it," he said, and took Aiela's arm and
held his hand on the counter, compelling him to accept a stamp on the back of his hand, like the
other baggage.
Aiela received it with so deep a confusion that he failed to protest; but afterward, with the nas
kame holding his arm and guiding him rapidly through the echoing hold, a wave of such shame and
outrage came over him that he was almost shaking. He should have said something; he should have
done something. He worked his fingers, staring at the purple symbols that rippled across the bones
of his hand, and was only gathering the words to object to the indignity when the nas kame roughly
turned him and thrust him toward a personnel lift. He went, turned once inside, and expected the
nas kame to step in too; but the door slid shut and he was hurtled elsewhere on his own. The
controls resisted his attempt to regain the loading deck.
In an instant the lift came to a cushioned halt and opened on a cargo area adapted to the
reception of live goods; there were a score or more individual cells and animal pens, some with
bare flooring and some padded on all surfaces. Gray-smocked noi kame and amaut in green were
waiting for him, took charge of him as he stepped out. One noted the number from his hand onto a
slate, then gestured him to move.
As he walked the aisle of compartments he saw one lighted, its facing wall transparent; and his
flesh crawled at the sight of the naked pink-brown tangle of limbs that crouched at the rear of
it. It looked moribund, whatever it had been—the Orithain ranged far: perhaps it was only one of
the forgotten humans of the Esliph; perhaps it was some more dangerous and exotic specimen from
the other end of the galaxy, where no metrosi ship had ever gone. He delayed, looked more closely;
a nas kame pushed him between the shoulders and moved him on, and by now he was completely
overwhelmed, dazed and beyond any understanding of what to do. He walked. No one spoke to him. He
might have been a nonsentient they were handling.
Physicians took him—at least so he reckoned them—kallia and amaut, who ordered him to strip, and
examined him until he was exhausted by their thoroughness, the cold, and the endless waiting. He
was beyond shame. When at last they thrust his wadded clothing at him and put him into one of the
padded cells to wait, he stood there blankly for some few moments before the cold finally urged
him to dress.
He shivered convulsively afterward, walking to lean against one and another of the walls. Finally
he knelt down on the floor to rest, limbs tucked up for warmth, his muscles still racked with
shivers. There was no view, only white walls and a blank, padded door—cold, white light. He heard
nothing to tell him what passed outside until the gentle shock of uncoupling threw him off-
balance: they were moving, Kartos would be dropping astern at ever-increasing speed.
It was irrevocable.
He was dead, so far as his own species was concerned, so far as anything he had known was
concerned. There were no more familiar reference points.
He was only beginning to come to grips with that, when the room vanished.
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He was suddenly kneeling on a carpeted floor that still felt strangely like the padded plastics of
the cell. The lights were dim, the walls expanded into an immense dark chamber of carven screens
and panels of alien design. A woman in black and diaphanous violet stood before him, a woman of
the Orithain, of the indigo-skinned iduve race. Her hair was black: it hung like fine silk, thick
and even at the level of her shapely jaw. Her brows were dark, her eyes amethyst-hued, without
whites, and rimmed with dark along the edge of the lid. Her nose was arched but delicate, her
mouth sensuous, frosted with lavender, the whole of her face framed with the absolute darkness of
her hair. The draperies hinted at a slim and female body; her complexion, though dusky from the
kalliran view, had a lustrous sheen, as though dust of violet glistened there, as if she walked in
another light than ordinary mortals, a universe where suns were violet and skies were of shadowy
hue.
He rose and, because it was elethia, he gave her a proper bow for meeting despite their races: she
was female, though she was an enemy. She smiled and gave a nod of her graceful head.
"Be welcome, m'metane," she said.
"Who was it who had me brought here?" he demanded, anger springing out of his voice to cover his
fear. "And why did you ask for me?"
"Vaikka," she said, and when he did not understand, she shrugged and seemed amused. "Au, m'metane,
you are ignorant and anoikhte, two conditions impossible to maintain aboard Ashanome. We carry no
passengers. You will be in my service."
"No." The answer burst out of him before he even reckoned the consequences, but she shrugged again
and smiled.
"We might return to Kartos," she said. "You might be set off there to advise them of your
objections."
"And what then?"
"I would prefer otherwise.",
He drew a long breath, let it go again. "I see. So why do you come offering me choices? Noi kame
can't make any, can they?"
"I have scanned your records. I find your decision expected. And as for your assumption of noi
kame—no: kamethi have considerable initiative; they would be useless otherwise."
"Would you have destroyed Kartos?"
His angry question seemed for the first time to perplex the Orithain, whose gentle manner
persisted. "When we threaten, m'metane, we do so because of another's weakness, never of our own.
It was highly likely that you would choose to come: elethia forbids you should refuse. If you
would not, surely fear would compel them to bring you. Likewise it is certain that I would have
destroyed Kartos had it refused. Any other basis for making the statement would have been highly
unreasonable."
"Was it you?" he asked. "Why did you choose me?"
"Vaikka—a matter of honor. You are of birth such that your loss will be noticed among kallia: that
has a certain incidental value. And I have use for such as you: world-born, but experienced of
outer worlds."
He hated her, hated her quiet voice and her evident delight in his misery. "Well," he said,
"you'll regret that particular choice."
Her amethyst eyes darkened perceptibly. There was no longer a smile on her face. "Kutikkase-
metane," she said. "At the moment you are no more than sentient raw material, and it is useless to
attempt rational conversation with you."
And with blinding swiftness the white light of the cell was about him again, yielding white
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plastic on all sides, narrow walls, white glare. He flinched and covered his eyes, and fell to his
knees again in the loneliness of that cubicle.
Then, not for the first time in the recent hour, he thought of self-destruction; but he had no
convenient means, and he had still to fear her retaliation against Kartos. He slowly realized how
ridiculous he had made himself with his threat against her, and was ashamed. His entire species
was powerless against the likes of her, powerless because, like Kartos, like him, they would
always find the alternative unthinkably costly.
He came docilely enough when they brought him out into the laboratory, expecting that they would
simply lock about his wrist the idoikkhe, such as they themselves wore—that ornate platinum band
that observers long ago theorized provided the Orithain their means of control over the noi kame.
Such was not the case. They had him dress in a white wrap about his waist and lie down again on
the table, after which they forcibly administered a drug that made his senses swim, dispersing his
panic to a vague, all-encompassing uneasiness.
He realized by now that becoming nas kame involved more than accepting that piece of jewelry—that
he was going under and that he would not wake the same man. In his drugged despair he begged, he
invoked deity, he pleaded with them as fellow kallia to consider what they were doing to him.
But they ignored his raving and with an economy of effort, slipped him to a movable table and put
him under restraint. From that point his perceptions underwent a rapid deterioration. He was
conscious, but he could not tell what he was seeing or hearing, and eventually passed over the
brink.
Chapter 2
THE DAZED STATE gave way to consciousness in the same tentative manner. Aiela was aware of the
limits of his own body, of a pain localized in the roof of his mouth and behind his eyes. There
was a bitter chemical taste and his brow itched. He could not raise his hand to scratch it. The
itch spread to his nose and was utter misery. When he grimaced to relieve it, the effort hurt his
head.
He slept again, and wakened a second time enough to try to move, remembering the bracelet that
ought to be locked about his wrist. There was none. He lifted his hand—free now—and saw the
numbers still stamped there, but faded. His head hurt. He touched his temple and felt a thin rough
seam. There was the salt of blood in his mouth toward the back of his palate; his throat was raw.
He felt along the length of the incision at his temple and panic began to spread through him like
icev
He hated them. He could still hate; but the concentration it took was tiring—even fear was tiring.
He wept, great tears rolling from his eyes, and even then he was fading. Drugs, he thought dimly.
He shut his eyes.
A raw soreness persisted, not of the body, but of the mind, a perception, a part of him that could
not sleep, like an inner eye that had no power to blink. It burned like a white light at the edge
of his awareness, an unfocused field of vision where shadows and colors moved undefined. Then he
knew what they had done to him, although he did not know the name of it.
"No!" he screamed, and screamed again and again until his voice was gone. No one came. His senses
slipped from him again.
At the third waking he was stronger, breathing normally, and aware of his surroundings. The sore
spot was there; when he worried at it the place grew wider and brighter, but when he forced
himself to move and think of other things, the color of the wall, anything at all, it ebbed down
to a memory, an imagination of presence. He could control it. Whatever had been done to his brain,
he remembered, he knew himself. He tested the place nervously, like probing a sore tooth; it
reacted predictably, grew and diminished. It had depth, a void that drew at his senses. He pulled
his mind from it, crawled from bed and leaned against a chair, fighting to clear his senses.
The room had the look of a comfortable hotel suite, all in blue tones, the lighted white doorway
of a tiled bath at the rear—luxury indeed for a starship. His disreputable serviceman's case
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rested on the bureau. A bench near the bed had clothing—beige—laid out across it.
His first move was for the case. He leaned on the bureau and opened it. Everything was there but
the gun. In its place Was a small card: We regret we cannot permit personal arms without special
clearance. It is in storage. For convenience in claiming your property at some later date, please
retain this card, 509-3899-345:
He read it several times, numb to what he felt must be a certain grim humor. He wiped at his
blurring vision with his fingers and leaned there, absently beginning to unpack, one-handed at
first, then with both. His beloved pictures went there, so, facing the chair which he thought he
would prefer. He put things in the drawer, arranged clothing, going through motions familiar to a
hundred unfamiliar places, years of small outstations, hardrock worlds—occupying his mind and
keeping it from horrid reality. He was alive. He could remember. He could resent his situation.
And this place, this room, was known, already measured, momentarily safe: it was his, so long as
he opened no doors.
When he felt steady on his feet he bathed, dressed in the clothes provided him, paused at the
mirror in the bath to look a second time at his reflection, when earlier he had not been able to
face it. His silver hair was cropped short; his own face shocked him, marred with the finger-
length scar at his temple, but the incision was sealed with plasm and would go away in a few days,
traceless. He touched it, wondered, ripped his thoughts back in terror; light flashed in his mind,
pain. He stumbled, and came to himself with his face pressed to the cold glass of the mirror and
his hands spread on its surface to hold him up.
"Attention please." The silken voice of the intercom startled him, "Attention. Aiela Lyailleue,
you are wanted in the paredre. Kindly wait for one of the staff to guide you."
He remembered an intercom screen in the main room, and he pushed himself square on his feet and
went to it, pressed what he judged was the call button, several times, in increasing anger. A
glowing dot raced from one side of the screen to the other, but there was no response.
He struck the plate to open the door, not expecting that to work for him either, but it did; and
instead of an ordinary corridor, he faced a concourse as wide as a station dock.
At the far side, stars spun past a wide viewport in the stately procession of the saucer's
rotation. Kallia in beige and other colors came and went here, and but for the luxury of that
incredible viewport and the alien design of the shining metal pillars that spread ornate flanged
arches across the entire overhead, it might have been an immaculately modern port on Aus Qao.
Amaut technicians waddled along at their rolling pace, looking prosperous and happy; a young
kalliran couple walked hand in hand; children played. A man of the iduve crossed the concourse,
eliciting not a ripple of notice among the noi kame—a tall slim man in black, he demanded and
received no special homage. Only one amaut struggling along under the weight of several massive
coils of hose brought up short and ducked his head apologetically rather than contest right of
way.
At the other end of the concourse an abstract artwork of metal over metal, the pieces of which
were many times the size of a man, closed off the columned expanse in high walls. At their inner
base and on an upper level, corridors led off into distance so great that the inner curvature of
the ship played visual havoc with the senses, door after door of what Aiela judged to be other
apartments stretching away into brightly lit sameness.
The iduve was coming toward him.
Panic constricted his heart. He looked to one side and the other, finding no other cause for the
iduve's interest. And then a resolution wholly reckless settled into him. He turned and began at
first simply to walk away; but when he looked back, panic won: he gathered his strength and
started to run.
Noi kame stared, shocked at the disorder. He shouldered past and broke into a corridor, not
knowing where it led—the ship, vast beyond belief, tempted him to believe he could lose himself,
find its inward parts, at least understand the sense of things before they found him again and
forced then- purposes upon him.
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