THERE WAS quiet over Kesrith. After so many hazards, after two days stalled with the port in chaos from the storm, that last shuttle had lifted with its cargo of refugees, to the station where the freighter Restrivi was forming the last regular civilian list that would leave the world. Hereafter there was time, necessary time, for setting final matters in order. Against the ruddy sun of Kesrith there was only Hazan remaining— armed and, when her minor repairs were completed, star-capable; she waited with her crew constantly within her. She carried in her tapes the way to Nurag, to regul homeworld, to safety and civilization for the few hundred left on Kesrith.
A ten of times each passing day bai Hulagh Alagn-ni, working in his heated offices in the Norn complex, looked up at the windows and concerned himself with the condition of Hazan. The dual-capable ship, strong enough behind her screens for combat, was yet a perilously fragile structure when grounded. He had hesitated to take her down in the first place; he had suffered agonies of mind in the hours of the storm’s approach, had decided against lofting her to sta-tionside.
And then—then, to have a witless aircraft pilot attempt to outrun the storm and risk the crosswinds, a known peril at Kesrith’s field—on such an occurrence the whole mission was almost lost. Hulagh cursed each time he thought of it, the youngling pilot and passengers, of course, beyond retribution. He was relieved that, at the least, damage had been confined to the tower and loading facilities, and that to Hazan’s structure was minimal. Luck had been with him. Hazan was in his trust over the objections of powerful influences back on homeworld. He had risked everything in securing for himself and his interests this post, replacing old Gruran and Solgan Holn-ni—an assignment for which his personal age and erudition had qualified him, and thereby won doch Alagn the status it was long overdue.
But as with landing the ship, as in other decisions he had made along the way, it was necessary to risk in order to gain. It was necessary to demonstrate to homeworld his claimed ability and that of doch Alagn in order to obtain the influence permanently.
He could do so by salvaging the most possible benefit of Kesrith, after its loss by Gruran Holn-ni and his get; and Solgah Holn-ni—he thought with disgust and contempt of the prolific female who had ruled Holn’s establishment of Kesrith, and lorded it so thoroughly over the zone and over the war that was her creation—Solgah was on her way to homeworld in utter confusion, stripped of her command, most of her younglings left behind, their ranks decimated by Holagh’s own orders, survivors parcelled out to many different colonies, the doch in complete disorganization. She would be lucky if her influences on homeworld enabled her to escape sifting and the execution of her younglings. At the least, Holn was due for some years of obscurity.
The memory still pleased him, how Solgah had received the shock of Hazan’s unscheduled and unauthorized landing: how she had fluttered and blustered with prohibitions and objections, until he had made known to her his homeworld-granted authority to assume control.
Now it was his office to complete the evacuation Solgah had begun, to save as much as possible from the concessions her weak kinsman Gruran Holn-ni had granted in negotiations at Elag, trying to save the inner portions of the vast Holn empire. It was his task to prepare Kesrith to receive human occupation, and to remove regul properties as much as could be saved, and regul personnel, as many as could be saved; and to ensure that humans drew the least possible benefit from what they had won in war and in negotiations.
Hulagh had dealt with humans indirectly for three home-world years, and met with a few after replacing Gruran, and knew them—including the two that had come in on Hazan—with a quiet but mild distaste, less distaste, in fact, than he had ever felt for mri, who served regul. The human war, of course, had been a complete mistake, an error in calculations, and not one attributable to doch Alagn. It had been abundantly clear to wiser regul minds for the better part of five years that the companies of Holn doch had involved themselves in an utter fiasco, from which the mri were unable to rescue them, and that error would have been corrected then, if it had been possible to restrain the obstinacies and military power of such as Holn, whose employ of mercenary kel’ein and whose obvious self-interest in retaining the disputed territories had stalled off any change in policy.
Now, at last, after the consequences of the original error were multiplied to great cost, after regul lives and properties and home territory itself had been lost, the Holn empire tottering on the brink, now the military Holn handed the tangled and dangerous situation—reluctantly even so—over to older, wiser minds on Nurag.
And politics, in a turn of events unforeseen by the Holn, had served to turn the Holn authority finally into the hands of Alagn, and to elevate Alagn to a status in which Alagn, with the right Alagn in command, could utterly ruin doch Holn.
Holn had left a tangle behind them. Bai Hulagh was far from satisfied with the treaty terms within which he must operate, but they were Holn’s legacy, sealed, legal, recorded and beyond his power to adjust. Yet if the cession of three colonial systems, costly as that was, had created a permanent and reliable boundary between human and regul claims, it could turn out to be one of the wiser things doch Holn had done in its administration. Doubtless, Hulagh felt, the humans now clearly knew that they had made all the cheap gain they could reasonably expect in this adventure, and that hereafter regul would resist with more vigor. The humans were apparently perplexed and disturbed by this sudden change of authority on the frontier, and yet they seemed anxious to honor the treaty. Kesrith was a likely and sensible boundary: the dead space of the Deep discouraged exploration regul-ward without considerable routing round by Hesoghan, an old and firmly regul holding; and the lure of the Haze-stars would lead humans from Kesrith rimward in due time. So Hulagh planned in his strategies, mapping what he considered might be new directions in regul policy. The humans would be attracted by the wealth toward which Kesrith had been reaching; but likewise the regul stars had mineral wealth sufficient to sustain industries without the convenient luxury of doch Holn’s outermost colonies. Economic effects would be felt, but only in small degree on homeworld; and so long as the elders of homeworld were well-supplied in their needs, the Alagn operation would be favorably judged.
And afterward, it was only one arm of regul expansion that had been cut off. Two others remained. One of them was the presently meager holding of doch Alagn.
To direct, to shape, to rule, to settle himself eternally into the memory not alone of doch Alagn, but of the center of Nurag—this was the dream Hulagh savored. In his vast age he had outlived his rivals, had seen them dust; and he remembered, and planned long. He had obliterated the younglings of his chiefest enemies. He risked everything now in assuming personal command of Kesrith: if matters went amiss, it would be remembered that Hulagh of Alagn was in charge when they did so; but here on Kesrith also lay wealth he desperately needed.
The terms of the human/regul treaty surrendered only the bare earth of the ceded worlds. There was no specified claim of valuable hardware, cities, resources. Bare earth was all the encroaching humans need find when they arrived; and redeveloping the stubborn wilderness of Kesrith would occupy them long enough to give regul-kind a breathing space— while the plunder of Kesrith would go into the stores of Alagn doch, legitimate salvage on which Holn had no claim.
And all this under the very eyes of the human envoys.
This satisfied Hulagh no less, to discredit the human who had been sent to oversee the transition of power. The sudden illness of the human elder and the natural timidity of its single youngling were a convenience beyond measure. A regul elder would have demanded constant and detailed reports of actions by his hosts; a competent one would have demanded them in such volume and at such a pace that nothing escaped his notice; a resourceful one would have used his youngling’s eyes to see what he was not meant to see. But none of this had the human envoy managed on any great scale. The human concentrated on the wrong materials, learned the language assiduously and reheard reports which he had already been given in his own language, going over old information as if he suspected he could learn something new from it, as if there were discrepancies or untruths in plain statements. Such deceptions might be the human practice; they were not regul. What was happening was as wide as the port and as plain as the ships that daily lifted, and when humans arrived some few days hence they would find a stripped and ruined possession and their delegate in command of a barren wilderness incapable of sustaining life on any large scale.
This was itself a coup that the council on Nurag would savor when it heard.
Hulagh had been perplexed originally that the two humans had contrived no means of circumventing the onerous restrictions placed on them. Only once had they broken quarantine, a quarantine no regul would have accepted in principle in the first place; and that one success seemed without forethought and was embarrassedly, tacitly ignored by the envoy. It had succeeded only because it had been uncharacteristic of the humans, a minor victory in the sense of its unhappy result, but actually of no possible benefit to them. In the end only the kel’en had suffered for it, and that needlessly, as impractical as all his kind. The mri had been a man of importance among their bloody, stubborn species. He had promised perhaps to be valuable; but he had been ruined. The humans remained ignorant even of this small revenge they had inflicted on their old enemies. They sat, helpless, obedient.
And hereafter there remained nothing much on Kesrith but what waited loading, now that work crews were free to clear the debris at the docks. There were charges to be set, a few small installations to be stripped, mines to be closed, but the most valuable cargo waited at the dock already.
Of personnel there remained only the lowest priority evacuees, who would leave with him on Hazan.
Records bequeathed him from doch Holn indicated that there had been some eighteen million regul adults on Kesrith at the beginning of the evacuation procedure, a colony once exceedingly prosperous and supporting a university and a few first-rate elder minds (excluding the Holn, whom he despised as overvalued). He knew the exact number, and the disposition Holn had made, and the disposition he himself had made of the remaining citizens and properties from the instant he had taken charge, and what goods he had placed on the evacuation ships to be consumed enroute, and what to be allotted as personal baggage, and what he was salvaging to take himself, down to fractional weight and space requirements for shipping. He had absorbed all this data in minute detail. He made occasional written records, against the event of his sudden death and the passing of Alagn doch to his immediate heirs—he did not entirely trust humans—or his sudden incapacity; but these were only for such an event. In the ordinary course of transactions he did not consult written records at all. It was physically impossible for a sane and healthy regul to forget anything he had ever determined to remember, and it was also quite likely that he would remember what he heard only casually. Hulagh believed implicitly in the accuracy of the record he had obtained from Solgah Holn-ni, his enemy, as he believed implicitly in her sanity. It was inconceivable that Solgah, however lacking in astuteness and over-impressed with her own ability as an administrator, would not have at least recalled accurately what was the number of regul on her world, and what their resources, and how disposed.
He knew therefore that 327 regul young remained with him outside the ship, the barest minimum necessary to carry out the dismantling operation, and three of those were almost adult. The majority were younglings below the age of twenty-five, as yet undetermined in sex—this would manifest itself at about thirty—and far more mobile than would be possible for them as they began to attain their adult weight. They were of use to him when it came to errands or heavy labor, for the observations of the evacuation that later would be gleaned from their memories by expert scholars on Nurag. Their memories, presently, save in their most recent unique experiences and knowledge of the events passing around them, had not yet acquired any data that would make them intrinsically valuable to any elder, simply because they had not lived long enough or travelled far enough to have rivalled the experience or comparative observatory powers of an elder. They belonged only to the doch of their birth, and had not seen what they might yet accomplish, and since they would not sex and reproduce for another several years, they were not distracted by these considerations.
Only those fully mature and those protected by adult choice of a doch (even Holn) had been lifted off to safety in the main evacuation—they and such infants as could be contained in their mothers’ pouches for the duration of the voyages, life-supported without undue expenditure of resources by the crowded rescue ships.
These last younglings, more fortunate than the masses of Holn that had not fitted into either category, knew that they were still expendable, and why, and they were accordingly nervous about the coming of humans and petulant about their personal losses—and, which was the common quality of the young—abysmally stupid in their anxieties, believing, for so their limited experience misled them, that they were the first and most important younglings in the history of the race to suffer such things.
One fretted outside now and craved admittance for the fifth time, urgent with some message doubtless protesting the conditions under which they were confined in the Nom and forbidden to wander the square during off-hours, or protesting the long hours that they had been required to work since the crisis at the port, or their increasing fear of the coming humans and the fact that they were not yet on board the safety of Hazan, which was at the root of everything. Hulagh had answered enough such requests for attention, both from regul younglings and from dull-witted humans. He was busy. The youngling in question was not assigned anywhere near the human delegate, so it could not be an emergency in that quarter, which was all that would have truly interested him within the Nom. He dealt with the destructions of the storm as best he could, covering the one error he had committed, in failing to ask of Solgah concerning the behaviors of the seasons and the climate of Kesrith. He had little time for petulant and frightened assistants.
The youngling persisted. Hulagh sighed at last and pressed a button and admitted the youngling, whose agitation was extreme.
“Be gracious, bai.” It was the one named Suth Hara-ri, bred of the university bai-dach. It gave a polite suck of breath.
Hulagh reciprocated. There was at least some grace in Suth, who had been unmannered and fearful to a degree unbecoming any age when it began service. This former gracelessness on the part of Kesrith’s younglings in general was surely due to the years of war which had encompassed the younglings’ entire experience. The Kesrithi younglings left in Hulagh’s charge were acquiring some graces. Hulagh continually took care to reprimand them, so that they would not arrive ashamed and misfit in the inner worlds: this also he took for part of his duty in salvaging what he could of Kesrith—and also anticipated winning the best of them to Alagn’s enlistment as adults, hand-trained, augmenting his private staff to that of a colonial governor.
He reached a place where stopping would not overmuch inconvenience him, but he let the youngling wait with the petition awhile more, while he enjoyed a cup of soi, and midway through it saw fit to gesture his willingness to listen.
“Be gracious,” Suth breathed, then blurted in desperate haste: “Bai, the station reports a mri vessel incoming.”
This struck through all courtesies and lack of them, commanding Hulagh’s attention. Hulagh leaned back, the cup forgotten on the console, and looked at the youngling in unconcealed dismay.
The mercenary Kel—in this situation with humans but a few days removed from Kesrith. Hulagh’s hearts became at once agitated and anger heated his face. It was like the mri to be inconvenient.
To arrive always in the moment other elements had reached their maximum vulnerability.
“They have given noice of their intentions?” Hulagh asked of Suth.
“They say that they will land. We urged them to make use of the station facilities. They did not respond to this. They said that they have come for their people onworld and that they intend to land.”
“Mri never lie,” said Hulagh, for the youngling’s reference, if it had never dealt face-to-face with the mercenaries.”Neither do they always tell the truth. In that, they resemble regul.”
Suth blinked and sucked air. Subtleties were wasted on this one. Hulagh frowned and blew heated air through his nostrils.
“Are they to have their permission to land?” asked Suth.”Bai, what shall we say?”
“Tell me this, youngling: Where are our station ships?”
“Why, gone, gracious lord, all but the freighter and the shuttles, with the evacuation.”
“Then we cannot very well enforce our instruction not to land, can we? You are dismissed, youngling.”
“Favor,” Suth murmured and withdrew, hasty and graceless in departure. Hulagh, already deep in thought, failed to rise to the provocation.
Mri.
Inconvenient as the stubborn kel’en he had inherited from Gruran. Bloody-handed and impulsive and incapable of coherent argument.
His memory informed him that there were constantly some few mri on Kesrith, and that this was true of no other world since Nisren had fallen to humans forty-three years ago. There were thirteen mri in residence. There was nothing to indicate why Kesrith had been so favored, save that mri had a tendency to choose one or another world as a permanent base, designating it as homeworld, and thereafter behaving as irrationally and emotionally as if this were indeed the true land of their birth. There had been three such homeworlds thus far in the regul-mri association, all within the Holn domain, since the mri had constantly come within Holn jurisdiction and remained unknown in home territories of the regul. This employment of the mercenaries was, curiously, not an arrangement of regul seeking, but an arrangement which the mri had offered the regul 2,202 years ago—for no apparent reason, for no apparent compulsion, save that this arrangement seemed to satisfy some profound emotional need of the mri. Regul had inquired into this mri peculiarity, but remained unsatisfied. There was a regul joke about mri, that mri had made records about their home and origin, but had forgotten where they had left them: hence their nomadic condition. The fact that mri had no memories was a laughable matter to one who had not dealt personally with the intractable mri.
One could not argue with them, could not reason, could not persuade them from old loyalties, and could not—above all could not tamper with their sense of proprieties. He remembered Medai’s suicide with a shudder; stubborn and without memory and prone to violence. It was like the mri to prefer bloodshed to reason, even when it was one’s own blood that was shed. Medai, Kesrith-born, would not compromise: the mri treaty held only so long as regul maintained a home-world for mri, so long as that homeworld was inviolate from invasion. Medai had seen what he had seen, and could not reason otherwise; and therefore he had chosen to set himself against his lawful employers.
His suicide was supposed, Hulagh recalled, to put some burden of shame or social stigma on the man who had offended against the mri in question. This self-destruction was an act of reproach or of complete repudiation supposed to have devastating effect on the emotions of his superior.
A mri kel’en would do such a thing, even knowing that regul were not impressed, casting away his precious life rather than compromise on a small point of duty that could make no ultimate difference to him personally. Mri doubtless imagined that it made a difference.
It was that mri ferocity that had originally appealed to the regul, an amazement that this savage, fearsome species had come peacefully to the regul docha and tendered their services—services without which the colonizing of the humanward worlds and the rise of the Holn might never had occurred, not in the manner in which Holn had created monopoly. And this very ferocity ought by rights to have warned sensible regul of the nature of mri. Mercenaries by breeding and choice, their strict, dull-witted codes made them in the beginning utterly dependable as guards in commerce of the out-world docha. They did not change allegiance in mid-service; it was impossible to bribe them; it was impossible even to discharge them save by the completion of a service or by suicide. They had not sense enough to retreat; they had no strong instincts of self-preservation, a fact which balanced their prolific breeding, in which all males of the Kel were free to mate with the low-caste females, besides the mates of their own caste: they therefore tended in the years of peace to multiply at an alarming rate, if it were not for the attrition worked on them by their way of life, their rejection of medical science, and their constant passion for duelling. How these fierce warriors had supported themselves before they found the regul to hire them was another mystery to regul, which the mri had never chosen to reveal. Mri would not do manual labor, not even sufficient to provide themselves food. A mri would starve rather than bear burdens or work the earth for another. They broke this rule only for the building and maintenance of their towers and the managing of the few ships they were allotted personally; but beyond those two exceptions, they would not turn a hand if there were regul available to take over the menial tasks. Once in Hulagh’s recall a certain ship with a kel’en aboard had met a difficulty other than human, a navigational malfunction that had the crew in a panic; they had summoned the ship’s kel’en—an old kel’e’en it was—who had leisurely come to see the difficulty, sat down at the console, and made the appropriate adjustments; then, with consummate arrogance, the kel’e’en had retired to the solitude of her own quarters, neither speaking nor offering courtesies nor accepting thanks.
Yet this kel’e’en could not read a simple sign to direct herself to the messhall on station liberty, but had to be directed by her regul employers.
There was nothing to match either the arrogance or the ignorance of the mri Kel: touchy, suiciding when offended by regul, fighting when offended by other mri—there was no knowing what truly motivated the species. Hulagh himself reckoned that he knew humans better than he knew mri, although he had dealt with humans for three years and his ancestors had dealt with mri for 2,202 years. Humans were simply territorial like regul, and while they were creatures of brief memory and small brain like the mri, they did have the industry to work, and to mend the deficiencies of their talents with an admirable technology.
It was a curious thing that in the forty-three-year war, the regul had come to trust humans far more than they did the mri; they had come to fear humans far less than they feared mri. Constantly regul had to command the mri to observe the decencies of restraint, actually had to intervene to prevent the mri escalating the war out of the territorial zone of conflict and into reaches far beyond regul limits, into a scale in which regul technology was inadequate to maintain defenses around vital homeworlds. The mri, who were specialists in war, yet had not been able to perceive this; even the Holn had done so, and had put restraints to the war, or there would have been incredible devastation and economic collapse. Mri might lose one homeworld after another and move on, but they were nomadic—perhaps, Hulagh estimated, the source of their contempt for national boundaries. Regul could not contemplate the loss of even one world of home space, with artwork, technology, trade routes: they did not intend at any time to enter war with the all-out dedication of mri.
The most serious losses were, at the end of matters, to the mri themselves. Mri had begun the war with one million, nine hundred fifty and seven kel’ein according to regul census; and this small figure was still a great increase over their former numbers, reflecting the prosperity that had been theirs in regul service over the span of 2,202 years. Only a hundred thousand had they numbered when their leaders had first approached the regul and begged to be allowed to take service with the regul species. But now most recent records indicated that there were but 533 mri of all castes surviving in known space.
It was impossible, considering that small number and the mri’s unrestrainably fierce inclinations, that the species could survive at this low ebb—ironically—without regul protection during their recovery. An era had ended, with the passing of the basis of Holn power, with the passing of the kel’ein. A few could be preserved by Alagn, if the mri would in extremity permit themselves to see reason: and Hulagh could see use for them, if only in the regul awe of the ferocity of the Kel. But they must be removed from the path of the human advance or the mri would continue like automatons to dash themselves to death against the inevitable.
And in the midst of other confusions, one mri must suicide and now a mri ship must come interfering in the evacuation of the mri homeworld. It would be an armed ship. Mri vessels, at least vessels totally mri, were small, but mri did not go anywhere unarmed.
The humans who were coming to take possession of Kesrith would likewise be armed.
Hulagh considered for one wild moment making a graceless withdrawal from his duty on Kesrith, bundling surviving younglings and himself aboard Hazan tonight and leaving the mri and the humans to each others’ mercies.
But Hazan was not ready, not fully repaired, her important cargo impossible to load until the dock machinery had been repaired.
And he would not retreat in such fashion, which would be told on homeworld to his discredit; in that much he understood the mri compulsion to stand fast when pushed.
He reached to his left and pressed a button, contacting the youngling Hada Surag-gi, kosaj of the Nom, who served him personally for sufficiently important errands: a twenty year old, Hada, extraordinarily competent in its advanced post. “Hada,” he said,”send the records of mri settlement on Kesrith.”
“Be gracious,” replied Hada’s voice. “Such records go back 2,202 years. Kesrith was among the first worlds possessed by the mri and it is locally believed that they were here before first contact. What information does the bai wish in particular? I may perhaps recall what is of help.”
This was utter impudence, that such a youngling supposed its own personal knowledge sufficient to remedy the desire of an elder.
“O young ignorance,” said Hulagh peevishly, remembering that he was the only elder presently on Kesrith and that the youngling, though impudent and self-important, was probably offering with the best of intentions, to save him valuable time and effort. This was not, after all, Nurag; there was a limit on everyone’s time and patience, most particularly his own. “Hada, what do you suppose would bring a mri ship now to Kesrith?”
“This is,” said Hada, “the present mri homeworld. Perhaps they mean to defend it. They are not accustomed to retreat.”
It was not a comforting conjecture, and precisely the one that Hulagh had made for himself. Yet the mri had accepted the treaty that regul had made with humans; mri had been advised at every step of the negotiations that they might not carry on further war with humans.
“Hada, what is the present number of mri on Kesrith?”
“Bai, there are thirteen, mostly elders of the edun and entirely unfit for war.”
He was surprised by this. He had not been interested in the small edun, since it had not intruded into his notice; he had known the number accurately but not the incapacity of its members.
“Send the records anyway, whatever you possess on the leaders personally and on the history of the species here.” Perdition, thought Hulagh miserably, mri have been on Kesrith for far too many years that I can sift through such as this. There is no time. The records will be mountainous. “Hada.”
“Favor?”
“Contact their kel’anth. Tell him I want him to report to this office immediately.”
There was a very long pause.”Be gracious, bai,” ventured Hada at last.”The Kesrithi edun is headed by a she’pan, one Intel. Onworld, a kel’anth must defer to a she’pan. He is not the leader of the mri on Kesrith.”
Hulagh’s oath cut short the youngling. There was silence in the chatter for a moment, welcome silence. He absorbed the new information, embarrassed by his reliance on a youngling’s knowledge, aware that, where mri were concerned, no one actually knew what the chain of command was within their community. Hada claimed to possess this knowledge. Perhaps Hada had acquired it from elders of Holn doch, who had commanded mri for generations. Plague and perdition, thought Hulagh, there is no time, there is no time. Confound all mri to perdition. But neither did one summon a she’pan: he knew that much. None but Kel caste would respond to a summons to leave their community and meet with outsiders. There was the necessity to brave the process of records search, or the necessity to ignore the incoming ship, with all its ugly possibilities.
Or there was the necessity to leave his desk and his work and his important duties to the incompetent mercies of youngling assistants at such a crisis, while he paid slow courtesies to a mri religious leader, whose memory was fallible and whose graces were probably lacking, who trammelled up the cleanly relations between regul doch and mri kel’anth. He and the war leader of the Kel might have settled things with a simple exchange; with one of the ceremonial leaders of the mri involved, whose power was nebulous and whose authorities and compulsions were somehow linked to the mri regligion, whatever it was—a regul petitioner must suffer tedious and pointless discussion that might only perhaps produce what he wanted.
“Hada,” said Hulagh, surrendering,”fetch me my car and the most reliable driver, a youngling who does not flinch from mri.”
Many humiliations had he accepted in dealing with the invading humans, in negotiations concerning arrangements, in accepting two inconvenient observers whose presence, if known, could cause impossible complications with the mri treaty. He had succeeded in handling the humans, which was thought to have been the most difficult matter; he had out-maneuvered them in a way that would bring him prestige.
And now it came to this, that he must interrupt the saving of regul lives and regul properties to counsel with mri hirelings, to rescue an ungrateful people who most likely would not treat with him courteously for his efforts.
A thought struck him.”Hada,” he said.
“Favor?”
“Is it or is it not possible that the mri would know that one of their ships is coming?”
“That information has not been released by this office,” said Hada. Then: “Be gracious, bai; mri have learned things before this that have not been released by this office. They have their own communications.”
“Doubtless,” said Hulagh, and broke the connection and went about the laborious and painful business of rising. He was 290 years removed from the class of younglings. His legs were proportionately shorter, his senses duller, his body many times heavier. His rugose skin was prone to cracking and developing sores when directly exposed to the dry cold of Kesrith’s air. His double hearts labored under the exertion of lifting his adult bulk, and his muscles trembled with the unaccustomed strain. As an elder of the regul, his principal business was of the mind and the intellect
And he was reduced to this, to visit mri.
THE MRI EDUN hove into view, a set of truncated, common-based cones ominously alien—and located, inevitably, in the most inconvenient and inaccessible place available. Hulagh settled uneasily into his cushions in the rear of the landsled and saw it grow nearer: built of the soil of the mineral flats, cemented and dull-surfaced, it was of a color with the earth, but startling to the eye and forbiddingly sterile in its outlines. It wasted space with its slanting walls—but then, mri never did anything the simple way. It was, he reflected, indicative of the mri mind, nonutilitarian, alien in its patterns, deliberately isolate. The sled labored in the climb up the causeway, which the rains, that other of Kesrith’s terrestrial nuisances, had left in ill-repair, dissolving the salts that lay in thick deposits thereabouts and creating alarming channels in the earth and rock of the causeway. On either side lay a fatal plunge to the thin crusts of the flats, volcanic and constantly steaming at one or another vent. Hulagh tried not to think of what depths lay beside the treads of the sled as it ground its way over a series of ruts that had almost eaten the road away.
Mri did not choose to repair it. Old they might be, but even if they had been physically capable, they would have disdained to do it, not as long as there remained onworld a single regul on whom to cast the responsibility. The road would wash away before mri would stir to mend it, and there was no intention in Hulagh’s mind to do so for human benefit.
He only hoped it would suffice to carry him to and from, and that once only.
The car jolted up the last few feet of incline and came to the main entry of the edun. The structure itself was in similar disrepair, already yielding to the rains that would claim it in the end, that would reduce it to the white earth again. The slanted walls bore dim traces of colors that must once have made it bright.
He had seen pictures of edunei, but he had never seen one in reality, and never seen one in such a state. This was surely an ancient structure, and declined sadly. Mri were usually more proud. Even the front walk was guttered with erosion channels, and with the sled grinding to a halt, bai Hulagh looked on that irregular surface with dread. It was a long walk, a difficult walk on soft ground. And there was a dus guarding the entry, a massive brown lump, all wrinkles and folds of flesh, rising to a hump at the shoulders and descending at either end. It seemed to be asleep, resting with its back a quarter as high as the door—higher by more should it stir, which Hulagh fervently hoped it would not do. Dusei were wherever mri travelled, but on ship they kept entirely to the kel’en’s cabin and were not allowed to range the premises. He had never encountered one at close range, had let his younglings tend to that unpleasantness. He knew only what he had heard: that while mri were legally class-two sapients on a scale which rated regul as one, dusei were tentatively classed at ten, although many who had dealt with the frustrating creatures reckoned that dusei should be considerably higher or lower. They were Kesrith’s native dominant species; he knew this too, although they ran wild wherever mri had been for long, which was every world where mri had ever been permitted—none, happily, in the inner territories of regul space—this was their origin. They were a plague in the wilds of whatever world they adopted, and they were dangerous. There were surely wild ones prolific in the hills and plains— slow, patient omnivores, a gift such as regul gladly bestowed on the humans. Mri purchased with their service food to feed their dusei, which accordingly haunted their dwellings and accompanied them into space; but dusei did nothing, contributed nothing, did not fight unless cornered, and were never eaten. Their only visible benefit was that to keep them nearby pleasured the mri, who apparently derived some social status among their own kind for the keeping and support of such useless and expensive creatures. Hulagh himself collected gems, stones, geological curiosities. He attempted to comprehend the mentality of the mri, who treasured such live and dangerous specimens.
This one in particular looked diseased. Its hide was patched and his attitude was more sluggish than was natural even for a dus. It had not even lifted its head as the car drew up at the walk.
The sight of the ugly creature did more than the decay of the edun itself to distress Hulagh’s aesthetic sense. He looked at it and did not wish to look, as he forced his own considerable bulk from the confines of the sled and waited for his driver, one Chul Nag-gi, to assist him up the walk. Chul also seemed to regard the dus with distaste, and as they walked together toward the step, Chul dutifully walked on the side nearest the creature and kept a constant eye on it. The dus lifted its head to investigate them as they came to the doorway. Its eyes were running and unhealthy.
Perdition, thought Hulagh uneasily, the thing is dying of disease on their doorsill, and will they not destroy it?—for the sake of hygiene, if not mercy.
The dus investigated them, snuffling wetly, emitted a strange sound, a low rumbling and whuffing that was not pleasure and not quite menace. “Away!” Chul exclaimed, in a voice edged with panic. Hulagh edged past with all possible speed, while Chul fended the creature away with a violent kick. Chul overtook him just inside the dark door, and offered an arm once more, whereupon they began the long walk together.
A mri saw them and vanished, a black shadow among shadows, and none offered to guide them. Hulagh needed no guidance. He had been acquainted before they left the Norn with the plan of edunei, which was universal. He knew the general design of the ground level, and where the fourth cone of the she’pan ought to sit, and to this cone he walked slowly, panting, struggling as the approach offered, to his horror, stairs, winding up and up toward the crest.
A shout echoed above. Yet he saw no one and came at his own agonized pace, step by step, past mud-plastered walls cheaply decorated with rough designs or symbols, so irregularly and stylistically painted that they seemed impossible of decipherment even if one knew the mri system. Designs in black and gold and blue serpentined round the windings of the corridor upon walls and ceilings. They might be religious in nature: it was another thing the mri had never revealed—to avert evils or call them down on intruders; or perhaps they simply thought it beautiful. It was difficult to reconcile this with the modern lighting and the other evidences of mri sophistication with regul machinery—a people that could handle starflight and yet lived in this primitive manner. The doors that shielded the hall where the she’pan would hold state, most of the doors in the edun, in fact, were steel, of regul manufactury, and steel likely reinforced the mud-and-binder architecture.
“They do not mind furnishing their mud hovels with good regul metal,” Chul said, an undertone, but the youngling saved its comments for itself when Hulagh gave it a hard look, for the acuteness of mri hearing was legendary.
“Open the door,” said Hulagh.
And when Chul had done so, the youngling gave a sharp intake of breath, for there was a mri directly confronting them, a black-veiled kel’en, a mere youngling himself; Hulagh reckoned so, at least, by the unmarred brow and clear golden skin. He was grim, impudent, barbarous, a golden man bedecked in black and weaponry, warlike gear that even included the archaism of a long knife at his belt. Hulagh was minded instantly and painfully of Medai, who had been such as this. It was like meeting a ghost.
Youngling fronted youngling, and it was the regul that backed a pace, a weakness that sent a wave of angry heat to Hulagh’s head.
“Where is the she’pan?” Hulagh asked sharply, embarrassed by his driver’s discomfiture and seeking to recover regul dignity.”Young mri, get out of the door and call someone of authority. You were advised that I would call on the she’pan.”
The mri turned neatly on his heel and walked away, silent, graceful, disrespectful. Mri warrior. Hulagh hated the whole breed. They were utterly unmannered as a nation, and encouraged it in their younglings. The youth, like the whole edun, stank of incense. It lingered in the air, and Hulagh fought a tendency to sneeze, to clear his violated air passages. His legs were shuddering from the long walk upstairs. He walked in and bent his knees and lowered his heavy body the necessary small degree to sit on the carpets. Mri furniture, of which there was only the she’pan’s chair of honor and two benches near the entry, was too high and too fragile for an adult regul, nor could a regul stand and bear his own weight for any length of time.
In proper courtesy the youngling should have summoned some of his kind to bring furniture apt to him; but this was a very poor edun by all evidences, and perhaps unused to regul callers at all. The carpets were at least clean.
Shouting echoed in the depths of the hall beyond the partition that screened the privacies of the central chamber. Hulagh mentally winced at the unseemliness of this behavior, and Chul stirred uneasily. In a moment more the room began to admit other warriors, likewise veiled and armed.
“Bai,” said Chul. There was fear in that tone. Hulagh dealt with it with a foul look: ignorant, this youngling. The mri, while graceless and arrogant, were still subjects of the regul, and they were subjects by choice, not compulsion. Mri were many things, and they were unpleasant, but they were not dangerous, at least in the personal sense—not to regul.
Several dusei wandered in, heavy-boned heads held low to the carpet, looking as if they had lost something and forgotten just what it was. They settled their great bulks into the corner and lowered their heads between their paws and watched, their tiny, almost invisible eyes glittering. One rumbled an ominous sound, quieted as a kel’en settled against him, using his broad shoulder for a backrest.
The sneeze came, unexpected and violent. Hulagh contained it as best he could. None of the mri affected to notice this terrible breach of etiquette. He counted those present. There were eleven, and nine of these were veiled, males and perhaps a female of the Kel; one young female was unveiled, robed in gold; and with her was one of the oldest, a presumed male of the gold-robed caste. They were the only mri whose faces he had ever seen. He could not help staring, amazed at the graceful delicacy of the young female.
Odd, Hulagh reflected, that this backward species sexed when young and aged into sameness. He stored that thought away for further pondering, did mri chance to survive this era and remain relevant to the living.
And with a soft rustling, the she’pan herself arrived, leaning on the arm of the young kel’en; she settled among them, in her chair, veilless. She was also very, very old, and, Hulagh thought, although he was not sure, that she had been disfigured on one side of her face. Young mri were smooth-skinned and slim; and the young woman’s hair shone in the light like textured bronze, but the she’pan’s was faded and brittle, and on the side with the apparent injury it was dark at the temple. The young warrior knelt at her side, golden eyes darting mistrust and hostility at the visitors. The she’pan’s look contained the placidity of age and long, long experience, qualities which Hulagh valued, and he suddenly revised his opinion and reckoned that it might be better after all to deal with this aged female than with an intractable war-leader, if she could indeed guide her people in areas other than in the obscure mri religion.
She had no great awe of regul, this was plain enough; but neither was she hostile or slow-witted. Her eyes were quick and appraising. There was the look of higher sentience there.
“She’pan,” said Hulagh, recognizing age’s right to dignity, even if she were mri.
“Hulagh,” she said, stripping him of titles.
His nostrils snapped shut, blew air in irritation. He remembered the presence of the youngling Chul at his elbow, Chul, whose witness he did not particularly want at this moment, and the heat of anger seethed in him as it had not in many sheltered years.
“She’pan,” said Hulagh, persistent in proprieties,”we have made room for your people on our ship.” This was, basically, the truth: he had allotted space, which he had hoped would not have to be too extensive, and he had hoped for younglings, who could be civilized and moulded anew under Alagn guidance; but he saw only two. He revised opinions quickly. These elders, it might be, could control young mri loose elsewhere, render them tractable, perhaps—gather a colony of mri in Alagn territory. He thought again of the young kel’en who had suicided, and thought perhaps that that would not have happened if there had been an elder mri to provide that youngling with a proper perspective on his act.
If there were not that restraint and sense even in elders like this, and they would not have dissuaded him, then the whole of mri civilization had failed, and there was no rescuing it from itself.
“We would desire,” he told the she’pan,”for you to board within the coming night.”
The she’pan stared at him, neither joyed nor dismayed by that short time.”Indeed, bai?”
“As soon as possible. We are at that stage of our loading.”
The she’pan stared at him and considered that in silence.”And our dusei?” she asked.
“And the dusei, one for each,” Hulagh painfully conceded, mentally deducting two times the resources that would have been necessary to accommodate the mri; he had hoped to take no dusei at all; but when he considered the matter, he reflected that the unpleasant beasts might keep the mri content, representing their wealth, and it was very desirable that the mri remain content.
“We will consult upon the matter,” said the she’pan, her hand on the shoulder of the young warrior who sat beside her, and at her other side, silent, settled the gold-robed young female.
“There is no time for lengthy consultations,” Hulagh objected.
“Ah,” said the she’pan,”then you have heard about the ship.”
Blood drained from Hulagh’s face, slowly resumed its proper circulation. He did not look at the youngling, hoping for once its wits would prevent its repeating this insult and humiliation elsewhere, among its youngling fellows. He had scant hope that this would be the case.
“Yes,” said Hulagh,”we have naturally heard. Nevertheless we are anxious to speed our departure. We are not familiar with this incoming ship, but doubtless—” he stammered over the not-truth, compelled to lie, for the first time in his life, for the sake of regul, for the welfare of the younglings in his protection, and most of all for his own ambitions and for the survival of his knowledge; but he felt foul and soiled in the doing. “Doubtless after you are aboard, we may intercept this ship of yours and divert it also toward the safety of our inner zones.”
“Would you permit that?” The dry old voice, heavy with accent, was careful, devoid of inflections that could have betrayed emotion and concealed meanings.”Shall mri go to the regul homeworld at long last? You have never permitted us knowledge of its location, bai.”
“Nevertheless—” He could not build upon the lie. He was not able to consummate this, the supreme immorality—to falsify, to lend untruth to memory, which could not be unlearned. He had learned this practice of aliens. He had watched them do it, amazed and horrified; he had learned that humans lied as a regular practice. He felt his own skin crawl at the enormity of it, his throat contract when he tried to shape more to his fiction, and knew that if he refused to build upon it, it would not be believed at all; and then he would be caught, lose credibility, with fatal consequences for the mri, with unfortunate result for the regul under his command, and for his own future.
If it were known on Nurag—
But they were only mri, lesser folk; they had no memories such as regul had; and with them the lie could not live as it would among regul. Perhaps therein lay at least a lesser immorality.
“Nevertheless, she’pan,” he said, controlling his voice carefully,”this is so. Matters are different now. We will not delay here as long as we had planned. We will board with all possible speed.”
“Do you fear lest the humans should gain us?”
This came too near the mark. Hulagh sat still, looking at the she’pan and suspecting deeper things within her words. Mri were, like regul, truthful. He had this on the tradition of all his predecessors who had made the records which he had learned, and an ancestry that made records on the truth of which all the past and therefore all the future depended.
Had the ancestors also been tempted to lie, to play small games with truth and reality?
Had they in fact done so? The very doubting increased the pace of Hulagh’s overtaxed hearts, pulled the foundations from beneath his firmest beliefs and left everything in uncertainty. Yet in spite of this tradition of the ancestors, a bai now lied, to save lives, for a good cause and the welfare of two species: but the truth had been altered, all the same, and now the lie shaped truth to cover it.
“We are anxious,” said Hulagh, wading deeper into this alien element,”that you be safe from humans. We are anxious to speed our own departure, for our safety’s sake, and for yours. Our own younglings are at stake, and myself, and my reputation, and I am extremely valuable in the eyes of my people, so you may know that we will take unusual care to ensure the safety of this particular ship. If you wish to go with us, and I advise it, she’pan, I strongly advise it, then prepare your people to embark at once.”
“We have served regul,” said the she’pan,”for 2,000 years. This is a very long service. And scant have been the rewards of it.”
“We have offered you what you ask and more: we have offered you technicians who would give you all the benefits of our experience; we have offered you our records, our histories, our technology.”
“We do not,” said the she’pan,”desire this knowledge of yours.”
“It is your own misfortune then,” said the bai. He had met this stupidity in mri before, in Medai.”She’pan, you keep to your own dwellings and to ships, but they are regul-built ships; even your weapons are regul-made. Your food is produced by regul. Without us you would starve to death. And yet you still affect to despise our knowledge.”
“We do not despise your knowledge,” said the she’pan.”We simply do not desire it.”
Hulagh’s eyes strayed past her shoulder to the chamber itself, a gesture of contempt for the conditions in which the she’pan held state, in rooms barely sanitary, in halls innocent of amenities, decorated with that frighteningly crude and powerful art of symbols, the meaning of which he doubted even the mri remembered. They were superstitious folk. If ill or injured, mri would turn from regul help and die rather than admit weakness, desiring only the presence of other mri or the presence of a dus. This was their religion at work.
Usually they died, all the same. We are warriors, regul had heard often enough, not carriers of burdens, sellers of goods, practitioners of arts, whatever the offered opportunity or benefit. Medicine, engineering, literature, agriculture, physical labor of any sort as long as there was a single regul to do it for them?all these things the mri despised.
Animals, Hulagh thought, plague and pestilence—they are nothing but animals. They enjoy war. They have deliberately prolonged this one in their stupidity. We ought never to have unleashed them in war. They like it too well.
And to the youth, the arrogant young kel’en who sat by the she’pan’s knee, he asked, “Youngling, would you not wish to learn? Would you not wish to have the things that regul enjoy, to know the past and the future and how to build in metals?”
The golden eyes nictitated, a sign of startlement in a mri.”I am of the Kel,” said the young warrior.”And education is not appropriate for my caste. Ask the Sen.”
The young woman in gold looked on him in her turn, her unveiled face a perfect mask, infuriating, expressionless. “The Sen is headed by the she’pan. Ask the she’pan, bai, whether she desires your knowledge. If she bids me learn, then I will learn what you have to teach.”
They played with him, games of ignorance, mri humor. Hulagh saw it in the eyes of the she’pan, who remained motionless through this circular exchange.
“We know,” said the she’pan finally,”that these things have always been available to us. But the rewards of service that we desired were other than what you offer; and of late they have been scant”
Enigmas. The mri cherished their obscurities, their abstruseness. There was no helping such people. “If one of you,” Hulagh said with deliberate patience, “had ever deigned to specify what reward you sought, then we might have found the means to give it to you.”
But the she’pan said nothing to this, as the mri had always said nothing on this score: We serve for pay, some had said scornfully, similarly questioned, but they offered nothing of the truth of the whole; and this she’pan like her ancestors said nothing at all.
“It would be a comfort to my people,” said Hulagh, trying that ancient ploy, the appeal to legalities of oath and to mri conscience, and it was partly truth at least. “We are accustomed to the protection of mri with us. We are not fighters. Even if one or two mri should be on the ship as we leave, we would feel safer in our journey.”
“If you demand a mri for your protection,” said the she’pan,”I must send one.”
“She’pan,” said Hulagh, trying again to reach some point of reason, forgetful of his dignity and the watching eyes of Chul. “Would you then send one, alone, without his people, to travel so far as we are going, and without the likelihood of return? This would be hard. And what is there possibly in these regions to detain you once we have gone?”
“Why should we not,” asked the she’pan,”bring our own ship in your wake—to Nurag? Why are you so anxious to have us aboard your own, bai Hulagh?”
“We have laws,” Hulagh said, his hearts pounding.”Surely you realize we must observe cautions. But it will be safer for you than here.”
“There will be humans here,” said the she’pan.”Have you not arranged it so?”
Hulagh found nothing in his vast memory with which to understand that answer. It crawled uneasily through his thoughts, rousing ugly suspicions.
“Would you,” Hulagh asked, compelled to directness, “change your allegiance and serve humans?”
The she’pan made a faint gesture, meaningless to a regul. “I will consult with my Husbands,” she said. “If it pleases you, I will send one of my people with you if you demand it. We are in service to the regul. It would not be seemly or lawful for me to refuse to send one of us with you in your need, o Hulagh, bai of Kesrith.”
Now, now came courtesy; he did not trust this late turn of manners, though mri could not lie; neither had he thought that he could lie, before this conference and his moment of necessity, which had been spent all in vain. Mri might indeed not lie; but neither was it likely that the she’pan was without certain subtleties, and possibly she was laughing within this appearance of courtesy. And the Kel was veiled and inscrutable.
“She’pan,” he said, “what of this ship that is coming?”
“What of it?” echoed the she’pan.
“Who are these mri that are coming? Of what kindred? Are they of this edun?”
Again the curious gesture of the hand that returned to stroke the head of the young female who leaned against her knee.
“The name of the ship, bai, is Ahanal. And do you make formal request that one of us accompany you?”
“I will tell you this when you have consulted with your Husbands and given me the answer to other questions,” said Hulagh, marking how she had turned aside his own question. He smoldered with growing anger.
These were mri. They were a little above the animals. They knew nothing and remembered less, and dared play games with regul.
He was also within their territory, and of law on this forsaken world, he was the sole representative.
For the first time he looked upon the mri not as a comfort, not as interestingly quaint, nor even as a nuisance, but as a force like the dusei, dull-wittedly ominous. He looked at the dark-robed warriors, this stolid indifference to the regul authority that had always commanded them.
For mri .to challenge the will of the regul—this had never happened, not directly, not so long as mri served the varied regul docha and authorities; Hulagh sorted through his memory and found no record of what the mri had done when it was not a question of traditional obedience. This was that most distasteful of all possible situations, one never before experienced by any regul on record, one in which his own vast memory was as helpless as that of a youngling, blank of helpful data.
Regul in the throes of complete senility sometimes claimed sights of memories that were yet in the future, saw things that had not yet been and on which there could not possibly be data. Sometimes these elders were remarkably accurate in their earliest estimations, an accuracy which disturbed and defied analysis. But the process then accelerated and muddled all their memories, true and not-yet-true and never-true, and they went mad beyond recall. Of a sudden Hulagh suffered something of the sort, projected the potentials of this situation and derived an insane foreboding of these warlike creatures turning on him and destroying him and Chul at once, rising against the regul docha in bloody frenzy. His two hearts labored with the horror not only of this image, but of the fact that he had perceived it at all. He was 310 years of age. He was bordering on decline of faculties, although he was now at the peak of his abilities and looked to be for decades more. He was terrified lest decline have begun, here, under the strain of so much strangeness. It was not good for an old regul to absorb so much strangeness at once.
“She’pan,” he said, trying the last, the very last assault upon her adamancy. “You are aware that your ill-advised delay may make it impossible in the end to take any of your people aboard to safety.”
“We will consult,” she said, which was neither aye nor nay, but he took it for absolute refusal, judging that he would never in this world hear from the she’pan, not until that ship had come.
There was something astir among mri, something that involved Kesrith and did not admit regul to the secret; and he remembered the young kel’en who had suicided when he was denied permission to leave—who would have borne the news of human presence to the she’pan already if he had been allowed off that ship; and there was that perversity in mri, that, deprived of their war, they might be capable of committing racial suicide, a last defense against humans, who came to claim this world—and when humans met this, they would never believe that the mri were acting alone. They would finish the mri and move against regul: another foresight, of horrid aspect.
Mri would retreat only under direct order, and if they slipped control, they would not retreat at all. Of a sudden he cursed the regul inclined to believe the mri acquiescent in this matter—Gruran, who had passed him this information and caused him to believe in it.
He cursed himself, who had confirmed the data, who had not considered mri as a priority, who had been overwhelmingly concerned with loading the world’s valuables aboard Hazan, and with managing the humans.
Hulagh heaved himself up, found his muscles still too fatigued from his first climb to manage his weight easily, and was not spared the humiliation of having to be rescued from relapse by the youngling Chul, who flung an arm about him and braced him with all its might.
The she’pan snapped her fingers and the arrogant young kel’en at her knee rose up easily and added his support to Hulagh’s right side.
“This is very strenuous for the bai,” Chul said, and Hulagh mentally cursed the youngling. “He is very old, she’pan, and this long trip has tired him, and the air is not good for him.”
“Niun,” said the she’pan to her kel’en, “escort the bai down to his vehicle.” And the she’pan rose unaided, and observed with bland face and innocent eyes while Hulagh wheezed with effort in putting one foot in front of the other. Hulagh had never missed his lost youth and its easy mobility; age was its own reward, with its vast memory and the honors of it, with its freedom from fear and with the services and respects accorded by younglings; but this was not so among mri.
He realized with burning indignation that the she’pan sought this comparison between them in their age, furnishing her people with the spectacle of the helplessness of a regul elder without his sleds and his chairs.
Among mri, light and quick, and mobile even in extreme age, this weakness must be a curiosity. Hulagh wondered if mri made jest of regul weakness in this regard as regul did of mri intelligence. No one had ever seen a mri laugh outright, not in 2,202 years. He feared there was laughter now on their veiled faces.
He looked on the face of Chul, seeking whether Chul understood. The youngling looked only bewildered, frightened; it panted and wheezed with the burden of its own and another’s weight. The young mri at the other side did not look directly at either of them, but kept his eyes respectfully averted, a model of decorum, and his veiled face could not be read.
They left the steel doors and entered the dizzying windings of the painted halls, down and down agonizingly painful steps. For Hulagh it was a blur of misery, of colors and cloying air and the possibility of a fatal fall, and when they finally reached level ground it was blessed relief. He lingered there a moment, panting, then began to walk again, leaning on them, step by step. They passed the doors, and the stinging, pungent air outside came welcome, like the hostile sun. His senses cleared. He stopped again, and blinked in the ruddy light, and caught his breath, leaning on them both.
“Niun,” he said, remembering the kel’en’s name.
“Lord?” responded the young mri.
“How if I should choose you to go on the ship with me?”
The golden eyes lifted to his, wide and, it seemed, frightened. He had never seen this much evidence of emotion in a mri. It startled him. “Lord,” said the young mri,”I am duty-bound to the she’pan. I am her son. I cannot leave.”
“Are you not all her sons?”
“No, lord. They are mostly her Husbands. I am her son.”
“But not of her body, all the same.”
The mri looked as if he had been struck, shocked and offended at once.”No, lord. My truemother is not here anymore.”
“Would you go on the ship Hazan?’
“If the she’pan sent me, lord.”
This one was young, without the duplicities, the complexities of the she’pan; young, arrogant, yes, but such as Niun could be shaped and taught. Hulagh gazed at the young face, veiled to the eyes, finding it more vulnerable than was the wont of mri—rudeness to stare, but Hulagh took the liberty of the very old among regul, who were accustomed to be harsh and abrupt with younglings. “And if I should tell you now, this moment, get into the sled and come with me?”
For a moment the young mri did not seem to know how to answer; or perhaps he was gathering that reserve so important to a mri warrior. The eyes above the veil were frankly terrified, agonized.
“You might be assured,” Hulagh said,”of safety.”
“Only the she’pan could send me,” said the young kel’en.”And I know that she will not.”
“She had promised me one mri.”
“It has always been the privilege of the edun to choose which is to go and which to stay. I tell you that she will not let me go with you, lord.”
That was plainly spoken, and the obtaining of permission through argument would doubtless mean another walk to the crest of the structure, and agony; and another debate with the she’pan, protracted and infuriating and doubtful of issue. Hulagh actually considered it and rejected it, and looked on the young face, trying to fix in mind what details made this mri different from other mri.
“What is your name, your full name, kel’en?”
“Niun s’Intel Zain-Abrin, lord.”
“Set me in my car, Niun.”
The mri looked uncertainly relieved, as if he understood that this was all Hulagh was going to ask. He applied his strength to the task with Chul’s considerable help, and slowly, carefully, with great gentleness, lowered Hulagh’s weight into the cushion. Hulagh breathed a long sigh of exhaustion and his sight went dim for a moment, the blood rushing in his head. Then he dismissed the mri with an impatient gesture and watched him walk back to the doorway, over the eroded walk. The dus by the door lifted his head to investigate, then suddenly curled in the other direction and settled, head between its forelegs. Its breath puffed at the dust. The young mri, who had paused, vanished into the interior of the edun.
“Go,” said Hulagh to Chul, who turned on the vehicle and set it moving in a lumbering turn. And again: “Youngling, contact my office and see if there are any new developments.”
He thought uneasily of the incoming ship, distant as it surely was, and of everything which had seemed so simple and settled this morning. He drew a breath of the comfortably filtered and heated air within the vehicle and tried to compose his thoughts. The situation was impossible. Humans were about to arrive; and if humans perceived mri near Kesrith and suspected treachery or ambush, humans could arrive sooner. They could arrive very much sooner.
Without a doubt there would be confrontation, mri and human, unless he could rid Kesrith and Kesrith’s environs of mri, by one method or another; and of a sudden reckoning she’pan Intel into matters, Hulagh found himself unable to decide how things were aligned with mri and regul.
Or with mri and humans.
“Bai,” came Hada Surag-gi’s voice over the radio.”Be gracious. We have contacted the incoming mri ship directly. They are Ahanal.”
“Tell me something I do not already know, youngling.”
There was a moment’s silence. Hulagh regretted his temper in the interval, for Hada had tried to do well, and Hada’s position was not enviable, a youngling trying to treat with mri arrogance and a bai’s impatience.
“Bai,” said Hada timidly,”this ship is not based on this world, but they are intending to land. They say—bai—”
“Out with it, youngling.”
“—that they will be here by sunfall over Kesrith’s city tomorrow. They have arrived close—dangerously close, bai. Our station was monitoring the regular approaches, the lanes—but they ignored them.”
Hulagh blew his breath out softly, and refrained from swearing.
“Be gracious,” said Hada.
“Youngling, what else?”
“They rejected outright our suggestion to dock at the station. They want to land at the port. We disputed their right to do so under the treaty, and explained that our facilities were damaged by the weather. They would not hear. They say that they have need of provisioning. We protested they could obtain this at the station. They would not hear. They demand complete reprovisioning and re-equipage of a class-one vessel with armaments as on war status. We protested that we could not do these things. But they demand these things, bai, and they claim—they claim that they number in excess of 400 mri on that ship.”
A chill flowed over Hulagh’s thick skin.
“Youngling,” said Hulagh,”in all known space there are only 533 of the species known to survive, and thirteen of these are presently on Kesrith and another is recently deceased.”
“Be gracious,” pleaded Hada.”Bai, I am very sure I heard accurately. I asked them to repeat the figure.—It is possible,” Hada added in a voice trembling and wheezing with distress, “that these are all the mri surviving anywhere in the universe.”
“Plague and perdition,” said Hulagh softly and reached forward to prod Chul in the shoulder.”The port.”
“Bai?” asked Chul, blinking.
‘The port,” Hulagh repeated.”O young ignorance, the port. Make for it.”
The car veered off left, corrected, followed the causeway the necessary distance, then left along the passable margin of the city, bouncing over scrub, presenting occasionally a view of the pinkish sky and the distant mountains, Kesrith’s highlands, then of white barren sands and the slim twisting trunks of scrub luin.
To this the humans fell heir.
Good riddance to them.
He began to think again of the mri that had suicided, and with repeated chill, of the remaining mri that had by that time already tended toward Kesrith—all the mri that survived anywhere, coming to their homeworld, which was to go to the control of humans.
To die?
He wished he could trust it were so simply final. To stop the humans; to breathe life into the war again; to ruin the peace and the regul at once, and then, being few, to die themselves, and leave the regul species at the mercy of outraged humans: this was like the mri.
He began to think, his double hearts laboring with fear, what choice he had in dealing with the mercenaries; and as he had never lied before he dealt with mri, so he had never contemplated violence with his own hands, without mri hired as intermediaries.
The sled made a rough turn toward the port gate, bouncing painfully over ruts. The disrepair was even here.
He saw with utter apprehension that clouds had gathered again over the hills beyond the city.
THE RAIN CAME, a gentle enemy, against the walls of the edun. The winds rushed down, but the mountain barrier and the high rocks broke their force and sent them skirling down slopes toward the regul town and port instead. No strong wind had ever touched the edun, not in 2,000 years.
It was comfortable on such a night to take the common-meal, all castes together in the she’pan’s tower. All evening long there had been a curious sensitivity in the air, a sense of violent pleasure, of satisfaction as strong as the storm winds. The dusei, mood-sensitive, had grown so restive that they had been turned out of the edun altogether, to roam where they pleased this night. They disappeared into the dark, all but the miuk’ko at the gate, finding no discomfort at all in the world’s distempers.
And the spirits of the kel’ein were high. Old eyes glittered. There was no mention of the ship that was coming, but it was at the center of everything.
Niun likewise, among the kel’ein, felt the surge of hope at the arrival of Ahanal. Of a sudden, dizzying views opened before his feet. Others. Brothers. Rivals. Challenge and hope of living.
And himself, even unfledged, even without experience in war, hitherto no person of consequence: but this was home-world, and he of homeworld’s Kel; and he was, above all, the she’pan’s kel’en. It was a heady, unaccustomed feeling, that of being no longer the least, but one among the first.
“We have been in contact with a mri ship,” was all the word the she’pan had given them that morning, before the arrival of the regul bai; and that, outside its name, was all that they knew. The Lady Mother had gathered them together in the dawning, and spoken to them quietly and soberly, and it was an effort for her, for she lay insensible so much of the time. But for a moment, a brief moment, there had been an Intel Niun had never seen: it awed him, that soft-voiced, clear-headed stranger who spoke knowledgeably about lanes and routings around Kesrith that were little-monitored by regul—in riddles she spoke at times, but not now: “Soon,” she had said, “Very soon. Keep your eyes on the regul, kel’ein.”
And quickly then, more quickly than they had anticipated, the regul bai had come making them offers.
The regul were concerned. They were presented something that had never happened before, and they were concerned and confused.
“Intel,” said Eddan, her eldest Husband, when dinner was done and Niun had returned from carrying the utensils to the scullery—that and the storerooms the only part of the Kath-tower that remained open. “Intel, may the Kel ask permission to ask a question?”
Niun settled among the kel’ein quickly, anxious and at once grateful that Eddan had waited until his return; and he looked at Intel’s face, seeking some hope that she would not deny them.
She frowned.”Is the Kel going to ask about the ship?” “Yes,” said Eddan,”or anything else worth the knowing.” The she’pan unfolded her hands, permission given. “When it comes,” asked Eddan, “do we go or do we stay?” “Kel’ein, I will tell you this: that I have seen that Kesrith’s use is near its end. Go, yes; and I will tell you something more: that I owe the regul bai one kel’en, but no more. And I do much doubt that he will come back to collect that promise of me.”
Old Liran, veilless as they all were veilless in the intimacy of the common-meal, grinned and made a move with his scarred hand. “Well, she’pan, Little Mother, if he does come back, send me. I would like to see whether Nurag is all it is claimed to be, and I would be of scant use in the building of another edun. This one, all cracks as it is, is home; and if I am not to stay with this one, why, I might as well take service again.”
“Would a service among the People not do as well, Liran?” “Yes, Little Mother, well enough,” Liran answered, and his old eyes flickered with interest, a darted glance at Eddan—an appeal: ask questions, eldest. The whole Kel sat utterly still. But the she’pan had turned their question aside. Eddan did not ask again.
“Sathell,” said Intel.
“She’pan?”
“Cite for the Kel the terms of the treaty that bind us to the service of regul.”
Sathell bowed his head and lifted it again. “The words of the treaty between doch Holn and mri are the treaty that keeps us in service to the regul. The pertinent area: So long as regul and mri alone occupy the homeworld, whereon the edun of the People rests ... or until regul depart the home-world, whereon the edun of the People rests... This long we are bound to accept service with regul when called upon. And I hold, she’pan, that in spirit if not in letter, regul have already failed in the terms of that treaty.”
“Surely,” said the she’pan, “we are not far from that point. We contracted with doch Holn. Doch Holn might have known how to deal with us; but this bai Hulagh is apparently of Nurag itself, and I do not think he knows the People. He erred seriously when he did not take urgent care to see to our evacuation long before now.”
“Holn knew better,” said Sathell.
“But Holn neglected to pass on to her successor all that she might have told him. The old bai Solgah kept her silence. Neither do regul tend to consult written records. The regul-kind do not make good fighters, but they are, in their own way, very clever at revenge.”
And Intel smiled, a tired smile that held a certain satisfaction.
“May the Kel,” asked Eddan,”ask permission to ask a question?”
“Ask.”
“Do you think the Holn deliberately excluded us from the assets she turned over to this bai Hulagh?”
“I believe the Holn will consider this a stroke of revenge, a salve to their pride, yes. Bai Hulagh has lost the mri. In such manner regul fight against regul. What is that to us? But I am sure of this,” she said in a hard tone, “that Medai was the last of my children to leave on a regul ship, the last of my children to die for regul causes. And hereafter, hereafter, kel’ein, do not plan that mri should fight mri again: no. We do not fight.”
There was palpable dismay in the whole Kel.
“May the Kel ask??” Eddan began, unshakably formal.
“No,” she said. “The Kel may not ask. But I will tell you what is good for you to know. The People are dangerously declined in numbers. Time was when such fighting served the People; but no longer, no longer, kel’ein. I will tell you a thing you did not ask: the ship Ahanal bears what remains of all the People; and we are the rest. There are no more.”
There was cold in the room, and no one moved. Niun locked his arms tightly about his knees, trying to absorb personally what the Mother said, hoping that it was allegory, as she often spoke in riddles: but there was no way to believe it a figure of speech.
“At Elag,” said Intel in a thin hard voice, “while regul evacuated their own kind, they threw the kel’ein that served them against humans again and again and again, and summoned the kel’ein of Mlassul and Seleth edunei, and lost them as well. But this mattered little to regul, to this new bai, Hulagh—to this new master sent out from Nurag.”
There was a sudden sound, an impact of fist on flesh; and Eddan, who did not swear, swore. “She’pan,” he said then. “May the Kel ask?”
“There is nothing more to ask, Eddan,” said Intel. That is the thing that happened: that cost 10,000 mri lives, and ships—ships of which I do not know the tally; many, many of the ships were regul, without regul personnel aboard, because the regul feared to stay. They killed 10,000 mri. And I curse the she’panei who lent their children to such as that.”
A fine sweat beaded Intel’s face, and pallor underlay her skin. The sound of her breathing was audible, a hoarseness, above the sound of the rain outside. Never had the gentle Mother cursed anyone; and the enormity of cursing she’panei chilled the heart; but neither was there repentance on her face. Niun drew his breaths carefully, sucking in air as if he drew it off the noon-heated sands. His muscles began to tremble, and he clenched his hands the harder lest someone notice it, if anyone could notice anything but his own heartbeat in that terrible silence.
“Little Mother,” Sathell pleaded. “Enough, Enough.”
“The Kel,” she said, “finds it necessary to ask questions. They are due their answer.” And she paused a moment, drawing great breaths, as if she intended next something necessary, something urgent. “Kel’ein,” she said, “chant me the Shon’jir.”
There was a stirring among the kel’ein, outright panic and dismay. She is dying, was Niun’s first thought, and: O gods, —what an ill omen of things! And he could not say the words she asked of them.
“Are you children,” she asked of her Husbands, “to believe any longer in luck either good or bad? Chant me the Passing ritual.”
They looked at Eddan, who inclined his head in a gesture of surrender, and began, softly. Niun joined them, uncertain in this insanity in which they were bidden join.
From Dark beginning
To Dark at ending,
Between them a Sun,
But after comes Dark,
And in that Dark
One ending.
From Dark to Dark
Is one voyage.
From Dark to Dark
Is our voyage.
And after the Dark,
O brothers, o sisters,
Come we home.
Intel listened with her eyes closed, and afterward there was a long silence; and her eyes opened, and she looked on all of them as from a far place.
“I give you,” she said, “a knowledge which Kel’ein knew long ago, but which passed from the Kel-lore. Remember it again. I make it lawful. Kesrith is only a between, and Aram only one of many suns, and we are near an ending. In the People’s history, kel’ein, are many such Darks; and the regul have afforded us only the latest of our many homes. For this reason we call it Shon’jir,and in the low language, the Passing ritual. For this reason we say it at the beginning of each life of the People and at each life’s ending; and at the beginning of each era and at its ending. Until another she’pan shall bid your children’s children, Niun, forget what I have told you, the Kel may remember.”
“Mother,” he said, raising hand to her in entreaty, “Mother, is it the moving of homeworld you mean?”
Too long she had been mother to him, and he realized after he had spoken his question that she was due more courtesy; he sat with his heart pounding and waited to hear her coldly rebuff him by asking Eddan if the Kel had a question to pose.
But she neither frowned nor refused his question. “Niun, I give you more truth to ponder. The regul call themselves old; but the People are older. The 2,000 years of which you know are only an interlude. We are nomads. I say that the Kel shall not fight; but the Kel has other purposes. Last of my sons, the Kel of the Darks is a different Kel from the Kel of the Between. Last of my daughters, the she’panate of the Darks is a duty I do not envy you.”
Upon an instant the whole Kel was torn from one to the other of them, a fearful, astonished attention.
The succession was passed, not in fact, but in intent; and Niun looked at his onetime brothers, and saw their dismay; and looked at Melein and saw her pale and shaken. She veiled herself and turned away from them; and of a sudden he felt himself utterly alone, even amid the Kel. He bowed his head and stayed so while the voice of Eddan, subdued, begged leave to question, which the she’pan refused.
“The Sen asks,” said Sathell’s voice then, and by that, posed a question that could not be refused. “She’pan, we cannot make these plans without consulting together.”
“Is that a question, Sen?” the she’pan asked dryly, and in the shock of that collision of wills, there was silence. Niun looked at them, from one to the other, appalled that those who ruled his life did not agree.
“It is a question,” said Sathell.
The she’pan bit at her lip and nodded. “Yet,” she said, “we have made these plans without consulting. I did not consult when I made sure that Ahanal was reserved from the madness of Elag. I did not consult when I maintained our base on Kesrith against the urging of some to leave. I have made these plans without consulting—and I have left the People no other choice.”
“To the death of our Kath and most of our Kel, when we might have had Lushain for homeworld instead, where there is water and gentle climate, where we might have had a rich world, she’pan.”
‘That old quarrel,” she said in a still voice.”But I had my way, Sathell, because the she’pan, not the sen’anth, leads the People. Remember it.”
“The Sen asks,” said Sathell in a trembling voice, “why. Why must it have been Kesrith?”
“Is your knowledge adequate? Do you know the last Mysteries, sen’anth?”
“No,” Sathell acknowledged, an answer wrung from him.
“Kesrith was the best choice.”
“I do not believe it.”
“I said at the time,” said Intel softly, “that I decided as I saw fit. That is still true. I do not require your belief.”
“This I know,” said Sathell.
“Kesrith is hard. It kills the weak. It performed its function.”
“This forge of the People, as you called it, performed its function too well. We are too few. And Elag has left us with nothing.”
“Elag has left us with a remnant like the remnant of Kesrith,” said Intel. “With what has been through fire.”
“A handful.”
“We have given the People,” she said, “a place to stand, and stand we shall until humans stand on Kesrith. And then the Dark. And then a decision that will belong to others than you and me, Sathell.”
There was silence. Sathell rose suddenly and caught at the wall for support, his weakness betraying him. “To others then,” he said, “let it pass now.”
And he walked out. His footsteps descended the tower.
Eddan bowed himself, came to Intel and took her hand. “Little Mother,” he said gently, “the Kel approves you.”
“The Kel knows little,” she said, “even now.”
“The Kel knows the she’pan,” he said in a faint voice. And then he looked about him at the others, at Melein last of all. “Sen Melein—make the cup for her.”
“I will not drink it tonight, Eddan,” Intel said.
But Eddan’s look said otherwise, and Melein nodded, silent conspiracy against Intel’s will, and rose and poured water and komal into a cup, preparing the draught that would give Intel ease.
“Go,” said Eddan to the Kel.
“Niun will stay,” said Intel, and Niun, who had risen with the others, stopped.
And downstairs the main door opened and closed, a hollow crash.
“Gods,” Pasev breathed, and cast a look at Intel. “He is leaving the edun.”
“Let him go,” said Intel.
“She’pan,” said Melein’s voice, a clear note of anguish. “He cannot stay the night out there in the weather.”
“I will go after him,” said Debas.
“No,” said the she’pan. “Let him go.”
And after a moment it was clear that there was no changing her mind. There was nothing to be done. Melein settled at Intel’s side, still veiled, her eyes averted.
“The Kel is dismissed,” said Intel, “except Niun. Sleep well, kel’ein.”
Eddan did not wish to be dismissed. He stayed last of all; but Intel gestured him away. “Go,” she said. “There is nothing more I can tell you tonight, Eddan. But in the morning, set one of the kel’ein to watch the port from the high rocks. Sleep now. This storm will keep the regul inactive, but tomorrow is another matter.”
“No,” said Eddan. “I am going after my brother.”
“Without my blessing.”
“All the same,” said Eddan, and turned to go.
“Eddan,” she said.
He looked back at her, “We are getting too few,” he said, “to make too many journeys to Sil’athen. Sathell would not willingly have left Nisren. Neither would I. Now we will not leave Kesrith. We will walk toward Sil’athen, he and I. We will be content.”
“I give my blessing,” she said after a moment
“Thank you,” he said, “she’pan.”
And that was all. He left; and Niun stared after him into the dark of the hall and trembled in every muscle.
They were as dead, Eddan and Sathell. They had chosen, Sathell after the fashion of his kind, and Eddan, untypical for his caste, to go the long walk with him. And he had seen Eddan’s face, and there was no heaviness in it. He heard the kel’anth’s steps going down the spiral, a quick and easy stride, and the door closed behind him too; and it was certain that the edun was less by two lives, and they had been great ones.
“Sit by me,” Intel bade them.
“She’pan,” said Melein in a thin, strained voice, “I have made your cup. Please drink it”
She offered it, and the tray shook in her two hands. Intel took the cup from her and drank, then gave it back, leaning back as Niun settled, kneeling, on her left hand, and Melein on her right
So they had spent many of the nights since Medai’s death, for Intel’s sleep was not easy and she would not sleep without someone in the room.
This night, Niun envied her the draught of komal; and he would not look at her while she waited for the draught to have effect, but bowed his head and stared at his hands in his lap, shaken and shattered to his inmost heart.
Eddan, Eddan and Sathell, that had been a part of all his life. He wept, naked-faced, and the tears splashed onto his hands, and he was ashamed to lift a hand to wipe them away, for the Kel did not weep.
“Sathell is very ill,” said Intel softly, “and he knew well what he did. Do not think that we parted hatefully. Melein knows. Eddan knows. Sathell was a good man: our old, old quarrel—he never agreed with me, and yet for forty-three years he has given me his good offices. I do not grudge that he simply stated his opinion at the last. We were friends. And do not feel badly for Eddan. If he did otherwise, I would have been surprised.”
“You are hard,” said Niun.
“Yes,” she said. And her slight touch descended on his shoulder, brushed aside the zaidhe. He slipped it off, wadded his cloth in his clenched fists, head still bowed, for his eyes were wet. “Last son of mine,” she said then, “do you love me?”
The question, so nakedly posed, struck him like a hammer blow; and in this moment he could not say smoothly, yes, Mother. He could not summon it.
“Mother,” he said, painfully, of her many titles, the best and dearest to the Kel.
“Do you love me, Niun?” Her soft fingers brushed past his mane, touched the sensitivity of his ear, teasing the downy tufts at its crest, an intimacy for kinswomen and lovers: Here is a secret, the touch said, a hidden thing: be attentive.
He was not strong enough for secrets now, for any added burden; he looked up at her, trying to answer. The calm face looked down on him with curious longing. “I know,” she said. “You are here. You pay me duty. That is still a good and pious act, child of mine. And I know that I have robbed you and denied you and compelled everything that you have done and will ever do.”
“I know that your reasons are good ones.”
“No,” she said. “You are kel’en. You do not know; you believe. But you are proper to say so. And you are right. Tomorrow—tomorrow you will see it, when you see Ahanal. Melein—”
“She’pan.”
“Do you mourn Sathell?”
“Yes, she’pan.”
“Do you dispute me?”
“No, she’pan.”
“There will be a she’pan on Ahanal,” said Intel.”That she’pan is not fit as I have made you fit.”
“I am twenty-two years old,” protested Melein. “She’pan, you could take command of Ahanal, but if they challenge, if they should challenge—”
“Niun would defend me, defend me well. And he will defend you in your hour.”
“Do you pass his duty to me?” Melein asked.
“In time,” she said, “I will do this. In your time.”
“I do not know all that I need to know, she’pan.”
“You will kill,” said Intel, “any who tries to take the Pana from you. I am the oldest of all she’panei, and I have prepared my successor in my own way.”
“In conscience—” Melein protested.
“In conscience,” said the she’pan, “obey me and do not question.”
And the drug began to come over her and her eyes dimmed and she sank into her cushions and was still. In time she slept soundly.
It was said, in a tale told in the Kel, that at the fall of Nisren, humans had actually breached the edun, ignoring mri attempts to challenge to a’ani: this the first and bitterest error the mri had made with humans. A human force had swept through the halls while the Kath in terror tried to escape: and Intel had put herself between humans and the Kath, and fired the hall with her own hand. Whether it was Intel or the fire, those humans had not come against her. She had held long enough for some of the Kath to escape, until the embattled Kel could reach that hall and get her to safety, to the regul ship.
That aspect of gentle Intel had always been incredible to Niun, until this night.
DUNCAN HEARD the hum of machinery. It wakened him, advising him at once that Stavros had need of something. He pulled himself off the couch and gathered his fatigue-dulled senses. He had not undressed. He had not put Stavros to bed. Storm alarms had made most of the night chaotic. There was a time that constant storm advisories were coming over communications.
He heard the storm shields in Stavros’ quarters go back. He wandered in to see that the alarms were past, that the screens showed clear. The dawn came up ruddy and murky, flooding a peculiar light through the glass.
Stavros was in the center of that glow, a curious figure in his mobile sled. He whipped it about to face Duncan with a jaunty expertise. The communication screen lighted.
Look outside.
Duncan stepped up to the rain-spattered window and looked, scanning the desolate expanse of sand and rock, toward the sea and the towers of the water-recovery system. There was something wrong, a gap in the silhouette, a vacancy where yesterday towers had stood.
There was a particularly dark area of cloud over the seacoast, flattened by the winds, torn and streamered out to sea.
Stavros’ screen activated.
Advisory just given: water use confined to drinking and food preparation only. ‘Minor repairs at plant.’ They ask we remain patient.
“We’ve got people coming down here,” Duncan protested.
Suspect further damage at port. Regul much disturbed. Bai ‘not available.’
The rain slacked off considerably, leaving only a few spatters on the windows. The murky light grew for a moment red like that from fire, only Arain through thick cloud.
And on the long ridge that lay beyond the town there was a shadow that moved. Duncan’s eyes jerked back to it, strained upon that one spot. There was nothing.
“I saw something out there,” he said.
Yes, the screen advised him when he looked. Many. Many. Maybe flood drove beasts from holes.
In a moment another shadow appeared atop the ridge. He watched, as yet another and another and another appeared. His eyes swept the whole circuit of the hills. Against the sullen light there was a gathering row of black shapes, that moved and milled aimlessly.
Mri, he had feared.
But not mri. Beasts. He thought of the great unpleasant beasts that had been found with dead mri, ursine creatures that could be as dangerous as their size warned.
“They’re mri-beasts,” he said to Stavros.”They’ve got the whole area ringed.”
Regul call them dusei. They are native to Kesrith. Read your briefings.
“They go with mri. How many mri are supposed to be here? I thought it was only a handful.”
So the bai assures us—a token presence—to be removed.
He looked at the horizon. The clouds stretched unbroken.
And the dusei were a solid line across the whole ridge, encompassing the visible circuit of the sea to the town.
Duncan turned from the sight of it, shivered, looked back again. He considered the rain, and the land—worked his sweating hands and looked at Stavros. “Sir, I’d like to go out there.”
“No,” Stavros murmured.
“Listen to me.” Duncan found it awkward to talk at such an angle, dropped to one knee so that he could meet the old man eye to eye, set a hand on the cold metal of the sled. “We’ve got only regul word for it that the regul don’t lie; we’ve got mri out there; we’ve got a colony mission coming in here in a matter of days. You took me along. I assume you had some feeling then you might need me. I can get out there and take a look and get back without anyone the wiser. You can cover for me that long. Who cares about a youngling more or less? They won’t see me. Let me go out there and see what kind of situation we’re facing with those ships coming in. We don’t know how bad it is with the water; we don’t know what shape the port is in. Are you that confident we’re always told all the truth?”
Weather hazardous. And incident with regul likely.
“That’s something I can avoid. It’s my job. It’s what I know how to do.”
Argument persuasive. Can you guarantee no incident?
“On my life.”
Estimate correct. If incident occurs, then regul law prevails out there. You understand. Survey facilities, plant, port, return. Can cover you till dark.
“Yes, sir.” He was relieved in some part; he did not look forward to it: he knew the hazard better perhaps than Stavros did. But for once he and the honorable Stavros were of one mind. Hunting out the hazards was more comfortable than ignoring them.
He rose, looked outside, found the dusei’s dark line vanished in that brief interval. He blinked, tried to see through the haze of rain, made out little in the distance.
“Sir,” he murmured to Stavros by way of farewell; Stavros inclined his head, dismissing him. The screen stayed dark.
He went quickly to his own quarters and changed uniforms, to khaki weatherproofs and sealed boots, still common enough in appearance that he did not think regul would notice the difference. He put into the several pockets a tight roll of cord, a knife, a packet of concentrates, a penlight, whatever would fit without obvious outlines. He flipped the hood into the collar and zipped the closures.
Then he strolled out into the hall on a pattern he had followed several times a day since he had studied the layout of the building, down the hall to the left and out toward the observation deck window. No one was in the hall there. He opened the door and went out into the rain-chilled air, walked the circuit of the low-walled observation deck, looked over his shoulder to see that the hall beyond the doors was still clear.
It was.
He quite simply sat down on the edge of the wall, held with his hands as he dropped, and let go. The regul stories were short by human standards. He landed on cement at the bottom, but it was not a hard drop at all, only a flex of the knees; and the cement showed no tracks. By the time that he reached the edge of the concrete and disappeared into the gentle rolls of the landscape, he was confident that he was unobserved.
He walked toward the water plant, turning up the hood of his uniform as he went, for he knew the warnings about the mineral-laden rains and cared to expose as little of his skin as possible. Now off the pavements of the city he left tracks as plain as wet sand could show them, but he did not reckon to be tracked at all. He felt rather self-pleased in this, which he had thought about for days, idle exercise of his professional mind during the long inactivity in the Nom: the fact was that no regul could have possibly done what he had just done, and therefore the regul had not taken precautions against it. Such a drop would have been impossible to their heavy, short-legged bodies, and likewise there was no regul that could come tracking him crosslands.
That would take a mri.
And that was the only possibility that made him a little less self-pleased than he might have been under the circumstances. He had wanted arms at the outset of the voyage, but the diplomats had denied them to him: unnecessary and provocative, they had reasoned. Now he was unarmed but for the kit-knife in his pocket, and a mri warrior could carve him in small portions before he could come close enough to make use of that for defense.
The fact was plainly that if regul would set a mri on his trail, he was dead; but then, he reasoned, if regul would dare do that, then the treaty was worth nothing, and that fact had as well be known early.
There was also the possibility that the mri were out in force, and that they were not under regul control; and that most of all needed to be known.
For that reason he exercised more caution in his walking than he would have shown if he feared only regul: he watched the ridges and the shadows of gullies, and took care to look behind him, remembering the dark shapes that had moved upon the hills, the dusei that were out somewhere: he crossed dus-tracks, long-clawed, ominous reminders that there were hunters aprowl other than regul or mri.
Briefings said that the beasts did not approach regul dwellings.
Briefings also said that crossing the flats off the roads was not recommended.
The jetting steam of geysers, the crunch of thin crusts underfoot, warned him that there was reason for this. He had to draw a weaving course around hot zones, approaching the lowest part of the flats, that near the seashore and the water plant.
There was a road of sorts, badly washed, along the seacoast. Parts of it were underwater. A regul landsled was down in a trench where it had run off the edge.
Duncan sat down, winded in the thin, cold air, his head and gut aching, and watched from a distance as a regul crew tried to extricate it. He could see the water plant clearly from this vantage point. There was chaos there too, beyond its protective fences. The towers extended far out into the white-capped water, and several of those towers were in ruins.
From what he could see there was no possibility those towers could even be cleared for repair in the few days before human ships would arrive, certainly not with prevailing weather. What was more, he could not see any evidence of heavy machinery available to do repairs.
Realistically estimating, it was not going to be done at all. A large human occupation force was going to land, having to depend totally on ships’ recycling: irritating, but possible—if there was a place to land.
He looked to the right along the shoreline, toward the city and beyond, where he could see the low shape of the Nom— no building high enough to obstruct his view of the port. He recognized Hazan, saw its alien shape surrounded by gantries, a web of metal.
There was no way to set a ship down on the volcanic crusts that overlay most of the lowlands. If the port was in the same condition as the water plant, then there was going to be merry chaos when the human forces tried to land.
And the regul had not been forward to inform them of the extent of damages to the facilities at the plant: they had not lied, but neither had they volunteered all the truth.
He drew a breath of tainted air and looked behind him suddenly, chilled to realize that he had been thinking about something other than his personal safety for a few seconds.
The horizon was clear. There were only the clouds. A man did not always find himself that fortunate in his lapses.
He let go that breath slowly and gathered himself up, conscious of the pounding of his head and the pounding of his heart in the thin air. He saw a way to work around some low rocks and a sandy shelf and so cross between the city and the sea, working toward the port. Regul were reputed to have dim eyesight—to be dull, as it happened, in all sensory capacities. He hoped that this was so.
Stavros, sitting back in the embrace of his regul machine, had said that he could cover his absence. He reckoned that Stavros might be good at that, being skilled at argument and misleadings.
Out here, he knew his own job—knew with a surety that the instinct that had drawn Stavros to choose a SurTac for Kesrith had been a true one. Stavros had not ordered him, had only relied on him, quietly—had waited for him to move of his own accord, sensing, perhaps, that a man trained in the taking of alien terrain would know his own moment.
He could not afford a mistake. He was afraid, with a different sort of fear than he had ever known in a mission. He had operated alone before, had destroyed, had escaped—his own life or death on his head. He was not accustomed to work with the life or death of others weighing on his shoulders, with the weight of decision, to say that an area was safe or not safe for the landing of a mission involving hundreds of lives and policies reaching far beyond Kesrith.
He did not like it; he far from liked it. He would have cast it on any higher authority available; but Stavros, bound to his machine, had to believe either the regul or his own aide, and he desperately wanted to be right.
THE EDUN woke quietly; the People moved quietly about the daily routine. Niun went back to the Kel, which was now empty-seeming; and the Kel sat in mourning. Eddan did not return.
And Pasev’s eyes bore that bruised look that told of little sleep; but she sat unveiled, in command of her emotions. Niun brought her a special portion at breakfast, and it tore his heart that she would not eat.
After breakfast the brothers Liran and Debas spoke together and rose up and put on the belts with all their honors, and mez’ein and zaidh’ein, and gave their farewells.
“Will you all leave?” asked Niun, out of turn and out of place and terrified. And he looked then at Pasev, who had most reason to go, and did not.
“You might be needed,” said Pasev to the brothers.
“We will walk and enjoy the morning,” said Liran. “Perhaps we will find Eddan and Sathell.”
“Then tell Eddan,” she said softly, “that I will be coming after him when I have finished my own duties, which he left to me. Goodbye, brothers.”
“Goodbye,” they said together, and all the remaining Kel echoed, “Goodbye,” and they walked down from the tower and out across the road.
Niun stood in the doorway to watch them go, a deep melancholy upon him; and a knot settling in his throat to consider their absence hereafter. They continued to the horizon, two shapes of black; and the sky was shadowed and threatening, and they had not so much as the comfort of their dusei in their journey, for none of the beasts had come home. The miuk’ko from the door had disappeared also, dead, perhaps, in the storm: dusei went away to die, alone, like kel’ein that found no further hope in their lives.
Loyal to Intel, he thought, and loyal to Kesrith, and foreseeing the end of both; they could not help now, and so they departed, with their honors on them, not seeking burial of a young kel’en too overburdened with duties to see to them.
They had chanted the rites last night. It was ill-omened; they all knew it. It was as if they had chanted them over Kesrith itself, and he suddenly foresaw that few of the old ones at all would board the ship.
They did not want Intel’s dream. She had shown them the truth of the rites and they had not wanted it; they had seen only the old, familiar ways.
She had promised them change, and they would have none of it.
He was otherwise shaped, formed by Intel’s hands and Intel’s wishes, and loyalty to Melein would hold him bound to Intel’s dream. He looked on the place in the rocks where the brothers had disappeared and could have wept aloud at what he then realized of them and him, for Pasev would follow, rather than take ship into uncertainties for which she had no longing; and after her would go the others. He would never be one with the like of them: black-robe, plain-robe, honor-less and untested, shaped for different ways. The Kel of the Darks, she had said, is a different Kel.
It was he who already stood in the Dark; and they had walked away from the shadow, into what they knew.
He turned, to seek the edun, the Shrine’s comfort for his mood; and his heart chilled at what he saw along the lower ridges, with row upon row of shadows moving there.
Dusei.
They ringed the regul town in every place that offered solid ground. Ha-dusei, wild ones, and dangerous.
The dusei of the edun had not returned.
And there were far too many of the ha-dusei, far too many.
The sky roiled overhead, stained with red and sullen grey: stormfriends, the dusei, weather-knowing. In the days before the edun stood, they had watered here below: the Dus plain, the lowland flats were called. They came as if they sensed change in the winds, they came as if waiting the regul departure, which would give the Dus plain back to the dusei.
Waiting.
It was told of regal stubbornness that the first mri had warned the regul earnestly that they should build their city elsewhere, as the edun itself had been carefully positioned off the plain, in respect to the bond between mri and dusei; but regul had wanted rock for their ships to land on, and they had sounded the area thereabouts and found only on the Dus plain rock suitable for a port near the sea. Therefore regul had built there, and there had grown a city, and the ha-dusei had gone.
But dusei returned now, with the unseasonal rains and the destroying winds. They sat and waited.
And the dusei had left even the mri.
He shrugged, half a shiver, and walked inside and stopped, not wishing to bear that news to the Kel or to the she’pan. The Kel was in mourning, the she’pan still lost in dreams; and Melein, her Chosen, had veiled herself and sealed herself alone in the Sen-tower.
He cast a yearning thought skyward, through the spiral corridors that massed over him, that Ahanal hasten its coming, for he did not think that he could bear the endless hours until the evening.
And each thing that he thought of doing this day was pointless, for it was a house to which they would never return; and outside, the weather threatened and the lightning flashed in the clouds and the thunder rumbled.
So he sat down in the doorway, watching all the flats below, the geysers’ plumes, predictable as the hours, their clouds torn and thrown by gale-force winds. It was a cold day, as few days on Kesrith were chill. He shivered, and watched the heavy drops pock the puddles that reflected a sky like fire-on-pewter.
A heavy body trod the wet sand: a whuff of breath, and a great dus lumbered round the corner, head hanging. Others followed. He scrambled up in terror, not sure of their mood; but wet and muddy-pawed, they came, and nosed their way past him into the edun, rumbling that hunger sound that betokened a dus with a considerable impatience. He counted them in: one, two, three, four, five, six. And last came the miuk’ko, the seventh, bedraggled and angular, to cast itself down in the puddle at the base of the slanted walls, drinking with great laps of its grey tongue at the water between its massive paws.
Three did not come. Niun waited, a relief and a disquiet growing in him at the same time—relief because a bereaved dus was dangerous and pitiable; and disquiet because he did not know how they had known. Perhaps the three that were missing had encountered their kel’ein.
Or perhaps, with that curious sense of dusei, they had known and sought them.
Perhaps they were far along the trail to Sil’athen. He earnestly hoped so. It would be best for both men and dusei.
He went to the storerooms in the cellar of Kath. The dusei must have care.
And first of all of them, he waited on the miuk’ko, that had left its post of mourning for the first time and then returned. He hoped it would be in a different mind.
But it would not eat. Perhaps, he thought, it had fed during its hours of wandering. But he did not believe it. He left the food on the dry edge of the step and went to carry portions to the others.
Save for the insistence and irreverence of the dusei, save for Melein, who grieved in her tower, the edun had become a place of dreams, and a sense of finality hung over everything: the dus by the gate, the old men and the old women. He crept about his tasks with the utmost quiet, as if he, living, walked in the caves at Sil’athen.
And in the evening the ship came.
The she’pan was asleep when they heard it descending; and they that were left of the Kel hurried out to the road to see it, and on tired faces there were smiles, and in Niun’s heart there was misgiving. Dahacha took his arm on impulse and pressed it, and he looked at the sun-wrinkled eyes and felt an unspoken blessing pass between them.
“Dahacha,” he whispered. “Will you come, at least?”
“We that have not walked will come,” said the old man. “We will not send you alone, Niun Zain-Abrin. We have made our reckoning. If we would not, we would have gone with Eddan, like Liran and Debas.”
“Yes,” said Palazi at his other side. “We will reason with the kel’anth.”
And it struck him like a blow upon a wound, that this now referred to Pasev.
The commotion of the ship’s landing was visible in lights, in flares of regul headlights that crawled serpent-wise toward that far side of the field, half-glow in the red twilight: regul eyes were not adapted to the night.
“Come,” said Pasev, and they followed her into the halls and to the she’pan’s tower.
Melein was there, beside Intel, and she touched the she’pan’s hand and tried to wake her, but it was Pasev who laid a firm grip on the she’pan’s arm and shook her from her dreams.
“She’pan,” said Pasev, “she’pan, the ship has come.”
“And the regul?” In the she’pan’s golden eyes the dream finished and that keenness returned, focused and struggling for control. “How do the regul bear it?”
“We do not know that yet,” said Pasev. “They are all astir, that is all we saw.”
Intel nodded. “No contact by radio. Regul will be monitoring; Ahanal will observe that caution also.” She struggled with the cushions, a small moue of pain upon her face, and Melein adjusted them for her. She sighed and breathed easily a moment.
“Shall we,” asked Dahacha, “Little Mother, carry you to the ship? We can bear you.”
“No,” she said with a sad smile. “A she’pan is guardian of the Pana: there is no ship-going for me until that care of mine is finally discharged.”
“At least,” said Dahacha then, “let us take you down to the road, so that you can see toward the port.”
“No,” said Intel, firmly. And then she touched Dahacha’s hand upon the arm of her chair and smiled. “Do not fear: I am in possession of my faculties and in possession of this edun and this world, and so I will remain until I am sure that it is my time; and yours will not be until mine is. Do you hear me?”
“Aye,” said Pasev.
Intel met the eyes of the kel’anth and nodded, satisfied; but then her glance strayed about the room, perhaps counted faces, and her eyes clouded.
“Liran and Debas left some time ago,” said Pasev. “We gave them farewell.”
“My blessing,” she murmured dutifully.
Pasev bowed her head in acknowledgement. “Until the she’pan dismisses me,” she said, “I serve you, and there are still enough of us to do what needs doing.”
“We will not be long about it,” said Intel. “Niun, child,” she said, and held out her hand.
He knelt at her knee and took her hand in his, bowed his bared head to her touch, felt her fingers slip from his and give that gesture of blessing.
“Go crosslands,” she said. “Go to the ship and talk with the visitors face to face, and hear what they have to say. Answer wisely. You may have to take decisions on yourself, young kel’en. And do not go carelessly. We have almost ceased to serve regul.”
Something passed his bowed head: he felt weight settle on his neck, and caught at it, and his fingers closed on cold metal. When he turned it and looked at the amulet on the chain he saw the open hand emblem of Kesrithun edun, and Intel’s silken fingers touched his chin and lifted his face to meet her eyes.
“Only one jtal” she said softly. “But a master-one. Do you recognize it, my last son?”
“It is an honor,” he said, “of a she’pan’s kel’en.”
“Bear yourself well,” she said. “And make speed. Time is important now.”
And she pushed at him with her fingers and he rose, almost fearing the eyes of the others, the kel’ein who might have been honored with such a j’tal; and he the youngest and least. But there was no envy there, only gladness, as if this were something in which they were all agreed.
He took off his houserobe, and there in the she’pan’s chamber, they all took hand in preparing him for the journey, hastening to bring him the siga that he should wear in walking the dusty lands, and zaidhe and mez; and they gave him their own weapons, both yin’ein and zahen’ein, finer than his own; and with a smile, a laugh that deprecated superstition older than memory among the People, Palazi undipped a luck amulet from his own belts and gave it him, a maiden warrior, giving him of his luck.
“Years and honors,” said Palazi.
He hugged the old man, and others, and returned to the she’pan for a last hasty bow at her feet, his heart pounding with excitement. But as he received her kiss upon his brow she did not let him go at once, but stared into his face in such a way that it chilled all the blood in him.
“You are beautiful,” the she’pan said to him, her golden eyes brimming with tears. “I have a great fear. Be careful, youngest son.”
The People no longer believed in presciences with any great fervor, no more than he really trusted Palazi’s luck-wish; but he shivered. There was mri-reason and regul-reason, and always to believe only what could be demonstrated by experience was the regul way, not the mri.
One who had lived so many years as Intel might have reasons he did not understand. His whole life had been spent in the presence of the forbidden and the incomprehensible; and she’pan Intel had been involved in most: she’pan—keeper of mysteries.
“I shall be careful,” he said, and she let him go then; he avoided the eyes of Melein when he rose, for if she’pan and Chosen shared anything concerning him, he did not want to carry it with him on this mission.
“Do not trust any regul,” said the kel’anth. “See all that you look upon.”
“Yes,” he agreed earnestly, and took Pasevs hands and pressed them gently by way of farewell to the brothers and sister of his caste.
He turned away quickly and left, long strides carrying him hurriedly down the spiraling stairs, past the written names of the history and heroes of the People and the truth of all the things that Intel had hinted at, that he could not read. He felt their meaning this day, the remembrance of his ancestors.
All, all that Intel had desired had come down to him; and she had been able, at the last, to let him go, to cast him like the as’ei in shonai. And she had not lost him. There was too much of love poured into him by these old ones that he could fail the wishes of Eddan, of Intel, of Pasev and Debas and Liran. They had made sure that he would succeed before they had launched him about the she’pan’s mission.
He passed the main doors and closed them against the night, and saw there the monstrous bulk of the miuk’ko, a shadow beside the door. The great head lifted and the eyes stared at him invisibly in the dark.
Perhaps, he thought, optimism uncrushed in a hundred repetitions of this coming and going, perhaps this time. It would be good if it were this time at last, who needs me, who need him.
But it murmured and turned its face and laid its massive head in the mud. Male, female, or neither; no one had ever ascertained the sex of a dus, nor reckoned why they came to one mri or why they refused to come to another; whether this one had yet comprehended that Medai would never return, whether it grieved, or whether it starved out of simple stupidity, waiting for Medai to feed it, Niun could not fathom.
With a sad shrug he went his way, hardly having paused that half-step; but in this passing there was a difference, for things the dus did not understand had changed, were changing, were about to change. And it was doomed, having rejected him.
Likely the humans would destroy the dusei. Regul would have done so gladly, if not for mri protection. The size and the slow-moving power of dusei was very like that of regul, but regul instinctively hated the dusei. Regul could not, as mri could, become immune to the poison of the claws; they could not, as mri could, abandon themselves to the simplicity of the beasts. Therefore regul fled them.
And the unease the contact of the dus had left in him stayed the while he walked down toward the flats, toward the ghostly plumes of geysers under the windtorn clouds. He smelted the wind, felt the familiar force of it, like some living thing.
He found himself looking at the familiar places that he had seen and known all his life, and thinking of each: this is almost the last time. There was excitement in his heart and an uncertainty in his stomach that was far from heroic and cheerful. His senses were alive to the whole world, the scents of the earth, acrid and wet, the feel of the damp hot breath of the geysers, that each had their name and manner.
His world.
Homeworld.
Impermanent as the wind, the Kel, but capable of loving the earth. It struck him that they did not know where they were going, that Intel spoke of the Dark as if it were a place, as if it had dimension and depth and duration like the world itself. It came to him that after leaving Kesrith he might never feel earth under his feet again: a Dark with promise, the she’pan had insisted; but he could not imagine what it promised.
And hereafter to deal with kel’ein who were not old, long-thinking men—kel’ein who knew only war and were touchy of their pride and their prerogatives of caste, in a way that the gentle Kel of Kesrith had never been.
To live among the Kel of strangers, where there were kath’ein, who would be his for the asking, and the chance to get children, and to see his private immortality. He would be son to one she’pan, truebrother to another, honored next whatever fen’ein, Husbands, she would choose to sire her children on the kel’e’ein and the kath’ein of the edun, if first he survived the combat of succession.
Choices spread before him in dazzling array, in dizzying profusion, a future full of things neither stale nor predictable nor sure.
He walked swiftly, where reeking sulphur and steam obscured his way, where water dripped from recently sprayed rocks and the heat underground prepared further eruptions. He knew his timing to a nicety. The thin crusts on the right— boiling water and mud underlay much of that ground. The edge that he trod would bear a mri’s weight, but not that of a dus or a regul. Regul had learned bitter lessons about Kesrith’s flatlands; they did not stray now from the safety of their vehicles and aircraft and carefully chosen roads and landing sites. It would take a long time for humans to learn the land, if they would ever dare leave the security of the regul city.
Some would surely die learning it. A few mri had done so.
He could cease to care what humans did. They would gather up the People and go, all of them, Dahacha and Palazi and the others; and Intel too—they would persuade her too, though she was old and very tired of struggles; she could at least begin their journey.
And then they could leave without even wanting to look back.
He gazed at last from the long white ridge that was above the port and saw the shape of the regul ship Hazan and opposite it, the new one of Ahanal.
Ahanal—the Swift.
He slid down the moonlit ridge in a white powdering of dust, and crossed the long slope to the lower ground.
And a shadow flowed among the rocks, large and menacing. He turned, hand on his pistol, and looked up at the hulking form that had mounted a ridge.
Ha-dus. For a moment he did not breathe, did not move. Three others showed. Silent, the great beasts could be, when they stalked; but they did not stalk him. He had only disturbed their vigil.
He remained still, respectful of their right to be here, and they snuffed the air and regarded him with their small eyes, and finally gave that explosive question sound that indicated the fighting mood was not on them.
Pardon, brothers, he wished them in his mind, which was the best way to deal with a strange and skittish dus, and backed a few paces before he edged on toward his former course: language the dus understood, a matter of movements that one made and did not make.
His hand shifted from the pistol to the amulet at his breast. Not the moment to risk his life with the ha-dusei, far from it; he walked more slowly, more cautiously, remembering Pasev’s admonishment to use his eyes and his wits.
They let him go, and when he looked back they were no longer there.
He walked from the white dust to the artificial surface that covered the firm rock of the north rim area; and there was a fence, a laughable affair of wire screen that could stop nothing that was truly determined, not on Kesrith. He burned it, made himself a door in it, with fine disregard for regul obstructions on the free land. Any mri would do the like rather than walk round a fence, and regul met the like with outrage; but it was the mri way, and in this mri would not oblige the masters.
Bloody-handed savages, he had heard one of the regul younglings call him in the town.
But regul built fences and made machines that scarred the earth, and tried to divide up space itself into territories and limits and parcels to be traded like foodstuffs and metals and bolts of cloth. It was ludicrous in his eyes.
He walked amid the great tangle of abandoned equipage and skeletal braces and vehicles—as he had foreseen, a vast graveyard of vehicles and machines, a clot of metal so tightly jammed together that he had to detour round the whole of it, a heap of vehicles and sleds and aircraft indiscriminately mixed as if some giant hand had piled them there, the vehicles that had brought out the inhabitants of all the settlements the regul had ruled. And there, there a great burned area, a tower in charred and jagged outline against the port lights, an angular tangle of braces and more goods that the regul had cast aside as waste. Storm-shattered, burned: the damage at the port had then been very extensive. He looked about him as he walked, taking inventory of things he had once seen whole and what he saw now damaged, and he began to see reason for the regul’s distressed behaviors.
Hazan stood in a vast assemblage of gantries and hoses and fragile extensions, and about that ship too he saw evident damage. She was aglow with lights, acrawl with black figures that labored on her like carrion insects; and a steady line of vehicles crawled toward her, bearing goods, no doubt, for loading and for repairs.
He passed this area, careful of being seen, and rounded the shape of Hazan. There, a tower before him, stood Ahanal once more, looming against the sky with only one light brought to bear upon her hull.
He drew near and saw that she was old, her metal pitted as with acids, her markings seared almost beyond recognition. Long scars marked where shields must have failed.
He voice-hailed them, conscious of the nearness of regul sentries; of a sled that had already started his way.
“Ahanal!” he cried.”Open your hatch!”
But either they were not prepared to hear or they had reason to be uneasy of the regul; and there was no response from Ahanal. He saw the sled veer sharply, coming to a halt near him, and a youngling regul opened the sidescreen to speak to him.
“Mri,”said the regul,”you are not permitted.”
“Is this the order of the bai?” he asked.
“Go away,” the regul insisted.”Kesrithi mri, go away.”
There was a crash of metal: the hatch had opened. He ignored the regul to glance upward at the ship, from which a ramp began to extend. He walked toward it, simply ignoring the regul.
The sled hummed behind him. He moved, narrowly missed: its fender clipped the side of his leg, and the sled circled in front of him, blocking his path.
The window was still open. The youngling regul was breathing hard, his great nostrils opening and shutting in extreme agitation.
“Go back,” it hissed.
He began to step round the sled; it lurched forward and he rolled on his shoulder across its low nose, landed on the other side and ran, shamed and frightened: mri were watching from the ramp, doubtless outraged at his discomfiture. His legs were weak under him with terror for what he had done, a thing which no mri had ever done: he had defied the masters directly; but he was the she’pan’s messenger, and if he delayed to argue with the youngling there would be regul authority involved, with orders to obey or disobey, with a crisis for the she’pan that a mere kel’en could not resolve without direct violence.
He ran, hit the echoing solidity of the ramp and raced up it as quickly as he could to meet the mri of the ship, but they were already fading back into the ship and did not stay for him. He heard and felt the ramp taking up behind him, shortening its length as he overtook the last of them. Lights came on, blinding; doors shut, sealing them safely inside.
Ten kelein: Husbands, by their age and dignity. There was cold light and air piercing in its sterility after the air of Kesrith. The final seal of the lock closed between them and the outside, the ramp in place. There was silence.
“Sirs,” he remembered to say, and stopped looking at them, with their many j’tai and their grim, stranger’s manner, long enough to touch his brow and pay proper respect. He looked up again and unveiled, a courtesy which they grudgingly returned.
“I am Niun s’Intel Zain-Abrin,” he said in the high language, as all mri used in formalities. “I bear service to Intel, she’pan of Edun Kesrithun.”
“I am Sune s’Hara Sune-Lir,” said the eldest of them, an old man whose mane greyed at the temples and who looked to be of the age of Pasev or Eddan; but his fellows were younger, more powerful-looking men. “Does the she’pan Intel fare well?”
“The edun is safe.”
“Does the she’pan intend to come in person?”
“As to that, sir, not until I return wth the word of your she’pan.”
He understood somewhat their attitude, that of men who loved and defended their own, who must yield to she’pan Intel, who must yield them too. It was natural that they look on Intel’s messenger with resentment.
“We will take you to her,” said Sune s’Hara, with formal grace. “Come.” And with better courtesy: “You are not injured?”
“No, sir,” he said, and remembered with a sudden flush that it was not proper for him to defer to this man, that he was a messenger, and more than that; he betrayed himself for a very young kel’en and inexperienced in his authority. “Regul and mri are not at ease in Kesrith,” he added, covering his confusion. “There have been words passed.”
“We were met with weapons,” Sune said. “But there were no casualties.”
He walked with them, through corridors of metal, in halls designed for regul. He saw kel’ein and he saw kel’e’ein, veiled and youthful as he; and his pulse quickened—he thought them glorious and beautiful, and tried not to stare, though he knew that their eyes were taking close account of him, a stranger among them. Some unveiled in brotherly welcome when he met them, and a great company of them went through the corridors to the mainroom, to that center of the ship that was now the hall of a she’pan.
She was middle-aged. He came and bowed his head under her hands, and looked up at her, vaguely disturbed to be greeted by a she’pan not in the familiar earthen closeness of a tower but in this metal place, and to a greeting a she’pan who was not kin, whose emblem on her white, blue-edged robes was that of a star, not the hand emblem of Edun Kesrithun.
She was a stranger who must die, who must choose to die or whose champion he must defeat, if she challenged; and he prayed silently all the gods that this one would be brave and gracious and forego challenge.
Her eyes were hard and she existed in light harsh enough to hurt; and the world that surrounded her was cold and metal. Many, many of the ship-folk surrounded them now, their she’pan, their beloved Mother, and not his: he an intruder, a threat to her life.
They saw a she’pan’s messenger, but one innocent of j’tal won in battles—a youth unscarred, untried, and vulnerable to challenge.
He felt her eyes go up and down him, reckoning this, reckoning his world and those who sent him. And beyond her, about her, he saw gold-robed sen’ein; and black-robed kel’ein; and shyly observing from the recesses of the further hall, he saw kath’ein, blue-robes, veilless and gentle and frightened.
And about them, within the other corridors, row on row of hammocks slung like the nestings of Kesrith’s spiders, threads of white and webbings that laced the room and the sides of the corridors. He was overwhelmed by the number of those that crowded close: and yet it struck him suddenly that here was his whole species, all reduced to this little ship, and under the present command of this woman.
“Messenger,” she said, “I am Esain of Edun Elagun. How fares Intel?”
Her voice was kinder than her face, and shot through him like sun after night. His heart melted toward her, that she could speak kindly toward him and toward Intel.
“She’pan,” he said, “Intel is well enough.”
He put kindness in his voice, and yet she understood, for a shadow passed through her eyes, and fear; but she was a great lady, and did not flinch.
“What does Intel wish to tell me?” asked Esain.
“She’pan,” he said, “she gave me welcome for you; and sent me to listen to you first of all.”
She nodded slightly, and with a move of her hand bade council attend her: kel’anth and sen’anth and kath’anth came and sat by her; and the fen’ein, her Husbands of the Kel; and the body of the Sen; and while these took their places the others withdrew, and doors were closed.
He remained kneeling before her, and carefully removed his zaidhe and laid that before him; and on it he laid the av-kel, the Kel-sword that was Sirain’s lending, sheathed before him, hilt toward her, a token of peace. His hands he folded in his lap. Her kel’ein did the same, hilts toward him, the stranger in their midst, the visitor admitted to council.
“We send greetings to Intel,” said Esain quietly. “Of her wisdom long ago was Ahanal reserved for the People, and of her wisdom was Ahanal freed to come. She placed such a burden on the Kel, refusing regul assistance, that there was no honorable choice. Honor outweighed honor. This was wisely done. All aboard understand and are grateful that it was done in time, for nothing else could have compelled us from the front. Is it true as we guess, that she intends to leave regul service?”
“Her words: We have almost left regul service. Your fen’ein and the kel’anth saw the result of it when I came toward the ship.”
She looked at the kel’anth. He gave agreement with a gesture.
“I have seen a thing I have never seen,” the old man said. “A regul attacked this messenger—not with hands, to be sure; but with his machine. These regul are desperate.”
“And the edun?” the she’pan asked, her brow crossed with a frown. “How fares the Edun of the People, with the regul in such a mood?”
“Presently secure,” he said, and, for he saw the real question burning in her, that she would hesitate to ask a mere kel’en: “She’pan, the Forbidden is in her keeping; and the regul are busy with the damage the weather has done them. Humans are close, and the regul fear delays that could hold them grounded. I think what happened out there was the act of a youngling without clear orders.”
“Yet,” said the she’pan, “what if we were to leave the ship in a body?”
“We are mri,” said Niun with supreme confidence, “and regul would give way before us, and they would dare do nothing.”
“Did you so judge,” asked the she’pan, “of that youngling that attempted your life?”
Heat mounted in his face.”She’pan,” he said, made aware of his youth and his inexperience. “I do not think that was a serious threat.”
She thought, and looked at the Sen and the others, and finally sighed and frowned. “I bear too great a charge here to risk it. We will wait until Intel has made her decision. We have force here at her call; I will send it or reserve it as she says. And, messenger, assure her that I will respect her claim on the People.”
He was shocked and relieved at once, and he bowed very low to her, hearing the murmur of grief run the length and breadth of the room. He could hardly bear to meet her eyes again, but found them gentle and unaccusing.
“I will tell her,” he said, recovering the courtesies trained into him, part of blood and flesh and bone,”that the she’pan of Edun Elagun is a grand and brave lady, and that she has earned great honor of all the People.”
“Tell her,” she said softly, “that I wish her well with my children.”
Many veiled themselves, hearing her, and he found his own eyes stinging.
“I will tell her,” he said.
“Will you, messenger, stay the night with us?”
He thought of it, for it was a walk of the rest of the night to come again to the edun, and likely a great deal of sleep lost thereafter, once Intel had begun to give orders; but he thought of the regul that had crossed his path, and the weather, and the uncertainties that hemmed him about.
“She’pan,” he said, “my duty is to go back now—best now, before the regul have time to take long consultations.”
“Yes,” she said, “that would be the wisest thing. Go, then.”
And she, when he had gathered up the av-kel and replaced the zaidhe, and come to touch her hand and do her heartfelt courtesy, gave into his hand a ring of true gold, at which his heart clenched in pain; for it was a gracious, brave thing to do, to give a service-gift as if he had well-pleased her. Off her own finger she drew it, and pressed it into his hand, and he bowed and kissed her fingers, before he stood and took his leave. He laced the ring into one of the thongs of his honors, to braid it in properly later, and bowed her farewell.
“Safe passage, kel’en,” she said.
He should wish her long life, and he could not; he thought instead of that parting of kel’ein: “Honors and good attend,” he said, and she accepted that courtesy with grace.
The Kel veiled, and he did so likewise, grateful for that privacy as they led him back to the doors, to let him out into the dark.
He heard the mournful protest of a confined dus, attuned to the mood of the Kel it served; and with that he entered the lock, and the lights were extinguished, to make them less a target.
For a moment the darkness was complete. Then the opening ramp and the double doors let the light in, the floodlights on the field, and the acrid wet wind touched them.
They did not speak as he left. There had not been a word passed. It was due to their Lady Mother’s courage that he and one of hers would not shed blood in the passing of power; but it was settled.
When there was only one she’pan on Kesrith, then there would be time for courtesies, for welcome among them.
He did not look back as he started down the ramp.
NIUN HAD expected trouble at the bottom of the ramp: there was nothing, neither regul guard nor the assistance that guard might have summoned. He questioned nothing of his good fortune, but ducked his head and ran, soft-soled boots keeping his steps as quiet as possible across the pad.
He threaded again the maze of machinery, and there, there were the regul he had feared, a flare of headlights beyond the fence. He caught his breath and paused half a step to survey the situation, slipped to the shadows and changed course, reckoning that there was no need to use the same access twice. He burned through the wire fence and kicked the wire aside, and ran for it, his lungs hurting in the thin air. Somewhere a dus keened, over the rumble of machinery that prowled the dark.
He reached the edge of the apron and bolted for the sand, startled and shocked as a beam hit the sand across his path. He gasped for air and changed directions, darted round the bending of a dune and ran with all the strength he had remaining.
After a moment he reckoned himself relatively safe, enough to catch his breath again. Regul could not outrace him and the noisy machines could not surprise him. He smothered a cough, natural result of his rash burst of speed, and began uneasily to take account of this new state of affairs, that regul had premeditatedly sought not to catch him, but to kill him.
He lay against the side of the dune, his hand pressed to his aching side, trying to keep his breathing normal, and heard something stir—dus, he thought, for he knew that the hills were full of them this night, and did regul come out very far into the wild after him, they would meet a welcome they would not like. The dusei of the edun would do no harm to regul; but these were not tame ones, and the regul might not reckon that difference until it was too late to matter.
He gathered himself up and started to move, hearing at the same time a rapid sound of footsteps, mri-light and mri-quick, and following his track through the dunes. He reckoned it for one of Esain’s kel’ein, on some desperate second thought; and for that reason he froze, hissed at the shadow a warning as it fronted him, respectful of it, another kel’en.
But no kel’en.
Half a breath they faced each other, human and mri; and in that half-breath Niun whipped up his pistol and the human dived desperately to retreat, vain hope in that narrow, dune-constricted area.
And in the next instant another thought flashed into Niun’s mind—that a dead human could provide little answer to questions. He did not fire. He followed; and when he overtook the human he motioned with his hand, come, come. The human, casting desperate looks behind and at him, was a fair target if he fired.
And the human chose regul and whirled and ran.
A creature that had no business on Kesrith.
Niun thumbed the safety on, holstered the pistol and chose a new direction, a direction the regul could not, up over the arm of a dune; and cast himself flat, scanning the scene to know what manner of ambush he had sprung. Indeed the human had run directly into regul hands, in the person of one daring youngling who had him cornered against a ridge the human could easily climb if he had the wit to think of it; and the human did think of it and scrambled for his life, fighting to gain the top. But the regul laid hold on his ankle, and dragged him back again, inexorably.
They noticed nothing else. Niun retreated behind the ridge, raced a distance, came over and down in a plummeting slide, hit the solid mass of the regul and staggered it; and when it rounded on him clumsily, making the mistake of aiming a weapon at a kel’en, it was the youngling’s final mistake. Niun did not think about the flash of the as’ei that left his hand and buried themselves in the youngling’s throat and chest: they were sped before the thought had time to become purpose.
And the human, scrambling to reach the regul’s gun— Niun hit him body to body, and if there had been a knife in Niun’s intentions, the human would have been dead in the same instant.
No mean adversary, the human: Niun found himself countered, barehanded, in his attempt to seize hold of him; but the human was already done, bleeding from the nostrils, his bubbling breath hoarse in Niun’s ear. He broke the human’s hold: his arm found the human’s throat and snapped his head back with a crack of meeting teeth.
Not yet did the human fall, but a quick blow to the belly and a second snap to the head toppled him writhing to the sands; and Niun hit him yet another time, ending his struggles.
A strip from his belt secured the human; and he recovered his as’ei and sheathed them quickly, hearing the slow grinding of machinery advancing on this place, and both of them having made tracks even the night-blind regul could read.
The human was showing signs of consciousness; he gave him a jerk by the elbow and dragged him until the man tried to respond to the discomfort. Then he gave him slack to drag his legs under him and try to stand.
“Quiet,” Niun hissed at him.
And if the human thought to cry out, he thought better of it with the edge of the av-tlen near his face; he struggled up to his knees and, with Niun’s help, to his feet, and went silently where he was compelled to go. He coughed and tried to smother even that sound. His face was a mask of blood and sand in the dim light that shone from the field, and he walked as if his knees were about to fail him.
Onto the edge of the flats they went, and slow, ominous shadows of dusei stood watching them from the dunes, but gave them no threat. There was no sound of pursuit behind them. Perhaps the regul were still in shock, that a kel’en had raised hand against the masters.
Niun knew the enormity of what he had done, had time to realize it clearly; he knew the regul, that they would take time to consult with authority, and beyond that he could not calculate. No mri had ever raised hand to his sworn authority. No regul had ever had to deal with a mri who had done so.
He seized the human’s elbow and hurried him, though he stumbled at times, though he misstepped and cried out in shock when a crust broke with him and he hit boiling water. They went well onto the flats, where neither regul nor regul vehicles could go, into the sulphuric steam of geysers that veiled them from sight. By now the human coughed and spat, bleeding in his upper air passages if not in his lungs, Niun reckoned.
In consideration of that he found a place and thrust the human down against the shoulder of a clay bank, and let him catch his breath, himself glad enough of a chance to do the same.
For a moment the human lay face down, body heaving with the effort not to cough, correctly reckoning that this would not be tolerated. Then the spasms eased and he lay still on his side, exhausted, staring at him.
Unarmed. Niun took that curious fact into account, wondering what possessed the humans; or what had befallen this one, that he had lost his weapons. The human simply stared at him, eyes running tears through sand: no emotion, no other expression than one of exhaustion and misery. Unprotected he had come into Kesrith’s unfriendly environment; unwisely he had run, risking damage to his tissues.
And he had run from regul, with whom his people had made a treaty.
“I am Sten Duncan,” the human whispered at last in his own tongue.”I am with the human envoy. Kel’en, we are here under agreement.”
Niun considered that volunteered information: human envoy, human envoy—the words rolled around in his mind with the ominous tone of betrayal.
“I am kel Niun,” he said, because this being had offered him a name.
“Are you from the edun?”
Niun did not answer, there seeming no need.
“That is where you’re taking me, isn’t it?” And when again the human had no answer of him, he seemed disquieted. “I’ll go there of my own accord. You don’t need to use force.”
Niun considered this offer. Humans lied. He knew this. He had not had experience to be able to judge this one.
“I will not set you free,” he said.
It was not the custom of humans to veil themselves; but Niun was sorry, all the same, that he had so dealt with a human kel’en, taking dignity from him—if he was kel’en. Niun judged that he was: he had handled himself well.
“We will go to the edun,” he said to Duncan. He stood up and drew Duncan to his feet—did not help him overmuch, for this was not a brother; but he waited until he was sure he had his balance. The man was hurt. He marked that the human’s steps were uneven and uncertain; and that he walked without knowledge of the land, blind to its dangers.
And deaf.
Niun heard the aircraft lift from the port, heard it turn in their direction; and the human had not even looked until he jerked him about to see it—stood stupidly gazing toward the port, malicious or dull-witted, Niun did not pause to know. He seized the human and pulled him toward the boiling waters of Jieca, that curled steam into the night; and by a clay ridge, their lungs choked with sulphur, they took hiding.
Regul engines passed. Lights swept the flats and lit plumes of steam, fruitlessly seeking movement. Heat sensors were of limited usefulness here on the volcanic flats. The boiling springs and seething mud made regul science of little value in tracking them.
“Kel’en,” Duncan said.”Which one are they looking for? Me or you?”
“How have you offended the regul?” Niun asked, reckoning it of no profit to give information, but of some to gain it; and all the while the beams of light swept the flats, lighting one plume and another. “Were you a prisoner?”
“Assistant to the human envoy, to come—” A burst of fire lit their faces and spattered them with boiling water. They made a single mass against it, and as the firing continued and the water kept splashing, a rumble began in the earth and a jet of steam broke near them, enveloping them, uncomfortably hot but not beyond bearing.
“Tsi’mri,” Niun cursed under his breath, forgetting with what he shared shelter; and as the barrage kept up he felt the human begin trembling, long, sickly shudders of a being whose strength was nearly spent.
“—to come ahead of the mission,” the human resumed doggedly, still shaking .”To see that everything is as we were promised. And I don’t think it—”
A near burst threw water and mud on them. The human cried out, smothered it.
“How many of you are there?” Niun asked.
“Myself—and the envoy. Two. We came on Hazan—back there.”
Niun grasped Duncan’s collar and turned his face to the light that glared from the searching beams. He saw nothing to tell him whether this was truth or lie. This was a young man, he saw, now that the face was washed clear by the moisture that enveloped both of them—a kel’en of the humans: he shrank from applying that honorable title to aliens, but he knew no other that applied to this one.
“There was a kel’en on Hazan,” said Niun, “who died there.”
For the first time something seemed to strike through to the human: there was a hesitancy to answer. “I saw him. Once. I didn’t know he was dead.”
Niun thrust him back, for the moment blind with anger. Tsi’mri, he reminded himself, and enemy, but less so now than the regul. I saw him. I didn’t know he was dead.
He turned his face aside and stared bleakly at the rolling steam and the lights that crisscrossed the flats, searching.
Forgive us, Medai, he thought Our perceptions were too dull, our minds too accustomed to serving regul or we could have understood the message you tried to send us.
He made himself look at the hateful human face that had not the decency of concealment—at the nakedness of this being that had, unknowingly perhaps, destroyed a kel’en of the People. Animal, he thought; tsi’mri animal. The regul-mri treaty was broken, from the moment this creature set foot on Kesrith; and that had been many, many days ago. For this long the People had been free and had not known it.
“There is no more war,” Duncan protested, and Niun’s arm tensed, and he would have hit him; but it was not honorable.
“Why do you suppose that the regul are hunting us?” he asked of Duncan, casting back his own question. “Do you not understand, human, that you have made a great mistake in leaving Hazan?”
“I am going with you,” the human said, with the first semblance of dignity he had shown, “to talk to your elders, to make them understand that I had better be returned to my people.”
“Ah,” said Niun, almost moved to scornful mirth. “But we are mri, not regul. We care nothing for your bargains with the regul, much good they have done you.”
The human stayed still and reckoned that, and there was no yielding at the implied threat. “I see,” he said. And a moment later, in a quiet, restrained tone: “I left the envoy down there in town—an old man, alone with regul, with this going on. I have to get back to him.”
Niun considered this, understanding. It was loyalty to this sen’anth for which he endured this patiently. He gave respect to the human for that, touched his heart in token of it
“I will deliver you alive to the edun,” he said, and felt compelled to add: “It is not our habit to take prisoners.”
“We have learned that,” Duncan said.
Therefore they understood each other as much as might be. Niun considered the flats before them, reckoning already what might have been done to familiar ground by the bombardment: what obstacles might have been created on the unstable land, where they might next find securest shelter if the regul swept back sooner than anticipated.
It was well that he and the human had come-to an understanding, that Duncan considered his best chance and most honorable course was to cooperate for the moment. A man unburdened could make the journey by morning, all things in his favor; but not with regul blasting away the route about them; and day would show them up clearly, making it next evening before they could reach the edun if things kept on as they were.
A sick dread gathered in Niun’s stomach: for very little even so, he would have killed the human and run for the edun at all speed.
He cursed himself for his softness, which had put him to such a choice between butchery and stupidity, and gripped the human’s arm.
“Listen to me. If you do not keep my pace, I cannot keep you; and if I cannot keep you, I will kill you. It is also,” he added, “very likely that the regul will kill you to keep you from your superior.”
He slipped from cover then, and drew the human with him by the arm, and Duncan came without resisting.
But the regul craft, lacing the area, swept back, and they made only a few strides before it was necessary to hurl themselves into other cover.
The barrage began again, deafening, spattering them with boiling water and gouts of mud.
The edun would be aware of this. They were doubtless doing something; perhaps—Niun thought—Duncan’s sen’anth likewise knew and was doing something; and there was also Ahanal, independent of Intel.
He understood the human’s helpless terror. Of all who had power on Kesrith, they two had least; and the regul, who did not fight, had taken up arms, impelled by malice or fear or whatever driving motive could span the gap between cowardice and self-interest.
THERE WAS firing, a sound unmistakable to a man who had lived a great part of his life in war.
Stavros turned his sled to view the window and saw the lights of aircraft circling under the clouds. His fingers sought the console keyboard, adjusted screens with what had grown to be some expertise: simple controls, a phenomenal series of coded signals, each memorized. The regul had provided him the codings with an attitude of smug contempt: learn it, they challenged him with that look of theirs that rated beings of short memory with sub-sapients.
Stavros was not typical in this regard, had never been typical, not from his boyhood on remote Kiluwa, to his attachment to the Xen-Bureau to his directorate on Halley during first contact. He found nothing difficult in languages, nor in alien customs, nor in recognizing provincial shortsightedness, whether offered by humans or by others.
He was Kiluwan by allegiance, a distinction the regul and most humans did not appreciate: remote, first-stage colony, populated by religious traditionalists, among whom writing was a sin and education an obsession. He had been born there a century ago, before peaceful, eccentric Kiluwa became a casualty of the mri wars.
A number of Kiluwans had distinguished themselves in Service; they were gone now, among casualties forty years ago, retaliation for Nisren. Stavros survived. It was characteristic of his Kiluwan upbringing that he should be driven to understand the species that had ordered Kiluwa obliterated. Regul had done this, not mri. Therefore he studied the phenomenon of regul—minds much like the perfection Kiluwa had sought; and they had destroyed all that Kiluwa had built. There was, as the university masters had once said, a ‘rhythm of justice’ in this, a joining of cancelling forces. Now a Kiluwan came to displace regul, and the rhythm continued, binding them both.
He learned regul ways, looking for resolution to this; he observed meanness and coldness and self-seeking ambition, as well as reverence for mind. He had come from fear of regul to a yearning over them—not a little of sorrow for Kiluwa, whose dream in the flesh had come to this flawed reality; and there were truths beyond what he had been able to grasp, vices and virtues inherent in the biology of regul. He saw these, began to understand, at least, constraints of species perpetuation and population control—-division into hive structures, breeding-elders and younglings, the docha that answered roughly to nations: he acquired suspicions about the value of treaties, which bound and yet did not bind docha which had not been party to the agreement.
They had contracted with Holn and suddenly found themselves dealing instead with Alagn; and Alagn honored the agreement.
Outwardly.
It had come to the point of truth. He had sat the long hours through the day and into dark and covered for Duncan’s absence and committed every deception but the outright lie which the regul would not forgive. In the hours’ passage he had grown more and more certain, first that Duncan had found something amiss or he would have returned quickly, certainly by the time dark gave him concealment—and when the fall of night did not bring him back, he became well sure that something amiss had found Duncan.
The pretenses with the regul became charade bitterly difficult to maintain. They could murder the SurTac and blandly fail to mention it with the morning’s reports. And there was not a human going to land on Kesrith without Stavros’ clearance: not in peace, at least, not without removing all possible resistance.
The regul surely understood this.
He sat and listened to the firing, knowing while it continued that Duncan was likely still alive.
He had been a shaper of policy in his days, had settled a new world and founded a university; had plotted strategies of diplomacy and war, had disposed of lives in numbers in which ships and crews were reckoned expendable, in which the likes of Sten Duncan perished in their hundreds.
But he heard the firing, and clenched his right hand and agonized in a desperate attempt to move his unwilling left with any strength at all. He was held to the sled. He was constrained to be patient.
There was new catastrophe at the port. There were hints in regul communications, into which he had intruded, that a ship had come down, that it was not friendly to regul.
Human, rival regul, or mri. He could guess well enough what had drawn Duncan to overstay his leave. Create no incident, he had told the lad, knowing then that there was little Duncan could do to create anything: it waited to happen, all about them. He had felt it increasingly, in the silences of the regul, the tension in the atmosphere of the Nom.
The regul were trying something illicit. Human interests were endangered. And there was no word of approval going from him to the human mission when it arrived, no matter what the coercion.
If that was not what had already happened.
Stavros was not a man of precipitate action: he thought; and when he had concluded chances were even, he was capable of rashness. He found no need to cooperate further with hosts that would either kill them or not dare to kill them: it was time to call their bluff.
He fingered the console, whipped the sled about and opened doors. He guided it through Duncan’s apartment and with a smooth, well-practiced series of commands, and a turn to the right, locked it into the tracking that ran the corridors.
Youngling regul saw him and gaped, jabbering protests which he ignored. He knew his commands, calculated the appropriate moves, and locked into a turn, whisked into the side of the building that faced the port. There he stopped and keyed into the window controls, brightening windows, commanding storm shields withdrawn.
A new ship, indeed.
And lights glared over the countryside, flaring garishly in the haze of smoke and steam, aircraft lacing the ground with their beams.
Ah, Duncan, he thought with great regret.
A youngling puffed up to him.”Elder human,” it said.”We regret, but—”
Bai Hulagh. Where? he demanded via the screen, which took the youngling considerably aback. Youngling, find me the bai.
It fled, at least with what dispatch a regul could manage, and Stavros whipped the sled about and took it to the left, engaged a track and shot down the ramp, whipped round the corner and entered the first level of the Nom, from which they had been carefully excluded.
Here he disengaged and went on manual, edging through the gabbling crowd of younglings. Mri, he heard, and: mri ship; and: alert.
And they made way for him until one noticed that the sled, the symbol to them of adult authority, contained a human.
“Go back,” they wished him.”Go back, elder.”
Bai Hulagh. Now, he insisted, and would not move, and there was nothing they dared do about it. When they began to murmur together in great confusion, he directed the sled through them and toured the ground floor in leisurely fashion, with the air vibrating with the attack out on the flats and the building vibrating to the shocks. Mentally he noted where doors were located, and where accesses were, and where it was possible to come and go with the sled.
A message flashed on his receiver.
It was Hulagh’s sigil. Hulagh’s face followed. “Esteemed elder human,” Hulagh said. “Please return at once to your quarters.”
I am unable to believe that they are secure, Stavros spelled out patiently. Where is my assistant?
“He has disregarded our advice and is now involved in a situation,” said Hulagh with remarkable candor, such that Stavros’ hopes abruptly lifted. “Mri have landed, I regret to admit, honorable representative. These mri are outlaws, bent on making trouble. Your youngling is somewhere in the midst of things, quite contrary to our warnings. Please make our task easier by returning to the safety of your quarters.”
I refuse. Stavros keyed a window clear. I will observe from the windows here.
Hulagh’s nostrils snapped shut and flared again. “This lack of cooperation is reprehensible. We are still in authority here. We do not lose this authority until the arrival of your mission. You are here only as an observer, on our agreement.”
Therefore I shall observe.
Again the flare of anger. “Do so, then, at your own hazard. I shall inform your youngling if he is found that you miss his services and he would be well advised to return to you.”
I should be grateful, Stavros spelled out with deliberation, I shall inform my people when they come that you are not responsible for any delay in withdrawal—if it should happen that my aide is recovered safely and there is no damage to our chosen landing site, or to necessary facilities, such as this building or the water or power plant. However, if these things do occur, other conclusions may be drawn.
There was silence, bai Hulagh still on the screen, while the bai reflected on this statement Of intent. Stavros had expected anger, threat, bluster. Instead some quieter emotion passed within the bony mask of a face, betrayed only by the rapid flare of nostrils.
“If the human envoy will assure us that this is indeed the case and accommodation may be made, then we will make every effort to preserve these facilities and to accomplish the recovery of your youngling alive. It will, however, be necessary to warn the human envoy that there will be necessary operations at the port and, for the security of the Nom and all within, it will be preferable for the honorable human elder to observe through remote channels and not through the windows. Your consideration, favor, sir.”
I understand. Favor, sir. I am presently satisfied that you are doing your utmost. He would not, voluntarily, have surrendered his view through the windows, not trusting the limited view provided by regul services; but the barrage was intense and the windows rattled ominously, and he began to believe the bai’s warning. The regul building was undergoing repeated shocks. He knew the bai’s warning for an honest one.
It only remained to question what was happening to occasion the firing. The regul, he reminded himself, closing the storm shield, did not lie.
Therefore it was true that mri had landed and that Sten Duncan was somewhere out on the flats, but one never assumed anything with the regul.
Then the floor shook, and sirens wailed throughout the building.
Stavros locked the sled onto a track and whisked himself back to the main lobby, where a group of younglings frantically waved at him, trying to offer him instructions all at once.
“Shelter, reverence, shelter!” they said, pointing at another hall, a ramp leading down. He considered and thought that it might at the moment be wise to listen.