Kutath fs-3

by C. J. Cherryh

  But to Suth's lasting dismay there had been transfer; Suth, most honored of Hulagh's youngling attendants, passed as special favor to bai Sharn, who undertook a mission on which but one elder could be risked; Sharn, female, on a voyage years in length. Maleness tempted; Sharn herself was very high in doch Alagn.

  Sharn, female, fourth eldest of one of the greatest of the docha, and murdered by a deranged human youngling.

  Degh had been Impressed in witnessing that incomprehensible act. To replace bai Sharn ... to foe Sharn… that desire came with the Consuming.

  And degh could not complete the Change, poised between, for days neither Hulagh's nor Sham's, neither female nor male.

  Degh screamed aloud and cursed the human who had done this thing, who allied with mri and tried to lure others of his species after. A hundred twenty-three stars, a hundred twenty-three… dead… lifeless… systems. And even after seeing the deadly track the mri had cut through the galaxy… humans approached these killers and spoke of peace.

  Degh must live. Species demanded. Life demanded. More than personal ambition, more than doch, than the chance of elevating degh's little doch of Horag, allying to powerful Alagn at its highest levels; these things were motivation… but this touched something at depth Suth had never felt, which perhaps no regul had ever had to feel, for no regul had ever confronted such a possibility, death on such a scale. Degh must live, generate, produce lives to deal with this threat, innumerable lives.

  There came another touch at degh's body, faint, tremulous. It was Nagn, an older youngling. And it tore back with a shriek of dismay.

  "Honored," it cried, "I burnl”

  It had happened; next eldest had gone prematurely into Change. Suth cried out with relief and shut degh's eyes.

  The pain moved lower. Muscle contractions began at last, fever increasing, skin sloughing and peeling. The younglings brought food, and bathed deghn, and applied unguents to the swollen parts.

  Scarcely supported by the younglings, the Honored Nagn moved again to degh's side, touched, shuddering in degh's own pain.

  The choice was Suth's. Suth's body was making it The swelling continued as one vestigial set of organs was absorbed, and the other began, in convulsive heaves of Suth's body, to press down into the membrane covering the aperture… descended, evident as it would never be henceforth save in mating.

  "Male!" a youngling declared.

  Nature's logic. Suth smiled, a tightening of the muscles beneath his eyes, and this despite the pain. Elsewhere Nagn writhed in the throes of Change, but Nagn's choice was set, and swifter, Tiag cried out in agony, and Morkhug, the hysteria of Change settling upon all the eldest

  The pain ebbed in time. Suth moved, supported by younglings. Never again would he stand long unaided. His bulk, already increased by his appetite, would increase twice more. His legs, once strong, would atrophy until little muscle lay under the abundant fat, although his arms, constantly exercised by the operation of the prosthetic supports, would remain strong. Senses would dim hereafter, save for sight. The mind dominated. Regul memory was instant and indelible; he would live, barring accident or murder, for three hundred years more, remembering every chance moment and every minute detail to which he paid attention.

  He had lived to be adult, and only thirty percent of regul did so; he was, by virtue of being the first adult on the ship, remote from others of greater age ... an elder, in command of Shirug and of whatever other adults matured; only one percent of regul reached such status.

  And by the Change which had come on him he could not now meet his old bai Hulagh as mate… but as a rival of another doch. He was senior to Nagn and Tiag and Morkhug, who were Alagn, and therefore this great Alagn ship, the pride of the doch, became Horag territory. Hulagh of Alagn had miscalculated, reckoning every eventuality but Sham's premature death and a Horag sexing ahead of the others. Suth smiled.

  Then he looked on the three who were in the throes of Change, ... on Nagn, who was flushing with the swift completion of agonies which had held him for days.

  "Out!" he shouted at the other younglings.

  They fled. He struck at those who supported him, and they joined the others in flight. He could not long stand, but sank down on his weakened legs, panting.

  "Honor, reverend Nagn," he said.

  "Honor, bai Suth." She struggled to sit. He had deprived her of younglings to help her, but she was female and would always be more mobile than he save in the final stage of carrying.

  And she had not near attained his dignity of bulk, nor suffered the several skin changes. Those were, for her, only beginning.

  "Favor," said Suth, "Nagn Alagn-ni.”

  "Favor, Suth Horag-gi.”

  She came to him, the order of their age of Change, although it was established by mere moments. He mated her, with dispatch and twice, for honor to her precedence of the others. She was next eldest and would hold that rank while he held the ship. He moved then, necessity, and mated the other two, which likely would produce no young, but which would Impress them with more haste, painful as it was for them. He would mate them until all three were with as many young as they could carry. These were his officers; it was economical, his maleness. There was need of rapid reproduction of Horag young; eldest claimed all young in any mating. As other younglings aboard Shirug sexed, they would sex under his Impress, female.

  Horag young would increase on the ship at first by the factor of the litters these three would bear; and more, with more females. Had he sexed female as he had first tended, the Alagn youngling Nagn would have sexed male in complement, and the next two would have sexed randomly, with himself bearing three to five young as female, some by Nagn, some by any other young male that might develop, and though he could claim such young as Horag, as female he could make only a small nest of Horag young on an otherwise Alagn ship.

  It was indeed nature's logic and politics but Suth was smug in it, suffused with a feeling of power and tightness after his long suffering. There would be a new order on this ship, his ship. And for Horag to succeed in an operation where great Alagn had failed miserably.… Ambitions occurred to him, incredible in scope.

  "It is not necessary," he said, "that humans know we exist.”

  "No," Nagn agreed, "but until they realize we have an elder on this ship, they will be continuing on their own course of action. They will do what pleases them without consulting us.”

  "If all witnesses die," said Suth, " there is no event”

  "Eldestr

  "We are far from human bases; we can do what pleases us.”

  "Strike at elders?”

  "Secure ourselves.”

  Nagn considered this, her nostrils flaring and shutting in agitation. Finally they remained open. "With their rider ship and their probe as well, they have mobility we do not”

  "Mri could even the balance.”

  "Even mri have some memory, eldest They will not hire to us."

  "On that world, Nagn Akgn-ni, there is power. It struck back at our ship; we experienced it and we know the sites of it. If both mri and human witnesses perish then regul worlds are freed of an inestimable danger; and humans can ask questions but regul need give no answers.”

  Nagn grinned, a slow relaxation of her jaws and a narrowing of her eyes.

  Chapter Five

  Yet again the beasts shifted position, not to be buried, shaking the sand off with a vengeance. The gale had fallen off markedly, and Na'i'in shone brighter this morning than it had yesterday noon. Duncan stumbled to his feet, muscles aching. He had slept finally, when the dusei no longer roused so often; and he was stiff, the more so that the great beasts had pressed on him and leaned on him; instinct, he reckoned, to keep his chilling body up to their fever warmth. They milled about now, blew and sneezed wetly, clearing their noses. Duncan shivered, folding his arms about him, for the cold wind threatened to steal what warmth he had gathered.

  Time to move. Anxiety settled on him as he realized he could see horizon through the c
urtain-like gusts; if he could see, so could others, and he had lingered too long. He should have been on his way in the night, when the sand had ceased to come so heavily; he should have realized, and instead he had settled down to sleep.

  Stupidity, his mri brother had been wont to tell him on other occasions, is not an honorable death.

  "Hai," he murmured to the dusei, gathered up bis pack, shrugged into it, started off, with a protest of every muscle in his body, making what haste he could.

  He took a little more of the dried food, with a last bite of the pipe, and that was breakfast, to quiet his hunger pangs. The dusei tried to cajole their share, and he gave to his own, but when he offered to the others, his began a rumbling that boded trouble.

  He at once flung the handful wide, and die two stranger dusei paused, themselves rumbling threats, letting the pace separate them. After a moment they lowered their heads and took the food, and the curtaining sand began to come between. The storm-night was over, truces broken. His heart still beat rapidly from the close call, the injudiciousness of his own dus to start a quarrel while he had his hand full of something the others wanted. He glanced back; one of them stood up on its hind legs, a towering shadow, threatening their backs; but his own whuffed disgust and plodded on, having evidently dismissed the seriousness of the threat. His was tame only in the sense it wanted to stay with him, which dusei had done with the mri of Kesrith for two thousand years, coming in out of their native hills, choosing only kel-caste, bonding lifelong; and not even the mri knew why. Kath'ein had no need and sen'ein minds were too complex and cold for the dusei's taste; so the mri said. But for some mad reason, this one had chosen a human its only existing choice, perhaps, when mri on Kesrith had perished.

  He had a dread of it someday departing his side, deserting him for the species it preferred; truth be told, that parting would be painful beyond bearing, and lonely after, incredibly lonely. He needed it, he suspected, with a crippled need a kel'en of the mri might never have. And perhaps the dus knew it

  He walked, his hand on the beast's back, looked over his shoulder. The other two were only the dimmest shadows now. They would choose, perhaps, other kel'ein. ... He hoped not the kel'ein who followed him now; that was a dread thought

  His rumbled with pleasure, blowing at the sand occasionally, shambling along at his pace, turning its face as much as might be from the wind.

  But after a time that pleasure-sound died, and something else came into its mood, a pricklish anxiety.

  The skin contracted between his shoulders. He looked back, searching for shadows in the amber haze coughed, bund for a moment.

  The dus had stopped too, began that weaving which accompanied ward-impulse, back and forth, back and forth between him and some presence not far distant

  "Hush," he bade it, dropped to his knees to fling his arms about its neck and distract it, for a determined pursuer could use that impulse to locate them.

  A mri who pursued… could well do that.

  The impulse and the weaving stopped; the beast stood still and shivered against him, and he scrambled up and started it moving again, facing the wind, blind intermittently in the gusts, and with the beast's disturbance sawing at his nerves like primal fear.

  The land did not permit mistakes. He had made one, this morning, out of weakness.

  Turn, he thought, and meet his pursuers, plead that he carried a message that might mean life or death for all the mri?

  One look at his habit and his weapons and his human-brown eyes… would be enough. Mri meant the People; outsiders and higher beasts were tsi'mri; not-People. He and the dus were equal in their eyes; it was built into the hal'ari that way, and no logic could argue without words to use.

  It was a stranger behind him, no one of the tribe he knew; they would have showed themselves long since if that were the case; there was more than curiosity involved, if pursuit continued after the storm. He was sure of it now, with a gut-deep knowledge that he was in serious trouble.

  Kel'ein did not walk far alone, not by choice. There was a tribe somewhere about, and a Kel which had set himself to trail an invader.

  Hlil stopped with the sand-veiled shadow of the city before him, sank down on his heels on the windward side of a low dune and surveyed the altered outlines of the ruin tsi'mri had left.

  An-ehon. His city. He had never lived in it; but it was his by heritage. He had come here in the journeyings which attended the accession of a she'pan, when he was very young; had sat within walls while the Sen closed themselves within the Holy and the Mother gained the last secrets she had to know, which were within the precious records of the city. No more. It was over, the hundred thousand years of history of this place ended, in his sight, in an instant He had seen the towers falling, comrades slain on right and on left of him, and for so long as he lived he would carry that nightmare with him.

  What he had to do now… was more than to recover the tents, the Things, which concerned only life; it was to retake the Holy, and that… that filled him with fear. The stranger-she'pan had laid hands on him, giving him commission to handle what he must; perhaps she had the right to do so. He was not even certain of that. An-ehon was destroyed, the means of teaching she'panei gone with it, and they must trust this stranger, who claimed to hold in herself the great secrets. It was all they had, forever, save what rested here.

  Merai, he had thought more than once on this journey, with even the elements turning on them, Merai, o gods, what should I do?

  He did so now, thinking of the city before them, of the tribe-gods, of the tribe, pent within that narrow cut and the sand moving. In his mind was a vision of them being overwhelmed in it by sandfalls, or the sandslip building all down the cut, gravity bearing them in a powdery slide into the basin, a fall which turned his stomach to contemplate.

  He had sent five hands of kel'ein back when the storm began, to aid if they could. That far he went against the she'pan's plans, dividing his force. Perhaps she would forgive; perhaps she would curse, damning him, cutting him off from the tribe for disobedience. That was well enough, he thought, tears welling up in his throat, if only it saved the rest of the children. There was following orders and there was sanity; and the gods witness he tried to choose aright... to obey and to disobey at once.

  Sand slipped near him. Ras had caught up with him, came over the crest and slid down to a crouch at his side. In a moment more came Desai, third-rank kel'en, blind in one eye, but the one that saw, saw keenly; a quiet man and steady, and after him came Merin, a Husband, and the boy Taz ... an unscarred, who had begged with all his heart to come. There were others, elsewhere, lost in the rolls of the land and the gusting wind. He took to heart what the kel'anth had said of ambushes and ships, and kept his forces scattered.

  He waited a moment, letting the others take their breaths, for beyond this point was little concealment Then he rose up, started down the trough, keeping to the low places where possible, while his companions strayed along after him at their own rate, making no grouped target for the distance-weapons of tsi'mri.

  But when they neared the buildings and crossed the track by which they had fled the city, and came upon the first of the dead, anger welled up in him, and he paused. Black-robe; this had been a kel'en. He gazed at the partially buried robes, the mummy made of days in the drying winds, ravaged by predators; they must have held feast in An-ehon.

  The others overtook him; he walked on without looking at them. Ahead were the shells of towers, geometries obscured in sand, horizonless amber in which near buildings were distinct even to the cracks in their walls and the distant ones hove up as shadows. And everywhere the dead.

  "This was Ehan," Desai said of the next they came to; and "Bias," said Merin of another, for the Honors these dead wore could still distinguish them, when wind and dryness had made them all alike.

  From time to time they spoke names of those they saw among the passages between the ruined buildings; and the dead were not only kel'ein but old sen'ein, gold-rob
es, scholars, whose drying skulls had held so much of the wisdom of the People; young and old, male and female, they lay in some places one upon the other, folk that they had known aU their lives; among them were the bodies of kath'ein, blue-robes, the saddest and most terrible the child-rearers and children. Walls had fallen, quick and cruel death; in other places the dead seemed without wound at all. There were the old whose bronze manes were dark and streaked with age; many, many of their number, who had not been strong enough to bear the running; and in many a place a kel'en's black-robed body lay vainly sheltering some child or old one.

  Name after name, a litany of the dead; kath Edis, one of his own kath-mates, and four children, two of whom might be his own; that hit him hard; and sen'ein, wise old Rosin; and kel Dom; they had come into the Kel the same year. He did not want to look, and must, imposing horrors over brighter memories.

  And the others, who had lost closer kin, Kel-born, who had kin to lose; Taz, who mourned trueparents and sister and all his uncles; and Ras Ras passed no body but that she did not look to see.

  "Haste," he said, having his fill of grieving. But Ras trailed last, disobedient, still searching, almost lost to them in the murk.

  He said nothing to that; matters were thin enough between them. But he looked at no more dead; and the others grew wise, and did not, either, staying close with him. Chance was, he thought, that they could run head-on into members of their own party, if they were not careful in this murk, come up against friends primed to expect distance-weapons and primed to attack ... an insanity; he had no liking at all for this kind of slipping about.

  Suddenly the square lay before them, vast, ribboned with blowing sand which made small dunes about the bodies which lay thicker here than elsewhere in the city. At the far side hove up the great Edun, the House of the People, Edun An-ehon, sad in surrounding ruin. It was mostly intact, the four towers, slanting together, forming a truncated pyramid. The doorway gaped darkly open upon steps which ran down into the square. The stone of the edun was pitted and scarred as the other buildings; great cracks showed hi the saffron walls, but this place which had been the center of the attack had also held the strongest defense, and it had survived best of any structure in the city. Hope welled up in him, hope of success, of doing quickly what they had come to do and getting away safely.