He moved and the others followed, on a course avoiding the open square, taking their cover where they could find it among the shattered buildings and the blowing sand. Finally he broke away at a run, up the long steps, toward that ominous dark within, hard-breathing with the effort and thinking that at any moment fire might blast out at him. It did not. He slid through the doorway and inside, against the wall, where dust slipped like oil beneath his feet, where was silence but for the wind outside and the arriving footsteps of the others. They entered and stopped, all of them listening a moment. There was no sound but the wind outside.
"Get a light going," he bade Taz. The boy fumbled in the pouch he carried and knelt, working hastily to set fire in the oil-wood fiber he had brought. Ras arrived, last of them, "Stay out there," Hlil ordered her, "visible; others will be coming soon.”
"Aye," she said, and slipped back out again into the cold wind, a miserable post, but no worse than the dark inside.
The flame kindled; Taz shielded it with his body and lit a knot of fiber impaled on an oilwood wand. They all, he, Merin, and Desai, kept bodies between the fire and the draft from the door. Mervin lit other knots and passed them about. Outside, Ras's low voice reported no sight of the others.
Hlil took his light and walked on. The inner halls echoed to the least step. Cracks marred the walls, ran, visible once eyes had adjusted to the dim light, about the higher walls and ceilings, marring the holy writings there.
The entry of kel-tower was clear, and that of Sen, the she'pan's tower and Kath… affording hope of access to their belongings. But when he looked toward the shrine his heart sank, for that area of the ceiling sagged, and the pillars which guarded that access were damaged. He felt of them and stone crumbled at his least touch on the cracks.
He had to know; he went farther into the shrine, thrust his light-wand into a cracked wall and passed farther still.
"Hlil," Merin protested, behind him.
He hesitated, and even as he stopped a sifting of plaster hit his shoulders and dimmed the light.
"Go back," he bade Merin and the others. "Stand clear.”
The Holy was there, that which they venerated and the Holy of the Voyagers; his knees were weak with dread of the great forbidden; but in his mind was the hazard of losing them once for all, these things which were more than the city and more than all their lives combined.
He moved inward; the others disobeyed and followed; he heard them, saw the lights moving with him, casting triple shadows of himself and the pillars and the inner screen.
Beyond that the stranger-she'pan had given him her blessing to go; that first, she had bidden him. He was shaking unashamedly as he put but a hand and moved the screen aside.
A tiny box of green bronze; figures of corroding metal and gold; a small carven dus and a shining oval case as large as a child; together they were the Pana, the Mysteries, on which he looked, on which no kel'en ought ever to look. He thrust out a hand almost numb, gathered up the smallest objects and thrust them, cold and comfortless, within the breast of his robes. He passed the box to Merin, whose hands did not want to receive it Last he reached for the shining ovoid, snatched it to him in a sifting of dust and falling plaster. It was incredibly heavy for its size, staggered him, hit a support in a cascade of plaster and fragments. He stumbled back at the limit of his balance, hit the steadying hands of Desai who snatched him farther, outside, as dust rolled out at them and they sprawled, shaken by the rumble of falling masonry. It stopped.
"Sir?" Taz's voice called.
"We are well enough," Hlil answered, holding the pan'en to him, bowed over it, though the chill seemed to flow from it into his bones. Other hands helped him rise with it; the light of the door showed in a shaft of dust, and the figures of Taz and Ras within it, casting shadows. He carried his burden to the doorway, past them and out into the light and the storm, knelt down and laid the pan'en and the other objects on the top of the steps. Merin added the ancient box, stripped off his veil to shield the Holy objects ... so did he, and Ras and Desai too. He looked up into the faces of the others, which were stark with dread for what they had in hand. He looked from one to the other, chilled with a sense of separation ... for kel'ein died, having touched a pan'en; such was the law. Or if they lived, then forever after they were known by it; pan'ai-khan, somewhere between Holy and accursed.
"I have dispensation," he said. "I give it you.”
They crouched down, huddled together, he and the others, protecting the Holy as if it were something living and fragile, that wanted mortal flesh between it and the elements.
The boy Taz was not with them.
Taz are you well?" Hlil shouted into the dark
"I am keeping the fire," the boy said. "Kel-second, the dust is very thick, but there is no more falling.”
"The gods defend us," Hlil muttered, conscious of what he had his hand on, that burned him with its cold. "Only let it hold a little while longer.”
Duncan paused, where a scoured ridge of sandstone offered a moment's shelter from the wind, flung his arms about the thick neck of the dus and lowered his head out of the force of the gusts. He coughed, rackingly; his head ached and his senses hazed. The storm seemed to suck oxygen away from him. He uncapped the canteen and washed his mouth, for the membranes were so dry they felt like paper. ... He swallowed but a capful. He stayed a moment, until his head stopped spinning and his lungs stopped hurting, then he found the moral force to stand and move again.
There was a bright spot in the world, which was the sun; in the worst gusts it was still all that could be seen. The dus moved, guiding him in his moments of blindness.
Then something else grew into reality, tall shadows like trees, branched close to the trunk and rising straight up again, gaunt giants. Pipe. He went toward it, consumed with the desire for the sweet pulp which could relieve his pain and his thirst better than water. The dus lumbered along by him, willingly hurrying; and the.shadows took on more and more of substance against amber sky and amber earth.
Dead. No living plants but pale, desiccated fiber materialized before him, strands ripped loose, blowing in the wind, a ghostly forest of dead trunks. He touched the blowing strands, drew his av-tlen to probe the trunk closest, to try whether there might be life and moisture at the core.
And suddenly he received something from the dus, warning-sense, which slammed panic into him.
He moved, ran, the beast loping along with him. He cursed himself for the most basic of errors; Think with the land, the mri had tried to teach him; Use it; flow with it; be it. He had found a point in the blankness. He had been nowhere until he had found a point, the rocks, the stand of dead plants. He was nowhere and could not be located until he made himself somewhere.
And childlike, he had gone from point to point. The dus was no protection; it betrayed him.
Think with the land, Niun had said. Never challenge beyond your capacity; one does not challenge the jo in hiding or the bur-rower in waiting.
Or a mri in his own land.
He stopped, faced about, blind in the dust, the shortsword clenched in his fist. Cowardice reminded him he was tsi'mri, counseled to take up the gun and be ready with it. He came to save mri lives; it was the worst selfishness to die, rather than to break kel-law.
Niun would.
He sucked down mouthfuls of air and scanned the area around about, with only a scatter of the great plants visible through the dust. The dus hovered close, rumbling warnings. He willed it silent, flexed his fingers on the hilt.
The dus shied off from the left; he faced that way, heart pounding as the slim shadow of a kel'en materialized out of the wind.
"What tribe?" that one shouted.
"The ja'anom," he shouted back, his voice breaking with hoarseness. He stilled the dus with a touch of his hand; and in utter hubris; "You are in the range of the ja'anom. Why?”
There was a moment's silence. The dus backed, rumbling threat.
"I am Rhian sTafa Mar-Eddin, kel'an
th and daithon of the hao'nath. And your geography is at fault.”
His own name was called for. They proceeded toward challenge by the appointed steps. It was nightmare, a game of rules and precise ritual. He took a steadying breath and returned his av-tlen to its sheath with his best flourish, emptying his hands. He kept them at his sides, not in his belt, as Bhian had his. He wanted no fight
"Evidently the fault is mine," he said. "Your permission to go, kel'anth.”
"You give me no name. You have no face. What is that by you?”
"Come with me," Duncan said, trying the most desperate course. "Ask of my she'pan.”
"Ships have come. There was fire over the city.”
"Ask of my she'pan.”
"Who are you?”
The dus roared and rushed; pain hit his arm even as he saw the mri flung aside. "No!" Duncan shouted as the dus spun again to strike. The dus did not; the mri did not move; Duncan reached to the numb place on his arm and felt the hot seep of moisture.
Two heartbeats and it had happened. He trembled, blank for the instant, knowing what had hit, the palm-blades, the as-ei, worn in the belt. The dus's attack, the mri's reflex both too quick to unravel; dusei read intent.
He shuddered, staggered to the dus and found the other blade, imbedded in the shoulder… fatal to a man, no serious thing to the dus's thick muscle. He was shaking all over… shock, he thought; he had to move. It was a kel'anth who lay there, a whole Kel hereabouts…
He leaned above the prostrate form, still shaking, put out a hand to probe for life, bis right one tucked to him. Life there was; but the kel'en had dus venom in him, and sand already covered the edges of his robes. Duncan gasped breath on his own, started away cursed and shook his head and came back, seized the robes and tugged and struggled the inert form to the stand of pipe, left him sitting there.
"Dus," he called hoarsely, turned, veered off into the wind again, running, the dus moving with lumbering haste at his side.
They would follow; he believed that beyond question. Blood feud if the kel'anth died and someone to tell the tale of him if he did not. He coughed and kept running, sucked in dust with the air despite the veils, slowing when he could no longer keep from doubling with pain. Dus-sense prickled about him, either the animal's alarm or its sense of a new enemy. He held his injured arm to him, running a little, walking when he could not run, making what speed he could. Two mistakes on his own; the dus had accounted for the third.
"Storm is diminishing," the voice from Flower reported. "No chance yet to assess conditions outside.”
"Don't," Koch said, passed a hand reflexively over the stubble on his head. "Don't risk personnel, in any limited visibility.”
"We have our own operations to pursue." Flower's exec was Emil Luiz, chief surgeon, civ and doggedly so. "We know our limitations. We have measurements to take.”
"We copy," Koch muttered. The civs were indeed under his command, but they were trouble and doubly so since they were the potential link to the SurTac. "We are dispatching Santiago to a survey pattern. We wish you to observe unusual cautions for the duration. Please do not disperse crew or scientific personnel on outside research. Keep everyone within easy jump of the ship, and no key personnel out of reach of stations. This is a serious matter, Dr. Luiz. We fully sympathize with your need to gather information, but we do not wish to have to abandon personnel onworld in case of trouble. Understood?”
"We will not disperse personnel outside during your operation. We copy very clearly.”
"Your estimation of mission survival down there?”
There was long silence. "Obviously natives survive such storms.
"Unsheltered?”
"We don't know where he is, do we?”
Koch tapped his stylus nervously against the desk. "Code twelve," he cautioned the civ; they used scramble as standard procedure, but there was a nakedness, sending information back and forth after this fashion. He misliked it entirely.
"We suggest further patience," Luiz said. "Anything will have been dekyed in this storm.”
"We copy," Koch said.
"We request an answer," Luiz said. "Flower staff recommends further patience.”
"Recommendation noted, sir.”
"Admiral, we request you take official note of that recommendation. We ask you cease flights down there. These are clearly reconnaissance and they're provocative. Our personal safety is at stake and so are our hopes of peaceful contact. You may trigger something, and we are in the middle. Please discontinue any military operations down here. Do you copy that, sir?”
Koch's heart was speeding. He held his silence a moment, reached and coded a number onto his desk console. The answer flashed back to his screen, negative.
"We will look into the matter," Koch said. "Please code twelve that and wait shuttled reply.”
Now there was silence for a few beats on the other end.
"We copy," Luiz said.
"Any other message, Flower? We're moving out of your range. Santiago should be in position soon to serve as relay and cover. Ending transmission.”
"We copy. Ending transmission.”
The artificial voices and crawl of transcription across the second screen ceased. Koch wiped sweat from his upper lip and punched in Silverman of Santiago. The insystem fighter was in link at the moment, riding attached to Saber's flank as she had ridden into the system. "Commander, Koch here. Report personally, soonest”
He received immediate acknowledgment. With matters as they were, key personnel kept communicators on their persons constantly.
He punched up security next, Del Degas. The man was in the next office and available, there as soon as four doors could open.
"Sir.”
"Someone's overflying Flower's scan down there. Who?”
Degas's thin face went tauter still. "We have no missions downworld right now.”
"I know that. What about our allies?”
Til find out what I can.”
"Del if they're regul… theoretically younglings can't take that kind of initiative. If someone's data is wrong on that point, if Shirug can function in their hands that's a problem. Theoretically those shuttles the agreement allows them aren't armed.”
"Like ours," Degas said softly.
"Want Santiago out there where she has a view, Del; scan operations have to be subordinated to that for the time being. They won't let us inside; we do what we can.”
Regul could not lie; that was the general belief. Their indelible memories made lying a danger to their sanity. So the scientists said.
Likewise regul were legalists. To deal with them it was necessary to consider every word of every oral agreement, and to reckon all the possible omissions and interpretations. Regul memory was adequate for that kind of labyrinthine reckoning. Human memory was not.
Degas nodded slowly. "Try again to open contact?”
"Don't. Not yet. I don't want them alarmed. Santiago's maneuvering is enough.”
"And if they're not regul doing those overnights?”
"I consider that possibility too.”
"And act on it?”
Koch frowned. Del Degas had his private anxiousness in that matter. Conviction, perhaps ... or revenge. A man who had lost both sons and a wife to mri might harbor either.
"The SurTac," Degas pursued uninvited, "is a deserter. That may have been planned by the office that sent him; but his attitudes are not a calculation; the attitude that dumped that tractor and the transmitter into the canyons… was not carelessness. His behavior is clear; he's no human; he's mri; he says there are no mri ships. But the psychological alteration he must have undergone, years alone with them on that ship.… Those who think they know him may recognize a role he's playing, if he's playing at being SurTac Duncan.”
Duncan had refused to debrief to security, only willing to talk to Flower staff, with Degas to frame the essential questions and take notes. Degas had been outraged at the order that permitted it.
"The Sur
Tac is a fanatic," Degas said. "And like all such, he's capable of convolute reasoning in support of his cause. There's also the possibility he saw only what the mri wanted him to see. I strongly urge an attempt to get direct observation down there. Military observation. Galey's mission “
"Will not be diverted to that purpose.”
"Another, then.”
"Do you want an objection to policy put on record? Is that what you're asking?”
Degas drew a deep breath, looked down at the floor and up again in silent offense. They had grown too familiar, he with Degas; neighbors, card players; a man had to develop some human associations on a voyage years in duration. They were not of the same branch of the service. He had found Degas's quick mind a stimulation to his own. Now there were entanglements.
"We don't use Galey," Koch said. He considered a moment, weighing the options. "The regul matter first; it may not be youngling shyness that keeps them over-horizon from us. If they can operate, they have powerful motivation for revenge. That's a motive you're not reckoning.”
"Assuming human motives. That may be error.”
"Who's our regul expert now?" It had been Aldin, Koch recalled, Aldin was dead; old age, like Saber's former captain, Me the translations chief. Repeated jump stresses took it out of a man, put strain on old hearts. "Who's carrying that department?”
"Dr. Boaz is Xen head.”
Boaz, Duncan's friend, the mri expert Koch bit at his lip. Til not pull her up. She's important down there.”
Degas shrugged. "Dr. Simeon Averson specialized in language under Aldin; ran the classification system for library on Kesrith. He would be the likely authority in the field after Aldin and Boaz.”
The man's knowledge of the unbreachable intricacies of Flower's departments did not surprise him. Del Degas was a collector of details. Pent in a closed system of humanity for the years of the voyage, he doubtless had turned his talents to the cataloging of everyone aboard. Koch dimly recalled the little man in question. He tried to call on Flower personnel as little as possible, disliking civs operating underfoot, delving into military records and files. Kesrith's civilian governor had saddled him with Flower, and Mel Aldin had once been useful in the early stages of the mission, conducting crew briefings and studies, settling matters of protocol between regul elder and humans unused to regul. But the years of voyage had passed; things had found a certain routine, and Aldin had diminished in necessity and visibility. Flower held its own privacies.
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