Kutath fs-3

by C. J. Cherryh

  "We can find it. We'll be there, Duncan. Be patient with us."

  "Understood, Boz. Youtt be safe to land. You only.”

  "Cease," said Melein.

  Transmission ceased," the machine echoed.

  "Aliens," Abotai hissed. "You deal with aliens.”

  Duncan pulled his veil aside, and there was a void in the dus-sense; a cry went up from the elee, for it was the face of the image. He seemed not to regard it, but looked at Melein. "Is there else," he asked, "she'pan?”

  "When they come," she answered.

  "Aye," Duncan said, and the void persisted, a gap and a darkness where Duncan had been. A touch fell on Niun's shoulder; it was Hlil. He felt all of them, Has, Rhian, Taz. Only Duncan was not there, for all that Duncan returned to him, and looked nakedly into his eyes, and stood among them.

  "Veil yourself," Niun said, "sov-kela.”

  Duncan did so, and he and his beast went aside, into the other room, among the others who waited.

  They rested… must, finally. Galey sucked in great breaths from the mask, bowed over, uninterested in the rations the others passed among them. A drink of water, that he took, and bowed down with his head against his arms. His knees ached and his temples pounded. He rubbed at eyes which ran tears that never stopped.

  More such to go; the city of the mri dead… that one next, he reckoned.

  "Sir," Kadarin said. And when he responded lethargically; "Sir…”

  He looked up, rose, as the others scrambled to their feet There was a ship coming. He stared at it, blank and terrified; and there was no place to go, no concealment in the vast flat; it was coming low.

  One of their own. He blinked, no less disquieted, heard the same realization on the lips of Magee and Kadarin.

  It was coming for them, coming in fast.

  "Treachery," Nagn hissed, her color gone white around the nostrils. Suth sat still, his hearts quite out of phase, stared at the screens on which shuttles and Santiago were moving dots, all his calculations amiss.

  "Bai," Morkhug pleaded.

  Suth faced his sled about. His attendant crouched in the corner, attempting invisibility. Suth considered, regarding his mates who looked to him for decision… suddenly keyed in the control center, where a contact to Saber-Corn was maintained continuously.

  "Bai Koch," he requested of his own younglings, and slowly calmed his breathing, suppressed the racing heartbeats with reason. The human face suddenly filled his screen; Koch, indeed; Suth knew him by the ruddiness and white, clipped hair.

  "Bai Suth?" the human bai asked.

  "You are undertaking operations without consultation, bai, contrary to agreement”

  "No operations; maneuver. As you have an observer near the world as you have received transmission, as we have. We are moving more reliable monitoring into position. We confess surprise, bai Suth; we are not yet ready to address policy.”

  “What action are you taking, bai?”

  "Meditating on the matter, bai Suth.”

  "What is your installation onworld doing?”

  A hesitation. "What is yours doing?”

  "We are not in contact. They are pursuing previous instruction. Doubtless they will not act beyond those instructions.”

  "Ours likewise, bai Suth.”

  Suth sucked air. Is your intention to accept this offered contact, reverend ally?”

  There was a second hesitation. "Yes," Koch said.

  Suth's hearts left synch again. "We… urge the bai to enter urgent consultations with us.”

  "Most assuredly. You are welcome aboard.”

  "We also… must contact our onworld mission.”

  Koch's face remained impassive. There was a slight flaring of his nostrils; what this meant in a human was disputable.

  "We advise you," Koch said, "to stay clear of Kutath; we do not mean to have lives endangered. We would take very seriously any approach to Kutath, bai Suth."

  "We wish to send a shuttle to your ship.”

  "I have said that you are welcome.”

  "I am entering arrangements. Favor, bai Koch, maintain a full flow of data to our offices.”

  "Agreed.”

  "Favor.”

  "Favor," Koch murmured in turn, and faded.

  Suth sucked a deep breath, puffed it out with a flutter of his nostrils. "They wish me aboard.”

  "Bai?" Tiag mourned, visibly disturbed.

  "Secure ship," Suth said. And when they delayed in confusion; "Leave onworld to onworld; secure the ship. Saber ... is here”

  "Enough," said Melek in horror; Magd killed the message which played over and over in the recorder. There was the thump of the pumps in the silence, the furtive scratching of some night-wandering crawler at the plastic dome.

  They were alone, they two, senior. They had killed their assistants, a grim matter of economics. They hungered almost constantly in their terror; and Magd looked on Melek with continual fear. It was next, when it came to seniority.

  "There is a way out," said Melek.

  "I am listening." Magd's belly hurt. It already existed on short rations, pampering Melek, beginning to die slowly in the hope of living longer. Its skin flaked; its joints were whitening. More than anything it desired to please; its thoughts were nightmare, of hunger on the one hand, being refused survival by the elder Suth if it dared leave its post; of slaughter at Melek's hand, merciful and more immediate. It could not think. It wanted life, dung to hope, scrabbled after this one, that Melek itself offered.

  "Orders," Melek said, "require we observe and find this youngling Duncan. That we stir up the mri and destroy this youngling if we find it. This is our way out Listen… listen, youngest] Will this message have gone out and Skirug not know? Is not our time shortened here? They will send us orders; we finish here; we finish. Then we can come back; then Eldest will welcome us and make us favorites, feed us of his own cup. Both… both of us. If we do this for him. If we finish."

  Magd had no inner confidence. Magd's hearts labored and its mouth was dry, its tongue sticking to the membranes, so that water and soi were the only coherent desires. Magd knew the trap; that yielding food to Melek, Magd was no longer strong enough to resist, no longer keen-witted.

  "Yes," it said, desperate, paid anxious attention as Melek brought up charts on their screens.

  "Here," Melek said, indicating a place near hills. "This is the place. We must be ready; we must work out all the details. You will lead in, youngest”

  "Yes," it said again.

  It would have agreed to any instruction.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was an hour for sleeping. Perhaps some within the elee city did so, but none within the hall of the elee she'pan, nor anywhere about it. Niun sat still, at the feet of Melein, his dus and his companions by him, while certain kel'ein, mostly hao'nath and ja'ari, walked the corridors of the city, wandering by twos and by threes, to observe the things which passed among the elee. None offered them violence. None challenged them, or alarm would have been raised in the halls of Ele'et, and blood would have flowed; it did not; and the most part of the Kel sat quietly in attendance on the she'pan.

  "You must call them back," said Abotai of the kel'ein who ranged the city corridors. "They must not must not harm Ele'et”

  "They do not," Melein said softly, and stilled any protest of Sen or Kel with an uplifted and gently lowered hand. "And we go where we will.”

  "Understand…" Abotai's lips trembled, and she held the hand of the Husband who sat beside her. "More than lives… these precious things, she'pan of the mri.”

  "What thingsr

  Abotai gestured about her, at the hall full of carved stones, flowers in jade, ornate work over every exposed finger's-length of surface, works in glass, statues in the likeness of elee and mri and lost races and beasts long forgotten, whether myth or truth. "Of all Kutath has made, of beauty, of eternal things… they are here. Look look, mri she'pan." Abotai slipped from her or– nate robes a pin, passed it to the youth I
llatai, who sat in a chair near her. He leapt up to bring it, but Niun gestured abruptly and intercepted it. It was a translucent green stone, the likeness of a flower even to veins within the leaves, and a drop of moisture on a petal. He handled it most carefully, and passed it to Melein.

  "It is very beautiful," Melein said, and passed it back at once the same route it had come. "So are live ones. What is that to me?”

  "It is an elee's life," said Abotai. "A sculptor spent his Me to perfect that flower. Each thing you touch… even to the stonework under your feet ... is the life of an elee, a perfection. Ele'et is a storehouse of all the millions of years of the meaning of Kutath, not alone of elee. You are here, wrought in stone, written in records, as we are.”

  "You are generous, then. A manner of pan'en, a holy thing. We shall tread lightly on it, this stonework. But we care nothing for it.”

  "It is all here," said Abotai. "All the goodness of the past All perfection. Saved.”

  "For whom?" Melein whispered. "When the sun fades and the last lake of the last sea is drunk, and the sand is level ... for whom, mother of elee?”

  "For the Dark," said Abotai. "When the Dark comes… and all the world is gone… these things will stand. They will be here. After us.”

  "For whom," Melein said yet again. "When the power fades, when there is not even a lizard left to crawl upon your beautiful stones what is the good?”

  "The stones will be here.”

  The wind will erode them and the sand will take them.”

  "Buried, they will survive any wind that blows.”

  "Will it matter?”

  "They will exist.”

  Niun drew in his breath, and there was a murmuring in the Kel.

  "Is that the end," asked Melein, "of all the races and the civilizations, and the dreams of the world, to be able to leave a few stones buried beneath the sands, to tell the Dark that we were here? Leave us out of your pan'en, she'pan of elee. We want no part of it. Consumer of the world's substance, was it this, was it this for which you ate all the world and let the ships go ... to leave a few stones to say that you were here?”

  "And what gift do you leave?" Abotai pointed to the kel'en by a serpent pillar, at Duncan. "That, and the beasts? Aliens, to come here and see these things, and steal them, or destroy them?”

  Duncan had looked up, and for a moment, a brief moment, he was back with them, a touch of pain in the dus-sense.

  "He," said Melein in a still voice, "is more to Kutath than you, or your children, or the fine trinkets you have made to amuse the Dark. You gave me a flower in stone to touch, and it was the life of an elee. Duncan, kel'en, shadow-at-my-door… come here. Come here to me.”

  No, Niun pleaded with her in his mind, for Duncan had borne enough, had more yet to bear; but Duncan rose up and came, and sat down again at Melein's feet, his dus settling disconsolately against him. Melein set her hand on his shoulder, kept it there, while Duncan bowed his head. "He is not for your touching," Melein said. "But he is our gathering, elee she'pan, and far more precious than your stone flower.”

  "Abominationr

  "There are builders and there are movers, mother of elee; and in the great Dark the builders have only their stones." She touched Duncan's shoulder, rested her hand there. "We went out, to find a way for all to follow. The great slow ships in which generations were born and died… took Kutath as far as our generations could reach; there was no hope, so few the ships, so many those left behind, on a world with no means left for ships your doing, elee. But the ships of humans, that leap the Darks so blinding-swift one such, only one; and perhaps eyes will live that will see these pretty stones of yours. And desire them. And scatter them, perhaps, that all the universe will wonder at the hands that made them.”

  "No," Abotai hissed.

  "Then close your eyes, mother of elee. You are bound to see things you will not like at all. We do not serve to your service any more. And first, a ship, ai, keren-my-brother's-brother?”

  Duncan looked up. The edge of his veil was damp and his eyes filmed. "Aye," he said.

  She bent and kissed his brow. "Our Duncan," she murmured, and whispered; "If lives of humans come into our hands, take or give; I pass them to you. I do not ask more of you than the People need. And you will not do less.”

  "She'pan," he replied.

  Time passed, that the elee murmured together in the edges of the hall, that elee brought food and drink, and offered to them; but they were not guests, and would not take. Elee ate and drank; those of the People that hungered drew what they needed of their own supplies, and if cups of water tempted them, pride forbade, and the law. They took nothing, not one.

  And suddenly it came, the machine voice out of the other hall, advising them of movement in the skies of Kutath. Melein sprang up, all the People rising. "Stay," she bade them, and went with Sen only; and in the frightened whispers of the elee, the Kel settled back again.

  "It has come," Niun said, hearing from the other room the advisement that it moved their way. He reached out, touched Dun-can's sleeve. "Sov-kela?”

  The void in the dus-sense filled, slowly, remarkably calm.

  "We ought to go out there," Duncan said. "Not have them come in among elee; no knowing what could result of that. I should be out there, myself.”

  "So," Niun agreed.

  "And you. If you would.”

  "I shall ask that," Niun said. Other dus-sense came to them, Taz, anxious and concerned; Rhian, who moved to join them and sank down on his heels, silent, solid.

  Ras came. "Are you well?" she asked, touching at Duncan's arm; and Duncan murmured that he was. Strange, Niun thought, that there was affinity between these two, but there was; and Hlil drew near, who had no love of tsi'mri things… but he had lost his distaste regarding Duncan. Taz moved to them. Always so, Niun thought, on Kesrith, that we and the beasts sat together; one never wondered there, whose was the need. There was a numbness, a blessed lack of pain, the slow song of dusei then disturbance, a sense of distance, of looking heavenward.

  "The wild one," Duncan murmured. "It warns us. We have to go out now. We have to go.”

  "Not all," Niun said. "You and I. A few hands of others. I want some dusei left here, for safety." He rose up, hastened unbidden to the machine hall, stood there an instant until Melein turned her face to him.

  "I set it in your hands," she said, "and Duncan's. They are coming in.”

  Elee watched them in their passage through the halls. The kel'ein ignored elee in their haste, hands empty of weapons; and Duncan spared them only an anxious glance, white, blue-eyed faces which stared at them forlornly and listlessly and perhaps… perhaps had self enough left to worry for their own brief lives and not for their treasure. He shuddered at them. They shrank away in equal terror whenever a kel'en brushed close to them.

  And when it was clear they meant to go out, a frightened group of the jewel-robed citizens held up hands to stop them, hastening to show them a door that they might use, well-hidden in a trio of carved and living stones.

  "They are jealous of their glass walls," said one-eyed Desai, when they were out in the dark and free. There was a muttering of laughter, for mri hated barriers, borders, and locked doors. The way that they had come in, letting the wind into the halls… that was a satisfaction to them, mri humor, equally grim.

  Dawn had begun; it was a logical time for meetings, and the logical place was before them, the wide expanse of sand between the city and the carved pillars; room enough there for landings. Duncan walked, and Niun stayed beside him, with the others at his back, nothing questioning. The sand ahead writhed and rippled with life which fled the ward impulse of their two dusei. And when they had come most of the distance he stopped to wait.

  Niun stood close, having moved between him and the wind. Desai did so from the other side, setting a hand upon his shoulder; and the ja'anom, for they were mostly ja'anom in the company, stood as close as they might, as if to shelter him, caring for him as for a child. He
was always colder than they, and they seemed to realize his tendency to chill.

  Sometimes, Niun had taught him early, a kel'en might find himself regretting friendships out-of-House, caught in a tangle of obligations and debts; best never to form them. When one did, there was one clear law, one service above other services, and that was the she'pan's will; if one was mri, one believed that.

  There were two lights in the sky, brightening steadily out of the north.

  "Shuttle's aboard, bay one," the secretary reported.

  Koch took note of it, impatient, more interested in the flow of data from Santiago, which had moved closer to Kutath, within the critical limit. Regul visitors aboard were not to his taste; not now. They were here and they had to be welcomed. Averson would be coming up at any moment, to handle interpretation where needed. He had prepared information to satisfy regul curiosity and quiet their fears. Degas was scanning what further materials Averson planned to send the allies to be sure they were clean and clear of sensitive items. That was a hasty job, and critical And it had to be ready; with regul on the ship, they were out of time.

  He reached for the panel, coded in Degas's office.

  And suddenly alarm lights flashed red.

  "Sir," the bridge cut through. "Damage to landing bay one.”

  He stabbed die reply button, ignoring other lights which began to flash on his board, an urgent pulse from Degas's channel, the muffled babble of information from the operations contact. "The regul shuttle? Was it involved?”

  "Yes, sir; we don't know details; we don't get com down there; the whole bay is breached. Casualties undetermined. Cause undetermined. Crash team is on its way, and med and security. The section sealed.”

  "Sir," Zahadi's voice overrode. "Shirug is moving our way.”

  Panic slammed into him. Fire, instinct advised him, xenophobic; politics was more cautious. "Get in touch with them," he said. "Advise them to keep clear. Advise them we're doing what we can with the shuttle and they're to stay back.”