They walked with him, a shambling, rolling gait, broad noses snuffling the strange air as they entered the dock. About them lay a great expanse of docking area, vast room for them to stray off, get out of hand, break into freedom that could only end in harm. Duncan tried to think only of the ship Fox, of the mri, of the dusei going—trying to make them understand, if understand they could.
They went, the big one slightly before him and the smaller so close at his side it constantly touched. Once the big one gave a cry that echoed all over the vast station dock, a sound to send chills down the back.
In that moment Duncan feared he was going to lose control of them; but after a moment’s skittishness, they walked docilely up the ramp to Fox, and inside. Doors were open along the way that they must go, unwanted alternatives sealed. Duncan walked them down to the hold that was prepared for them there, and let them in, himself delaying in the doorway to be sure they settled. They were excited, fretting with activity, pacing and swaying their massive bodies in the anticipation that coursed through them. One began that rumbling pleasure sound, that numbed and drew at the senses.
Duncan fled it, closed door, sealed them, retreated into the sane corridors and deathly quietude of the ship that was henceforth his.
* * *
“Clear,” Saber control informed him. A visual on his screen showed clear space all about; a second screen showed a system mockup, with a red dot at the limit of it, which was regul, and trouble. A second dot appeared at the margin, likewise red, and flashed alarmingly.
“Saber,” he queried the warship, “is your system mockup accurate?”
There was a long pause, someone checking for clearance to respond, no doubt. Duncan waited, pulse elevated, knowing already that the screen would have corrected itself by now if there had been any mistake.
“Affirmative,” Saber informed him. “Further details not yet available. You have no lane restrictions, Fox. Officially there’s no one out there but you. Clear to undock, take course of your choosing.”
“Thank you, Saber,” Duncan replied, noting the flash of data to his screen. “Stand by.”
He began the checks, a few run-throughs, though the most important would check once he was clear. Fox was recently in from a run through nonsecure space and her sheet was impeccable.
He warned Saber and loosed the grapple to station, a queasy feeling as he slipped tiny Fox through the needle’s eye of clearance between Saber and the station. Hannibal obstructed his view as he came over the crest, then fell away below.
Fox came under main systems now, aimed for the shortest run away from Kesrith and Arain’s disruptive pull. He kept the world between himself and the incoming regul. He heard voices relayed from the station: the regul ship was in contact, voices harsh and dialectic. He heard the station and Saber respond. He made out that they were doch Alagn vessels, come for the reverence bai Hulagh Alagn-ni, for his rescue: this was a relief, to know at least that the incoming ships were not doch Holn. He was grateful that they had chosen to relay to him, a consideration that he would not have expected with his status.
He could draw a whole breath, reckoning humanity at Kesrith base safe for the moment, poised, on the knife’s edge of safety that Stavros had prepared, cultivating the reverence bai Hulagh.
And absenting the mri, who rested now, secretly, in the belly of a very vulnerable and very small outbound probe.
Remain invisible, he mentally read the wish that came with that relayed message, a communication they dared not send him in other terms now. He reckoned himself well-placed—reckoned with grudging admiration that Stavros might have done the right thing. If Stavros imperiled the peace by antagonizing the regul, there would be outcries at Haven; once it was known—demands for his recall, even if Kesrith remained safe. If Stavros lost the mri and Fox, in this present mad venture, there would be questions asked, but the whole incident would be passed off and forgotten. The mri were out of the affair at Kesrith. Accidents happened to probes: they were written off. The mri were only two prisoners; and no one had ever kept mri prisoners successfully. Mri artifacts were curiosities, obtainable wherever mri had died in numbers—meaningless curiosities now, for the species was dead: that news would have flashed back from Kesrith with all possible speed, joyous news for humankind, glory for Stavros, who had done nothing to obtain it, and who had kept his hands clean in the massacre. Reports coming from Kesrith were doubtless carefully worded, and would be in the future.
It only remained to see whether Stavros could deal with the regul. It was highly possible that he was going to succeed.
Phenomenal luck, phenomenal intelligence, a memory that missed nothing: there was nothing that escaped Stavros’ notice, and his apparent gambles were less chance than calculated hazard. While extending one hand toward the regul, another directed Fox, covering that possibility also, trusting no one absolutely.
Duncan frowned, began to relax to the familiar sights and sounds of the ship—unaccustomed leisure, to know that he was not dropping down to combat, that Kesrith’s ruddy crescent did not represent threat, but shelter. He settled into Fox as into his natural environment, at home in ships, in the dark worlds, in the jungle and deserts and barrenness of humanless worlds, in freefall and heavy g and every other place where survival was not reasonable. He had known from the time that he had been shunted into special services, in a wartime confusion of transports and destructing orders from faceless men of Stavros’ kind, that he would end in some such place, light years removed from the safety of Stavros’ king. Stavros at this distance became only one of a long succession.
No one special.
At this distance, from now on, there was only Sten Duncan.
On his scan he saw that something else had occurred, that there was another ship free of station. It was Santiago, an in-system rider, armed, but not star-capable.
He absorbed that knowledge calmly enough, a little resentful that he had not been asked whether such an escort was wanted; but with regul in the system, he did not object to it.
And he looked at the deck beside him, where in a padded support rode a silver ovoid, strangely unmarred after all the accidents that had befallen it. It did not look ever to have tumbled among the rocks at Sil’athen, ever to have been opened and examined. Its surface was unscratched.
But it was no longer unique. It had been duplicated in holes—and might be duplicated in more tangible detail one day at Zoroaster’s more elaborate facilities, a museum curiosity for humans. Duncan reached down and touched it with his fingers, feeling the smoothness and the chill of it, drew his hand back and took a last check of the screens, where Santiago seemed locked onto his track.
* * *
He ate, the ship proceeding under automatic, silent and safe from alarms. The scan took in Santiago at its now accustomed distance, and the machines recognized each other. There was no other within threatening range. There was leisure finally for human needs.
And there was leisure, too, for beginning to reckon with the mri, who rode, unconscious, in the ship’s labs.
He walked the corridors of Fox, checking to be sure that everything was in order, that nothing had come adrift in the shift from station operations to free flight. Units had reoriented themselves; the transition had gone smoothly. The dusei had ridden through it without visible difficulty: he observed them by remote, unwilling to enter that place now, disturbed as he was, and tense. The mri too rested safely, in their separate quarters. The medics had not taken them from their automeds.
Duncan did so, first the delicate, slight she’pan of the mri, Melein, arranging her into a more comfortable rest on a lab cot. Her delicate limbs felt of bone and loose flesh, appallingly slight; her eyes were sunken and stained with shadow. She did not respond when he touched her thin face and smoothed her bronze mane into order, trying to make her beautiful again. He was afraid for her, watching her breathe, seeing how each breath seemed an effort for her. He began to fear that he was going to lose her.
&nb
sp; And in desperation he adjusted the temperature in the compartment downward, marginally reduced the pressure to something approximating Kesrith. He was not sure—no one was—what conditions were natural for the mri. It was only certain that they had less discomfort in Kesrith atmosphere than did humans or regul.
Melein’s breathing became easier. After a long time of sitting in the compartment, watching, he dared leave her; and in another compartment he opened the unit to remove Niun.
Niun likewise was deeply sedated, and knew nothing of being moved, settled into yet another bed, a helplessness that would have deeply shamed the mri.
There would be no more drugs. Duncan read carefully the instructions that were clipped to the automeds, and found that medics had provided for such drugs, that they were to be found in lab storage, sufficient, the instructions said, for prolonged sedation. There were other things, meant to assist him in maintaining the mri. With two regul ships in the system and the likelihood of trouble, surely, Duncan thought it was irresponsible to ignore those precautions, at least before jump; but when he touched the mri and felt how thin and weak they had become, he could not bring himself to do it.
They were days from jump, days more of sedation, so that the mri could ride through that condition which flesh and living systems found terrifying, sealed in their automeds, limbs unexercised, muscles further deteriorating.
It was only common sense, those few days more of precaution; those who had set him in control of the mri had reckoned that these certain precautions would apply.
But those who had laid the plans did not know the mri, who, confined, would simply do what all mri captives had done, whether or not they knew their jailer—and die, killing if they could. Disabled, with their inherent loathing for medical help, they would surely make the same choice.
Duncan himself had understood from the beginning; it was on his conscience that he had never made it clear to Stavros or to others. He could not restrain the mri without killing them; and with the dusei aboard it was not likely that he could restrain them at all.
There was only one reason that would apply with the mri, amid all the powers, regul and human, that converged upon them, one thing with which the mri could not argue.
He made a final check of both mri, found them breathing easily now, and went topside, settling again into the command post.
He activated, navigation storage and coded in a number: zero zero one.
Fox swung into a new orientation, her sensors locking on Arain, analyzing, comparing with data that flashed onto her screens. Lines of graphs converged, merged, flashed excited recognition.
Chapter Seven
Niun wakened, as at so many other wakings, a great lethargy on him. His eyes rested first upon Duncan, sitting as he had so often, patiently waiting by the side of his cot. Niun grew confused, disturbed at a vague memory.
“I thought,” he said to Duncan, “that you had gone.”
Duncan reached forth a hand, laid it on his arm. Niun tried simply to move his fingers, and that effort was beyond his strength. “Are you awake?” Duncan asked of him “Niun, wake up.”
He tried, earnestly, knowing that he was safe to do so if it were Duncan asking him; but the membrane half-closed over his eyes, hazing everything, making focus too difficult. The dark began to come back over him, and that was easier and more comfortable. He felt a touch on his mane, a mother’s touch—none other would touch him so; but the fingers that touched his face then were calloused. It remained something to perplex him, and hold him close to waking.
“Drink,” he was told, a voice that he trusted. He felt himself lifted—Duncan’s arm: he remembered. A vessel’s plastic rim touched his lips. He drank, found cool water, swallowed several times. It slid to his stomach and lay there uneasily.
Duncan took the vessel away, let him back on raised cushions that did not let him sink back into his former peace, and the elevation of his head dizzied him for a moment. Niun began to be sure that he was meant to wake in this terrible place, that there was no refuge. In his nostrils, unpleasant on the hot, heavy air, was the scent of food.
He could move his limbs. He found this a wonder. He tried to do so, began to absorb sensation again, and past and present finally merged into his mind.
He remembered fire and dark and a regul who—he thought—had killed him.
He lay now on a bed like a woman of the Kath, face-naked, his body naked and wasted beneath light coverings, his limbs without strength.
He was in an alien place. To this he had no wish to wake.
But there was dimly in his mind a belief that he had something yet to do, that there was a duty yet undone.
Someone had told him this. He could not remember.
He tried to rise, succeeded in sitting up for an instant before his arms began to shake uncontrollably and he collapsed. Duncan’s arms caught him, gentle and yielding him to the mattress.
Thereafter it was easier to drift back into the Dark, where there was no remembrance at all. But Duncan would not let him. A cold cloth bathed his face, shocked awareness-back into him.
“Come on,” Duncan kept saying to him—lifted, his head once again and poured water between his unwilling lips. Then followed salt-laden meat broth, and Niun’s stomach threatened rebellion.
“Water,” he asked, after he had swallowed the mouthful; and receiving it, took one sip. It was all that he could bear.
He drifted away for a time then, and came back, found himself propped half-sitting. A comfortable rumbling sound filled his ears, numbed his mind for a time; he felt warmth upon his hand, a movement. He looked and saw to his confusion that a great dus had come to sit beside him. It pushed at the cot, making it shudder, then settled, soothing his mind with its contentment.
And Duncan returned upon the instant—in the dress of humans: he noticed this for the first time. Duncan had rejoined his own kind, as was proper. It was a human place. For the first time Niun began to take account of his presence not as delirium, most real and urgent of the images that peopled his wakings, but as a presence that had logical place among humans.
Whose reasons were doubtless human, and threatening.
Disturbed, the dus looked about at Duncan, then settled again, giving only a weary sigh. It tolerated the human; and this perplexed Niun—frightened him, that even the incorruptible dusei could be seduced. He had no protection left.
Dark crossed his mind, memory he did not want, towers falling, the she’pan’s pale face in the darkness, eyes closed.
The dus lifted its head again, moaned and nosed at his hand.
“Melein,” he asked, focusing on Duncan, on white walls and reality, for he had to ask. He remembered that he had trusted his human: hope surged up in him, that no guilt touched Duncan’s face when he asked that question.
The human came and sat by him, touched the this in doing so, as if he were utterly easy with the beast; but fear . . . fear was in him: Niun felt it. “She is here,” Duncan told him. “She is well—as well as you are.”
“That is not well at all,” Niun said thickly, with a twist of his mouth; but it was true, then; it was true, and he had not dreamed it among the other dreams. He could not close his eyes, lest the tears flow from them, shaming him. He stared at Duncan, and fingered the velvet skin of the dus between them, a hot and comforting sleekness.
“You are free,” Duncan explained carefully, distinctly, as one would talk to a child. “Both you and she. We are on a ship, headed out from Kesrith, and I am the only one besides you aboard. I’ve done this because I trust you. Do me the favor of trusting me for a little while.”
This, incredible, mad as it was, had the simple sound of truth in it: there was no flinching in Duncan’s gaze. Niun accepted, bewildered as he was, and began at once to think of escort ships, of themselves surrounded, proceeding toward some human captivity, of a myriad other treacheries; but there was Duncan.
There was Duncan, on whom all hopes rested, who alone of human enemies and regul ha
d understood him with honor, whose heart was honorable, a kel’en of the human folk.
He flexed his hands, trying their strength, found the numbness that had blanked his mind and weakened his limbs so long now retreating. Drugs: he recognized the probability of it; but they were losing their grip on his senses, leaving them increasingly clear. Duncan gave him water to drink again, and he drank; and more of the horrid broth, and he drank that too, and clamped his jaws and fought his stomach to keep his meal down.
The she’pan was alive: his true sister Melein, Mother of the People. She was his duty. He was kel’en, a warrior, and the sickness and the wound and the drugs had taken from him his strength and his quickness and his skill, which were all the possession he had ever owned, for the only purpose of his life, which was to serve the she’pan.
He did not let himself think of what had become of him, only of the necessity of standing on his feet, of finding again the strength to walk and go to her, wherever she was.
Until then he would bear with anything.
* * *
Duncan returned after a dark space; and in his hands he bore a black bundle of cloth, that he laid on the table by the bed.
“Your clothes,” Duncan said. “If you will let me, I will help you.”
And Duncan did so, carefully, gently, helping him to sit for a moment that his senses spun and went gray, then settled him back again, wrapped in the familiar comfort of a kel’en’s inner robe, and propped on cushions.
Duncan sat beside him, waiting until he had his breath again. “The she’pan is doing well,” he said. “She took food and demanded her belongings and told me to go away. I did.”
Niun slipped a hand within his robe, where a scar crossed his ribs, and knew that he should have died: they both should have died. “Tsi’mri medicines,” he objected, his voice trembling with outrage; and yet he knew that these same forbidden things had kept them both alive, and he was, guiltily, unwilling to die. He was twenty-six years old; he had expected to die before this: most kel’ein did, but most kel’ein had had honors in plenty by this time. Niun had gained nothing wherewith he was proud to go into the Dark. All that he had almost won, he had lost, being taken captive, allowing the she’pan to be taken. He should have died.
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