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, the Niun had said. Never challenge beyond your capacity; one does not challenge the jo in hiding or the burrower 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 moment’s silence. The dus backed, rumbling threat.
“I am Rhian s’Tafa Mar-Eddin, kel’anth 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 Rhian 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. “Not” 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, his 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 on-world 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 delayed 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 Si
lverman 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?”
“I’ll 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 overflights?”
“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 tracer and the transmitter into the canyons . . . was not carelessness. His behavior is clear; he’s not 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 SurTac is a fanatic,” Degas said. “And like all such, he’s capable of convoluted 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, like 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. “I’ll 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.
“You’ll want him shuttled up?” Degas asked.
“Do it.” Koch leaned back impatiently, rocked in his chair. “Galey moves down: Harris. Two shuttles. Every time we drop a rock into that pond we risk stirring something up. I don’t like it. We don’t know that machinery’s dead. We’ll draw ourselves a little back. I don’t want us a sitting target.”
“I can have armaments moduled in, and scan; a very short delay. As well have several shuttles downworld as two. While we’re making one ripple in the pond, so to speak, we might as well take utmost advantage of it. Your operation with Galey might benefit by the information.”
Koch expelled a slow breath. A long voyage, a mind like Degas’s . . . security had gone incestuous in the long confinement. “Everything,” he said, “every minute detail of those flight plans will be cleared with this office.” He tapped the stylus against the desk, looked at Degas, turned and keyed an order into the console.
Chapter Six
Others came, across the square, up the steps, shadows out of the storm. Hlil gathered himself up to meet them. “It is safe,” he said to kel Dias, who commanded them, and looked beyond her to the ones who followed, sen’ein. He set his face, assumed the assurance he did not feel, met the eyes of the gold-robes who were veiled against wind and dust. “I secured the Pana first; that was my instruction.”
They inclined their heads, accepting this, which comforted him. They took charge of the Holy, one spreading his own robes to cover it, for the kel-veils blew and fluttered in the wind.
He left them and went inside with the others, where Taz began to share his light, where knot after knot of fiber flared into life. “Haste,” he urged them, “but walk lightly; there has been one collapse in here already.”
They moved, no running, but swiftly. He watched them scatter with their several leaders, one group to Kel, one to Kath, one to Sen, and another to the storerooms, and two to the she’pan’s tower, so that in a brief time all the building whispered to soft, quick steps, the comings and goings of those who had come to loot the House of all that was their own.
“Go,” he murmured distractedly, finding Taz still by him. “If there are any proper lamps at hand, get light in that middle corridor. The rubble is unstable enough without someone falling.”
“Aye, sir,” the youth exclaimed, and made haste about it.
Even now some were beginning to come down with burdens, stumbling in the dark, having to choose between light and two hands to steady their loads. Hlil stationed himself to guide them to the point where they could see the doorway; the flow began to be a steady to and fro. There was no science in their plund
ering that he could see; he forbore to complain of it. In their haste and dread of collapse they snatched what they could, as much as they could.
Taz managed lights, two proper lamps, set in the area of the fallen shrine; and to Hlil’s vast relief the essential things began to appear, the heavy burden of the tents, the irreplaceable metal poles, wrapped meticulously in twisted and braided fiber; their vessels, their stores of food and oil; a sled of offworld metal; lastly hundreds of rolled mats, the personal possessions of the tribe.
And two sen’ein came inside, gathered up one of the lamps from the hall, passed out of sight into the entry of sen-hall.
He disliked that. He walked a few steps in that direction, fretting with the responsibility he bore for them, and his lack of authority where it regarded sen-matters. He stared anxiously after them, then turned for the door, where a diminishing trickle of kel’ein tended. Shouts drifted down from the heights of the edun, that they had gotten all of it, to the very last.
Hlil walked out onto the steps and into the particle-laden wind, where the two sen’ein who had remained with the Pana struggled to load the Holy onto the sled, padding it with rolled mats below and above. Merin and Dias and Ras had charge, directing the division of goods into bearable portions. They were not going to leave any portion of it if they could help.
He stood idle, fretting with the matter, prevented by rank from lending a hand to it. Perhaps, he thought, they should all have gone back to the relief of the tribe in the storm; or perhaps he should never have divided his force, and should have trusted the she’pan and kel Seras to do the necessary. The load was no easier for the driving wind; and it was a long trek back.
Yet there seemed some lessening in the storm. Excessive optimism, perhaps; the wind would diminish for a time and then return with double force. He could see the top of the ruined building nearest, of many of the buildings, which he had not been able to do when they came.
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