The Faded Sun Trilogy (61 page)

For a moment Niun said nothing. Then he gave a long sigh. “She has waited for you to ask.”

The mri still had power to surprise him. Duncan sat back in confusion, all his reckonings of them in disorder. “She will see me, then.”

“Whenever you would decide to ask. Go and speak to her. The doors are not locked.”

Duncan rested yet a moment, all impetus taken from him; and then he gathered himself to his feet and started for the door, the dus behind him.

“Duncan.”

He turned.

“My brother of the Kel,” said Niun softly, “in all regard for you—remember that I am the she’pan’s hand, and that should you err with her—I must not tolerate it.”

There was, for the moment, a ward-impulse in the room: the dus backed and its ears lay down. “No,” said Duncan. It stopped. And he drew the
av-tlen
from his belt, and would have laid aside all his weapons. “Hold these if you suspect any such thing of me.” It was demeaning to surrender weapons; Duncan offered, knowing this, and the mri flinched visibly.

“No,” Niun said.

Duncan slid the blade back into place, and left, the dus walking behind him. Niun did not follow: the sting of that last exchange perhaps forbade, and his suspicion would worry at him the while. Duncan reckoned it, that although Niun slept by him, though he let down his guard to him in weapons-practice, to teach him, Melein’s safety was another matter: the kel’en was deeply, deeply uneasy.

To admit a tsi’mri to the she’pan’s presence, armed: it surely went against the mri’s instincts.

But the doors had been unlocked.

The doors had always been unlocked, Duncan supposed suddenly; he had never thought to try them. Melein herself had slept with unlocked doors, trusting him; and that shocked him deeply, that the mri could be in that regard so careless with him.

And not careless.

Prisons, locked doors, things sealed, depriving a man of weapons—all these things went against mri nature. He had known it from the beginning in dealing with them: no prisoners, no capture—and even in the shrine, the pan’en was only screened off, not locked away.

Even controls, even that had always been accessible to him, any time that he had decided to walk where he had been told not to go; he might have quietly gone forward, sealed the doors, and held the ship—could, at this moment.

He did not.

He went to the door that was Melein’s, to that dim hall, painted with symbols, vacant of all but a chair and the mats for sitting. He entered it, his steps loud on the tiles.

“She’pan,” he called, and stood and waited: stood, for it was the she’pan who offered or did not offer, to sit. The dus settled heavily next to him, resting on its hindquarters—finally sank down to lay its head on the tiles. A sigh gusted from it.

And suddenly a light step sounded behind him. Duncan turned, faced the ghost-like figure in the shadow, white-robed and silent. He was not veiled. He was not sure whether this was polite or not, and glanced down to show his respect.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“To beg your pardon,” he said.

She answered nothing for a moment, only stared at him as if she waited for something further.

“Niun said,” he added, “that you were willing to see me.”

Her lips tautened. “You still have a tsi’mri’s manners.”

Anger came on him; but the statement was the simple truth. He smothered it and averted his eyes a second time to the floor. “She’pan,” he said softly, “I beg your pardon.”

“I give it,” she said. “Come, sit down.”

The tone was suddenly gracious; it threw him off his balance, and for an instant he stared at her, who moved and took her chair, expecting him to settle at her feet.

“By your leave,” he said, remembering Niun, “I ought to go back. I think Niun wanted to follow me. Let me go and bring him.”

A frown creased Melein’s smooth brow. “That would reproach him, kel Duncan, if you let him know why.
No. Stay. If there is peace in the House, he will know it; and if not, he will know that. And do not call him by his name to me; he is first in the Kel.”

“I am sorry,” he said, and came and sat at her feet, while the dus came and cast itself down between them. The beast was uneasy. He soothed it with his hand.

“Why,” asked Melein, “have you been driven to come to me?”

The question struck him with confusion—rude and abrupt, she was, and able to read him. He shrugged, tried to think of something at the edge of the truth, and could not. “She’pan, I am a resource you have. And I wish that you would make use of what I know—while there is time.”

The membrane flashed across her eyes, and the dus lifted its head. She leaned forward and soothed the beast, her fingers gently moving on its velvet fur. “And what do you know, kel Duncan, that so suddenly troubles you?”

“That I can get you home alive.” He laid his hand on the dus, fearless to do so, and looked into the she’pan’s golden eyes. “
He
has taught me; is not managing ships a part of the skill of a kel’en? If he will learn, I will teach him; and if not—then I will take what care of the ship I can do myself. His skill is with the
yin’ein,
and mine never will approach his—but this I can do, this one thing. My gift to you, she’pan, and worth a great deal to you when you reach your home.”

“Do you bargain?”

“No. There is no
if
in it. A gift, that is all.”

Her fingers did not cease to stroke the dus’s warm hide. Her eyes lifted again to his. “Are you
my
kel’en, kel Duncan?”

Breath failed him an instant. The hal’ari, the kel-law had begun to flow in his mind like blood in his veins: the question stood, yes or no, and there was no going back afterward.

“Yes,” he said, and the word almost failed of sound.

Her slim fingers slipped to his, took his broad and human hand. “Will you not turn on us, as you turn on your own kind?”

The dus moved at his shock: he held it, soothed it with both hands, and looked up after a moment at Melein’s
clear eyes.

“No,” she judged, answering her own question, and how, or of what source he did not know. Her sureness disturbed him.

“I have touched a human,” she said, “and I did not, just then.”

It chilled. He held to the dus, drawing on its warmth, and stared at her.

“What do you seek to do?” she asked.

“Give me access to controls. Let me maintain the machinery, do what is needful. We went wrong once. We cannot risk it again.”

He expected refusal, expected long days, months of argument before he could win that of her.

But controls, he thought, had never been locked. And Melein’s amber eyes lowered, by that silent gesture giving permission. She lifted her hand toward the door.

He hesitated, then gathered himself to his feet, made an awkward gesture of courtesy to her, and went.

She followed. He heard her soft footfalls behind the dus. And when he settled at the console in the brightly lit control room, she stood at his shoulder and watched: he could see her white-robed reflection in the screens that showed the starfields.

He began running the checks he desired, dismissing Melein’s presence from his concerns. He had feared, since last he was dismissed from controls, that the ship was not capable of running so long and hard a voyage under total automatic; but to his relief everything checked out clean, system after system, nothing failed, no hairbreadth errors that could ruin them, losing them forever in this chartless space.

“It is good,” he told Melein.

“You feared something particular?”

“Only neglect,” he said, “she’pan.”

She stood beside him, occasionally seeming to watch the reflection of his face as he glanced sometimes to that of hers. He was content to be where he was, doing what his hands well remembered: he ran through things that he had already done, only to have the extra time, until she grew weary of standing and departed his shoulder to sit
at the second man’s post across the console.

Lonely, perhaps, interested in what he did: he recalled that she was not ignorant of such machinery, only of that human-made, and he dared not try too much in her presence. She surely knew that he was repeating operations.

He took the chance.

Elapsed time,
he asked of the records-storage.

It flashed back refusal.
No record.

Other details he asked.
No record. No record,
it answered.

Something cold and hard swelled in his throat. Carefully he checked the status of the navigational tapes, whether retrace was available, to bring him home again.

Classified,
the screen flashed at him.

He stopped, mindful of the auto-destruct linked into the tape mechanism. Suspicion crept horridly through his recollections.

We want nothing coming home with you by accident.

Stavros’ words.

Sweat trickled down his side. He felt it prickling on his face, wiped the edge of his hand across his mouth and tried to disguise the gesture. Melein still sat beside him.

The dus came nearer, moved between them, close to the delicate instruments. “Get out of there,” Duncan wished it. It only lay down.

“Kel’en,” said Melein, “what do you see that troubles you?”

He moistened his lips, shifted his eyes to her. “She’pan—we have found no life . . . I have lost count of the worlds, and we have found no life. What makes you think your homeworld will be different?”

Her face became unreadable. “Do you find reason there, kel’en, to think we shall not?”

“I have found reason here . . . to believe that this ship is locked against me. She’pan, when that tape runs to its end, it may have no navigational memory left.”

Amber eyes flickered. She sat with her hands folded in her lap. “Did you plan to leave?”

“We may not be able to run. We will have no other options, she’pan.”

“We never did.”

He drew in his breath, wiped at the moisture that had gone cold on his cheek, and let the breath go again. Her calm was unshakable, thoroughly rational:
Shon’ai
 . . . the throw was cast, for them—by birth. It was like Niun with his weapons.

“She’pan,” he said quietly, “you have named each world as we have passed. Do you know the number that we have yet to see?”

She nodded in the fashion of the People, a tilt of the head to the left. “Before we reach homeworld,” she said, “Mlara and Sha, and Hlar and Sa’a-no-kli’i.”

“Four,” he said, stunned at the sudden knowledge of an end. “Have you told—?”

“I have told him.” She leaned forward, her arms twined on her white-robed knees. “Kel Duncan, your ships will come. They are coming.”

“Yes.”

“You have chosen your service.”

“Yes,” he said. “With the People, she’pan.” And when she still stared at him, troubled by his treachery: “On their side, she’pan, there are so many kel’ein one will not be missed. But on the side of the People, there is only one—twice that, with me. Humankind will not miss one kel’en.”

Melein’s eyes held to his, painfully intense. “Your mathematics is without reproach, kel Duncan.”

“She’pan,” he said softly, moved by the gratitude he realized in her.

She rose, and left.

Committed the ship to him.

He sat still a moment, finding everything that he had sought under his hands, and suddenly a burden on him that he had not thought to bear. Had he intended betrayal, he did not think he could commit it now; and to do to them again what he had done on Kesrith, even to save their lives—

That was not an act of love, but of selfishness . . . here, and hereafter. He knew them too well to believe it for their own good.

He scanned the banks of instruments, that hid their horrid secrets, programs locked from his tampering, things triggered perhaps from the moment he had violated orders and thrown them prematurely onto taped running.

Or perhaps—as SurTacs had been expended before—it was planned from the beginning, that
Fox
would not come home, save as a rider to
Saber.

There was the pan’en, and the record in that; but under
Saber
’s firepower,
Fox
was nothing . . . and it was not impossible that the navigational computer would go down as the tape expired, crippling them.

He reached for the board again, plied the keys repeatedly, receiving over and over again
No Record
and
Classified.

And at last he gave over trying, and pushed himself to his feet, reached absently for the dus that crowded wistfully against him, sensing his distress and trying to distract him from it.

Four worlds.

A day, or more than a month: the span between jumps was irregular.

The time seemed suddenly very short.

Mlara and Sha and Hlar and Sa’a-no-kli’i.

Niun watched them pass, lifeless as they were, with an excitement in his blood that the somber sights could not wholly kill.

They jumped again, and just after ship’s noon there appeared a new star centered in the field.

“This is home,” said Melein softly, when they gathered in the she’pan’s hall to see it with her. “This is the Sun.”

In the hal’ari, it was Na’i’in.

Niun looked upon it, a mere pinprick of light at the distance from which they entered the system, and agonized that it would be so long a journey yet. Na’i’in. The Sun.

And the World, that was Kutath.

“By your leave,” Duncan murmured, “—I had better go to controls.”

*   *   *

They all went, even the dusei, into the small control room.

And there was something eerie in the darkness of that section of the panels that had been most active. Duncan stood and looked at it a moment, then settled in at controls, called forth activity elsewhere, but not in that crippled section.

Niun left the she’pan’s side to stand at the panel to Duncan’s right: little enough he knew of the instruments, save only what Duncan had shown him—but he had knowledge enough to be sure there was something amiss.

“The navigational computer,” Duncan said. “Gone.”

“You can bring us in,” Niun said without doubt.