The Faded Sun Trilogy (91 page)

“Yes, sir.”

He thanked com, broke connection and leaned back, gnawing at his knuckle.

And in a moment the screen activated again. “Dr. Averson,” said a different and female voice.

“Yes.”

“Dr. Averson, this is Lt. McCray, security. Col. Degas’s regards, sir, but your last request violates lines of operations.”

“What request?”

“For communications with the military arm, sir. Regulations make it necessary to deny that interview. Lt. Harris is on other assignment.”

“You mean he’s not on the ship?”

“He’s on other assignment, sir.”

“Thank you.” He broke connection, clenched his hands a second time.

And after a moment he snatched up a pertinent handful of his notes, his notebook, and the tapes, stalked across to the door and opened it.

There was a young man in AlSec uniform just outside, not precisely watching—or moving, or with reasonable business in the otherwise deserted corridor.

Averson retreated inside and closed the door between them, feeling a prickling of sweat, a pounding of his heart which was not good for him. He walked back to the desk and sat down, slammed his notebook at the cassettes and the papers down, fumbled in his breast pocket for the bottle of pills. He took one and slowly the pounding subsided.

Then he stabbed at the console and obtained com again. “This is Averson. Get me the admiral.”

“That has to go through channels, sir.”

“
Put
it through channels.”

There was prolonged silence, without image.

“Dr. Averson,” Degas’s voice came suddenly over the unit. “Do I detect dissatisfaction with something?”

Averson sucked in his breath, let it out again. “Put me through to the admiral, sir. Now.”

The silence again. His heart beat harder and harder. He was Havener. In the war, such men had had power there. Absolute power. He had learned so.

“Now,” Averson repeated.

More silence.

“That comes by appointment,” Degas said. “I will make that appointment for you.”

“This moment.”

“I will meet you at the admiral’s office. If there is some question regarding security operations, it will be necessary.”

The heartbeat became painful again, even more than in the terror of the flight up.

“I trust you won’t be needing transfer back downworld,” Degas said blandly. “Flights are very much more hazardous than they were when you came up. I would not risk it.”

“No,” Averson said, short of breath.

“Perhaps you have come up with some new advice. I would like to hear it.”

“A complaint. A complaint about security’s bullying tactics. I want that man taken off my door. I want access to anyone I choose. I want contact with the admiral.”

“In short, the whole ship should arrange itself and its operations to accommodate you. Dr. Averson, I have tried to be helpful.”

“You have taken away data I could use.”

“A copy will be sent you. But I have your statement that you aren’t qualified in that area. Precisely what direction are your researches taking now, Dr. Averson? The admiral will want to know.”

“I object to this intimidation and harassment.”

“Stay there, Dr. Averson.”

Panic set in. He sat still, hearing the connection broken, sat still with the realization that there was no contact he could make past this man; nowhere he might go without encountering the man in the corridor. Sensibly he suspected that no violence would be done him if he tried to leave, but he was not a physical man; he flinched from the possibility of unpleasantness and confrontations, which touched on his medical condition. He dared not, could not, would not.

He had to sit and wait.

And eventually the man arrived, closed the door and crossed the room to him, quiet and looking ever so much more conciliatory than needed be.

“We have a misunderstanding,” Degas said. “We should clear that up.”

“You should get that man off my door.”

“There
is
no man out there.”

Averson drew in his breath. “I object,” he said, “to being intimidated.”

“You are free to object—as I am free to state otherwise.”

“What is the matter with you?” Averson cried. “Are we on opposite sides?”

“Opposite sides of opinion, perhaps.” Degas settled again on the edge of the desk, towering over him. “We are both men of conscience, doctor. You have an opinion colored by panic. Mine rests on convictions of practicality. A pattern, you say. Have you
met
mri, doctor? Have you dealt with the agent who became mri?”

“We are all Haveners. All of us—remember . . . but—”

“Some interests here want to throw over alliance with the regul for protection of the mri. Do you understand that?”

He blinked, realized his mouth was open and closed it. The matter of politics began to come clear to him. “I—don’t see where it is . . . No. Breaking up the regul alliance is insanity.”

“And unnecessary.”

“Unnecessary, yes.” He lifted a hand and wiped perspiration from his upper lip, gazed up at Degas, who backed off from him a few paces.

“You do not counsel this,” Degas said.

“No. It’s possible to deal with the regul. I know this; I would never say otherwise. It is possible to deal with them. But dangerous . . . dangerous under present conditions.”

“Do you really understand the situation, doctor? Certain interests are pro-mri. Why they have taken this position . . . leave that to them to answer. It is a very dangerous position. The mission onworld, the personnel on that mission—the mission leader, your own Dr. Boaz, if you will forgive me, who is with them . . . are predisposed to find the mri nonaggressive, to counsel us into an approach to them. Regul do not threaten us;
regul
are not an aggressive species. Regul don’t pose the primary threat. Do you agree: they don’t pose the primary threat?”

“We’re in a dangerous position here. You yourself said—”

“But the mass of mankind, back home . . . a threat to them?”

“No. No danger from regul. No possible danger.”

“Do you see what these well-meaning influences would have you do? And what the result will be? From which species is the real threat of conflict, doctor?”

“I—see what you’re saying. But—”

“Application of humanitarian principles. But Cultures above all ought to see through our moralistic impulses. We’re talking about a species of killers, Dr. Averson, a species that lives by killing, parasites on the wars of any available power, who cultivate wars as regul cultivate trade. We may lose the regul here. And save what we’ll regret. You understand me?”

“I—”

“I suggest, Dr. Averson, that these are points worth considering. Those reports you make should be carefully considered for effect on policy at high levels. We have new data from the surface, a disturbing resurgence in the destroyed sites. The mri do not offer to contact us. So we send a peace mission stirring into the ruins. We have allies taking on independent operations thanks to these changes in our policy and the killing of their leader by a mri agent . . . You can’t interpret their intention . . . or won’t. How do we proceed? Do you have answers? Or do we let the situation go others’ way?”

Averson sat and sweated and slowly, after considering, wadded up the envelope in his hand, put it into his pocket under Degas’s stare. “You found life in the old sites and the mission went any-way.”

“We learned it this morning. We don’t have direct contact with the mission . . . can’t reach them without endangering everything.”

“Can’t call them back?”

“Officially,” Degas said in a low voice, leaning close to touch a finger before him, “not without blowing what we’re doing wide open to the regul, among other things. And how do regul take that? What reaction could we anticipate? You should appreciate the significance of your own reports, doctor. They set directions. You should understand that.”

“I do not intend to set directions.”

“You’re in that position. What do you say about the regal? I should have hoped your peculiar insights into
their culture would have balanced . . . other interests in Cultures. What do you say?”

“We should not lose them, no. We should not let that happen.”

“Make it clear, then.” Degas leaned there with both hands. “We have dissenting views. We need this in writing, in recommendations with practical application, or we slip toward another line of policy. We’re sitting up here blind, over active weapons. We’re protecting mri at the expense of all we’ve gained by the treaties. We’re alienating a species from whom the gains could be enormous. I suggest, Dr. Averson, that you and I have a long conference on these matters.”

“I will—talk about it.”

“Now,” Degas said.

Someone stirred close by; Niun drew a sudden breath, lifted his head, remembering Duncan with a slight panic . . . . He looked toward him and found him sleeping.

Kel Ras was sitting on her heels just the other side of him, veiled, staring at him in the shadow, leaning on the sword which rested across her knees. “They are out there,” she said. “Kel’anth, I really think you should come and see.”

The Kel had begun to rouse at the whispering. Hlil was there, and Seres and Desai and Merin, the youth Taz, Dias, others. A chill came over him, a profound sense of loneliness. He gazed down at Duncan, who remained oblivious to what passed, quietly disengaged himself from the dusei, a separation which had its own feeling of chill, physical and mental.

Whatever befell, they might leave Duncan in peace, at least until he was stronger; he was Kel’en and some ja’anom might take that as a matter of honor. For himself and Melein . . . .

He gathered himself to his feet, shook off the concern that urged at him, bent again to gather up his sword and slung it to his shoulder. He walked outside into the beginnings of dawn, with Ras and Hlil and Desai close to him.

“Has anyone advised the she’pan?” he asked, and when no one answered he sent Desai with a gesture in that direction. It was necessary to think of no more concerns, to settle his mind for what had to be met and what had to be done. He had no feeling of comrades at his side, rather that of witnesses at his back, and the loneliness persisted.

There was no possibility yet of seeing clearly what had come. Halflight tricked the eye, made the land out to be flat when it was not A thousand enemies could be hidden in that gentle rolling of the sands. They walked out to the rear of Kel, and Ras lifted her arm silently toward the northeast, where a faint hint of rocks marred the
smoothness of the land.

No one was in sight now, and that was perhaps another of the land’s illusions.

Kel’ein joined them out of Kath, rousing out in some haste; and kath’ein came in haste with bowls of offering to the Kel. The word had spread through all the camp by now; sen’ein came, but the children were held in Kath, concealed.

A kath’en he knew brought a bowl to him, offered; he recalled another morning, when there had been the illusion of safety, and love with this gentle, plain-faced kath’en. “Anaras,” he murmured her name, and took the bowl from her hands, ate a very little, gave it back, lonelier than before. He was afraid; it was not an accustomed sensation.

The kath’en withdrew; all that caste did, having no place in what might come. Sen remained, and turning, he saw Melein’s pale figure among them, caught her eye. She had no word for him, only a nod of affirmation, a beckoned permission. He went to her and she touched lips to his brow, received his kiss in return; and from that dismissal he went out, past the tents, with all the Kel at his back.

They stopped after a space; and he walked as far again alone, stopped on the verge of a long slope, facing the open and seemingly empty land. It was cold in the wind, which swept unhindered across the land.

He had not been wise, after running so long, not to have spent all the night before in the indulgence of his own needs, forgetting Duncan; but he could not have done so, could not have rested—went at least with clear conscience for the things that he had done. He veiled himself, as one must facing strangers, as all the Kel was veiled. He put aside Niun s’Intel, slipped from himself into the Law, into the she’pan’s hands, and the tribe’s, and the gods’.

He waited.

*   *   *

The city depressed, the crumbling aisles of stone, the sad corpses, the alleys resounding to their footsteps and the rasp of the breathers, the whisper of the wind. Galey kept an eye to the buildings, the hollow shells which seemed
long untouched by any living. It was such a place and such an hour as made him glad of the weapon under his hand and several armed companions about him, Boaz the only one of them who carried no weapons.

It was at once relief and discouragement, that there was no stir from the place, neither the attack they had dreaded nor the approach they had hoped. Nothing. Wind and sand and shells of ruins.

And the dead.

There were only kel’ein corpses at the first, black-robed; then others, gold-robes and blue, and children. The blues were without exception women and children, and babes in arms. Boaz stood over a cluster of sad husks and shook her head and swore. Shibo touched at a kel’en’s body with his foot, not roughly, but in distaste.

“There’s nothing alive here,” Boaz said. She was hard-breathing despite the mask, overburdened with the equipment and her own weight; she hitched the breather tank to another place on her shoulder and drew a gasping breath. “I think they’d have buried them if they could have.”

“But it was inhabited,” Galey said. “Duncan maintained the cities were empty.” The suspicion that in other particulars Duncan’s data might have inaccuracies in it . . . filled him with a whole array of apprehensions, a cowardice that wanted to go running back to the ship, pull off world and declare failure, so that guns could blast at each other at a distance where humans had advantage. Another part of him said no . . . looked at dead civs and children and turned sick inside. Kadarin, Lane, Shibo . . . what they felt he had no idea but he suspected it was something the same.

“Isn’t saying,” Boaz said, walking farther among the dead, “that the city was inhabited. Just that people were killed here. Children were killed here. Duncan’s mri. I think we’ve found them . . . just the way he said. He talked about dead cities; he’d seen one, been there . . . with the mri. He talked about a woman who died; and the children . . . he’d seen that too.”