Steel rang under his boots, the gratings that made firm the surface of the causeway. It was the only sound. He stopped, only to have complete silence for a moment, and scanned the whole of the horizon, the glittering waters of the Alkaline Sea, the lights of the city, the steaming geysers, the ridges beyond Flower.
Rock scuffed, rattled. The sound seized his heart and held it constricted. He heard it again, spun toward the sound, saw a shadow shamble four-footed down a ridge.
It hit the guard beams and shied back, whuffing in alarm. Then it reared up against the sky, twice the height of a tall man, a great, long-clawed beast.
The dusei are lost, Niun had said.
Duncan stood still, heart pounding. He reckoned the danger posed by these great omnivores, these natives of Kesrith. Venom-clawed and powerful enough to rip a man to shreds. This one tried the beam again, again, disliking the sensation, but single-minded in its attempt.
A second beast showed on the crest of the slope, coming down-hill. Flower’s spotlights came on, adding to confusion, her hatch open, men pouring out.
“Stop!” Duncan shouted. “No farther! Don’t shoot!”
The dus tried the beam again, heaved his bulk forward, and this time energies of the defense system played along his great sides, useless. He broke through, reared up and screamed, a moaning, hollow cry that echoed off the walls of Kesrith’s Nom.
A rifle beam cut the dark.
“Stop shooting!” Duncan shouted.
The second beast broke through, a sparkle of light against its sides, a stench of singed fur. They huddled together, the two invaders, backed rump to rump, and kept shifting nervously.
Niun’s beasts.
Duncan saw them head for the ramp, toward the open door, where the men were—saw shots fired. The beasts shied off.
“No!” he cried, and the beasts backed, turned and came toward him, snuffling the air. Back at the hatchway, men shouted at him. They could not fire; he was too close to the beasts. Lights played on them, blinding. The dusei, locked into their inquisitive obstinacy, paid no heed. They came, long-clawed feet turned in, claws rattling on the mesh, heads lowered, ursine monsters—slope-shouldered, almost comic in their distracted manner.
The larger dus nosed at him, sniffed noisily from its pug nose. Duncan stood still, heart pounding so that the blood raced in his veins. The beast nudged him, nothing gentle, and he did not fall; it nosed his hand, investigated it with the mobile center of the lip.
And they circled one before him and then the other, shifting position in a strange ballet, constantly between him and the men with the rifles, uttering low, moaning cries. He took his life in pawn and moved, found that they moved with him. He stopped and they stopped.
They were surely Niun’s beasts, that had come a long, hard journey from Sil’athen—far longer a trek for them than for men’s machines. And with uncanny accuracy they had found Niun, across a hundred miles of desert, and singled out the place that confined him.
He had seen dusei and mri work, had watched the beasts react, so sensitive to the voice, the gestures of the mri. He had seen the mri glance at the beast, and the beast react as if some unspoken agreement were between them.
He felt them against him, touching, giving him the heat of their vast, velvet-furred bodies. Nearly impossible to kill, the dusei, immune to the poisons of Kesrith’s predators, vastly powerful, gentle and comic in their preoccupied approach to difficulties. He felt himself for a moment dizzy, the closeness of the beasts, their warmth, his exhaustion too much: he was for an instant afraid of the men with their guns, of the lights.
He thought of Niun, and there was another blurring, a desire, overwhelmingly strong, warm, determined.
The men, the lights, the guns.
Terror/desire/terror.
He blinked, caught himself with a hand against one warm back, found himself trembling uncontrollably. He began to walk, slowly, toward the open doorway, toward the security crew, who had their guns leveled, guns that could do little to a dus’s massive, slow body, much to his.
He felt the savor of blood. Of heat.
“No!” he said to the dusei. They grew calm.
He stopped within easy hailing of the security personnel.
“Get out of there,” one called to him. “Get out of there!”
“Go back inside,” he said, “and seal all the Corridors except the ones that go down to the holds. Give me a way to a safe compartment for them. Make it quick.”
They did not stay to argue. Two went inside, to consult with authority, doubtless. Duncan stayed with the dusei, a hand on either broad back, calming them. They sensed Niun and Melein. They knew. They knew.
He was safe with them. It was the men with the guns that were to be feared. “Go away from the door,” he wished the remaining security men. “They are no danger to me. They belong to the mri.”
“Duncan?” That was Boaz’ female voice, high-pitched and anxious. “Duncan, confound it, what’s going on?”
“They’ve come for Niun. They’re his. These creatures—are halfway sapient, maybe more than halfway. I want clearance to bring them inside before someone sets them off.”
There was a flurry of consultations. Duncan waited, stroking the two massive backs. The dusei had settled down, sitting like dogs. They, too, waited.
“Come ahead,” Boaz shouted. “Number one bow hold, equipment bay: it’s empty.”
Duncan made to the dusei the low sound he had heard Niun make, started forward. The dusei heaved themselves to their feet and came, casually, as if entering human ships were an ordinary thing. But no human stayed to meet them: even Boaz fled, prudence overcoming curiosity, and nothing greeting them but sealed doors and empty corridors.
They walked, the three of them, a long, long descent without lifts, down ways awkward for the big dusei—passed with a slow, measured clicking of claws on flooring. Duncan was not afraid. It was impossible to be afraid, with the like of them for companionship. They had searched him and had no fear of him: though at the back of his mind reason kept trying to urge him that he had been right to be afraid of the beasts, he began to be certain that the beasts were utterly at ease with what he was doing.
He came down into the hold, and caressed the offered noses, the thrusting massive heads that, less gentle, could stave in ribs or break his back; and again came that blurred feeling, that surety that he had given them something that pleased them.
He withdrew and sealed the doors, and trembled afterward, thinking what he had done. Food, water, other needs they had none, not at the moment. They wanted in. They had gained that, through him.
He fled, fear flooding him. He was panting as he ran the final distance to the medical wing. He saw the door that he wanted—closed, like all other doors during the emergency. He opened it manually, closed it again.
“Sir?” the sentry on duty asked.
“Are they awake?” Duncan asked, with harsh intensity. The sentry looked confused.
“No, sir. I don’t think so.”
Duncan shouldered past him, opened the door and looked at Niun. The mri’s eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Duncan went to the bedside and seized Niun’s arm, hard.
“Niun. The dusei. The dusei. They have come.”
There was a fine sweat on the mri’s brow. The golden eyes stared into infinity.
“They are here,” Duncan almost shouted at him. Niun blinked.
“Yes,” said Niun. “I feel them.”
And thereafter Niun answered nothing, reacted to nothing, and his eyes closed, and he slept, with a relaxed and tranquil expression.
“Sir?” the sentry asked, invading the room contrary to standing orders. “Do you want someone called?”
“No,” Duncan said harshly. He edged past the man, walked out into the corridor, and started for the upper levels of the ship. The intercom came on, the whole ship waking to the emergency just past. He heard that Boaz was paging him, urgently.
He did not remember the w
alk upstairs, the whole of it a blank in his mind when he reached the area of the lock and found Boaz anxiously waiting. He dreaded such lapses, remembering the dizzy blurring of senses that had assailed him before.
“They’re domestic?” Boaz asked him.
“They—seem to be. They are, for the mri. They’re—I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Boaz looked at him critically. “You’re through for the day,” she said. “No more questions. If they’re bedded down and secure, no questions.”
“No one goes down there. They’re dangerous.”
“No one is going to go near them.”
“They’re halfway sapient,” he said. “They found the mri. Across all that desert and out of all these buildings, they found them?”
He was shaking. She touched his arm, blonde, plump Boaz, and at that moment she was the most beautiful and kindly creature in all Kesrith. “Sten, go home,” she said. “Get to your own quarters; get some rest. One of the security officers will walk you. Get out of here.”
He nodded, measured his strength against the distance to the Nom, and concluded that he had enough left in him to make it to his room without staggering. He turned, blindly, without a word of thanks to Boaz, remembered nothing until he was out the door and halfway down the ramp with a security man at his side, rifle over one arm.
The mental gaps terrified him. Fatigue, perhaps. He wished to believe so.
But he had not consciously decided to enter Flower with the dusei.
He had not decided.
He tore his mind away, far away from the dusei, fighting a giddy return to the warmth that was their touch.
Yes, Niun had said, I feel them.
I feel them.
He talked to the security man, something to drown the silence, talked of banal things, of nonsensical things with slurring speech and no recall later of what he said.
It was only necessary, until he was within the brightly lighted safety of the Nom, in its echoing halls that smelled of regul and humans, that there not be silence.
The security guard left him at the door, pressed a plastic vial into his hand. “Dr. Luiz advised it,” he said.
Duncan did not question what the red capsules were. They killed the dreams, numbed his senses, made it possible for him to rest without remembering anything.
He woke the next morning and found he had not turned off the lights.
Chapter Four
Stavros, seated outside his sled-console, in the privacy of his own quarters, looked like a man who had not slept. There was a thick folder of papers on the desk in front of him, rumpled and read: the labor of days to produce, of a night to read.
Duncan saw, and knew that there was some issue of his work, of the hours that he had spent writing and rewriting what he was sure only one man would ever see, reports that did not go to Boaz or Luiz, or even to security: that would never enter the records, if they ran counter to Stavros’ purposes.
“Sit down,” Stavros said.
Duncan did so, subject to the scrutiny of Stavros’ pale eyes on a level with his own. He had no sense of accomplishment, rather that he had done all that was in him to do, and that it had probably failed, as all other things had failed to make any difference with Stavros. He had labored more over that report than over any mission prep he had ever done; and even while he worked he had feared desperately that it was all for nothing, that it was only something asked of him as a sop to his protests, and that Stavros would discard it half-read.
“This mri so-called shrine,” said Stavros. “You know that the regul are disturbed about it. They’re frightened. They connect all this mri business in their thinking: the shrine, the artifact, the fact that we’ve taken trouble to keep two mri alive—and your influence, that not least. The whole thing forms a design they don’t like. Do you know the regul claim they rescued you and Galey?”
Duncan almost swore, smothered it “Not true.”
“Remember that to a regul your situation out there may have looked desperate. A regul could not have walked that distance. Night was coming on, and they have a terror of the dark in the open wilderness. They claim they spotted the grounded aircraft and grew concerned for your safety—that they have been trying to watch over our crews in their explorations, for fear of some incident happening which might be blamed on them.”
“Do you really believe that, sir?”
“No,” said Stavros flatly. “I rather put it down to curiosity. To Hulagh’s curiosity in particular. He is mortally afraid of what the mri might do, afraid of anything that has their hand in it. I think he’s quite obsessed with the fear that some may survive and, locate him. I am being frank with you. This is not for conversation outside this room. Now tell me this: was there any touching, any overt threat from the regul you encountered?”
“No hand laid on us. But our property—”
“I read that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You handled it well enough,” said Stavros, a slight frown on his face. “I think, though, that it does indicate that there is a certain interest in you personally, as well as in the mri relics. I think it was your presence drew them out there. And if I hadn’t put Galey out there with you, you could have met with an accident. You neglected precautions.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’ll kill you if they can. I can deal with it after it happens, but I can’t prevent it, not so long as you’re within convenient reach of them. And why this shrine, Duncan? Why this artifact?”
“Sir?”
“Why do you reckon it was so important? Why did the mri risk their lives to go to that place and fetch it?”
Duncan gestured vaguely to the report that lay on the desk. “Religion. I explained—”
“You’ve been inside that so-called shrine. I’ve seen the pictures you brought out. Do you really believe that it’s a place of worship?”
“It’s important to them.” He was helpless to say anything else. Other conclusions lay there in the photographs: computer banks weaponry, communications—all such possibilities as regul would dread, as allies of the regul would have to fear.
“You’re right: it’s important to them. Boaz has cracked your egg, Duncan. Three days ago. The artifact is open.”
It shook him. He had thought it unlikely—that if it were to be opened, it would need mri help, cooperation, that might be negotiated. But Boaz’ plump hands, that worked with pinpoint probe and brush, with all the resources of Flower’s techs at her command—they had succeeded, and now the mri had nothing left that was their own.
“I hadn’t thought it would be possible that soon,” Duncan said. “Does the report say what it was?”
“Is. What it is. Boaz says it was designed for opening, no matter of difficulty to someone with the right technique, and some assurance that it was not a weapon, which I understand your pictures provided. It’s some sort of recording device. The linguistic part of it is obscure—some sort of written record is there; and there’s no one fluent in the mri language to be able to crack the script. For obvious reasons we don’t want to consult with the regul. But there’s numerical data there too, in symbols designed to be easily deciphered by anyone: there was even a key provided in graphics. Your holy object, Duncan, and this so-named shrine, are some kind of records-storage, and they wanted it badly, wanted it more than they wanted to survive. What kind of record would be that important?”
“I don’t know.”
“Numerical records. Series of numerical records. What sort of recording device does that suggest to you?”
Duncan sat silent a moment. In his limited experience only one thing suggested itself. “Navigational records,” he said at last, because Stavros waited, determined to have such an answer.
“Yes. And is that not a curious thing for them to want, when they had no ship?”
Duncan sat and considered the several possibilities, few of them pleasant to contemplate.
“It knocks out another idea,” Stavros said, “?
??that the mri were given all their technology by the regul: that they weren’t literate or technologically sophisticated on their own.” He picked up a photo that lay face-down on the desk, pushed it across, awkward in the extension of his arm. “From the artifact, ten times actual size.”
Duncan studied it. It showed a gold plate, engraved with symbols, detail very complex. It would have been delicate work had the original been as large as the picture.
“Plate after plate,” said Stavros. “Valuable for the metal alone. Boaz theorizes that it was not all done by one hand, and that the first of that series is very old. Techniques of great sophistication or of great patience, one or the other, and meant to last. I’m told the mathematics are intricate; they’ve gone to computer to try to duplicate the series of navigational tape, and to try to match it out with some reference point. Even so it seems beyond our capabilities to do a thorough analysis on it. We may have to resort to the labs at Haven, and that’s going to take time. A great deal of time. But you maintain you had no idea what it was you had.”
“No, sir.” He met Stavros’ eyes without flinching, the only defense he could make. “I didn’t know then and I’m not even sure now that the mri knew; maybe they were sent by their own authorities, and had no idea why. But I’ll agree it’s highly likely that they knew.”
“Can you get it out of them?”
“No. No. I don’t think so.”
“They seem to have expected a ship—if this tape is what it appears to be.”
“I don’t think they did. They wanted offworld, yes, but they expected nothing. That’s an emotional judgment, based on the general tone of things they said and did, but I believe it.”
“Possibly a very valid judgment. But they may not commit your error, Duncan, of seeing all regul as alike. The mri dealt specifically with doch Holn; Alagn is Holn’s rival; and Holn . . . . does have ships.”