He called to his dus, softly, from a throat that had almost forgotten sound, and went, felt a presence at his left side, a warm breathing on the hand that hung beside him.
Doubly attended now he went. Another was with them, thought of destination, desired what they desired.
Men.
Shapes wandered his subconscious. Memory, no. Some else-where saw, cast vision, guided him. He knew this.
Shapes obscured in sand, a half-dome. Jaws closed on his hand, gently, gently . . . he realized that he was down, and that the dus urged him. He gathered himself up again and started moving, staggered as his boot hit something buried and something whipped at the leather, but it did not penetrate, and whipped sinuously away in the amber murk. Dus-feelings raged at it, and ignored it thereafter, preferring his company.
Night was on them, storm-night and world-night, friendly to them, hiding them. He knew the ship near, stumbled on pieces of it, bits of wreckage, bits of heat-fused sand, before its alien hulk took shape in the ribbons of sand, and he saw the havoc that had been made there.
And a half-dome, squat half-ovoid on stilts, the red wink of lights beaconing through the murk.
Dusei ringed him, all of them; fear-desire-fear, they sent.
“Yai!” he cried at them, voice lost in the wind. But his stayed, plodded its turn-toed way beside him as he walked toward that place, that alien shape on Kutath’s dead seashore.
* * *
He knew it as he came near, vast and blind as it was, knew the patterning of its lights—
And for an instant he did not know how to name it.
Flower.
The word for it came back, shifting from reality to reality.
“Flower,” he hailed it, a cracked and unrecognizable voice in the living wind. “Flower—open your hatch.”
But nothing responded. He gathered up a fist-sized stone and threw it against the hull, and another, and nothing answered. The storm grew, and he knew that he had soon to seek shelter.
And then he saw the sweep of a scanner eye, and light followed it, fixing him and the dus together in its beam. The beast shied and protested. He flung his arm up to shield his visored eyes, and stood still, mind flung back to another night when he had stood with this dus in the lights, before guns.
There was long silence.
“Flower!” he cried.
The lights stayed fixed. He stood swaying in the gusts of wind, and held one hand firm against the dus’s back so that the beast would stand.
Suddenly the hatch parted and the ramp shot down, invitation.
He walked toward it, set foot on the ringing metal, and the dus stayed beside him. He lifted his hands, lest they mistake, and moved slowly.
* * *
“Boz,” he said.
It was strange to see her, the gray suddenly more pronounced in her hair, reminding him of time that had passed. He was conscious of the guns that surrounded him, of men that held rifles trained on him and on the dus. He took off the mez and zaidhe, so that they might know him. He smoothed his hair, that he had let grow; there was the stubble of beard on his face, that no mri would have. He felt naked before them, before Boaz and Luiz. He looked at their faces, saw dismay mirrored in their eyes.
“We’ve contacted Saber,” Luiz said. “They want to see you.”
He saw the hardness in their looks: he had run, taken the enemy side; this, not even Boaz was prepared to understand.
And they had seen the mri track, the desert of stars.
“I will go,” he said.
“Put off the weapons,” said Luiz, “and put the dus outside.”
“No,” he said quietly. “You would have to take those, and the beast stays with me.”
It was clear that there were men prepared to move on him. He stood quietly, felt the dus’s ward impulse, and the fear that was thick in the room.
“There are arguments you could make in your defense,” Boaz said. “None of them are worth anything if you make trouble now. Sten, what side are you playing?”
He thought a moment. Human language came with difficulty, a strange, déjà-vu reference in which he knew how to function, but distantly, distantly. There were ideas that refused clear shaping. “I won’t draw my weapons unless I’m touched,” he said. “Let Saber decide. Take me there. Peace.” He found the word he had lost for a time. “It’s peace I bring if they’ll have it.”
“We’ll consult,” said Luiz.
“We can lift and consult later. Time is short.”
Boaz nodded slowly. Luiz looked at her and agreed. Orders were passed with gestures, and a man left.
“Where are the others?” Luiz asked.
Duncan did not answer. Slowly, carefully, lest they misinterpret any move, he began to resume the zaidhe, which made him more comfortable. And while Luiz and Boaz consulted together, he put back the veil, and adjusted it to the formal position. The dus stood beside him, and the men with guns remained in their places.
But elsewhere in the ship came the sound of machinery at work—preparation for lift, he thought, and panic assailed him. He was a prisoner; they had him back, and doors had closed that he could not pass.
Warning lights began to flash in the overhead. He looked about apprehensively as another three regulars came into the compartment, rifles leveled at him, and Luiz left.
“Sit down,” Boaz advised him. “Sit down over there and steady that beast for lift. Will it stay put?”
“Yes.” He retreated to the cushioned bench and settled there, leaned forward to keep his hand on the dus that sat at his feet.
Boaz delayed, looking down at him: blonde, plump Boaz, who had grown thinner and grayer, whose face had acquired frown lines—wondering now, he thought, and not understanding.
“You speak with an accent,” she said.
He shrugged. Perhaps it was true.
The warning siren sounded. They were approaching lift. Boaz went to the opposite side of the room, to the bench there; the regulars with their guns clustered there, weapons carefully across laps. The dus lay down at Duncan’s feet, as the stress began, flattening itself to bear it.
The lift was hard, reckless. Duncan felt sweat breaking from him and his head spinning as they lofted. The dus sent fear . . . afraid, Duncan thought, of these men with guns. The fear turned his hands cold, and yet the heat of the compartment was stifling.
It was long before they broke from the force of lift, before new orientation took over and it was possible to move again. Duncan sat still, not willing to provoke them by attempting to rise. He desired nothing of them. Boaz sat still and stared at him.
“Stavros did this to you,” she said finally, with a look of pity.
Again he shrugged, and kept his eyes unfixed and elsewhere, lost in waiting.
“Sten,” she said.
He looked at her, distressed, knowing that she wanted response of him, and it was not there. “He is dead,” he said finally, to make her understand.
There was pain in her eyes: comprehension, perhaps.
“I feel no bitterness,” he said, “Boz.”
She bit at her lips and sat white-faced, staring at him.
Luiz called; there was an exchange not audible to him, and the regulars stood by with lowered guns, kept them constantly trained on him. He sat and stroked the dus and soothed it.
The guards sweated visibly. To confront a disturbed dus took something from a man. They were steady. There was no panic. Boaz sat and mopped at her face.
“We’re some little time from rendezvous,” she said. “Do you want some water or something to eat?”
It was the first offering of such. A slight hesitation still occurred to him, consciousness that there was obligation involved, had they been mri.
Here too, obligation.
“If it is set before me,” he said, “free, I will take it.”
It was. Boaz ordered, and a guard set a paper cup of water within reach on the bench, and a sandwich wrapped in plastics.
He took the water, h
eld it under the mez to sip at it slowly. It was ice-cold and strange after days on the desert water: antiseptic.
Likewise he tore off bits of the sandwich with his fingers and ate, without removing his veil. He would not give his face for their curiosity. He had no strength to sit and trade hate with them, and the veil saved questions. His hands shook, all the same. He tried to prevent it, but it was weakness: he had been too long without more than the pipe for nourishment. His stomach rebelled at more than a few bites. He wrapped the remainder in the plastic again and tucked it into his belt-pouch, saving it against need.
And he folded his hands and waited. He was tired, inexpressibly tired. In the long monotony of approach he wished to sleep, and did so, eyes shut, hands folded, knowing that the dus watched balefully those others that occupied the compartment, watching him.
Boaz came and went. Luiz came and offered—a sincere offer, Duncan reckoned—to give him treatment for the cough that sometimes wracked him.
“No,” he said softly. “Thank you, no.”
The answer silenced Luiz, as he had silenced Boaz. He was relieved to be let alone, and breathed quietly. He stared at the man in command of the regulars—knew that one’s mind without the help of the dus, the cool mistrust, the almost-hate that would let the human kill. Dead eyes, unlike the liveliness of the mri among brothers: Havener, who had seen evils in plenty. There was a burn scar on one cheek, that the man had not had repaired. A line man, by that, no rear-lines officer. He had respect for this one.
And the man, perhaps, estimated him. Eyes locked, clashed. Renegade, that was the thought that went visibly through the man’s gaze; it wondered, but it did not forgive. Such a man Duncan well understood.
This man he would kill first if they laid hands on him. The dus would care for the others.
Let them not touch me, he thought then, over and over, for he remembered why he had come, and what was hazarded on his life; but still outwardly he kept that quiet that he had maintained, hands folded, eyes unfocused, sometimes closed. There was need for the moment only of rest.
At last came maneuvering for dock, and the gentle collision. Neither Boaz nor Luiz had been there for some time . . . consulting, doubtless, with higher authority.
And Luiz nodded toward the door.
“You will have to leave your weapons,” Luiz said. “That is the simplest way; otherwise they’ll force it, and we’d rather not have that.”
Duncan rose, weighed the situation, finally loosed the belt of the yin’ein and the lesser one of the zahen’ein, turned and laid them on the bench he had quitted.
“Boz,” he said, “you bring them for me. I will be needing them.”
She moved to gather them up, did so carefully.
“And the dus stays,” Luiz said.
“That is wise,” he said; he had not wanted the beast thrown into the stress of things to come. “It will stay here. Have you made all your conditions?”
Luiz nodded, and the guards took positions to escort him out. He felt strangely light without his weapons. He paused, looked at the dus, spoke to it, and it moaned and settled unhappily, head on paws. He looked back at Boaz. “I would not let anyone try to touch him if I were you,” he said.
And he went with the guard.
* * *
Saber’s polished metal corridors rang with the sound of doors sealing and unsealing. Duncan waited as another detachment of regulars arranged itself to take charge of him.
And little as he had given notice to these professionals, he gave it to the freckled man that commanded the group from Saber.
“Galey,” he said.
The regular looked at him, tried to stiffen his back, turned it into a shrug. “I got this because I knew you. Sir, come along. The admiral will see you. Let’s keep this quiet, all right?”
“I came here to see him,” Duncan said. Galey looked relieved.
“You all right? You walked in, they said. You’re coming in of your own accord?”
Duncan nodded, mri-wise. “Yes,” he amended. “Of my choice.”
“I have to search you.”
Duncan considered it, considered Galey, who had no choice, and nodded consent, stood with his arms wide while Galey performed the cursory search himself. When Galey was done, he rearranged his robes and stood still.
“I’ve got a uniform might fit,” Galey said.
“No.”
Galey looked taken aback at that. He nodded at the others. They started to move, and Duncan went beside Galey, but there were rifles before and rifles at his back.
A taint was in the air, an old and familiar smell, dank and musky. Humanity, Duncan thought; but there was an edge of it he had not noticed on the other ship.
Regul.
Duncan stopped. A rifle prodded his back. He drew a full breath of the tainted air and started walking again, keeping with Galley.
The office door was open; he turned where he knew he must, and Galey went with him into the office, into the admiral’s presence.
Koch occupied the desk chair.
And beside him was a regul, sled-bound. Duncan looked into that bony countenance with his heart slamming against his ribs: the feeling was reciprocated. The regul’s nostrils snapped shut.
“Ally, sir?” Duncan asked of Koch, before he had been invited to speak, before anyone had spoken.
“Sharn Alagn-ni.” The admiral’s eyes were dark and narrow as the regul’s. His white, close-shaven head was balder than it had been, his face thinner and harder. “Sit down, SurTac.”
Duncan sat, on the chair at the corner of the desk, leaned back and stared from Koch to the regul. “Am I going to have to give my report in front of a stranger?”
“An ally. This is a joint command.”
Pieces sorted into order. “An ally,” Duncan said, looking full at Sharn, “who tried to kill us and who destroyed my ship.”
The regul hissed. “Bai Koch, this is a mri. This is nothing of yours. It speaks for its own purposes, this youngling-without-a-nest. We have seen the way these mri have passed, the places without life. We have seen their work. This impressionable youngling has been impressed by them, and it is theirs.”
“I left beacons,” Duncan said, looking at Koch, “to explain. Did you read them? Did anyone listen to my messages before you started firing—or did someone get to them first?”
Koch’s eyes flickered, no more than that. Darker color came to Sharn’s rough skin.
“I told you in those messages that the mri were inclined to friendship. That we reached agreement.”
Sharn hissed suddenly: the color fled. “Treachery.”
“In both our houses,” Duncan said. “Bai Sharn, I was sent to approach the mri—as you were surely sent to stop me. We may be the only ones in this room who really understand each other.”
“You are doing yourself no good,” said Koch.
Duncan shrugged. “Am I right about the beacons? Was it Sharn who chose to move against the cities?”
“We were fired on,” Koch said.
“From my ship? Was it not the regul that came in first?”
Koch was silent.
“You have done murder,” Duncan said. “The mri would have chosen to talk; but you let the regul come in ahead of you. Defenses have been triggered. The mri no longer have control of them. You are fighting against machines. And when you stop, they will stop. If you go on, you will wipe out a planet.”
“That might be the safest course.”
Duncan retreated to a distant cold place within himself, continued to stare at the admiral. “Flower witnesses what you do. What you do here will be told; and it will change humankind. Perhaps you don’t understand that, but it will change you if you do this. You will put the finishing touch on the desert of stars that you have traveled. You will be the monsters.”
“Nonsense.”
“You know what I mean. Flower is your conscience. Stavros—whoever sent them—did right. There will be witnesses. The lieutenant here—others in
your crew—they will be witnesses. You are warring against a dying people, killing an ancient, ancient world.” His eyes wandered to Sharn, who sat with nose-slits completely closed. “And you likewise. Bai Sharn, do you think that you want humanity without the mri? Think on checks and balances. Look at your present allies. Either without the other is dangerous to regul. Do not think that humankind loves you. Look at me, bai Sharn.”
The bai’s nostrils fluttered rapidly. “Kill this youngling. Be rid of it and its counsels, bai Koch. It is poisonous.”
Duncan looked back to Koch, to the cold and level stare that refused to be ruffled by him or by Sharn, and of a sudden, thinking of humans again, he knew this one too: Havener, full of hate. A mri could not hold such opinions as ran in Koch: a mri had allegiance to a she’pan, and a she’pan considered for the ages.
“You want to kill them,” he said to Koch. “And you are thinking perhaps that you will hold me here as a source of information. I will tell you what I know. But I would prefer to tell you without the presence of the bai.”
He had set Koch at disadvantage. Koch had to dismiss Sharn or keep her, and either was a decision.
“Do your explaining to the security chief,” Koch said. “The report will reach me.”
“I will say nothing to them,” Duncan said.
Koch sat and stared at him, and perhaps believed him. Red flooded his face and stayed there; a vein beat at his temple. “What is it you have to say, then?”
“First, that when I am done, I am leaving. I have left the Service. I am second to the kel’anth of the mri. If you hold me, that is your choice, but I am no longer under orders of Stavros or of your service.”
“You are a deserter.”
Duncan released a gentle breath. “I was set aboard a mri ship to learn them. I was thrown away. The she’pan gathered me up again.”
Koch was silent a long time. Finally he opened his desk, drew out a sheet of paper, slid it across the desk. Duncan reached for it, finding the blockish print strange to his eyes.
Code numbers. One was his. Credentials, special liaison Sten X Duncan; detached from Service 9/4/21 mission code Prober. Authorization code Phoenix, limitations encoded file SS-DS-34. By my authority, this date, George T. Stavros, governor, Kesrith Zone.