Shon'jir

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 greeted 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 mem 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 walk 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.