Shon'jir

"At that rate," said Duncan, taking the tray and setting it on the table, where immediately the dus began to investigate it, "you'll recover soon enough." He rescued the tray and took it out to the corridor, followed by the traitor dus, which trailed him with that mournful, head-lowered gait, hoping for charity.

Niun shut his eyes and rested; hearing activity down the hall and measuring the distance from him: there was the rattle of dishes; he could hear no voices, only the explosive whuff .of a dus, that the beasts expressed for their own rea­sons.

Melein? he wondered desperately. He had asked once; he had been refused in the matter of his weapons. He would not expose his anxieties a second time. It was necessary to remember that Duncan was tsi'mri, and the enemy.

Duncan returned after a long time, in which the meal had somewhat settled and Niun felt his stomach the easier for it. Duncan showed him a panel within reach of his arm, how to dim the lights and how to call for help if he needed anything, where the sanitary facilities were, also; and with that instruc­tion a strong admonition against attempting to walk alone.

Niun said nothing, only absorbed all the instructions he was offered, and lay staring at Duncan.

"Sleep awhile," Duncan wished him after a moment, evi­dently feeling the ill will. He walked to the door and looked back. "There's food whenever you want it. You only have to call me.”

Niun gave no response, and Duncan left, leaving the door open, the lights dimmed, the illumination coming from the corridor outside.

And when somewhere a door closed and sealed, Niun be­gan, methodically, to try to move, to work muscles long unaccustomed to move. He worked until he was exhausted, and when he had rested a time, and slept, he found the dus returned. He spoke to it, and it came, laying its massive head on the edge of the bed. He set his hand on its great back and used it to steady him so that he could stand. Then he walked a few steps, leaning on the beast that moved with him, and walked back again, legs trembling so that he fell across the bed. For a while he lay still, breathing hard, close to being ill; it was a few moments before he could even drag his strengthless legs into bed again and rest.

But when he had rested, he began to move again, and arose with the help of the dus and began again to essay those few possible steps.

A long sleep: a day passed, more or less, time meant noth­ing. It was measured only in the arrival of food and those periods when he was alone, that he could attempt to bring life back to his limbs.

Another sleep: on that day he wakened alone, with only the dus for company. His limbs hurt from the exercise he forced, and Duncan still had not found it convenient to re­turn his weapons. For a moment he lay still, in the darkness, staring out into the lighted corridor.

Then he rose, without the dus this time, and walked stiffly to the bath, washed in water and carefully dressed to the ful­lest in the clothing that had lain folded on the table. Last of all he put on the zaidhe, the tasseled headcloth, visored against the light of unfriendly suns: but the visor he left raised; and with the zaidhe he put on the mez, the veil, which he fastened under his chin modesty abandoned here, alone with Duncan, who knew his face. In the black robes of the Kel he felt himself almost whole again, and felt a pang when he touched the gold honors that were his: the heavy symbol of Edun Kesrithun, stamped with the mark of an open hand ... on a chain, that ftal, for it had come from the neck of Intel, the departed Mother; and there was a small ring laced to the honor-belt memory flashed back at him, bitter and terrible from the hand of the Mother of Elag; and more memories, full of recent pain a small gold luck j'tai, in the shape of a leaf that had never grown on barren Kesrith: this came from an elder brother of the Kel, and called back oth­ers to his memory, the masters who had taught him arms and the law of the Kel.

And he received them back from the hand of a human.

He rested a moment against the wall, the dus nervously pushing at his leg; when he had caught his breath he went to the door, looked out, and walked out into the corridor unhin­dered, the dus behind him.

The very look of the place was alien: narrow, rectangular corridors, when he was accustomed to the slanting walls of his own ruined home, or the curving walls of regul interiors. It was hard to breathe, the air heavy and pungent with unfa­miliar chemical scents. In his confusion he caught at the wall as his own dus shouldered him aside, and ahead of him, far down the corridor, he saw another dus thrust its broad head forth from a doorway. His shambled ahead to meet it, quite cheerfully.

He had known; somewhere in the drug-dazed depth of him, he had sensed the other presence, calming and drawing at him. Two dusei, and one with Melein, who had been of the Kel, who still might touch one of the beasts.

It was a long walk, the longest that he had tried; he thrust himself from the wall and went to that door, leaned upon the door frame and looked inside.

Melein, she'pan.

She was in truth alive; she slept fully dressed in her mod­esty, in her tattered yellow robes of Sen-caste, that she had outworn. So frail she had become, Niun thought with pain, so thin; it was one thing that a kel'en should be hurt and starved and kept numbed with drugs but that they should have dealt so with her: rage swelled up in him so that for a moment he could not see, and the dusei moaned and drew back into the corner.

He left his place at the doorway, came and knelt on the floor at her bedside, where she slept upon her side, her head pillowed upon her arm. The dusei returned, and crowded close about him; and he touched the slim ringers of her open hand.

Her golden eyes opened, nictitated in surprise. She seemed dazed at first, and then put out her hand and touched his naked face, as if to see whether he were a dream or not.

"Niun," she whispered. "Niun.”

"What shall I do?" he asked of her, almost trembling in dread of that question, for he was only kel'en, and could not decide: he was the Hand of the People, and she was its Mind and Heart.

If she would not live, then he would kill her and himself; but he saw the cold, clear look of her eyes, and this was not the look of defeat.

"I have waited for you," she told him.

Niun took the dusei with him. They walked before him, single-file, for they were too big to go abreast in the corridor. Claws clicked on hard flooring, slowly, slowly. They knew whom he sought, in that curious sense of theirs knew also that this was not a hunt in the way of game, with a kill at the end; but they were disturbed, nonetheless, perhaps because they had walked with him they hunted.

And they met Duncan in the narrow hall just beyond the turning.

Duncan was perhaps coming as he came so faithfully to see to them. He was not armed; he never had been, Niun re­called with a sudden confusion in his anger. And perhaps Duncan had tempted them to this moment, had waited for it. He seemed to know how things lay between them; he stood still before the dusei, waiting for Niun to say or do what he would. Surely he knew that his life was in danger.

"There are no others aboard," Niun reminded him, chal­lenging him with his own statement.

"No. I told you the truth.”

Duncan was afraid. Dus-feelings were close and heavy; but he did not give way to his fear, that would have killed him.

"Yai!" Niun rebuked the dusei, attracting their attention out of that single-minded and dangerous fixation. They shifted nervously and the feeling lifted. They would not defy him. "Duncan," he said then, as directly as he would speak to a brother of the Kel, "what did you hope to do with us?”

Duncan shrugged, human-fashion, gave a faint, tired twist of the mouth. Naked-faced as he was, he looked like a man long without rest either of body or of spirit. He was nai've at times, this man Duncan, but he was capable of having guarded himself, and knew surely that he ought to have done so. Niun momentarily put aside his thoughts of violence.

"I meant," Duncan said, "to get you out of the hands of the regul.”

"You simply asked your people, and they gave you this for your own pleasure. Are you so great among them that they are that eager to please you?”

Duncan did not rise to the sarcasm. His expression re­mained only tired, and again he shrugged. "I'm alone. And I don't plan to contest the control of the ship. You can take it. But I will point out that this is not a warship, we are not armed, and we are possibly doing already what you would wish us to do. I don't think you can take actual contrbl; we are on taped navigation.”

Niun frowned. This, in his inexperience, he had not taken into account. He stared at Duncan, knowing his own strength limited, even to go on standing. He could loose the dusei; he could take the ship; but the thing that Duncan said made Duncan's calm comprehensible, that neither of them could manage the ship.

"Where are we going?" Niun asked.

"I don't know," Duncan said. "I don't know. Come with me to controls, and I will show you what I mean.”

The ovoid rested in a case lined with foam, a shining and beautiful object, unique, holy. Not a flaw was on its surface, although Niun knew that it had tumbled down rocks and withstood the gods knew what afterward to come here. He knelt down, heedless of Duncan's presence, and stretched out a reverent hand, touched that slick, cold surface as if it were the skin of a sentient being.

A piece of the mri soul, this object, this pan'en, this mys­tery, that he had carried until he could carry it no longer. He would have died to keep this from tsi'mri hands.

And from tsi'mri it had.come to them, touched and pro­faned.

Duncan's doing. There was none other who could have found it.

Niun stood up, eyes blurring, the membrane betraying him for the instant; and before a stranger of the People, he would have veiled himself in anger, but Duncan had been closer to him than many another of his own kind. He did not know what ma

"You know the mri well enough," Niun said, "to know that you have been very reckless to touch this.”

"It is yours. I got it back for you; would you rather it had been lost out there, left?”