Shon'jir

He was calm in thinking of these things, whether the ex­haustion of days without rest he wondered distantly if that was to blame for what he had done, or whether the trigger had been pulled much earlier, much earlier, when he had sought the mri's freedom. He tried to draw information from the tape: it would tell him nothing, neither ru

He pushed himself away from controls, his senses still sending him frantic signals even through the calming effects of the drug. It was worse than he had ever felt it: fatigue made it so. He thought that if things would remain stable only for an hour, he would go to his quarters and wash and lie down, now that it was too late to worry about anything.

And a dus ambled in the door, and the second dus after him; and behind them came the mri. He drew back. Melein came, unveiled as was her wont, her fingers laced with Niun's, who supported her. She entered the control room as Duncan stepped back, and her golden eyes swept the place, centered on the object that rested beside con­trols: on the artifact in its cradle. She went to it, ignoring all else, and touched the silver ovoid with her fingertips, bending with Niun to provide her balance, felt it as if to assure her­self that it was real.

Then she straightened. Her amber eyes sought Duncan's, shadowed and piercingly direct.

"I will sit," she said, her voice a hoarse whisper; and Niun carefully settled her on the edge of the reclined comstation cushion as if it were a throne. She sat straight, her hand pressed to her ribs where she had been injured, and for a mo­ment she was short of breath; but it seemed to pass, and the hand dropped. The two dusei came to crowd at her feet, giv­ing her a living wall at her knees; and she held out her left and to Niun, who settled on the deck beside her, elbow against the larger dus.

Duncan looked on them both: in his hazed senses he saw the modern control center become a hall for a priestess-queen, himself the stranger there. Melein gazed at him directly: behind her the starscreens showed a dust of light, and the colored telltales flashed in lazy sequence, hypnotically regular.

"Duncan," Melein said softly, "where is this ship going?”

He remembered that it was not always permitted to speak to her directly, though once he had been permitted: things were different now. He looked at Niun's veiled and uncom­municative face. "Tell the she'pan that that guides us," he an­swered, with a shrug toward the ovoid that rested beside them.

"I will speak to him," Melein said, and an anxious frown came over her face. "Explain. Explain, kel Duncan.”

"Do you know," he asked her, "what it holds?”

"Do you?" _

He shook his head. "No. Records. Navigational records. But not where we are going. Do you know?”

Her lovely face became like a mask, unreadable as Niun's, though unveiled. "Why are you alone with us? Might you not be wiser to have kept us apart from controls, kel Duncan?”

She trod the edges of questions with him. He fought his mind clear, gathered explanations, but she held out her hand to him, insisting, and there was nothing gracious but to take her long, slender fingers in his. The alien touch disturbed him, and he found himself against the dusei, a position of danger. "Sit, sit down," she bade him, for she must look up at him as he stood; and there was no place but the deck, against the bodies of the dusei, as Niun rested. "Are you too strange to us now?" she asked, taunting him.

He did as she asked, his knees finding the deck painful; he touched the dusei of necessity, and knew the trap, the contact with the beasts, the blurring flow of senses. He grew afraid, and the beasts knew it, stirring powerfully against him; he repressed the fear, and they settled.

"Once," said Melein to him, her voice distant and soft, "I said that we would find a ship and a way off Kesrith; I said that I must have the pan'en, and you were there to hear. Kel Duncan, are these things your gift, yours alone?”

Not naive, this child-queen: she asked what she did not believe. He sensed depths opening at his feet. "Policy," he said, "does not want you in regul hands. You are free. No, it is not my gift; I didn't have it to give. Others arranged these things. If you linger in regul space or human you are done; this ship is not armed. But we have no escort now, she'pan. We are alone; and we will follow this tape to its end.”

She was silent a moment. Duncan looked at Niun, found 'nothing of comfort, was not sure that he was believed in ei­ther quarter. Melein spoke in her own language; Niun an­swered in a monosyllable, but he did not turn his face or vary his expression. Tsi'mri, he heard: the mri word for out­sider; and he was afraid.

"Do your kind hate you?" asked Melein. "Why are you aboard alone, kel Duncan?”

"To tend you and the machinery. Someone must. She'pan, from that from the object-scientists made our guidance tapes. We're locked on it, and there's nothing you or I can do to stop it. I will tend the ship; I will deliver you to your destination, whatever it is. And when I have done that, I will take the ship and meet my people and tell them that the mri want no more part of regul or human politics, and that the war is over, forever. Finished. This is why I'm aboard.”

A troubled frown grew upon Melein's face as she gazed into his eyes. "I ca

"Medicines," Niun said in a low voice, the first word he had spoken without invitation. "They use them during transi­tion.”

The mri had none, refused medicines, even that: Niun's they acquired demeaning force, and Duncan felt the sting of it, felt the danger of it at the same moment. For th« first time panic settled round him; the dusei jerked in alarm, and Niun rebuked them, steadied them with his hands.

"You do not know," said Melein then, "what your superi­ors have done to you, kel Duncan. How long are you given to return?”

"I don't know," he said.

"So long, so long a voyage. You should not be here. You should not have done this thing, kel Duncan.”

"It's a long walk home, she'pan. We're across jump.”

"This is a mri ship now. And where we go, no tsi'mri can go.”

The dusei stirred, heaved up: Duncan started to rise, but Niun's hand seized his wrist, a pressure without strength, a warning without threat. "No," Niun said. The eyes above the veil were no longer hard. "No. Be quiet, Duncan.”

The dusei had retreated into the recess to Melein's left, making sounds of alarm, small puffs of breath. Their small eyes glittered dangerously, but after a moment they settled, sat, still watching.

And quietly, in his own language, Niun spoke to Melein received an answer and spoke again, urgently, as if he pleaded against her opinion. Duncan listened tensely, able only to catch the words mri, Kesrith, and tsi'mri tsi'mri: as mri meant simply the People, the word for any other species was not-people. It was their thinking; he had known it long since. There was no reasoning against it.

Finally, with a few words, Melein rose, veiled her face and turned away, deliberately turning her back.

It was a chilling gesture. Duncan gathered himself to his feet, apprehensive; and Niun arose, using the cushion to steady himself, standing between him and the dusei.

"She has said," said Niun, "that I must not permit any stranger in her sight again. You are kel'en; I will fight you when I am able, or you may choose to stay with us and live as mri. You may choose.”

He stared helplessly at Niun, even this made distant by the drag. "I didn't risk my neck getting you free only to kill one of you. No.”

"You would not kill me," Niun said.

It set him off-balance. "I am not your enemy," he protest­ed.

"Do you want to take service with the she'pan?”

"Yes.”

He said it quickly; it was the only sane answer. When things were quiet, at some later time, then it would be the moment to reason with them, to explain why he must be set free with the ship: it was their own protection they con­sidered.

But Niun remained still a moment, staring at him as if he suspected a lie in that consent.

"Niun," said Melein, her back still turned; Niun went to her, and they spoke in low voices. For a moment then Niun was still; the dusei shifted restlessly: one moaned and nosed at Niun's hand. He caressed it absently to silence, then came back to the side of the room where Duncan stood.

"Kel Duncan," he said, "the she'pan says that we are going home. We are going home.”

It did not register.for a moment came then with a dull, distant apprehension. "You called Kesrith home," Duncan said.

"And Nisren. Kel-truth. The she'pan knows. Duncan " The eyes above the'veil lost their impassivity. "Perhaps we are the last; perhaps there is nothing left; perhaps it will be too long a voyage. But we are going. And after this, I must forget; so must you. This is the she'pan's word, because noth­ing human can stay with us, not on such a voyage. The she'pan says that you have given the People a great gift; and for this service, you may keep your name, human though it is; but nothing more. We have gone from the sun into the Dark; and in the Dark, we forget, the whole of what we have been and seen and known, and we return to our ancestors. This is what you have entered, Duncan. If ever you stand on the homeworld of the People, you will be mri. Is this under­stood? Is this what you want?”

A dus crowded them, warm and urgent with emotion. Duncan felt a numbness; sensed, almost, Niun's anxiety. Vio­lation of privacy, of self-control: he edged back and the dus shied off, then returned obstinately to its closeness. There was no lying to the dusei; none, eventually, to the mri. They would learn one day what humans meant to do to them, what he had aimed at their home: a second, deadlier gift. It was irony that they asked him to share it.

"It's what I want," he said, for he saw no other choice.

Niun frowned. "A mri," he said, "could not have chosen what you have chosen.”

The distance that the drug lent was leaving, deserting him to cold reality. He heard what Niun said, and it twisted strangely, forebodingly in his mind. He looked at Melein's back, wondering whether she would now deign to notice him, since he had yielded to all their terms.