Shon'jir

The rods flew hard this time. Duncan flung his hands up to catch them, deflected one that could have injured his face, but could not catch it. It fell. The other he held. The rhythm ceased, broken.

"You are weak in the left hand," said Niun. "But you have the heart. Good. You will learn the skill before I begin to show you the yin'ein, the old weapons. The zahen'ein, the modern, you know as well as I; I have nothing there to teach you. But the yin'ein, one begins with shon'ai. Throw.”

Duncan threw. Niun held up his hand, easily received the separate rods cast back to him with one hand, sweeping them effortlessly from the air. Duncan blinked, dismayed at the skill of the mri, and measured his own.

"There is a time to rest," said Niun then. "I would not see you miss," He tucked the rods back into his belt. "It is time," he said, "that we begin to talk. I will not speak often in your language; I am ordered to forget it, and so must you. You know a few words of the mu'ara, the common speech; and even those you must forget, and stay to the hal'ari, the High Speech. It is the law of the Darks, that all the Between be forgotten, and the mu'ara that grows in the Between must die, too. So do not be confused. Sometimes there are two words for a thing, one mu'ara, one hal'ari, and you must for­get even a mri word.”

"Niun," Duncan protested, holding up a hand for delay. "I haven't enough words.”

"You will learn. There will be time.”

Duncan frowned, looked at the mri from under his brows, carefully approached what had already been refused. "How much time?”

Niun shrugged.

"Does the she'pan know?" Duncan asked.

The membrance flicked across Niun's eyes. "Your heart is still tsi'mri;”

It was a mri kind of answer, maddening. Duncan traced the design he had scratched on the flooring, considering what he could do to reason with the mri; of a sudden Niun's hand stopped his. He jerked it free, looked up in deep offense.

"Another matter," said Niun. "A kel'en neither reads nor writes.”

"I do.”

"Forget.”

Duncan stared at him. Niun veiled himself and rose, an unbending upward that a few days ago he could not have done, a grace natural to a man who had spent Tiis life sitting on the ground; but Duncan, in attempting to rise and face him, was less graceful.

"Listen," he said.

And a siren sounded.

It was in Duncan's consciousness a subtle moment before panic took over, raw fear. Transition was approaching: they had made a jump point. The dusei had learned. Their feelings washed about the room like a tide fear, abhorrence.

"Yai!" Niun shouted at them, settling them. He walked to the doorway and took hold of the handgrip there. Duncan sought that on the other side of the room, feigning calm he did not feel; his gut twisted in dread of what was coming and no drugs, nothing. It was Niun's cold, unmoved example that kept him from sinking to the floor to await it.

The siren stopped. In a moment a bell signaled imminent jump, automatic alarm triggered by the ship as the tape played toward its destination. They had not yet learned where they had been. The nameless yellow star still hung as only one among others in the field of the screen. No ships had come. Nothing.

Suddenly came that initial feeling of uncertainty, and walls, floor, time, matter, rippled and shredded. The mind un­derwent something irretrievable on the outflow, as the process reversed itself; but there remained an impression of in­conceivable depth, of senses over-stimulated. The walls rippled back into solidity. Hands felt. Breath and sight re­turned.

But the bell was still going, still warning of jump immi­nent.

"Something's wrong!" Duncan cried. He saw the look on Niun's face, fear, that was not accustomed there; and Niun shouted something at him that had to do with Melein and ran.

The dus-feelings were flooding the room. The dissolution began again, rippling, stomach-wrenching, like a fall to death. Duncan clung where he was, wishing to lose consciousness, unable to do so. The room dissolved.

Reshaped.

The bell kept on and on, and the warping began a third time. Dus-flesh was about him, radiating terror. Duncan screamed, lost his grip and fell down among them, one with them, beast-mind, beast-sense, and the bells. Another time the rippling began, and faded back; and another; and another; and another.

He felt solidity about him, touch and sensations of light that were alien after the abysses he had voyaged. He cried out, and felt the dusei warm against him, their solid comfort, the mad irrationalities of their uncomprehending minds.

They were his anchor. They had held him, one with him. He gave up his humanity and gave way to them for a time, arm flung over a massive neck, receiving their warmth and comfort until he clearly realized what he yielded them, and cursed, and pushed them; then they withdrew, and he became aware of himself again.

Human, who had laid down with them, no more than they.

He hurled himself up and staggered to the doorway. His legs folded under him as he grasped the handhold, his fingers too weak to keep it. His stomach tried to evert itself, as if un­derfoot were sideways, but he had not the strength to heave up its contents, and grayed out.

He fell, sprawled, and realized it, still wanted to be sick and could not. He lay still a time, heaving with his effort to breathe, and the dusei crouched in the far corner, separate from him, giving him nothing but their fear.

Niun returned after how long a time he knew not sank down, bowed his veiled head wearily against his folded arms. Duncan lay still on his side, unwilling to chance more than breathing.

"Melein is well," Niun said in his own tongue: that much Duncan could understand; and something further he said, but Duncan could not put it together.

"What happened?" Duncan demanded to know, an effort that cost him much in sickness; but Niun only shrugged. "Niun, where are we?”

But Niun said nothing, perhaps unable to answer, or sim­ply, mri-stubborn, pretending not to understand human laa-i guage any more.

Duncan cursed him, and the effort knotted his stomach and heaved up the sickness at last. He could not move, even to move aside. After a long time Niun bestirred himself in what Was surely disgust, and brought wet towels and cleaned the place and washed his face. The touch, the lifting of his head brought more dry heaving, and Niun let him alone thereafter, settling on the opposite side of the room just within his field of vision.

Came one of the dusei at last, nosing at him, urging at him with warmth. Duncan moved his limp hand and struck it. It reared aside with a cry of startlement and outrage, radiated such horrid confusion that he cried aloud. Across the room Niun rose to his feet.

And came the siren again; and the bell.

Dissolution.

Duncan did not seek the security of the wall, the illusion that he had some anchor. He let go. When it was over, he lay on the floor and retched and sobbed for breath, fingers spread on the unyielding flooring.

The dusei came back, urging their warm feelings at him. He began to gasp, unable to breathe, until something leaned on his chest and forced the air in, until Niun's hand gripped his shoulder and shook at him with bruising force, that dazed him and made him lose contact with the room again. He stared at the mri in utter blankness and sobbed.

He was composed again the next morning, a hard-fought composure, muscles of his limbs and belly still tending to spasm from the tension he could not force from them. He remembered with acute shame his collapse, how he had rested the remainder of yesterday or the day before tucked up in a ball in the corner, remembered tears pouring hotly down his face without emotion, without cause, only that he could not stop them.

This morning Niun stared at him, veiled amber eyes frown­ing as he offered a cup of soi into his trembling hand, steady­ing him so that he could drink it. The hot, bittersweet liquid rolled like oil into Duncan's unwilling stomach and lay there, taking some of the chill away. The tears started again, cause­less. He drank slowly, holding the cup child-fashion in both hands, with tears sliding down his face. He looked into the mri's eyes and met there a cold reserve that recognized no kinship between them.

"I will help you walk," Niun said.

"No," he said with such force that the mri let him alone, rose and walked away, looked back once, then left, immune to the weakness that assailed him.

In that day even the dusei radiated distrust of him: cross­ing the room they would shy away from him, hating his presence; and Niun when he returned sat far across the room, soothing the troubled dusei and long staring at him.

With ship's night about them, they jumped once more, and a second time, and Duncan clung to his corner, clamped his jaws against sickness, and afterward was dazed, with vast gaps in his memory. In the morning he found the strength to stagger from his cramped refuge to bathe, driven by self-disgust finally to take some food into his aching stomach. But for the better part of the day he could not remember clearly.

Niun regarded him, frowning, waiting, Duncan thought distractedly, for him to die or to shake off the weakness; and Duncan felt the contempt like a tangible force, and bowed his head against his arms and brooded desperately, how he would wrest control from the tape before the malfunction killed them all, how he would take them to some random, lost refuge, where humanity could not find them.

But this he had no skill to do, and in his saner moments acknowledged it. The mri could survive, so long as the ship did. He began to think obsessively of suicide, and brooded upon it, and then remembered in his terrified and circular thoughts that the drugs were gone.

"Tsi'mri," Niun said of him finally, after standing and star­ing at him for a time.

Contempt burned in the mri's voice. The mri walked away, and the outrage of it gave Duncan strength to rise and fight bis blurring senses. He was sick again immediately; he made it to the lavatory this time, blinked the tears from his eyes and washed his face and tried to control the tremor that ran through his limbs.

And came back into the living quarters and tried to walk across the naked center of it halfway across before his senses turned inside out and he reeled off balance. He hurled himself for the wall, reaching wildly, found it and collapsed against it.

Niun stood watching. He had not known. Niun looked him up and down, face veiled.