Shon'jir

Duncan listened, painfully aware that he was being played, prepared for something. One did not maneuver George Stavros; Stavros maneuvered others. Stavros was a profes­sional at it; and the mind in that fettered shell had very few human dependencies, an aged man who had dealt with crises involving worlds for more years than SurTacs tended to live, who had thrown aside family and a comfortable retirement to seize a governorship on a frontier like Kesrith. For a brief time Duncan had felt there had been some attachment be­tween himself and Stavros; he had given Stavros unstintingly of effort and loyalty had even believed in him enough to of­fer him truth. But to manage others with subtlety, even with ruthlessness, that was the skill for which Stavros had won his appointment; Duncan determined neither to believe him nor to be angry that he had been used and he knew that even so, Stavros had the skill to lie to him again.

"I have excused your actions," Stavros said, "and covered them as far as I can; but you have lost your usefulness to me hi the capacity in which you signed on. Hulagh can be per­suaded to tolerate your presence; but the suspicion that you have moved back into some position of direct influence would be more than he could bear, and it might endanger your life. I don't want that kind of trouble, Duncan, or the complications your murder might create. Regul are simply not prepared to believe the killing of a youngling is of equal seriousness with the killing of an elder.”

"I don't want to be sent offworld.”

"You don't.”

"No, sir. I don't.”

Stavros stared at him. "You have this personal attachment to those two mri. Attachment obsession. You're no longer a rational man on the subject, Duncan. Think. Explain to me. What do you hope to do or to find? What's the point of this sudden scholarship of yours, these hours in the library, in full view of the regul? What are you looking for?”

"I don't know, sir.”

"You don't know. But' it involves every mri record you can find.”

Duncan clenched his jaw, leaned back and made himself draw an even breath. Stavros left the silence, waiting for him. "I want to know," Duncan said finally, "what they were. I saw them die. I saw a whole species die out there. I want to know what it was I saw destroyed.”

"That doesn't make sense.”

"I was there. You weren't." Duncan's mind filled again with the night, the dark, the blinding light of the destruction. A mri body pressed against him, two men equally trembling in the forces that had destroyed a species.

Stavros gazed at him a long time. His face grew sober, even pitying, and this was unaccustomed for Stavros. "What do you think? That it might have been you that drew the at­tack to them? Is that what's eating at you that you might be responsible, as much as Hulagh?”

It hit near enough the mark. Duncan sat still, knowing that he was not going to be able to talk rationally about it Stavros let the silence hang there a moment.

"Perhaps," said Stavros finally, "it would be better if you would go up to Saber for a time, into an environment more familiar to you, where you can sort out your thinking.”

"No, sir. It would not be better. You took me off assign­ment with you. I accept that. But give me something else: I waive my transfer home, and my discharge. Give me another assignment, here on Kesrith.”

"That is a request, I take it.”

"Yes, sir. That is a request.”

"Everything you do, since you were attached to me, is ob­served and taken for omen by the regul. You've persisted in aggravating the situation. You came here to assist, SurTac Duncan, not to formulate policy.”

Duncan did not answer. It was not expected. Stavros' mouth worked in the effort prolonged speech cost him; he drew a difficult breath, and Duncan grew concerned, remem­bering that Stavros was a sick man, that he was trying, amid all other pressures, to remember something of personal debts. He put a curb on his temper.

"You took it on yourself," Stavros said at last, "to accuse bai Hulagh of murder. You created an incident that nearly shipwrecked the whole Kesrithi diplomatic effort. Maybe you think you were justified. Let us suppose " Stavros' harsh, strained voice acquired a marginally gentler tone. "Let us suppose for the sake of argument that you were absolutely justified. But you do not make decisions like that, SurTac Duncan, and you must know that, somewhere at the bottom of your righteousness.”

"Yes, sir," he said very quietly.

"As it happens," said Stavros, "I don't doubt you. And I'm positive the bai tried to kill you in spite of all my efforts to reassure him. When he found you among mri, that was too much for him. I think you know that. I think you're bothered , by that possibility, and I wish that I could set your mind at ease and say that it wasn't so. I can't. Hulagh probably did exactly what you charge he did. But charges like that aren't profitable for me to pursue right now. I recovered you alive. That was the best that I could do, with all else that was going on. I recovered your mri too, quite incidentally.”

"What remains of them. The medics “

"Yes. What remains of them. But you can't undo that. You can't do a thing about it.”

"Yes, sir.”

"The medics tell me you've healed.”

"Yes, sir." Duncan drew a deep breath and decided finally that Stavros was trying to put him at ease. He watched as the governor tried awkwardly to manipulate a clean cup into the dispenser rose and took over that task, filling the cup the governor was going to offer him. Stavros favored him with a one-sided smile.

"Still not what I was," Stavros said ruefully. "The medics don't make extravagant promises, but the exercises are help­ing. Makes the metal beast easier to manage, at least. Here, give my cup a warm-up, will you?”

Duncan did as requested, put it in Stavros' hand, settled again with his own cup cradled in his palms. After a moment he took his first sip, savoring the pleasant warmth. Soi was a mild stimulant. He found himself drinking more of it than was likely good for him these last few days, but his taste for food had been off since his sojourn in the desert. He sipped at the hot liquid and relaxed, knew that he was being swept into Stavros' talented manipulations, set at ease, moved, di­rected; but he was also being heard, for what it was worth. He believed, if nothing else, that Stavros began to listen and cultivated the regul for reasons that did not involve naivete.

"It was a mistake, my speaking out," Duncan admitted, which he had never admitted, not to his several interrogators or in any of the written reports he had filed. "It wasn't that I didn't know what I was saying; I did. But I shouldn't have said it in front of the regul.”

"You were in a state of collapse. I understood that.”

Duncan's mouth twisted. He set the cup aside. "Security got a sedative into me to shut me up and you know it. I did not collapse.”

"You talked about a holy place," Stavros said. "But you never would talk about it in debriefing, not even to direct questions. Was that where you found the artifact you brought back?”

Duncan's eyes went unfocused, his heart speeding. His hands shook. He attempted to disguise the fact by reaching for the plastic cup and clenching it tightly in both hands.

"Duncan?”

Dark and fire, a gleaming metal ovoid cradled in Niun's arms, precious to the mri, more than their lives, who were the last of their kind. Do nothing, Melein had bidden him while he stood in that place holy to the mri, touch nothing, see nothing. He had violated that trust, delivering the wounded mri into human care, to save their lives, by putting that metal ovoid into human hands, itself to be probed by human science. He had spoken in delirium. He looked at Stavros, helpless to shrug it off; he did not know how much he had said, or with what detail. There was the artifact itself, in Flower's labs, to make lies of any denial.

"I had better write the reports over," Duncan said. He did not know what else to say. A colonial governor had dictato­rial powers in that stage before there were parliaments and laws. He himself was not a civ, and unprotected in any in­stance. There was very little that Stavros could not do even including execution, certainly including shipping him to some station elsewhere, away from the mri, away from all hope of access to them and to Kesrith, forever.

"Your account was not accurate, then.”

Duncan cast everything into the balance. "I was shaken. I wasn't sure, after I was silenced the first time, how much was really wanted on record.”

"Don't give me that nonsense.”

"I was not rational at the time. To be honest to be hon­est, sir, I had the feeling that you wanted to bury everything about the mri, everything that happened. I wasn't sure I might not be put off Kesrith because I knew too much. I'm still not sure that it won't happen.”

"You know the seriousness of what you're charging?”

"This is a frontier," Duncan said. "I know that you can do what you want to do. Even to having me shot. I don't know the limit of what I know or how important it is. If an entire species can be wiped off the board and forgotten what am I?”

Stavros frowned, sipped at his drink, made a face and set it aside again. "Duncan, the regul are living; their victims aren't. So we deal with the regul, who are a force still dan­gerous and the mri " He moved the sled, turned it, looked at him at closer range. "You have your opinions on the mri, very obviously. What would you do with them?”

"Turn them loose. They won't live in captivity.”

"That simple? But it's not quite that simple afterwards. What of the regul?”

"The mri won't fight for the regul any longer and there are only two of them. Only two “

"Caring nothing for their lives, even two mri are consider­able; and they have a considerable grudge against bai Hu­lagh who heads the regul peace party, SurTac Duncan.”

"I know these two mri," Duncan said. "They did nothing to anyone on this world except to defend themselves. They only tried to get to safety, and we wouldn't let them. Let them go now, and they'd leave. That's all they want.”

"For now.”

"There is no tomorrow for them," Duncan said, and then Stavros looked at him quizzically. "There will be no more generations. There's a taboo between those two. Besides, even if there weren't ten, even twenty generations wouldn't make a vast threat out of them.”