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Chapter Sixteen
MLARA AND Sha and Hlar and Sa'a-no-kli'i.
Niun watched them pass, lifeless as they were, with an excitement in his blood that the somber sights could not wholly kill.
They jumped again, and just after ship's noon there appeared a new star centered in the field.
"This is home," said Melein softly, when they gathered in the she'pan's hall to see it with her. "This is the Sun.”
In the hal'ari, it was Na'i'in.
Niun looked upon it, a mere pinprick of light at the distance from which they entered the system, and agonized that it would be so long a journey yet. Na'i'in. The Sun.
And the World, that was Kutath.
"By your leave," Duncan murmured, " I had better go to controls.”
They all went, even the dusei, into the small control room.
And there was something eerie in the darkness of that section of the panels that had been most active. Duncan stood and looked at it a moment, then settled in at controls, called forth activity elsewhere, but not in that crippled section.
Niun left the she'pan's side to stand at the panel to Duncan's right: little enough he knew of the instruments, save only what Duncan had shown him but he had knowledge enough to be sure there was something amiss.
"The navigational computer," Duncan said. "Gone.”
"You can bring us in," Niun said without doubt.
Duncan nodded. His hands moved on the boards, and the screens built patterns, built structures about a point that was Na'i'in.
"We are on course," he said. "We have no starflight navigation, that is all.”
It was not of concern. Long after the she'pan had returned to her own hall, Niun still stayed by Duncan, sitting in the cushion across the console, watching the operations that Duncan undertook.
It was five days before Kutath itself took shape before them, third out from Na'i'in… Kutath. Duncan guided them, present at controls surely more than reason called for: he took his meals in this room, and entered kel-hall only to wash and to take a little sleep in night-cycle. Restlessly he would go back before the night was done, and Niun knew where to find him.
Nothing required his presence at controls.
There were no alarms, nothing.
It was, Niun began to reckon with growing despair, the same as the others. Melein surely made her own estimation of the lasting silence, and Duncan did, and none spoke it aloud.
No ships.
No reaction.
The sixth day there were the first clear images of the world, and Melein came to controls to look at them. Niun set his hand upon hers, silent offering.
It was a red world and lifeless.
Old. Very, very old.
Duncan cut the image off the screens. There was agony in his face when he looked at them both, as it he thought himself to blame. But Niun drew a deep breath and let it go, surrendering to what he had known all his life.
That they were, after all, the last-born.
Somewhere in the ship the dusei moaned, gathering in the grief that was sent them.
"The voyage of the People," said Melein, "has been very, very long. IlSwe are the last, still we will go home. Take us there, Duncan.”
"Yes," Duncan said simply, and bowed his head and turned to the boards so that he did not have to look on their faces. Niun found it difficult to breathe, a great tightness about his heart, as when he had seen the People die on Kesrith; but it was an old grief, and already mourned. He stood still while Melein went her way back to her hall.
Then he went apart, unto himself, and sat down with his dus, and wept, as the Kel could not weep.
"Why should we be sorrowful?" asked Melein, when they had met again that evening, for their first common-meal in many days, and their last, before landing. "We always knew that we were the last. For a time we believed otherwise, and we were happier, but it is only the same truth that has always been. We should still be glad. We have come home. We have seen what was our begi
This was something the human could not understand. He simply shook his head as he would do in pain, and his dus nosed at him, disconsolate.
But Niun inclined himself wholly to Melein's thoughts: they were true. There were far worse things than what lay before them: there was Kesrith; there were humans, and regul.
"Do not grieve for us," Niun said to Duncan, and touched his sleeve. "We are where we wish to be.”
"I will get back to controls," Duncan said, and flung himself to his feet, veiled himself and left their company without asking permission or looking back. His dus trailed after him, radiating distress.
"He can do nothing there," said Melein with a shrug. "But it comforts him.”
"Our Duncan," said Niun, "will not let go. He is obsessed with blame.”
"For us?”
Niun shrugged, pressed his lips together, looked aside.
She put out her hand and touched his face, recalled his attention, regarding him sadly. "I have known that it was possible, that it might have been too long. Niun, there have been above eighty Darks, and in each more than one generation has passed; and there have been above eighty Betweens, and the most of them have lasted above a thousand years.”
He attempted a deprecating laugh, a shake of his head: it did not come out as a laugh. "I can reckon that in distance but not in years. Twenty years is long for a kel'en. I ca
She bent and pressed her lips to his brow. "Niun, the accounting is no matter. It is beyond my reckoning too.”
That night, and the night after, Niun slept sitting, his head against her chair. Melein did not ask it. He simply did not want to leave her. And when Duncan came from his lonely watch for what few hours of true sleep he sought, he curled up against his dus in the corner here, and not in kel-hall. It was not a time that any of them wanted to be alone. The loneliness of Kutath itself was overwhelming.
On the eighth day Kutath swung beneath them, filling all the screen in the she'pan's hall angry, arid, scarred with its age.
And Duncan came to the she'pan's presence, burst in like a gust of wind and swept off mez and zaidhe to show his face: it was aglow.
"Life!" he said. "The scan shows it. She'pan, Niun your World is not dead.”
For an instant neither of them moved.
And of a sudden Melein struck her hands together and thanked the several gods; and only then Niun dared to draw breath and hope.
Behind Duncan, Melein went to controls, and Niun followed after, with the dusei padding behind them and blowing great puffs of excitement. Melein settled on the arm of the cushion and Niun leaned beside her, the while Duncan tried to make clear to them what his search had found, showing them the screens and the figures and all the chattering flow of data that meant life.
Life of machines; and very, very scant, the evidence of growing things.
"It looks like Kesrith from space," said Duncan softly, and sent a chill over Niun's flesh, for often enough the old she'pan had called Kesrith the forge that would prepare the People ... for all that would lie before them. "The dusei," said Duncan, "should fare well enough there.”
"One moon," Niun read the screen, remembering with homesickness the two that had coursed the .skies of Kesrith; remembering his hills, and the familiar places that he had hunted before humans came.
This world of their ancestors would hold its own secrets, its own graces and beauties, and its own dangers.
And humans soon enough.
"Duncan," said Melein, "take us down.”