Shon'jir

He shrugged, half a shiver, and descended to Duncan startled the human, who settled back again, distressed and re­lieved at once.

"I wish the dusei would come back," Duncan said.

"Yes," Niun agreed. They were limited without the ani­mals. They dared not leave the outer door unguarded. He looked in that direction, where there was only night, and then began to search through their packs. "I am going to take the she'pan up some food. I do not think we will be moving tonight. And mind, there are some small machines about. I think they are harmless. Do not damage one.”

"It comes to me," Duncan said softly, "that An-ehon could be dangerous if it chose to be.”

"It comes to me too.”

"It said… that it permitted the ship to land. That means it could have prevented it.”

Niun drew a slow breath and let it go, gathered up the packet of food and a flask, the while Duncan's words nagged at him. The human had learned well how to keep his thoughts from his face; he could no longer read him with ab­solute success. The implications disturbed him; it was not the landing of their own ship that Duncan was thinking of.

Others.

The humans that would come.

Such a thought Duncan offered to him.

He rose and went without looking back, climbed the way to sen-hall, thoughts of treachery moiling in him: and not treachery, if Duncan were Melein's.

What was the man?

He entered cautiously into the outer hall of the Sen, called out aloud, for the door was left open; he could hear the voice of the machine, drowning his words, perhaps.

But Melein came. Her eyes were shadowed and held a dazed look. Her weariness frightened him.

"I have brought you food," he said.

She gathered the offering into her hands. "Thank you," she said, and turned away, walked slowly back into that room. He lingered, and saw what he ought not, the pan'en open, and filled with leaves of gold… saw the pulse of lights wel­come Melein, mortal flesh conversing with machines that were cities. She stood, and light bathed her white-robed figure until it blazed blue-white like a star. The packet of food tumbled from her loose hand, rolled. The flask slipped from the other and struck the floor without a sound. She did not seem to notice.

"Melein!" he cried, and started forward.

She turned, held out her hands, forbidding, panic on her face. Blue light broke across his vision: he flung himself back, crashed to the floor, half dazed.

Voices echoed, and one was Melein's. He gathered himself to one knee as she reached him, touched him: he gained his feet, though his heart still hammered from the shock that had passed through him.

"He is well?" asked the voice of An-ehon. "He is well?”

"Yes," Melein said.

"Come away," Niun urged her. "Come away; leave this thing, at least until the morning. What is time to this ma­chine? Come away from it, and rest.”

"I shall eat and rest here," she said. Her hands caressed his arm, withdrew as she stepped back from him, retreating into the room with the machine. "Do not try to come here.”

"I fear this thing.”

"It should be feared," she lingered to say, and her eyes held ineffable weariness. "We are not alone. We are not alone, Niun. We will find the People. Look at yourself, she'pan's-kel'en.”

"Where shall we find them, and when, she'pan? Does it know?”

"There have been wars. The seas have dried; the People have diminished and fought among themselves; cities are abandoned for want of water. Only machines remain here: An-ehon says that it teaches the she'panei that come here, to learn of it Go away. I do not know it all. And I must. It learns of me too; it will share the knowledge with all the Cities of the People, and perhaps, with that One it calls the Living City. I do not know, I ca

"I am," he said, dazed by the temerity of such a vision, "the she'pan's Hand." "Look to Duncan.”

"Yes," he said; and accepted her gesture of dismissal and left, still feeling in his bones the ache that the machine's weapon had left; dazed he was still, and much that she had said wandered his mind without a tether to hold it ... only that Melein meant to fight, and that therefore she would need him.

A'ani. Challenge. She'panei did not share: the she'pan served by the most skillful kel'en, survived. Melein prepared herself.

He returned in silence to the hall below, curled up in the corner, massaging his aching arms and reckoning in troubled thoughts that there was killing to be done.

"Is she all right?" Duncan intruded into his silence, unwel­come.

"She will not leave. She is talking to it, with them. She speaks of wars, kel Duncan.”

"Is that remarkable for the People?" Niun looked at him, prepared to be angry, and realized that it was a failure of words. "Wars. Mri wars. Wars-with-distance-weapons." He resorted to the forbidden mu'ara, and Duncan seemed then to understand him, and fell quickly silent

"Would that the dusei would come," Niun declared sud­denly, wrenching his thoughts from such prospects; and in his restlessness he went to the door and ventured to call to them, that lilting call that sometimes, only sometimes, could sum­mon them.

It did not work this time. There was no answer this night, nor the next.

But on the third, while Melein remained shut in sen-tower, and they fretted in their isolation below, there came a famil­iar breathing and rattle of claws on the steps outside, and that peculiar pressure at the senses that heralded the dusei.

It was the first night that they two dared sleep soundly, warm next their beasts and sure that they would be warned if danger came on them.

It was Melein that came; a clap of her hands startled them and the beasts together, wakened them in dismay that she, though one of them, had found them sleeping.

"Come," she said; and when they had both gained their feet and stood ready to do her bidding: "The People are near. An-ehon has lit a beacon for them. They are coming.”