Faded Sun Part 61

He made attempt, and the food stuck in his throat; he swallowed that, and no more, sitting still again.

There came a slow silence in the Kel. Movements grew quieter and less. Voices hushed. No hand now reached for the bowls; no one spoke. He knew that they were staring at him, and eventually he grew as quiet within as without, remote from his pain.

Challenge me, he wished certain of them, not excluding Ras. I he wished certain of them, not excluding Ras. I will kill, and enjoy the killing. will kill, and enjoy the killing.

"Kel'anth," Hlil said.

Niun paid no attention to him.

Hlil sat silent a moment, offended, doubtless; and finally Hlil leaned closer to the fen'anth Seras, who sat next him; and then to Desai. There was some muttering together, and Niun removed his mind from all of it, letting them do what they would, reckoning that it would come to him when it was ready.

He rose instead, and withdrew to Duncan's side, sat down there, against the dus. The beast rumbled its sorrow and nosed at him, as if begging solace or help. Duncan breathed with a slow bubbling sound, and his eyes were open a slit, but they were glazed, dimly reflecting the lamplight The others resumed their meal, but for a small cl.u.s.ter about Hlil who withdrew together to talk in the opposite corner of Kel-tent, and for Ras, who came and sat down against one of the great poles, her face no more angry, only very weary, eyes shadowed.

She had, at the last, helped; he was mortally surprised for that . . . practicality, perhaps, that Duncan slowed them too much. He had long since ceased to try to account for what Ras did. He watched the others in their group, and anger moiled in him for that; he remembered the dus and stilled it ... put a hand on Duncan's shoulder and pressed slightly, obtained a blink of the eyes.

"I know you are there," Duncan said, a faint, congested voice. "Stop worrying. Is there word yet about the hao'nath?"

"No sign of them. Do not worry for it."

"Dus thinks they are still out there."

"Doubtless they are. But they have to think about it now."

"More . . . more than one. Back . . . side . . . front. . . ." Coughing threatened again. Niun tightened his hand.

"Save this for later."

Duncan's strange eyes blinked, and tears fell from inner corners, mixed with the dirt and the blood, trailing slowly into the hair of his face. "Ai, you are worried, are you? So am I. There are many . . . Dusei, maybe."

"You are not making sense, sov-kela."

"Life. I tried to show them Me. I think they understood."

"Dusei?"

There was movement; a sudden apprehension came into Dun-can's eyes, focused beyond him. Niun turned on one knee as a shadow fell on them, a wall of black robes about them. The dus stirred; but those foremost moved to kneel, restoring a little of the lamplight, and Niun moved his hand ashamedly from his weapons. Hlil Desai, Seras, and young Taz. Niun frowned, thrust out his hand in confusion when Taz set a smoldering bowl near Duncan.

"The smoke will help," Seras said. It was some portion of the oil-wood, which they used for lamp fuel, a greasy smoke with the cloying sweetness of some other herb added. Niun held his hand from striking it away at once, distracted between the harm it might do and his failure to have comprehended their honest intent. He settled his hand on Dun-can's shoulder instead, with the other hand poised to refuse their further intervention.

"Kel'anth," said Hlil coldly, "we know some things you do not. We were born on this world."

Duncan feebly reached for the smoldering bowl. Taz edged it closer and Duncan inhaled the smoke fully. It was true. Niun felt his own raw throat eased by the oily warmth. The smoke offended the dus, which turned its great head the other way with a deep whuff of displeasure, but of a sudden the beast caught up feelings utterly naked and wove them all together uninvited, Ku-tathi mri and Kesrithi.

"Yai!" Niun rebuked it, and faces averted slightly one from the other in embarra.s.sment. He looked on Duncan, who breathed deeply of the fumes, and then gazed at Hlil until Hlil looked up at him.

"S'sochil," Niun said very quietly, "I thank you; I should have said that; forgive."

"Ai," Hlil muttered, and soured the moment with a scowl and a gesture of contempt toward Duncan.

There was an explosive breath at the door. Niun looked about, saw his own dus, which had decided at last to come in out of the dark, drawn by some inner impulse. Kel'ein moved out of its path in haste as it came across the mats, head down and seemingly preoccupied; and when it had come to him, it nosed at him and sank down against Duncan's beast.

Niun rested an arm on its shoulder, tugged at its ear to distract it, lest it reach his mind and Hlil's together. For a long moment he stared at Hlil's scarred, unlovely face, fearing that the dus did indeed broadcast what moved in him. Or perhaps it came from both sides, that longing; even one who knew dusei could not always tell. Beside him Duncan rested, breathing in larger breaths, as if the smoke had taken the pain away.

Niun loosed one of his own Honors, offered it, his hand nigh trembling. He thought surely that Hlil would reject it, offending and offended; but he was obliged to the offering.

"For what service?" Hlil asked.

"That I find the tribe . . . well in your keeping. You and Seras . . . if you would."

Hlil did take; and Seras too ... of the Honors which had been Merai's, which were his to give away; of the friend for whom, Niun thought with a sudden pang, Hlil would always grieve. It surged through the dusei unasked, the desolation and the loneliness.

"We have watchers out," Hlil said. "You did not seek this, with the hao'nath. This was not your purpose."

"No," Niun said, dismayed to realize how things had fit such a thought. "You do not know me, kel Hlil, to have wondered that."

Hlil's eyes wandered briefly to Duncan, up again.

"They tracked him," Niun said.

"They have come to the cities," Hlil said. "So should we ... if we had not already. Kel'anth it will not stop with the hao'nath. You understand that Word will spread ... of this . . . stranger with us."

"I know," he said.

Hlil nodded, glanced down, rose, excusing himself as if there were nothing more he could say; so, one by one, did the others. Taz lingered last, silently produced a small handful of dried roots and pale fiber from the breast of his robe, along with a small leather sack.

"Sir," Taz said, laying it beside the pot. "I can find more, if need be; Kath surely has to spare."

The boy went away. Niun started to speak to Duncan, to ask if he was comfortable; and looked, and saw Duncan's eyes shut and his breathing eased.

He leaned against the dus, with the knot that had been so long at his belly somewhat less taut, watching all the Kel settle for the night, each to their mats that composed the flooring of the tent The lamps were put out, all but the one that hung nearest them, and the little bowl of smoldering fibers curled up smoke about them.

Only Ras remained, sitting; she stirred finally, and he reckoned that she too would seek her mat and sleep; but she returned after a moment, a shadow in the haze of smoke and the lamps, came close and knelt down by them with something in her arms, a roll of matting, which she set down by him.

"What is it?" he asked of her. "Kel Has?'

She said nothing . . . withdrew to the shadows, lay down finally and seemed to sleep.

He drew the matting into his lap, unrolled it, uncovering the cio-silk bindings of his longsword, the coa.r.s.er work of Duncan's, left behind in An-ehon. He bit his lip, fingered the ancient work of the hilt, drew the fine steel a little distance from the leather sheath, eased it back again. It was precious to him, the solitary vanity of his possessions; he had counted it lost Challenge, he thought, to hold what he had taken. It will not stop, It will not stop, Hlil had said, Hlil had said, with the hao'nath. with the hao'nath.

Time after time, while Kutath bled its strength out, and tsi'mri waited for answers.

He laid the swords beside him, settled back again. In the quiet which had settled, Duncan's breath still bubbled, and now and again he stirred and coughed and blotted at his mouth with the soiled veil. But much of the time he did sleep, and at last the bubbling ceased.

At that sudden silence Niun roused anxiously but Duncan's chest rose and fell with peaceful regularity, and the blood which stained his lip was dried.

He rested his eyes a time then jerked awake at a whisper of cloth by him, saw the boy Taz kneeling and feeding more of the fiber into the bowl.

T shall wake, sir," Taz said.

He was dazed somewhat, and ungracious simply looked at Duncan, whose breathing remained eased and regular, and let his head down again against the shoulder of the dus, moved his slitted eyes over all the Kel, that made huddled heaps in the darkness shut them again.

The lamp gave feeble light for study; Melein turned in her hands the golden and fragile leaf from the casing of the pan'en, laid it on her knee and drew another forth, replacing the first in sequence. She canted it to the light and the lamp picked out the graven letters like hairline fire. She read, as for years and years before this she had read, the record of the People's travels. They were incomplete. Nigh on a hundred thousand years the record stretched; in so blindingly swift a few years they had come back, she and Niun and Duncan. There would come a time when she would write her own entry into the leaves of gold, the last of the People of the Voyage, the last statement, the seal.

And she shivered sometimes, thinking of that.

The hand which held the tablet lowered to her lap. She gazed at the flickering lamp, thinking, centered in the Now.

Where do I go? That was determined. go? That was determined.

What do 1 do? That too, she knew. That too, she knew.

But other questions she did not. Some of them extended to human s.p.a.ce and regul, and dead worlds; some of them centered on Kutath itself, on the past in which mri had known another service. And they were one question.

A touch descended on her shoulder. She drew herself back, and shivered, looking into the gentle face of Kilis, the young sen'e'en who attended her, whose hands robed and disrobed her, and whose young eyes witnessed all her lif e.

"She'pan the Council of the Sen is waiting. You sent for them, she'pan."

She smiled at that, for at times the dreaming was too strong; it was not so for her, at least not often. "I will see them," she said, and carefully gathered the leaf of gold from her lap, slipped it into the casing with the others.

The curtains stirred and the Council entered, the first and second ranks of the Sen, to settle on the mats before her. Most were very old, older than kel'ein tended to live, hollow-cheeked and wrinkled; but there was among them Tinas, who had a kel'e'en's robustness about her, and kel-scars slanting across her cheeks. Foremost among them, Sathas also bore the scars, sen'anth; grimness on him was a habit, but more than one face was frowning this night "Has the Sen questions?"

"You appreciate our present danger," Sathas said. "It is what we warned you, she'pan."

"Indeed."

"It does not disturb you."

"It disturbs me. I would wish otherwise. But that is not ours to choose. Is that your question?"

"The she'pan knows our questions. And they are all tsi'mri."

"We have choices, sen'anth, and kel Duncan has given them to us."

"Did you send him out?"

She looked into the guarded offense of Sathas's eyes and tautly smiled, opened her hand palm up. "He is self-guiding. I let him go" Eyes flashed, nict.i.tating with inner pa.s.sion.

"You seriously consider this offer they have made?" asked Sathas.

"It is a matter we will consider ... for the worth in it. You do not care for his presence, doubtless. But he has brought us choices; and knowledge of what hangs above our heads; he comprehends them . . . and serves the People. His life has value. You understand me."

"We understand."

"And dislike it."

"We are your only weapon, she'pan, and you are ours. Do you turn aside?"

"From our course? No. No, trust me in this, sen'ein. I am not yet done." am not yet done."

No one spoke. For a moment eyes glittered hard with speculations. Believe me; Believe me; it was Intel who spoke, her old she'pan . . . who could persuade when reason counseled otherwise, with a voice which had wrapped silken cords about herself when she was younger; she had learned it, wielded it... consciously. it was Intel who spoke, her old she'pan . . . who could persuade when reason counseled otherwise, with a voice which had wrapped silken cords about herself when she was younger; she had learned it, wielded it... consciously.

Perhaps all she'panei had had such arts; she did not know. It was the nature of she'panei that they never met, save the one by whose death one rose.

It was true that Intel had controlled her children when they would have rebelled, and persuaded elders who had power in their own selves; that half-mad force of her that chilled the spine and held the eye when the eye would gladly turn away . . . that followed after, so that even out of her presence the most cynical reason had no power to utterly shatter that argument Intel still held her; and she . . . held them.

Chapter Ten.

The chief of security was back again, to trouble the labs. Aver-son blinked and focused on him, this dark man so persistent in his patrols. He glanced likewise at the collection of papers beside him on the desk, made a nervous s.n.a.t.c.h toward them as Degas gathered one up and looked at it.

"You've made progress with the regul transmissions?" Degas asked. "There's some urgency about it."

"It's " Averson held out his hand for the paper and received it back. Degas favored him with a sardonic smile as he shuffled it back into order. "It's couched in idiom, not code. It might be clear if we understood Nurag."

"Nurag."

"Homeworld has bearing on language," Averson answered shortly, and experienced a little uneasiness as Degas sat down on the edge of the desk facing him. Degas put down ca.s.settes, click, click, click, on the desk top before him.

"There's a great deal going on, Dr. Averson. Our time is escaping us. The onworld mission has decided to go . . . prudently or not rests elsewhere; they've moved out, to whatever they may find. And they may stir something up. There's always that chance. Now we have a request for permission for a regul shuttle to go down and sit with Flower." Flower."

Averson gnawed at his lips.

"The admiral is stalling," Degas said.

Perhaps he was supposed to make some observation on this. He did not like the thought of regul in Flowers Flowers neighborhood; he did not reckon what to do about it neighborhood; he did not reckon what to do about it "The admiral," said Degas, "understands from your reports and your advis.e.m.e.nts, that the regul may move in with or without our permission."

"They may," Averson allowed. "They would reckon we would not move to stop them."

"This"; Degas reached across the desk to the spot directly in front of his hands, tapped it with his forefinger. The man was dark in manner, dark in dress, but for the weapons and the badges; he glittered with them, like kerein, Averson thought, much like them. "This, Dr. Averson; you've paralyzed us with your yes and no. You've said nothing, except that there's no action to be taken. Wait, you say; and what is your general feeling on the regul? Where are your opinions?"

"I can't, I've told you. I can't p.r.o.nounce with any surety "

"Your guess, guess, doctor." doctor."

"But without supporting data "

"Your guess, doctor. It's more valuable than most men's studied opinion."

"No," Averson said. "It's more dangerous."

Give it.

"I find it possible . . . that there is more than one adult. One to remain here, one ... on that ship they want to send down. Logically, you see they don't function without elder direction. You think there are regul ships down there now; I agree. But no elder. I think they would like to get one down there if they could."