The Faded Sun Trilogy (24 page)

With a sad shrug he went his way, hardly having paused that half-step; but in this passing there was a difference, for things the due did not understand had changed, were changing, were about to change. And it was doomed, having rejected him.

Likely the humans would destroy the dusei. Regul would have done so gladly, if not for mri protection. The size and the slow-moving power of dusei was very like that of regul, but regul instinctively hated the dusei. Regul could not, as mri could, become immune to the poison of the claws; they could not, as mri could, abandon themselves to the simplicity of the beasts. Therefore regul fled them.

And the unease the contact of the dus had left in him stayed the while he walked down toward the flats, toward the ghostly plumes of geysers under the windtorn clouds: He smelled the wind, felt the familiar force of it, like some living thing.

He found himself looking at the familiar places that he had seen and known all his life, and thinking of each:
this is almost the last time.
There was excitement in his heart and an uncertainty in his stomach that was far from heroic and cheerful. His senses were alive to the whole world, the scents of the earth, acrid and wet, the feel of the damp hot breath of the geysers, that each had their name and manner.

His world.

Homeworld.

Impermanent as the wind, the Kel, but capable of loving the earth. It struck him that they did not know where they were going, that Intel spoke of the Dark as if it were a place, as if it had dimension and depth and duration like the world itself. It came to him that after leaving Kesrith he might never feel earth under his feet again: a Dark with promise, the she’pan had insisted; but he could not imagine what it promised.

And hereafter to deal with kel’ein who were not old, long-thinking men—kel’ein who knew only war and were touchy of their pride and their prerogatives of caste, in a way that the gentle Kel of Kesrith had never been.

To live among the Kel of strangers, where there were kath’ein, who would be his for the asking, and the
chance to get children, and to see his private immortality. He would be son to one she’pan, truebrother to another, honored next whatever fen’ein, Husbands, she would choose to sire her children on the kel’e’ein and the kath’ein of the edun, if first he survived the combat of succession.

Choices spread before him in dazzling array, in dizzying profusion a future full of things neither stale nor predictable nor sure.

He walked swiftly, where reeking sulphur and steam obscured his way, where water dripped from recently sprayed rocks and the heat underground prepared further eruptions. He knew his timing to a nicety. The thin crusts on the right—boiling water and mud underlay much of that ground. The edge that he trod would bear a mri’s weight, but not that of a dus or a regul. Regul had learned bitter lessons about Kesrith’s flatlands; they did not stray now from the safety of their vehicles and aircraft and carefully chosen roads and landing sites. It would take a long time for humans to learn the land, if they would ever dare leave the security of the regul city.

Some would surely die learning it A few mri had done so.

He could cease to care what humans did. They would gather up the People and go, all of them, Dahacha and Palazi and the others; and Intel too—they would persuade her too, though she was old and very tired of straggles; she could at least begin their journey.

And then they could leave without even wanting to look back.

He gazed at last from the long white ridge that was above the port and saw the shape of the regul ship
Hazan
and opposite it, the new one of
Ahanal.

Ahanal—
the Swift.

He slid down the moonlit ridge in a white powdering of dust, and crossed the long slope to the lower ground.

And a shadow flowed among the rocks, large and menacing. He turned, hand on his pistol, and looked up at the hulking form that had mounted a ridge.

Ha-dus. For a moment he did not breathe, did not move. Three others showed. Silent, the great beasts could be, when they stalked; but they did not stalk him. He had only disturbed their vigil.

He remained still, respectful of their right to be here, and they snuffed the air and regarded him with their
small eyes, and finally gave that explosive question sound that indicated the fighting-mood was not on them.

Pardon, brothers,
he wished them in his mind, which was the best way to deal with a strange and skittish dus, and backed a few paces before he edged on toward his former course: language the dus understood, a matter of movements that one made and did not make.

His hand shifted from the pistol to the amulet at his breast. Not the moment to risk his life with the ha-dusei, far from it; he walked more slowly, more cautiously, remembering Pasev’s admonishment to use his eyes and his wits.

They let him go, and when he looked back they were no longer there.

He walked from the white dust to the artificial surface that covered the firm rock of the north rim area; and there was a fence, a laughable affair of wire screen that could stop, nothing that was truly determined, not on Kesrith. He burned it, made himself a door in it, with fine disregard for regul obstructions on the free land. Any mri would do the like rather than walk round a fence, and regul met the like with outrage; but it was the mri way, and in this mri would not oblige the masters.

Bloody-handed savages, he had heard one of the regul younglings call him in the town.

But regul built fences and made machines that scarred the earth, and tried to divide up space itself into territories and limits and parcels to be traded like foodstuffs and metals and bolts of cloth. It was ludicrous in his eyes.

He walked amid the great tangle of abandoned equipage and skeletal braces and vehicles—as he had foreseen; a vast graveyard of vehicles and machines, a clot of metal so tightly jammed together that he had to detour round the whole of it, a heap of vehicles and sleds and aircraft indiscriminately mixed as if some giant hand had piled them there, the vehicles that had brought but the inhabitants of all the settlements the regul had ruled. And there, there a great burned area, a tower in charred and jagged outline against the port lights, an angular tangle of braces and more goods that the regul had cast aside as waste. Storm-shattered, burned; the damage at the port had then been very extensive. He looked about him as he walked, taking inventory of things he had once seen whole and what he saw now damaged, and he began to see reason for the regul’s distressed behavior.

Hazan
stood in a vast assemblage of gantries and hoses and fragile extensions, and about that ship too he saw evident damage. She was aglow with lights, acrawl with black figures that labored on her like carrion insects; and a steady line of vehicles crawled toward her, bearing goods, no doubt, for loading and for repairs.

He passed this area, careful of being seen, and rounded the shape of
Hazan.
There, a tower before him, stood
Ahanal
once more, looming against the sky with only one light brought to bear upon her hull.

He drew near and saw that she was old, her metal pitted as with acids, her markings seared almost beyond recognition. Long scars marked where shields must have failed.

He voice-hailed them, conscious of the nearness of regul sentries; of a sled that had already started his way.

“Ahanal!”
he cried. “Open your hatch!”

But either they were not prepared to hear or they had reason to be uneasy of the regul; and there was no response from
Ahanal.
He saw the sled veer sharply, corning to a halt near him, and a youngling regul opened the sidescreen to speak to him.

“Mri,” said the regul, “you are not permitted.”

“Is this the order of the bai?” he asked.

“Go away,” the regul insisted. “Kesrithi mri, go away.”

There was a crash of metal: the hatch had opened. He ignored the regul to glance upward at the ship; from which a ramp began to extend. He walked toward it, simply ignoring the regul.

The sled hummed behind him. He moved, narrowly missed: its fender clipped the side of his leg, and the sled circled in front of him, blocking his path.

The window was still open. The youngling regul was breathing hard, his great nostrils opening and shutting in extreme agitation.

“Go back,” it hissed.

He began to step round the sled; it lurched forward and he rolled on his shoulder across its low nose, landed on the other side and ran, shamed and frightened: mri were watching from the ramp, doubtless, outraged at his discomfiture. His legs were weak under him with terror for what he had done, a thing which no mri had ever done:
he had defied the masters directly; but he was the she’pan’s messenger, and if he delayed to argue with the youngling there would be regul authority involved, with orders to obey or disobey, with a crisis for the she’pan that a mere kel’en could not resolve without direct violence.

He ran, hit the echoing solidity of the ramp and raced up it as quickly as he could to meet the mri of the ship, but they were already fading back into the ship and did not stay for him. He heard and felt the ramp taking up behind him, shortening its length as he; overtook the last of them. Lights came on, blinding; doors shut, sealing them safely inside.

Ten kel’ein: Husbands, by their age and dignity. There was cold light and, air piercing in it sterility after the air of Kesrith. The final seal of the lock closed between them and the outside, the ramp in place. There was silenced.

“Sirs,” he remembered to say and stopped looking at them with the many
j’tai
and their grim, stranger’s manner long enough to touch his brow and pay proper respect. He looked up again and unveiled, a courtesy which they grudgingly returned.

“I am Niun s’Intel Zain-Abrin,” he said in the high language as all mri used in formalities. “I bear service to Intel, she’pan of Edun Kesrithun.”

“I am Sune s’Hara Sune-Lir,” said the eldest of them, an old man whose mane grayed at the temples; and who looked to be of the age of Pasev or Eddan; but his fellows were younger, more powerful-looking men. “Does the she’pan Intel fare well?”

“The edun is safe.”

“Does the she’pan intend to come in person?”

“As to that, sir, not until I return with the word of your she’pan.”

He understood somewhat their attitude, that of men who loved and defended their own, who must yield to she’pan Intel, who must yield them too. It was natural that they look on Intel’s messenger with resentment.

“We will take you to her,” said Sune s’Hara, with formal grace. “Come.” And with better courtesy: “You are not injured?”

“No, sir,” he said, and remembered with a sudden flush that it was not proper for him to defer to this man, that he was a messenger, and more than that; he betrayed himself for a very young kel’en and inexperienced in his authority. “Regul and mri are not at ease in Kesrith,” he added, covering his confusion; “There have been words passed.”

“We were met with weapons,” Sune said. “But there were no casualties.”

He walked with them, through corridors of metal, in halls designed for regul. He saw kel’ein and he saw kel’e’ein, veiled and youthful as he; and his pulse quickened—he thought them glorious and beautiful, and tried not to stares though he knew that their eyes were taking close account of him, a stranger among them. Some unveiled in brotherly welcome when he met them, and a great company of them went through the corridors to the main-room, to that center of the ship that was now the hall of a she’pan.

She was middle-aged. He came and bowed his head under her hands, and looked up at her, vaguely disturbed to be greeted by a she’pan not in the familiar earthen closeness of a tower but in this metal place, and by greeting a she’pan who was not kin, whose emblem on her white, blue-edged robes was that of a star, not the hand emblem of Edun Kesrithun.

She was a stranger who must die, who must choose to die or whose champion he must defeat, if she challenged; and he prayed silently to all the gods that this one would be brave and gracious and forego challenge.

Her eyes were hard and she existed in light harsh enough to hurt; and the world that surrounded her was cold and metal. Many, many of the ship-folk surrounded them now, their she’pan, their beloved Mother, and not his: he an intruder, a threat to her life.

They saw a she’pan’s messenger, but one innocent of
j’tai
won in battles—a youth unscarred, untried, and vulnerable to challenge.

He felt her eyes go up and down him, reckoning this, reckoning his world and those who sent him. And beyond her, about her, he saw gold-robed sen’ein; and black-robed kel’ein; and shyly observing from the recesses of the further hall, he saw kath’ein, blue-robes; veilless and gentle and frightened.

And about them, within the other corridors, row on row of hammocks slung like the nestings of Kesrith’s
spiders, threads of white and webbings that laced the room and the sides of the corridors. He was overwhelmed by the number of those that crowded close: and yet it struck him suddenly that hers was his whole species, all reduced to this little ship, and under the present command of this woman.

“Messenger,” she said, “I am Esain of Edun Elagun. How fares Intel?”

Her voice was kinder than her face, and shot through him like sun after night. His heart melted toward her, that she could speak kindly toward him and toward Intel.

“She’pan,” he said, “Intel is well enough.”

He put kindness in his voice, and yet she understood, for a shadow passed through her eyes, and fear; but she was a great lady, and did not flinch.

“What does Intel wish to tell me?” asked Esain.

“She’pan,” he said, “she gave me welcome for you; and sent me to listen to you first of all.”

She nodded slightly, and with a move of her hand bade council attend her: kel’anth and sen’anth and kath’anth came and sat by her; and the fen’ein, her Husbands of the Kel; and the body of the Sen; and while these took their places the others withdrew, and doors were closed.

He remained kneeling before her and carefully removed his
zaidhe
and laid that before him; and on it he laid the
av-kel,
the Kel-sword that was Sirain’s lending, sheathed before Mm, hilt toward her, a token of peace. His hands he folded in his lap. Her kel’ein did the same, hilts; toward him, the stranger in their midst, the visitor admitted to council.