The Faded Sun Trilogy (46 page)

He sank into the offered chair. “Are they all right?”

“I don’t know. Yes. Yes—they
were
all right. They were set into automeds for the transfer. If they just leave them in them, they’ll fare well enough for a while. Stavros’ orders. Stavros’ orders, they said.” She picked up a sealed cylinder from the center of the littered desk and gave it to him with a misgiving stare. “For you. They left it.”

He received the tube and broke the seal, eased out the paper it contained and read the message to himself.
Conditions as discussed apply, contingency as discussed has occurred. Observe patience and discretion. Stand by. Destroy message. Stavros.

Regul troubles: ship incoming. The mri were going out, off-station, and himself with them, soon enough. He looked sadly at Boaz, wadded the message in his hand, pocketed it; he would dispose of it later.

“Well?” asked Boaz, which she surely knew she should not ask; he Stayed silent. She averted her eyes, pursed her lips, and laced her fingers under her plump chin. “I belong to a ship,” she said, “which is—unfortunately—under the governor’s authority in some degree, where it regards putting us offworld or seizing what pertains to declared hostiles. For now, in those regards, that authority is absolute. I personally, am not under his orders, and neither is Luiz. I shouldn’t say this freely; but I will tell you that if you are personally not satisfied with the treatment of the mri—there can be a protest filed at Haven.”

Brave Boaz. Duncan looked at her with an impulse of guilt in his heart. There was no word from her of canceled programs, interrupted researches, the seizure of work on which she had labored with such care. The mri themselves occurred to her. This was something he had not foreseen; and yet it was like her.

“Boz,” he said, the name the staff called her. “I think everything is all right with them.”

She made a noncommittal sound, leaned back. She said nothing, but she looked a little relieved.

“They didn’t take the dusei, did they?” he asked.

Boaz smiled suddenly, gave a fierce laugh. “No. The beasts wouldn’t sedate. They tried. There was no way they would go down into that hold with them. They asked
Flower
staff to do it, got rather high-handed about it; and Luiz told them they could go down for themselves and throw a net over them. There were no volunteers.”

“I don’t doubt,” Duncan said. “I’d better get down there and see about them.”

“You can’t tell me what this business is.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

She nodded, shrugged “You can’t tell me whether things are likely to reverse themselves.”

“I don’t think they will.”

Again she nodded. “Well,” she said sadly. That was all.

He took his leave of her and walked out, through the lab that was, he saw, in a disorder that had nothing to do with research, small items that had been on the shelves now gone, books missing.

Saber
’s men had been thorough.

But if they had taken the mri from the ship, then the dusei might pine and die, like one that he had seen grieving over a dead mri, a beast that would not leave for any urging.

He took that downward corridor that led him to the hold. His stomach was already knotting in dread, remembering what they could do in distress. He had been among them since that first night, brought them food and water, and they had reacted to that with content. But now they had been disturbed by strangers, attacked; and the fear of that feeling that had possessed him once was as strong as any fear of venomed claws.

The sensation did not recur. He entered the hold high on the catwalk, looked down at the brown shapes that huddled below, and cautiously descended to them, fearing them and determined not to yield to it. The regul avowed that the dusei thrived on synthetic protein, which was abundant enough in the station stores; that they would, in fact, eat anything they were offered, which presumably included humans and regul, as he had heard Luiz remark.

The air was remarkably fresh, a clean though occupied aroma to the hold, not so pronounced as with the fastidious regul. The beasts were very neat in their habits, and remarkably infrequent in their necessary functions, metabolizing fluids in such a fashion that Boaz and Luiz found exceedingly intriguing, with a digestion that exacted fluids and food value from anything available of vegetable or animal tissue, and gave off practically no waste compared to the bulk they had ingested—and that quite dry. Regul information on them was abundant, for regul ships had kept kel’ein and dusei for many years. Dusei seemed to go dormant during long confinement, once settled and content. In general dusei put less demand on a ship’s life-support than humans, mri, or regul.

It was the awesome size of them that made them uncomfortable companions, the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing that could be done should one of them run amok.

Duncan stepped from the last tread of the stairs, saw both dusei rise with a keening moan that echoed throughout the deep hold. They stood shoulder to shoulder, nostrils working, smelling the stranger. Their small eyes, which were perhaps not overly keen, glittered in the light. The larger of them was a ragged, scarred beast: this one Duncan took for Niun’s own; and he thought he also knew the smaller, sleek one for a one-time companion of theirs.

The big one shambled forward with his pigeon-toed gait, looked Duncan up and down and rumbled a deep purring that evinced pleasure in the meeting. The smaller one came, urgently thrusting with its broad nose at Duncan’s leg.

He sat down on the last steps between them, and the big animals settled in an enormous mass about his feet, so that they touched. He stroked the velvet-furred hides—remarkably pleasant, that velvet-over-muscle. There was no sound at all but the rumbling of the dusei, a monotonous, peaceful sound.

They were content. They accepted him, accepted a human because of Niun, because they had known him in Niun’s company, he thought, although they had disdained his touch while Niun was there. When once he had attempted escape, the dusei had hunted him, had cornered him, all the while pressing at him with such terror as he began to understand was a weapon of theirs.

I wonder that they did not kill you
, Niun had said that night.

Duncan wondered now that they rested so calmly after what had been done to them, after humans had tormented them, trying to sedate them; but the dusei’s metabolism absorbed poisons, and perhaps absorbed the drug. There was no evidence of harm to them, not even any of disturbance in their manner.

Neither men nor fully animal, the dusei, but four-footed halflings, shadow-creatures, that partook of the nature of both . . . that offered themselves to the mri, but were not taken: they were companions of the mri, and not property. He doubted that humanity could accept such a bargain. The regul could not.

He sat content, touching, being touched, and calm; he had not known that night whether admitting the dusei to the ship was right: now it seemed very right. He found himself suddenly full of warmth—he was receiving. He knew it all at once, knew the one that so touched him, the small one, the small one that was still more than three times the bulk of a big man. It purred with a steady, numbing rhythm, leached passion from, him as water stole the salts of Kesrith from the soil and displaced them seaward.

It drowned them, overwhelmed them.

He drew back suddenly, panicked; and this the dusei did not like. They snorted and withdrew. He could not recover them. They stood and regarded him, apart, with small and glittering eyes.

Cold flooded into him, self-awareness.

They had come of their own accord, using him: they wanted—and he had given them access; and still he needed them, them and the mri, them and the mri . . . .

He gathered himself and scrambled up the narrow stairs, sweating and tense when he gained the safety of the catwalk. He looked down. One of them reared up, tall and reaching with its paws. Its voice shook the air as it cried out.

He hurled himself for the other side of the door and sealed and locked it, hands shaking. It was not rational, this fear. It was not rational. They used it. It was a weapon.

And they were where they wanted to be now: at a station orbiting Kesrith, and near the mri. He had done everything they wanted. He would do it again, because he needed them, needed the calming influence they might exert with the mri, who drew comfort from them, who relied on them. He began to suspect variables beyond his
reckoning.

But he could not leave them.

The thoughts wound him in upon himself, panic-fear and the gut-deep certainty of something wrong. He realized that he had been greeted by a man in the corridor some ten paces back, and absently turned and tried to amend the discourtesy, but it was too late; the man had walked on. Duncan enfolded himself in his private turmoil and kept walking, hands in his pockets, wadding into smaller and smaller balls the messages he had thrust there, Boaz’ and Stavros’.

Confound you, Niun
, he thought violently, and wondered if he were sane for the mere suspicion he entertained. The dusei, whatever they were, could not touch his conscious thoughts; it was at some lower level they operated, something elemental and sensual and sensory—possible to reject if a man could master his fear of them and his need of them: that was surely the wedge they used for entry, fear and pleasure, either one or the other. It felt very good to please a dus; it was threatening to annoy one.

Yet the researchers had not picked it up. There was nothing of the kind reported in their observations of the beasts.

Perhaps the beasts had not spoke to them.

Duncan closed the door to his own small quarters, opposite the now-vacant compartments of the mri, and began packing, folding up the clothes that he had scarcely unpacked.

When he had done, he sat down in the chair by his desk and keyed in a call to
Saber
by way of
Flower
’s communications.

Transfer of dusei possible and necessary
, he sent to
Saber
’s commander.

Stand by
, the message came back to him. And a moment later:
Report personally
Saber
Command soonest.

There was nothing remarkable about a SurTac boarding a military ship; there should not have been, but the rumors were flying among the crew. Duncan surmised that by the looks that slid his way as he was escorted up to Command: escorted, not allowed to range at will, to exchange words with crewmen. Even the intercom was silent, an unusual hush on a ship like
Saber.

He was shown into the central staff offices, not a command station, and directly into the presence of the ranking commander over military operations in the Kesrithi zones, R.A. Koch. Duncan was uneasy in the meeting. SurTacs had paper rank enough to assure obedience from the run of regulars, and that circumstance was bitterly resented, the more so because the specials flaunted those privileges with utter disdain for the protocols and dignity of regular officers: the gallows bravado of their short-lived service. He did not expect courtesy; but Koch’s frown seemed from thought, not hostility, the ordinary expression of his seamed face.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, SurTac Duncan.” The accent was Havener, like most that had come to Kesrith, the fleet of lately threatened Elag/Haven.

“Sir,” he said; he had not been invited to sit down.

“We’re on short schedule,” Koch said. “Regul have a ship, incoming,
Siggrav.
Fortunately it seems to be a doch Alagn ship. Bai Hulagh’s warning them to mind their manners; and we’re probably going to have them docking here. They’re skittish. Get yourself and your mri clear as quickly as possible. You’re going to be given probe
Fox.
Probably your instructions are clearer than mine are at the moment.” A prickle of distrust there, resentment of Stavros: Duncan caught it clearly. “
Fox
is transferring crew at the moment: some upset there.
Siggrav
is still some distance out. Your end of this operation is a matter of go when ready.”

“Sir,” said Duncan. “I want the dusei. I can handle them; I’ll see to transferring them to
Fox.
I also want the mri trade goods that are stocked on-station, whatever you can spare me help to load.”

Koch frowned, and this time it was not in thought “All right,” he said after a moment. “I’ll put a detail on it now.” He looked long at Duncan, while Duncan became again conscious that his face was marked with half a tan, that the admiral saw a stranger in more than one sense. Here was a power equal to that of Stavros, adjunct, not under Stavros’ authority save where it regarded political decisions: and the decision that took
Fox
from Koch’s command and overmanned Koch’s own ship with discontent, lately transferred crew and scientists did not sit well with Koch. He did not look like a man who was accustomed to accept such interference.

“I’ll be ready, sir,” Duncan said softly, “when called.”

“Best you go over to
Fox
now and settle in,” said Koch. “Getting her underway would relieve-pressure here. You’ll have your supplies; we’ll provide what assistance we can with the dusei. All haste appreciated.”

“Thank you, sir,” Duncan said. Dismissed, he took his leave, picked up his escort again at the door.

Koch had spent forty years on the mri, Duncan reckoned; he looked old enough to have seen the war from its beginning, and he doubtless had no love for the species. No Havener, who had seen his world overrun by regul and recovered by humanity at great cost, could be looked upon to entertain any charity toward the regul or toward the mri kel’ein who had carried out their orders.

The same could be said, perhaps, of Kiluwans—like Stavros but remote Kiluwa, on humanity’s fringes, had produced a different breed, not fighters, but a stubborn people devoted to reason and science and analyzing—a little, it had to be suspected, like the regul themselves. Overrun, they dispersed, and might never seek return. The Haveners were easier to understand. They simply hated. It would be long before they stopped hating.