The Faded Sun Trilogy (88 page)

“You found him,” Ras said.

“Where is the rest of the tribe?”

She lifted a robed arm south-southeast, as they were bearing.

“Are they well?” Niun asked, bitter at having to ask.

“When I left.”

Duncan made a faltering move and sat down, bowed over. Ras spared him a cold glance. Niun swallowed pride and knelt down by him, fended off the dus that wanted close to him, then let it, for the warmth was comfort to
Duncan. Niun leaned his hands against his own knees, to rest, the reassurance of Ras’s message coiling uncertainly in his belly. He put aside the rest of his reserve and looked up at Ras. “All safe?”

“Kel Ros, sen Otha, sen Kadas . . . dead.”

He let it go, bowed his head, too weary to go into prolonged questioning with Ras. He had not known the sen’ein; Ros had been a quiet man, even for a kel’en; he had never known him either.

Ras settled with a rustling of cloth, kel-sword across her knees to lean on.

“There are others out there,” Niun said at last. “Hao’nath. They have been following some few days.”

If that perturbed Ras she did not show it.

“Did Hlil send you?” he asked.

“No.”

The old feeling returned, that tautness at the gut that assailed him whenever Ras turned up in his path, or behind him. Brother and sister was the obligation between them; it was mockery. For a moment the hao’nath themselves seemed warmer.

“Come,” he said. “Duncan, can you?”

Duncan moved and tried. Niun rose and took his arm, lifting him up, and at the unsteadiness he felt, slipped an arm about him, started in the direction the dus-sense indicated.

Ras walked beside him this time, a shielded blankness in the dus-sense. Mri of Kesrith had learned that inner veil, living among dusei; Ras had, of loathing or of necessity, ignoring even a warding-impulse to stay with him.

The light brought detail to the land, the rounded hills, the limitless flat, the shadowy gape of the cut they had passed.

There was nothing in all of it that indicated a camp.

*   *   *

The preparations had that cold and lonely feeling which always came of dawn hours and broken routines. Galey meddled with his personal gear while the three regs with him did the same, and all of them waited on Boaz.

Ben Shibo, Moshe Kadarin, Ed Lane, two legitimate regs and Lane, who was more tech than hot, in armscomp. Shibo was backup pilot; Kadarin he had picked for a combination of reasons the others shared, the several world-patches on his sleeve, a personnel file that indicated an absence of hatreds, a phlegmatic acceptance of close contact with regul.

They took to Boaz’s presence the same way: quietly, keeping misgivings to themselves.

At present the misgivings were his own, a fretting at the delay, wondering if at the last moment Luiz might not confound them all by interposing his own orders.

But at length she came, Luiz trailing anxiously in her wake. She had a clutter of gear with her photographic and otherwise; and Galey objected to nothing—it was civ business and none of his. She paused to press a kiss on the old surgeon’s cheek, and Galey turned his head, feeling oddly intrusive between these two. “Load aboard,” he told the others; Kadarin and Lane gathered up the gear and went out. Shibo delayed to offer a hand for Boaz’s gear.

“No,” she said, adjusting the straps. Fiftyish, stout to the extent she could not fit into one of their fight suits, she wore an insulated jacket and breeches that in no wise made her slighter. Her crown of gray-blonde braids lent her a curious dignity. She looked at him, questioning. “Out,” he said. She paused for another look at Luiz and went.

The question had occurred to him more than once, how much
Saber
knew, whether Luiz had communicated to Koch precisely which civ had been included. There was at the back of his mind a doubt on that point, the suspicion that he was ultimately responsible, and that Koch would lay matters to his account. Boaz was not expendable.

So what good,
she had cornered him,
what good is some assistant of mine with good legs and no comprehension of what he’s seeing? What’s known of mri customs is my work; what’s known of the mri writings I broke in the first place. You need me to get the answers you’re going for. I’m your safety out there.

He wanted her, trusted her attitudes that did not want holocaust. He offered his own hand to Luiz, forbore the question and walked out, after the others.

Cold, thin air. Without the breathers for the short trip between hatch and shuttle, they were all panting by the time they had the shuttle hatch closed, and settled into the cheerless, cramped interior. Galey took his place at
controls, gave them light other than what came in from outside, started up the engines.

He cast a look back and to the side of him, found nothing but calm faces in the greenish glow . . . wondered if Boaz was afraid: no less than the rest of them, he reckoned.

He cleared with
Flower
and started lift, disturbing the sand. He did not seek any great altitude; the ground ripped past in the dawning, a blur of infrequent irregularities in the sands. Eventually the chasm gaped beneath them and he banked and dropped. He passed no orders, kept scan audio in his ear, and Shibo, beside him, watched as intently.

They went for the nearest of the sites; and it was the safest approach in his calculation, the best approach to that site potentially ready and hostile . . . . to fly below rim level. Dizzying perspective opened before them in the dawn, rocks blurring past on the left. Air currents jerked at them. In places sand torrented off the heights before them, cables and ribbons of sand which fell kilometers down to the bottom of the sea chasm . . . stained with sun colors. Rounded peaks rose disembodied out of the chasm haze.

And nearer and nearer they came to the city, to that point at which he had designated on their charts a limit to air approach.

His hands sweated; no one had spoken a word for the duration of the flight. He gathered a little altitude, peering over the rim and hoping to live through the probe.

“No fire,” Lane breathed at his shoulder . . . for confirmation, perhaps, that they were still alive.

The ruins were in sight now; he slipped over the plateau, settled down, shut down the engines.

No one seemed to breathe for the moment.

“Out,” Galey said, freeing himself of the restraints. There was no question, no hesitation, no sorting of gear: all of that on their part was already done. They went for the exit and scrambled down, himself last, to secure the ship. After that there was the ping of metal cooling, the whisper of the sand and the wind, nothing more. They shouldered the burden of breather-tanks, pulled up the masks which rasped with their breaths, adjusted equipment.

And walked, an easy pace, heavily booted against the denizens of the sands. Breathing seemed easier out of the vulnerable vicinity of the ship.

Boaz meddled with a pocket, fished out black and gold cloth which fluttered lightly in the breeze. “Suggest you adopt the black,” she said. Galey took one, and the other three did, while Boaz tied the conspicuous gold to her arm.

“Black is Kel,” he said, “and gold is scholars.”

“Noncombatant. If they respect that, you’ve a chance, in an encounter.”

“Because of you.”

“It’s something they might at least question.”

It was something, at least. There was the city before them, a far, far walk, and a lonely one. They were smaller targets apart from the ship, less deserving of the great weapons of the city.

Most of all was the cold, the knife-sharp air, and an abiding consciousness that they had no help but themselves.

Mri did not take prisoners. Humanity had learned that long ago.

The tents were in sight, appearing out of the evening and a roll of the land, and there was still no forcing. Duncan tried, and had soon to sink down and rest all the same, senses completely grayed for the moment, so that all he felt was his dus and the touch of its hot velvet body.

More came, then: dus-carried . . . Niun’s presence, the cold blankness that was Ras Kov-Nelan. It was one with the sickness that throbbed in his temples, that muddle of anxiousness and cold.

“Go on,” Duncan said after a moment. “Am I a child, that I cannot walk to what I Can see? You go on. Send someone out for me if you must.”

Niun paid no heed to him. He moved his numb hands over the shoulder of the dus, his vision clearing finally. Niun was kneeling near him, Ras standing. Somewhere was consciousness of what they sought; somewhere was the sense of their pursuers, anger and desire, an element in which he had moved for uncounted time, that gnawed persistently at them, far, far east and north, dus-carried.

“Duncan,” Niun urged at him.

Unjust, that they would not let him walk his own way, in his own time; he began to reason like a child, and knew it, at some remote distance from his own intelligence. Niun seized his arm and pulled him up, and he stayed on his feet, moved when they did, reckoning to make it this time. He shut his eyes and simply followed dus-impulse, lost to it for a time, feeling occasionally Niun’s touch when he would falter. The coppery taste of blood grew more pronounced. He coughed, and the moisture began to trickle inward, so that he wove in his steps and began to shake in his joints . . . frightened, mortally frightened. A knee gave, and Niun had him before he fell, keeping him on his feet. There was a touch at his other side, likewise holding him. He bent and coughed and
cleared his senses, dully aware of both of them, aware of dus-sense, that was roused and angry.

Kel’ein, Ahead of them, between them and the camp in the dusk, appeared a shadow like fluid rolling across the land. It moved out toward them. Dus-feelings moiled in the air like the scent of storm.
“Yai!”
Niun rebuked them both, and stilled it. “Send them away, Duncan. Send them off.”

It was hard. It was like yielding up a part of him. He dismissed the dus, felt suddenly cold, and clearer minded. The beasts strayed off a distance. He took more of his own weight, looking at that line of kel’ein who stopped before them, recognized the one who walked forward, saw sudden yielding in the line which flowed about them and included them. Hlil. He remembered the name as the kel’en tugged the veil down.

“She is well?” Niun asked.

“Well,” Hlil answered, and it dimly occurred to Duncan that
she
was Melein. “Ras,” Hlil said then, acknowledging her presence with a curious prickle of coldness in that tone. And for only a moment the kel’en stared directly at him, no more warmly.

“Hlil,” Niun said, “there are hao’nath—” He pointed northerly. “Within this range, and with blood between us, it may be. Let the Kel keep an eye to that direction.”

“Aye,” Hlil said in that same still tone.

Niun shed the pack he had borne so far into the hands of a young kel’en, reached and took Duncan again by the sleeve, urging him to walk. Duncan did so. His vision blurred, cleared again. There was silence about them, not so much as a whisper from the Kel as they walked back toward the tents that now shone light-through-black in the gathering dark.

There was a stir as they reached the tents, other castes venturing out to see, kath’ein veilless and solemn, gathering children to them as they saw what had returned to them . . . sen’ein too, who whispered together.

They went to the greatest of the tents . . . realization struck him: the she’pan; he had that before him, need of wit and sense and whatever eloquence he could summon.

Warmth hit their faces like a wall as they swept within: warmth and gold light of lamps lit the antechamber of the tent, and the smell of incense choked him. They paused there, and beyond the veil which shrouded the center
light gleamed on ovoid metal, a shimmer through gauze.

The pan’en. They had gotten it back. He was numbly relieved that among their other possessions they had gained this again, this most precious thing to them. Niun paid it respect; and respect to the Mystery he reverenced. He thought that he ought, but it was not something Niun had shown him fully, this last and most secret aspect of the People. He stood back instead, intimidated by the fervor of the others, made a token gesture toward removing his veil as they had unveiled before the Holy, but he kept his head down and his alien face inconspicuous.

Then Niun came and took his arm, drawing him through the curtain at their right, into the huge area of assembly, among the others.

Gold sen-cloth was the drapery; and golden the lamplight; gold-robed sen’ein made a bow about the single white figure which was Melein. She took her chair as the shadow of the Kel flowed about the walls to left and right; and a few older kath’ein insinuated themselves next Sen like a touch of bright sky. Duncan tried to walk steadily through the parting ranks without Niun’s hand, which hovered at his elbow. Manners came back to him, recollection of courtesies which had to be paid, things told him by kel-law, though he had never been so much the center of matters.

Niun went beyond the place he should, took Melein’s hands, kissed her brow and was kissed in return, whispered low words which had to do with hao’nath and strangers. Her amber eyes flicked once with distress, and she inclined her head.

“So,” she said in a low voice, “that will come as it will.” Very slightly her hands moved, beckoning.

Duncan came the few steps forward, settled to his knees as Niun did, head bowed; and because he did not come with favor, he reached and swept off the
zaidhe
in humility, baring his shoulder length hair, so unlike a mri’s bronze mane. Unshaven, bloody about the nose . . . he even Stank, and knew it. Humans smelled differently; he had always been careful of cleanliness and of shaving. He felt a nakedness in this exposure he had never felt in his life.

“Kel Duncan,” Melein said softly.

“She’pan,” he breathed, head down, hands clenched upon the veil and headcloth in his lap. The calm control
of her voice made silence in which there was scarcely even the rustle of cloth in the assembly. His temples pounded, and his throat was tight.