There was weariness in his voice; it trembled. For a moment there was again the man who had been long absent from them. Niun reached out, pressed his arm in a gesture he would have offered a brother of the Kel. "Duncan, I have tried to help you. All that I could do, I have tried."

Duncan closed his eyes, opened them again; his fingers at the dus' neck lifted in a gesture of surrender. "I think that, at least, is the truth."

"We do not lie," he said. "There are the dusei. We cannot."

"I can understand that." Duncan pressed his lips together, a white line, relaxed again, his hand still caressing the dus.

"I would not play at shon'ai with a man in your mood," Niun said, baiting him, searching after hidden things. They had not, in fact, played in some time.

The dus began slowly to give forth its pleasure sound, relaxed to Duncan's fingers as Duncan eased his arm about its fat-rolled neck; it sighed, oblivious to past grief, delighting in present love.

The human pressed his brow to that thick skull, then turned his face to look at Niun. His eyes bore a bruised look, like one long without rest. "It has no happier a life than mine," Duncan said. "I cannot let it have what it wants, and it cannot make me over into a mri."

Niun drew a deep breath, tried to keep images from his mind. "I might destroy it," he said, hushed and quickly. The human, in contact with the beast, flinched, soothed the dus with his hands. Niun understood; he felt soiled even in offering but sometimes it was necessary, when a dus, losing its kel'en, could not be controlled. This one had never gained the kel'en it wished.

"No," Duncan said at last. "No."

He pushed the animal away, and it rose and ambled over to the corner. There was peace in the feeling of the beasts. It was better than it had been.

"I would be pleased," said Niun, "if you would send to tie she'pan your apology."

Duncan sat quietly for a moment, arms on knees. At last he nodded, changed the gesture for a mri one. "When she needs me," he said, "I will come. Tell her so."

"I will tell her."

"Tell her I am sorry."

"I will tell her that too."

Duncan looked at him for a moment, and then gathered himself up and stood looking at the dus. He gave a low whistle to it: it whuffed in interest and heaved itself up and came, followed to the corner where the" pallets were.

And for a long time the human sat and worked over the dus, grooming it and soothing it, even talking to it, which seemed to please the beast. The dus settled, slept. In time, the man did.

Three days later the siren sounded, and they left Nhequuy and its sun. The next world was also without life.

Chapter Fifteen.

DUNCAN TURNED from the Screen that showed the stars and found his dus behind him always, always the beast was with him, shadow, herald, partaker of every privacy of his life. He found no need to touch it. It sighed and settled against his back. He felt it content.

It was strange, when a pain ceased, that it could be gone some considerable time before it was missed.

And that when that pain was gone, it could not be accurately remembered.

Duncan had known in this place, hi kel-hall, upon a certain instant, that he was no longer in pain: he had realized it, sitting here upon the floor; and he could remember the moment, the details, the place that the dus had been lying, the fact that Niun had been sitting exactly so, across the room sewing, that day: odd occupation for a mri warrior, but Duncan had learned well enough that a man tended all his own necessities in the Kel save food, that was taken in common.

Niun's face had been intent, the needle pursuing a steady rhythm. He had worked with skill, as Niun's slender hands knew so many skills. It would take years to learn the half of what Niun's native reflexes and the teaching of his masters had done for him.

Not an arrogant man, Niun: prideful, perhaps, but he never vaunted his abilities . . . save now and again when they practiced a pa.s.sage of arms with the yin'ein that Duncan had made to match the beautiful old weapons that were Niun's. Then Niun was sometimes moved, perhaps from the sheer ennui of practicing with a man with whom he could not extend himself to make a move so fast the eye could not follow it, so tiny and deft and subtle that Duncan hardly knew what had happened to him. Niun did such things, Duncan had noticed also, when he himself had almost settled into smugness in his practice with Niun. The mri subtly informed his student that he was still restraining himself. Restraint.

It governed the kel'en's whole being.

And Niun's restraint made peace where there was none: extended to a human who provoked him, to dusei that at times grew restive and destructive in their confinement extended even to Melein.

There was none of them, Duncan reflected with sudden grim humor, that wanted to disturb Niun, neither human, nor dusei, nor child-queen who relied on him. It was Niun's peace that was on them. The most efficient killers in all creation, Stavros had said of the mri.

He spoke of the Kel, of Niun's kind.

He had spoken before humankind even suspected the waste of stars that now surrounded them.

The record would be traced out, human ships tracking them to dead world after dead world; and there was no other conclusion that could occur to the Haveners manning those ships, but that they were tracing something monstrous to its source.

Duncan absently caressed the shoulder of his dus, thinking, as the same fearful thoughts had circled through his brain endlessly in the pa.s.sing days staring helplessly at Niun, whose imagination surely was sufficient to know what pursued them.

Yet there was no mention of this from Niun; and Melein, having asked her questions, asked nothing more; Niun went to her, but Duncan was not permitted, continuing in her disfavor.

The mri chose to ignore what pursued, to ask no further, to do nothing. Niun lived with him, slept beside him at night in apparent trust and cultivated only the ancient skills of his kind, the weapons of ritual and duel, as if they could avail him at the end.

The yin'ein, ancient blades, against warships, against the likes of Saber. Niun chose, advisedly. An image came: night, and fire, and mri obstinacy. Duncan pushed it aside, and it came back again, recollection of mri stubbornness that would not surrender, that would not compromise, whose concept of modern was lapped in Darks and Betweens and the ways of tsi'mri who were only a moment in the experience of the People.

Modern weapons.

Duncan felt the taint of the word, the scorn implicit in the hal'ari, and hated the human in him that had been too blind to see.

The last battle of the People.

To meet it with modern weapons if it came to that that the People should come to a hopeless fight....

Niun would not, then, plan to survive: the last mri would choose the things that made sense to his own logic, which was precisely what he was doing.

To seek his home.

To recover his ancient ways.

To be mri until the holocaust ended it.

It was all Niun could do, if he chose to think about it, save yield to tsi'mri. Duncan reckoned the depth of the mri's patience, that had borne with an outsider under such conditions even Melein's, who endured Niun's tolerance of a tsi'mri, even that was considerable.

And Niun only practiced at duel with him, patiently, gently practiced, as if he could forget the nature of him.

The yin'ein. They were for Niun the only reasonable choice.

Duncan rested his arm on his knee and gnawed at his lip, felt the disturbance of the dus at his back and reached to settle it guilty in his humanity, that troubled Niun. And yet the thought worried at him and would not let him go that, human that he was, he could not do as Niun did.

That there were for him alternatives that Niun did not possess.

Perhaps, at the end, the mri would let him go.

Or expect him to lift arms against humankind. He tried to imagine it; and all that he could imagine in his hand was the service pistol that rested among his belongings to deal large-scale death for his death: the inclination came on him. He could fight, cornered; he would wish to take a dozen of the lives, human or not, that would take his. But to take up the yin'ein ... he was not mri enough.

There were means of fighting the mri would not use. Human choices.

Slowly, slowly, shattered bits of what had been a SurTac began to sort themselves into order again. "Niun," he said.

The mri was shaping a bit of metal into a thing that looked like an ornament. For several days he had been working at it, painstaking in his attention. "A?" Niun answered.

"I have been thinking: we suffered one failure in instruments. If the she'pan would permit it, I would like to go back to controls, to test the instruments."

Niun stopped. A frown was on his face when he looked up. "I will ask the she'pan," he said.

"I would like," Duncan said, "to give her the benefit of what skills I do have."

"She will send if there is need." "Niun, ask her."

The frown deepened. The mri rested hands on his knees, his metalwork forgotten, then expelled a deep breath and gathered up his work again.

"I want peace with her," Duncan said. "Niun, I have done all that you have asked of me. I have tried to be one of you."

"Other things you have done," said Niun. "That is the problem."

"I am sorry for those things. I want them forgotten. Ask her to see me again, and I give you my word I will not offend against her. There is no peace on this ship without peace with her and none with you."

For a moment Niun said nothing. Then he gave a long sigh. "She has waited for you to ask."

The mri still had power to surprise him. Duncan sat back in confusion, all his reckonings of them in disorder. "She will see me, then."

"Whenever you would decide to ask. Go and speak to her. The doors are not locked."

Duncan rested yet a moment, all impetus taken from him; and then he gathered himself to his feet and started for the door, the dus behind him. "Duncan." He turned. "My brother of the Kel," said Niun softly, "in all regard for you remember that I am the she'pan's hand, and that should you err with her I must not tolerate it."

There was, for the moment, a ward-impulse in the room: the dus backed and its ears lay down. "No," said Duncan. It stopped. And he drew the av-tlen from his belt, and would have laid aside all his weapons. "Hold these if you suspect any such thing of me." It was demeaning to surrender weapons; Duncan offered, knowing this, and the mri flinched visibly.

"No," Niun said.

Duncan slid the blade back into place, and left, the dus walking behind him. Niun did not follow: the sting of that last exchange perhaps forbade, and his suspicion would worry at him the while Duncan reckoned it, that although Niun slept by him, though he let down his guard to him in weapons-practice, to teach him, Melein's safety was another matter: the kel'en was deeply, deeply uneasy.

To admit a tsi'mri to the she'pan's presence, armed: it surely went against the mri's instincts.

But the doors had been unlocked.

The doors had always been unlocked, Duncan supposed suddenly; he had never thought to try them. Melein herself had slept with unlocked doors, trusting him; and that shocked him deeply, that the mri could be in that regard so careless with him.

And not careless.

Prisons, locked doors, things sealed, depriving a man of weapons all these things went against mri nature. He had known it from the beginning in dealing with them: no prisoners, no capture and even in the shrine, the pan'en was only screened off, not locked away.

Even controls, even that had always been accessible to him, any time that he had decided to walk where he had been told not to go; he might have quietly gone forward, sealed the doors, and held the ship could, at this moment.

He did not.

He went to the door that was Melein's, to that dim hall, painted with symbols, vacant of all but a chair and the mats for sitting. He entered it, his steps loud on the tiles.

"She'pan," he called, and stood and waited: stood, for it was the she'pan who offered or did not offer, to sit. The dus settled heavily next to him, resting on its hindquarters finally sank down to lay its head on the tiles. A sigh gusted from it.

And suddenly a light step sounded behind him. Duncan turned, faced the ghost-like figure in the shadow, white-robed and silent. He was not veiled. He was not sure whether this was polite or not, and glanced down to show his respect.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

"To beg your pardon," he said.

She answered nothing for a moment, only stared at him as if she waited for something further.

"Niun said," he added, "that you were willing to see me."

Her lips tautened. "You still have a tsi'mri's manners."

Anger came on him; but the statement was the simple truth. He smothered it and averted his eyes a second time to the floor. "She'pan," he said softly, "I beg your pardon."

"I give it," she said. "Come, sit down."

The tone was suddenly gracious; it threw him off his balance, and for an instant he stared at her, who moved and took her chair, expecting him to settle at her feet.

"By your leave," he said, remembering Niun, "I ought to go back. I think Niun wanted to follow me. Let me go and bring him."

A frown creased Melein's smooth brow. "That would reproach him, kel Duncan, if you let him know why. No. Stay. If there is peace in the House, he will know it; and if not, he will know that. And do not call him by his name to me; he is first in the Kel."

"I am sorry," he said, and came and sat at her feet, while the dus came and cast itself down between them. The beast was uneasy. He soothed it with his hand.

"Why," asked Melein, "have you been driven to come to me?"

The question struck him with confusion rude and abrupt, she was, and able to read him. He shrugged, tried to think of something at the edge of the truth, and could not. "She'pan, I am a resource you have. And I wish that you would make use of what I know while there is time."

The membrane flashed across her eyes, and the dus lifted its head. She leaned forward and soothed the beast, her fingers gently moving on its velvet fur. "And what do you know, kel Duncan, that so suddenly troubles you?"

"That I can get you home alive." He laid his hand on the dus, fearless to do so, and looked into the she'pan's golden eyes. "He has taught me; is not managing ships a part of the skill of a kel'en? If he will learn, I will teach him; and if not then I will take what care of the ship I can do myself. His skill is with the yin'ein, and mine never will approach his but this I can do, this one thing. My gift to you, she'pan, and worth a great deal to you when you reach your home."

"Do you bargain?"

"No. There is no if in it. A gift, that is all."

Her fingers did not cease to stroke the dus' warm hide. Her eyes lifted again to his. "Are you my kel'en, kel Duncan?"

Breath failed him an instant. The hal'ari, the kel-law had begun to flow in his mind like blood in his veins: the ques-tion'stood, yes or no, and there was no going back afterward.