Hulagh’s eyes strayed past her shoulder to the chamber itself, a gesture of contempt for the conditions in which the she’pan held state, in rooms barely sanitary, in halls innocent of amenities, decorated with that frighteningly crude and powerful art of symbols, the meaning of which he doubted even the mri remembered. They were superstitious folk: If ill or injured, mri would turn from regul help and die rather than admit weakness, desiring only the presence of other mri or the presence of a dus. This was their religion at work.
Usually they died, all the same. We are warriors, regul had heard often enough, not carriers of burdens, sellers of goods, practitioners of arts, whatever the offered opportunity or benefit. Medicine, engineering, literature, agriculture, physical labor of any sort as long as there was a single regul to do it for them—all these things the mri despised.
Animals, Hulagh thought, plague and pestilence—they are nothing but animals. They enjoy war. They have deliberately prolonged this one in their stupidity. We ought never to have unleashed them in war. They like it too well.
And to the youth, the arrogant young kel’en who sat by the she’pan’s knee, he asked, “Youngling, would you not wish to learn? Would you not wish to have the things that regul enjoy, to know the past and the future and how to build in metals?”
The golden eyes nictitated, a sign of startlement in a mri. “I am of the Kel,” said the young warrior. “And education is not appropriate for my caste. Ask the Sen.”
The young woman in gold looked on him in her turn, her unveiled face a perfect mask, infuriating, expressionless. “The Sen is headed by the she’pan. Ask the she’pan, bai, whether she desires your knowledge. If she bids me learn, then I will learn what you have to teach.”
They played with him, games of ignorance, mri humor. Hulagh saw it in the eyes of the she’pan, who remained motionless through this circular exchange.
“We know,” said the she’pan finally, “that these things have always been available to us. But the rewards of service that we desired were other than what you offer; and of late they have been scant.”
Enigmas. The mri cherished their obscurities, their abstruseness. There was no helping such people. “If one of you,” Hulagh said with deliberate patience, “had ever deigned to specify what reward you sought, then we might have found the means to give it to you.”
But the she’pan said nothing to this, as the mri had always said nothing on this score: We serve for pay, some had said scornfully, similarly questioned, but they offered nothing of the truth of the whole; and this she’pan like her ancestors said nothing at all.
“It would be a comfort to my people,” said Hulagh, trying that ancient ploy, the appeal to legalities of oath and to mri conscience, and it was partly truth at least. “We are accustomed to the protection of mri with us. We are not fighters. Even if one or two mri should be on the ship as we leave, we would feel safer in our journey.”
“If you demand a mri for your protection,” said the she’pan, “I must send one.”
“She’pan,” said Hulagh, trying again to reach some point of reason, forgetful of his dignity and the watching eyes of Chul. “Would you then send one, alone, without his people, to travel so far as we are going, and without the likelihood of return? This would be hard. And what is there possibly in these regions to detain you once we have gone?”
“Why should we not,” asked the she’pan, “bring our own ship in your wake—to Nurag? Why are you so anxious to have us aboard your own, bai Hulagh?”
“We have laws,” Hulagh said, his hearts pounding. “Surely you realize we must observe cautions. But it will be safer for you than here.”
“There will be humans here,” said the she’pan. “Have you not arranged it so?”
Hulagh found nothing in his vast memory with which to understand that answer. It crawled uneasily through his thoughts, rousing ugly suspicions.
“Would you,” Hulagh asked, compelled to directness, “change your allegiance and serve humans?”
The she’pan made a faint gesture, meaningless to a regul. “I will consult with my Husbands,” she said. “If it pleases you, I will send one of my people with you if you demand it. We are in service to the regul. It would not be seemly or lawful for me to refuse to send one of us with you in your need, o Hulagh, bai of Kesrith.”
Now, now came courtesy; he did not trust this late turn of manners, though mri could not lie; neither had he thought that he could lie, before this conference and his moment of necessity, which had been spent all in vain. Mri might indeed not lie; but neither was it likely that the she’pan was without certain subtleties, and possibly she was laughing within this appearance of courtesy. And the Kel was veiled and inscrutable.
“She’pan,” he said, “what of this ship that is coming?”
“What of it?” echoed the she’pan.
“Who are these mri that are coming? Of what kindred? Are they of this edun?”
Again the curious gesture of the hand that returned to stroke the head of the young female who leaned against her knee.
“The name of the ship, bai, is Ahanal. And do you make formal request that one of us accompany you?”
“I will tell you this when you have consulted with your Husbands and given me the answer to other questions,” said Hulagh, marking how she had turned aside his own question. He smoldered with growing anger.
These were mri. They were a little above the animals. They knew nothing and remembered less, and dared play games with regul.
He was also within their territory, and of law on this forsaken world, he was the sole representative.
For the first time he looked upon the mri not as a comfort, not as interestingly quaint, nor even as a nuisance, but as a force like the dusei, dull-wittedly ominous. He looked at the dark-robed warriors, this stolid indifference to the regul authority that had always commanded them.
For mri to challenge the will of the regul—this had never happened, not directly, not so long as mri served the varied regul docha and authorities; Hulagh sorted through his memory and found no record of what the mri had done when it was not a question of traditional obedience. This was that most distasteful of all possible situations, one never before experienced by any regul on record, one in which his own vast memory was as helpless as that of a youngling, blank of helpful data.
Regul in the throes of complete senility sometimes claimed sights of memories that were yet in the future, saw things that had not yet been and on which there could not possibly be data. Sometimes these elders were remarkably accurate in their earliest estimations, an accuracy which disturbed and defied analysis. But the process then accelerated and muddled all their memories, true and not-yet-true and never-true, and they went mad beyond recall. Of a sudden Hulagh suffered something of the sort, projected the potentials of this situation and derived an insane foreboding of these warlike creatures turning on him and destroying him and Chul at once, rising against the regul docha in bloody frenzy. His two hearts labored with the horror not only of this image, but of the fact that he had perceived it at all. He was 310 years of age. He was bordering on decline of faculties, although he was now at the peak of his abilities and looked to be for decades more. He was terrified lest decline have begun, here, under the strain of so much strangeness. It was not good for an old regul to absorb so much strangeness at once.
“She’pan,” he said, trying the last, the very last assault upon her adamancy. “You are aware that your ill-advised delay may make it impossible in the end to take any of your people aboard to safety.”
“We will consult,” she said, which was neither aye nor nay, but he took it for absolute refusal, judging that he would never in this world hear from the she’pan, not until that ship had come.
There was something astir among mri, something that involved Kesrith and did not admit regul to the secret; and he remembered the young kel’en who had suicided when he was denied permission to leave—who would have borne the news of human presence to the
she’pan already if he had been allowed off that ship; and there was that perversity in mri, that, deprived of their war, they might be capable of committing racial suicide, a last defense against humans, who came to claim this world—and when humans met this, they would never believe that the mri were acting alone. They would finish the mri and move against regul: another foresight, of horrid aspect.
Mri would retreat only under direct order, and if they slipped control, they would not retreat at all. Of a sudden he cursed the regul inclined to believe the mri acquiescent in this matter—Gruran, who had passed him this information and caused him to believe in it.
He cursed himself, who had confirmed the data, who had not considered mri as a priority, who had been overwhelmingly concerned with loading the world’s valuables aboard Hazan, and with managing the humans.
Hulagh heaved himself up, found his muscles still too fatigued from his first climb to manage his weight easily, and was not spared the humiliation of having to be rescued from relapse by the youngling Chul, who flung an arm about him and braced him with all its might.
The she’pan snapped her fingers and the arrogant young kel’en at her knee rose up easily and added his support to Hulagh’s right side.
“This is very strenuous for the bai,” Chul said, and Hulagh mentally cursed the youngling. “He is very old, she’pan, and this long trip has tired him, and the air is not good for him.”
“Niun,” said the she’pan to her kel’en, “escort the bai down to his vehicle.” And the she’pan rose unaided, and observed with bland face and innocent eyes while Hulagh wheezed with effort in putting one foot in front of the other. Hulagh had never missed his lost youth and its easy mobility; age was its own reward, with its vast memory and the honors of it, with its freedom from fear and with the services and respect accorded by younglings; but this was not so among mri. He realized with burning indignation that the she’pan sought this comparison between them in their age, furnishing her people with the spectacle of the helplessness of a regul elder without his sleds and his chairs.
Among mri, light and quick, and mobile even in extreme age, this weakness must be a curiosity. Hulagh wondered if mri made jest of regul weakness in this regard as regul did of mri intelligence. No one had ever seen a mri laugh outright, not in 2, 202 years. He feared there was laughter now on their veiled faces.
He looked on the face of Chul, seeking whether Chul understood. The youngling looked only bewildered, frightened; it panted and wheezed with the burden of its own and another’s weight. The young mri at the other side did not look directly at either of them, but kept his eyes respectfully averted, a model of decorum, and his veiled face could not be read.
They left the steel doors and entered the dizzying windings of the painted halls, down and down agonizingly painful steps. For Hulagh it was a blur of misery, of colors and cloying air and the possibility of a fatal fall, and when they finally reached level ground it was blessed relief. He lingered there a moment, panting, then began to walk again, leaning on them, step by step. They passed the doors, and the stinging, pungent air outside came welcome, like the hostile sun. His senses cleared. He stopped again, and blinked in the ruddy light, and caught his breath, leaning on them both.
“Niun,” he said, remembering the kel’en’s name.
“Lord?” responded the young mri.
“How if I should choose you to go on the ship with me?”
The golden eyes lifted to his, wide and, it seemed, frightened. He had never seen this much evidence of emotion in a mri. It startled him. “Lord,” said the young mri, “I am duty-bound to the she’pan. I am her son. I cannot leave.”
“Are you not all her sons?”
“No, lord. They are mostly her Husbands. I am her son.”
“But not of her body, all the same.”
The mri looked as if he had been struck, shocked and offended at once. “No, lord. My truemother is not here anymore.”
“Would you go on the ship Hazan?”
“If the she’pan sent me, lord.”
This one was young, without the duplicities, the complexities of the she’pan; young, arrogant, yes, but such as Niun could be shaped and taught. Hulagh gazed at the young face, veiled to the eyes, finding it more vulnerable than was the wont of mri—rudeness to stare, but Hulagh took the liberty of the very old among regul, who were accustomed to be harsh and abrupt with younglings. “And if I should tell you now, this moment, get into the sled and come with me?”
For a moment the young mri did not seem to know how to answer; or perhaps he was gathering that reserve so important to a mri warrior. The eyes above the veil were frankly terrified, agonized.
“You might be assured,” Hulagh said, “of safety.”
“Only the she’pan could send me,” said the young kel’en. “And I know that she will not.”
“She had promised me one mri.”
“It has always been the privilege of the edun to choose which is to go and which to stay. I tell you that she will not let me go with you, lord.”
That was plainly spoken, and the obtaining of permission through argument would doubtless mean another walk to the crest of the structure, and agony; and another debate with the she’pan, protracted and infuriating and doubtful of issue. Hulagh actually considered it and rejected it, and looked on the young face, trying to fix in mind what details made this mri different from other mri.
“What is your name, your full name, kel’en?”
“Niun s’Intel Zain-Abrin, lord.”
“Set me in my car, Niun.”
The mri looked uncertainly relieved, as if he understood that this was all Hulagh was going to ask. He applied his strength to the task with Chul’s considerable help, and slowly, carefully, with great gentleness, lowered Hulagh’s weight into the cushion. Hulagh breathed a long sigh of exhaustion and his sight went dim for a moment, the blood rushing in his head. Then he dismissed the mri with an impatient gesture and watched him walk back to the doorway, over the eroded walk. The dus by the door lifted his head to investigate, then suddenly curled in the other direction and settled, head between its forelegs. Its breath puffed at the dust. The young mri, who had paused, vanished into the interior of the edun.
“Go,” said Hulagh to Chul, who turned on the vehicle and set it moving in a lumbering turn. And again: “Youngling, contact my office and see if there are any new developments.”
He thought uneasily of the incoming ship, distant as it surely was, and of everything which had seemed so simple and settled this morning. He drew a breath of the comfortably filtered and heated air within the vehicle and tried to compose his thoughts. The situation was impossible. Humans were about to arrive; and if humans perceived mri near Kesrith and suspected treachery or ambush, humans could arrive sooner. They could arrive very much sooner.
Without a doubt there would be confrontation, mri and human, unless he could rid Kesrith and Kesrith’s environs of mri, by one method or another; and of a sudden reckoning she’pan Intel into matters, Hulagh found himself unable to decide how things were aligned with mri and regul.
Or with mri and humans.
“Bai,” came Hada Surag-gi’s voice over the radio. “Be gracious. We have contacted the incoming mri ship directly. They are Ahanal.”
“Tell me something I do not already know, youngling.”
There was a moment’s silence. Hulagh regretted his temper in the interval, for Hada had tried to do well, and Hada’s position was not enviable, a youngling trying to treat with mri arrogance and a bai’s impatience.
“Bai,” said Hada timidly, “this ship is not based on this world, but they are intending to land. They say—bai—”
“Out with it, youngling.”
“—that they will be here by sunfall over Kesrith’s city tomorrow. They have arrived close—dangerously close, bai. Our station was monitoring the regular approaches, the lanes—but they ignored them.”
Hulagh blew his breath out softly, and refrained fr
om swearing.
“Be gracious,” said Hada.
“Youngling, what else?”
“They rejected outright our suggestion to dock at the station. They want to land at the port. We disputed their right to do so under the treaty, and explained that our facilities were damaged by the weather. They would not hear. They say that they have need of provisioning. We protested they could obtain this at the station. They would not hear. They demand complete re-provisioning and re-equipage of a class-one vessel with armaments as on war status. We protested that we could not do these things. But they demand these things, bai, and they claim—they claim that they number in excess of 400 mri on that ship.”
A chill flowed over Hulagh’s thick skin.
“Youngling,” said Hulagh, “in all known space there are only 533 of the species known to survive, and thirteen of these are presently on Kesrith and another is recently deceased.”
“Be gracious,” pleaded Hada. “Bai, I am very sure I heard accurately. I asked them to repeat the figure. —It is possible,” Hada added in a voice trembling and wheezing with distress, “that these are all the mri surviving anywhere in the universe.”
“Plague and perdition,” said Hulagh softly and reached forward to prod Chul in the shoulder. “The port.”
“Bai?” asked Chul, blinking.
“The port,” Hulagh repeated. “O young ignorance, the port. Make for it.”
The car veered off left, corrected, followed the causeway the necessary distance, then left along the passable margin of the city, bouncing over scrub, presenting occasionally a view of the pinkish sky and the distant mountains, Kesrith’s highlands, then of white barren sands and the slim twisting trunks of scrub luin.
To this the humans fell heir.
Good riddance to them.
He began to think again of the mri that had suicided, and with repeated chill, of the remaining mri that had by that time already tended toward Kesrith—all the mri that survived anywhere, coming to their homeworld, which was to go to the control of humans.
To die?
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