Niun had not understood the artifact he revered. That also did not surprise Duncan. Niun, competent as he was, refused to know certain things that he did not consider appropriate for him; he had to consult Melein before any act of policy, given the chance to do so. Upon this, Duncan had relied desperately. It had worked. He felt vindicated, freed of a weight that had been on him for days, now that he saw Niun whole and on his feet, and bound precisely where he had calculated he would go.
He found himself with a curious lack of fear for the thing that he had done. Fear, he felt lying, awake at night, remembering the ruin in the heights, the nightmare of Sil’athen, the inferno that had come down on them; or smiling at the regul who had tried to kill him and killed a sentient species instead. Of the mri he had only a knowledgeable respect.
There was still a good chance that the mri would turn on him and kill him; he had reckoned that from the beginning—but it was not the way that he had known them. If it would happen, it would proceed from the depth of some mri logic that these two mri had never shown him, even bitterly provoked.
It was long past time for regrets: there was little time left for anything he would do. He wiped the back of his hand across his blurring eyes—he had napped when he could these past four days, but he had not slept in a bed, had not dared to, not with matters aboard in a state of flux, with two regul ships loose in the system and a nervous human ship tagging him.
He settled in at the console, called forth data from the instruments that flashed their busy sequences, saw that they were prepared for transition, their guidance system locked upon its reference star and prepared to make the move as soon as Fox’s other systems informed the computer that they were far enough from the nearest sizable mass. It could be as much as a day: automatic tolerances were wider than they had to be. It would surely not be more.
This far out, Kesrith was lost in sunglare, and red Arain itself was assuming its proper insignificance on a stellar scale, a mere boundary beacon for men, marking as it did the edge of human territories, a star orbited by one scantly habitable world and several that were not.
And on the one screen was the mockup that still showed the regul further out than they should be after such a time: they were making a cautious approach. He did not concern himself with regul position: they were far across the system and no part of what occupied him.
On another screen appeared the tiny object that was Saber’s rider Santiago, his faithful shadow.
It was closer than it was wont to be.
He bit at his lip, his heart quickening, for he did not want to break silence or to start a dispute with his escort: the mri were at large; but the fact of the mri impelled him to rapid consultation with the computer, and he swore to himself and reached for the com switch.
“Santiago,” he signaled it. “Santiago, this is Fox. Request you draw back a space. You’re in my scan and your mass is registering on my instruments. You are preventing jump.”
There was a long pause. “We copy,” Santiago answered. And seemed to pause for consultation. “Fox,” came a new voice, “Zahadi here. Advise you we have difficulties developing.”
Santiago’s captain. A chill of foreboding went through him. “Explain,” he asked of Zahadi.
“Fox,” the answer came back in due course, “advise you neither regul ship has been receptive to approach. Hulagh has shuttled up to station. Situation there is extremely tense. Hulagh has demanded boarding on regul vessel Siggrav, Stavros’ latest message as follows: Boarding will be granted. All conditions with probe mission are unchanged. Proceed. End message as received.”
“Santiago, advise you we are prepared to jump. Situation elsewhere irrelevant. You are preventing jump. Please move out of scan.”
“We copy,” Zahadi replied.
There was a long silence. Duncan waited, watching the scan. There was no change. He repeated the message, irritably.
There was still no response. Santiago still hung within scan.
He flipped the contract again and this time swore at Santiago and all aboard her: a condemned man was allowed that liberty. “Get out of my scan,” he repeated. “Santiago, get out of my way.”
Again there was no answer. A chill sense of something utterly amiss was over him now; Santiago still remained, stubbornly using its mass to prevent him—he was sure of it now.
Stavros’ orders, a leash on a ship Stavros could not fully trust deliberate delay.
And the mri would come. He reckoned in his mind what would happen when Melein arrived down that corridor with the dusei to enforce her wishes. Niun might wait to search for his weapons; they both might wait a time, biding the return of their strength: Niun was hardly able to walk, and perhaps Melein could not. It was too much to hope that they would not intervene.
Stavros’ intervention. Stavros knew him, had not trusted him let loose without restraint.
And in a sudden flash of apprehension he flicked the scan to maximum. A moving dot appeared at the limit of the field, moving in fast.
He cursed and put in a panicked call to Santiago, complaining of it.
“Fox, Fox,” came the reply at last, “this is Saber via Santiago, assigned escort. Request acknowledgment.”
Duncan leaned forward, adjusted the pickup, his other hand clenched. “Saber, this is Fox. Advise you no escort was in my orders. Pull off. Pull off.”
There was no acknowledgment in the expected time. Nothing.
Saber did not vary course.
“Request explanation,” Duncan sent at them.
Nothing came in reply. Saber continued on intercept. In a very little time there would be no options at all.
Duncan swore at them. “Saber,” he urged. “Saber, relay the following message to Santiago. Pull out of my scan: repeat, pull out of my scan. This ship is ready to jump, and your mass is registering. Request following message to be officially logged; Santiago, you have ignored five prior warnings. I will jump this ship on manual override in fifteen minutes. If you do not take immediate evasive action, you will be caught in my field. Advise you pull out now. Fifteen minutes, mark, and counting.”
The seconds ticked off. His hand sweated on the override. The dot that was Santiago began to move away, but Saber was still coming in fast.
“Fox,” he heard. “This is Saber, Koch speaking. Advise you this operation henceforth ours too. We are assigned to track. Orders of the Hon. G. Stavros, governor Kesrith territories.”
It hit him at the pit of the stomach: O God, out of this, out of this, he wished, either them or him, he did not know. He was shaking with the strain of the long-held position.
A kilometer-long warship, with escort scout. He watched Saber moving in, not yet close enough for her great mass to register, but closing. They were coming in on Santiago’s track, and Santiago, not star-capable, would link and ride Saber’s ungainly structure into jump.
Warship, not a probe mission. He had been made a guide for warships.
No, no, no! he raged at them in his mind, and in an action both impulse and deliberate, slammed his hand forward and hit the manual override.
Jump.
He held onto the panel while the whole of his body told him lies at once, while walls flowed like water, while forms seemed to twist inside out and space was not; and was again; and the flow reversed itself, wrenching them back into normality.
* * *
The stars in the screens were different. Duncan shivered in disorientation, fighting out of it as a man must who had flown combat out of deep space.
He reached for controls to scan, finding vertigo in the tiniest imbalance of his body, the impression that interstices still existed into which he could fall, neither up nor down. If there was time in jump, the mind did not perceive it, drew nothing with it out of that abyss, only that terrible wrenching inward. He swept the scan.
There was nothing but star noise.
There was nothing.
He slumped in the cushion and fought against the emotional dissolution that often hit after
transition; and this time it was more than physical. He had made a terrible, irrevocable mistake—not for the mri, not for them: he had at least bought them time, while Koch and Stavros sorted out the thing that he had done, consulted and reckoned what side he was playing, and what should be done with him.
The regul are living, Stavros had said: their victims aren’t. So we deal with the regul, who are a force still dangerous.
Warships, not Flower, not the likes of Boaz and Luiz. The half of Stavros’ military forces had prepared to follow in unarmed Fox’s wake, even with regul threatening Kesrith: warships, and himself before them, with mri aboard, to probe the defenses—an unarmed ship, and then the others.
To seek and destroy mri bases, whatever contacts the tape could locate: to finish what the regul had begun.
He bowed his head into his arms and tried to take his breath again, muscles shaking with rage and reaction. For a moment he could do nothing else; and then, fingers still shaking convulsively, he sought after the ampoule he had carried for days in his belt, never knowing at what time jump might come. He broke it, almost dropped it, then inserted the needle and let the drug enter his bloodstream.
Warmth spread through him, a sense of tranquility, ability to cope with the unnatural wrench of jump, ability to function until there should be leisure to rest. His mind cleared, but kept its distance from stresses.
He reckoned clearly what he had done: that Saber would track them; they had identical records, everything had been duplicated. The warships would come. There would be a court martial, if ever humanity recovered him; his direct defiance of Koch had made that a certainty. But the mri, when they learned what had been done, might themselves care for that matter, so that human justice was a very remote threat indeed.
He was calm in thinking of these things, whether the exhaustion of days without rest—he wondered distantly if that was to blame for what he had done, or whether the trigger had been pulled much earlier, much earlier, when he had sought the mri’s freedom. He tried to draw information from the tape: it would tell him nothing, neither running time to go, nor number of jumps, nor any indication where they were. He looked at the star in scan. Mri base, possibly. In that case, his time could be measured in days.
He pushed himself away from controls, his senses still sending him frantic signals even through the calming effects of the drug. It was worse than he had ever felt it: fatigue made it so. He thought that if things would remain stable only for an hour, he would go to his quarters and wash and lie down, now that it was too late to worry about anything.
And a dus ambled in the door, and the second dus after him; and behind them came the mri.
* * *
He drew back. Melein came, unveiled as was her wont, her fingers laced with Niun’s, who supported her. She entered the control room as Duncan stepped back, and her golden eyes swept the place, centered on the object that rested beside controls: on the artifact in its cradle. She went to it, ignoring all else, and touched the silver ovoid with her fingertips, bending with Niun to provide her balance, felt it as if to assure herself that it was real.
Then she straightened. Her amber eyes sought Duncan’s, shadowed and piercingly direct.
“I will sit,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper; and Niun carefully settled her on the edge of the reclined comstation cushion as if it were a throne. She sat straight, her hand pressed to her ribs where she had been injured, and for a moment she was short of breath; but it seemed to pass, and the hand dropped. The two dusei came to crowd at her feet, giving her a living wall at her knees; and she held out her left hand to Niun, who settled on the deck beside her, elbow against the larger dus.
Duncan looked on them both: in his hazed senses he saw the modern control center become a hall for a priestess-queen, himself the stranger there. Melein gazed at him directly: behind her the starscreens showed a dust of light, and the colored telltales flashed in lazy sequence, hypnotically regular.
“Duncan,” Melein said softly, “where is this ship going?”
He remembered that it was not always permitted to speak to her directly, though once he had been permitted: things were different now. He looked at Niun’s veiled and uncommunicative face. “Tell the she’pan that that guides us,” he answered, with a shrug toward the ovoid that rested beside them.
“I will speak to him,” Melein said, and an anxious frown came over her face. “Explain. Explain, kel Duncan.”
“Do you know,” he asked her, “What it holds?”
“Do you?”
He shook his head. “No. Records. Navigational records. But not where we are going. Do you know?”
Her lovely face became like a mask, unreadable as Niun’s, though unveiled. “Why are you alone with us? Might you not be wiser to have kept us apart from controls, kel Duncan?”
She trod the edges of questions with him. He fought his mind clear, gathered explanations, but she held out her hand to him, insisting, and there was nothing gracious but to take her long, slender fingers in his. The alien touch disturbed him, and he found himself against the dusei, a position of danger. “Sit, sit down,” she bade him, for she must look up at him as he stood; and there was no place but the deck, against the bodies of the dusei, as Niun rested. “Are you too strange to us now?” she asked, taunting him.
He did as she asked, his knees finding the deck painful; he touched the dusei of necessity, and knew the trap, the contact with the beasts, the blurring flow of senses. He grew afraid, and the beasts knew it, stirring powerfully against him; he repressed the fear, and they settled.
“Once,” said Melein to him, her voice distant and soft, “I said that we would find a ship and a way off Kesrith; I said that I must have the pan’en, and you were there to hear. Kel Duncan, are these things your gift, yours alone?”
Not naïve, this child-queen: she asked what she did not believe. He sensed depths opening at his feet. “Policy,” he said, “does not want you in regul hands. You are free. No, it is not my gift; I didn’t have it to give. Others—arranged these things. If you linger in regul space or human—you are done; this ship is not armed. But we have no escort now, she’pan. We are alone; and we will follow this tape to its end.”
She was silent a moment. Duncan looked at Niun, found nothing of comfort, was not sure that he was believed in either quarter. Melein spoke in her own language; Niun answered in a monosyllable, but he did not turn his face or vary his expression. Tsi’mri, he heard: the mri word for outsider; and he was afraid.
“Do your kind hate you?” asked Melein. “Why are you aboard alone, kel Duncan?”
“To tend you—and the machinery. Someone must. She’pan, from that—from the object—scientists made our guidance tapes. We’re locked on it, and there’s nothing you or I can do to stop it. I will tend the ship; I will deliver you to your destination, whatever it is. And when I have done that, I will take the ship and meet my people and tell them that the mri want no more part of regul or human politics, and that the war is over, forever. Finished. This is why I’m aboard.”
A troubled frown grew upon Melein’s face as she gazed into his eyes. “I cannot read truth in you,” she confessed, “tsi’mri that you are; and your eyes are not right.”
“Medicines,” Niun said in a low voice, the first word he had spoken without invitation. “They use them during transition.”
The mri had none, refused medicines, even that: Niun’s they acquired demeaning force, and Duncan felt the sting of it, felt the danger of it at the same moment. For the first time panic settled round him; the dusei jerked in alarm, and Niun rebuked them, steadied them with his hands.
“You do not know,” said Melein then, “what your superiors have done to you, kel Duncan. How long are you given to return?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“So long, so long a voyage. You should not be here. You should not have done this thing, kel Duncan.”
“It’s a long walk home, she’pan. We’re across jump.”
The dusei stirred, heaved up: Duncan started to rise, but Niun’s hand seized his wrist, a pressure without strength, a warning without threat. “No,” Niun said. The eyes above the veil were no longer hard “No. Be quiet, Duncan.”
The dusei had retreated into the recess to Melein’s left, making sounds of alarm, small puffs of breath. Their small eyes glittered dangerously, but after a moment they settled, sat, still watching.
And quietly, in his own language, Niun spoke to Melein—received an answer and spoke again, urgently, as if he pleaded against her opinion. Duncan listened tensely, able only to catch the words mri, Kesrith, and tsi’mri—tsi’mri: as mri meant simply the People, the word for any other species was not-people. It was their thinking; he had known it long since. There was no reasoning against it.
Finally, with a few words, Melein rose, veiled her face and turned away, deliberately turning her back.
It was a chilling gesture. Duncan gathered himself to his feet, apprehensive; and Niun arose, using the cushion to steady himself, standing between him and the dusei.
“She has said,” said Niun, “that I must not permit any stranger in her sight again. You are kel’en; I will fight you when I am able, or you may choose to stay with us and live as mri. You may choose.”
He stared helplessly at Niun, even this made distant by the drug. “I didn’t risk my neck getting you free only to kill one of you. No.”
“You would not kill me,” Niun said.
It set him off-balance. “I am not your enemy,” he protested.
“Do you want to take service with the she’pan?”
“Yes.”
He said it quickly; it was the only sane answer. When things were quiet, at some later time, then it would be the moment to reason with them, to explain why he must be set free with the ship: it was their own protection they considered.
But Niun remained still a moment, staring at him as if he suspected a lie in that consent.
“Niun,” said Melein, her back still turned; Niun went to her, and they spoke in low voices. For a moment then Niun was still; the dusei shifted restlessly: one moaned and nosed at Niun’s hand. He caressed it absently to silence, then came back to the side of the room where Duncan stood.
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