Faded Sun Part 47

They have come here of their own purpose, Duncan thought suddenly, cold, and frightened. He remembered them entering the s.h.i.+p, remembered them, whose hearts he had never reached, living with them on the long voyage.

A refuge from humans, from regul. They had fled their world. They chose a new one, the escape that had lain open for them, that he had provided.

Closer they came, and his dus radiated darkness. Bodies touched, and a numbing pulse filled the air, rumbling like a windsound or like earthquake. They circled, all circled, touching. Duncan flung himself to his knees and put his arms about the neck of his beast, stopping it, feeling the nose of a stranger-dus at the nape of his neck, smelling the hot breath of the beast, heat that wrapped and stifled him.

s.h.i.+p, he remembered to think at them, and cast the disaster of An-ehon with his mind, the towers of Kesrith falling. Pleasure came back, appalling him.

No! he cried, silently and aloud. They fled back from him.

He cast them images of waterless waste, of a sun dying, of dusei wasting in desolation.

Their anger flooded at him, and his own beast shuddered, and drew back. It fled, and he could not hold it.

He was alone, desolate and blind. Suddenly he did not know direction or world-sense. His senses were clear, ice-clear, and yet he was cut off and without that inner direction that he had known so long.

"Come back," he cried at the dus that lingered.

He cast it edun-pictures, of water flowing, of Kesrith's storms, and s.h.i.+ps coming and going. Whether it received on this level he did not know. He cast it desire, desperate desire, and the image of the s.h.i.+p.

There was a touch, tentative, not the warding impulse.

"Come," he called it aloud, held out his hands to it. He cast it fellows.h.i.+p, mri-wise together, man and dus.

Life, he cast it.

There was hesitance. The warding impulse lashed fear across his senses, and he would not accept it Life, he insisted.

It came. All about him he felt warding impulse, strong and full of terrors, such that the sweat broke out on him and dried at once in the wind. But his dus was there. It began to walk with him, warding with all its might.

Traitor to its kind. Traitor human and traitor dus. He had corrupted ft, and it served him, went with him, began to be as he was.

Fear cast darkness about them and the afternoon sun seemed dimmer for a time; and then the others were gone, and there appeared finally black dots along a distant ridge, watching.

Children of Kutath, these dusei, flesh of the flesh that had come from Kesrith, and partaking not at all of it.

Only the old one remembered not events, but person, remembered him, and stayed.

By late afternoon the wind began rising, little gusts at first that skirled the sand off the dune crests and swept out in great streamers over the dead sea chasm. Then came the flurries of sand that rode on battering force, that made walking difficult, that rattled off the protective visor and made Duncan again wrap the met doubled about his face. The dus itself walked half-blind, tear-trails running down its face. It moaned plaintively, and in sudden temper reared up, shook itself, blew dust and settled again to walk against the wind.

The others appeared from time to time, walking the ridges, keeping their pace. They appeared as dark shadows in the curtain of sand that rode the wind, materialized as now a head and now less, or a retreating flank. What they sent was still hostile, and full of blood.

Duncan's beast growled and shook its head, and they kept moving, though it seemed by now his limbs were hung with lead and his muscles laced with fire. He coughed, and blood came, and he became conscious of the weight of the weapons that he bore, weapons that were useless where he was bound, and more useless still were he dead, but he would not give them up. He clenched in one hand the sole j'tai he wore, and remembered the man that had given it, and would not be less.

Su-she'pani kef en. The she'pan's kel'en.

Pain lanced up his leg. He fell, cast down by the treacherous turn of stone, carefully gathered himself up again and leaned on the dus. The leg was not injured. He tried to suck at the wound the stone had made on his hand, but his mouth was dry and he could not. There was no pipe hereabouts. He h.o.a.rded what moisture he had and chose not to use the little supply that remained to him, not yet And one of the lesser dusei came close to him, reared up so that his own interposed its body. There was a whuffing of great lungs, and the lesser backed off.

s.h.i.+p, he thought suddenly, and for no reason.

Desire.

There was no warding impulse from the stranger. He felt only direction, sensed presence.

He called to his dus, softly, from a throat that had almost forgotten sound, and went, felt a presence at his left side, a warm breathing on the hand that hung beside him.

Doubly attended now he went. Another was with them, thought of destination, desired what they desired.

Men.

Shapes wandered his subconscious. Memory, no. Some elsewhere saw, cast vision, guided him. He knew this.

Shapes obscured in sand, a half-dome. Jaws closed on his hand, gently, gently ... he realized that he was down, and that the dus urged him. He gathered himself up again and started moving, staggered as his boot hit something buried and something whipped at the leather, but it did not penetrate, and whipped sinuously away in the amber murk. Dus-feelings raged at it, and ignored it thereafter, preferring his company.

Night was on them, storm-night and world-night, friendly to them, hiding them. He knew the s.h.i.+p near, stumbled on pieces of it, bits of wreckage, bits of heat-fused sand, before its alien hulk took shape in the ribbons of sand, and he saw the havoc that had been made there.

And a half-dome, squat half-ovoid on stilts, the red wink of lights beaconing through the murk.

Dusei ringed him, all of them; fear-desire-fear, they sent.

"Yai!" he cried at them, voice lost in the wind. But his stayed, plodded its turn-toed way beside him as he walked toward that place, that alien shape on Kutath's dead seash.o.r.e.

He knew it as he came near, vast and blind as it was, knew the patterning of its lights And for an instant he did not know how to name it Flower.

The word for it came back, a s.h.i.+fting from reality to reality.

"Flower," he hailed it, a cracked and unrecognizable voice in the living wind. "Flower open your hatch."

But nothing responded. He gathered up a fist-sized stone and threw it against the hull, and another, and nothing answered. The storm grew, and he knew that he had soon to seek shelter.

And then he saw the sweep of a scanner eye, and light followed it, fixing him and the dus together in its beam. The beast s.h.i.+ed and protested. He flung his arm up to s.h.i.+eld his visored eyes, and stood still, mind flung back to another night when he had stood with this dus hi the lights, before guns.

There was long silence.

"Flower!" he cried.

The lights stayed fixed. He stood swaying in the gusts of wind, and held one hand firm against the dus' back so that the beast would stand.

Suddenly the hatch parted and the ramp shot down, invitation.

He walked toward it, set foot on the ringing metal, and the dus stayed beside him. He lifted his hands, lest they mistake, and moved slowly.

"Boz," he said.

It was strange to see her, the gray suddenly more p.r.o.nounced in her hair, reminding him of time that had pa.s.sed. He was conscious of the guns that surrounded him, of men that held rifles trained on him and on the dus. He took off the mez and zaidhe, so that they might know him. He smoothed his hair, that he had let grow: there was the stubble of beard on his face, that no mri would have. He felt naked before them, before Boaz and Luiz. He looked at their faces, saw dismay mirrored in their eyes.

"We've contacted Saber," Luiz said. "They want to see you."

He saw the hardness in their looks: he had run, taken the enemy side; this, not even Boaz was prepared to understand.

' And they had seen the mri track, the desert of stars.

"I will go," he said.

"Put off the weapons," said Liuz, "and put the dus outside."

"No," he said quietly. "You would have to take those, and the beast stays with me."

It was clear that there were men prepared to move on him. He stood quietly, felt the dus' ward impulse, and the fear that was thick in the room.

"There are arguments you could make hi your defense," Boaz said. "None of them are worth anything if you make trouble now. Sten, what side are you playing?"

He thought a moment. Human language came with difficulty, a strange, deja-vu reference in which he knew how to function, but distantly, distantly. There were ideas that refused clear shaping. "I won't draw my weapons unless I'm touched," he said. "Let Saber decide. Take me there. Peace." He found the word he had lost for a time. "It's peace I bring if they'll have it."

"We'll consult," said Luiz.

"We can lift and consult later. Time is short."

Boaz nodded slowly. Luiz looked at her and agreed. Orders were pa.s.sed with gestures, and a man left.

"Where are the others?" Luiz asked.

Duncan did not answer. Slowly, carefully, lest they misinterpret any move, he began to resume the zaidhe, which made him more comfortable. And while Luiz and Boaz consulted together, he put back the veil, and adjusted it to the formal position. The dus stood beside him, and the men with guns remained in their places.

But elsewhere in the s.h.i.+p came the sound of machinery at work preparation for lift, he thought, and panic a.s.sailed him. He was a prisoner; they had him back, and doors had closed that he could not pa.s.s.

Warning lights began to flash in the overhead. He looked about apprehensively as another three regulars came into the compartment, rifles leveled at him, and Luiz left.

"Sit down," Boaz advised him. "Sit down over there and steady that beast for lift. Will it stay put?"

"Yes." He retreated to the cus.h.i.+oned bench and settled there, leaned forward to keep his hand on the dus that sat at his feet.

Boaz delayed, looking down at him: blonde, plump Boaz, who had grown thinner and grayer, whose face had acquired frown lines wondering now, he thought, and not understanding.

"You speak with an accent," she said.

He shrugged. Perhaps it was true.

The warning siren sounded. They were approaching lift. Boaz went to the opposite side of the room, to the bench there; the regulars with their guns cl.u.s.tered there, weapons carefully across laps. The dus lay down at Duncan's feet, as the stress began, flattening itself to bear it.

The lift was hard, reckless. Duncan felt sweat breaking from him and his head spinning as they lofted. The dus sent fear . . . afraid, Duncan thought, of these men with guns. The fear turned his hands cold, and yet the heat of the compartment was stifling.

It was long before they broke from the force of lift, before new orientation took over and it was possible to move again. Duncan sat still, not willing to provoke them by attempting to rise. He desired nothing of them. Boaz sat still and stared at him.

"Stavros did this to you," she said finally, with a look of Pity-Again he shrugged, and kept his eyes unfixed and elsewhere, lost in waiting.

"Sten," she said.

He looked at her, distressed, knowing that she wanted response of him, and it was not there. "He is dead," he said finally, to make her understand.

There was pain in her eyes: comprehension, perhaps.

"I feel no bitterness," he said, "Boz."

She bit at her lips and sat white-faced, staring at him.

Luiz called; there was an exchange not audible to him, and the regulars stood by with lowered guns, kept them constantly trained on him. He sat and stroked the dus and soothed it.

The guards sweated visibly. To confront a disturbed dus took something from a man. They were steady. There was no panic. Boaz sat and mopped at her face.

"We're some little time from rendezvous," she said. "Do you want some water or something to eat?"

It was the first offering of such. A slight hesitation still occurred to him, consciousness that there was obligation involved, had they been mri.

Here too, obligation.

"If it is set before me," he said, "free, I will take it."

It was. Boaz ordered, and a guard set a paper cup of water within reach on the bench, and a sandwich wrapped in plastics. He took the water, held it under the mez to sip at it slowly. It was ice-cold and strange after days on the desert Water: antiseptic.

Likewise he tore off bits of the sandwich with his fingers and ate, without removing his veil. He would not give his face for their curiosity. He had no strength to sit and trade hate with them, and the veil saved questions. His hands shook, all the same. He tried to prevent it, but it was weakness: he had been too long without more than the pipe for nourishment. His stomach rebelled at more than a few bites. He wrapped the remainder in the plastic again and tucked it into his belt-pouch, saving it against need.

And he folded his hands and waited. He was tired, inexpressibly tired. In the long monotony of approach he wished to sleep, and did so, eyes shut, hands folded, knowing that the dus watched balefully those others that occupied the compartment, watching him.

Boaz came and went. Luiz came and offered a sincere offer, Duncan reckoned to give him treatment for the cough that sometimes wracked him.

"No," he said softly. "Thank you, no."

The answer silenced Luiz, as he had silenced Boaz. He was relieved to be let alone, and breathed quietly. He stared at the man in command of the regulars knew that one's mind without the help of the dus, the cool mistrust, the almost-hate that would let the human kill. Dead eyes, unlike the liveliness of the mri among brothers: Havener, who had seen evils in plenty. There was a burn scar on one cheek, that the man had not had repaired. A line man, by that, no rear-lines officer. He had respect for this one.

And the man, perhaps, estimated him. Eyes locked, clashed. Renegade, that was the thought that went visibly through the man's gaze; it wondered, but it did not forgive. Sucfr a man Ducan well understood.

This man he would kill first if they laid hands on him. The dus would care for the others.

Let them not touch me, he thought then, over and over, for he remembered why he had come, and what was hazarded on his life; but still outwardly he kept that quiet that he had maintained, hands folded, eyes unfocused, sometimes closed. There was need for the moment only of rest.

At last came maneuvering for dock, and the gentle collision. Neither Boaz nor Luiz had been there for some time ... consulting, doubtless, with higher authority.

And Luiz nodded toward the door.

"You will have to leave your weapons," Luiz said. "That is the simplest way; otherwise they'll force it, and we'd rather not have that."

Duncan rose, weighed the situation, finally loosed the belt of the yin'ein and the lesser one of the zahen'ein, turned and laid them on the bench he had quitted., "Boz," he said, "you bring them for me. I will be needing them."

She moved to gather them up, did so carefully.

"And the dus stays," Luiz said.

"That is wise," he said; he had not wanted the beast thrown into the stress of things to come. "It will stay here. Have you made all your conditions?"