Shon'jir

Chapter Five

THE STATION was a different world indeed regul-built, a maze of tbe spiraling tunnels favored by the sled-traveling regul. Everything was automated.

And strangest of all, there were no regul.

To walk among humans only, to hear their talk, to breathe the air breathed by humans, and never to be startled by the appearance of an alien face in all this vast space: it was like being cast across light years; and yet Kesrith's rusty sur­face was only a shuttle flight away: the screens showed it, a red crescent.

The screens likewise showed the ships that clustered about the station Saber foremost, a kilometer-long structure that was mostly power, instrumentation, and weaponry and sur­prisingly scant of crew, only two hundred to tend that mon­ster vessel. Shields made her strong enough to resist attack, but she would never land onworld. Flower and Fox had rid­den in attached to Saber's sides, as Santiago had ridden the warship Hannibal, like diminutive parasites on the flanks of the warships, although Flower and Fox were independently star-capable. Presently the probe ships were docked almost unnoticed in the black shadow of Saber. Flower had snugged into the curve to berth directly under the long ship, and from her ports and scanners there was very little visible but Saber and the station itself.

And the station, vast, complexly spiral, rolled its way about Kesrith, a curious dance that dizzied the mind to consider, as one walked the turning interior.

Most personnel made use of the sleds. The distances inside the station were considerable, the sleds novel and frighteningly rapid, whirling round the turns with reckless precision, avoiding collisions by careful routing at hairbreadth intervals.

Duncan walked, what of a walk was possible in the less than normal g of the station that was planned for regul comfort. The giddy feeling combined with the alien character of the corridors and the sight of Kesrith out of reach below, and fed his depression.

"That's the one that came in off the desert," he heard someone say behind his back. It finished any impulse he had toward mingling with these men, that even here he was a curiosity, more out of place than he was ever wont to be among regulars. He was conscious of the mask of tan that was the visible mark of the kel'en's veil, worn in the burning light of Arain; he felt his face strangely naked in their sight, and felt their stares on him, a man who had lived with hu­manity's enemy, and spoke for them.

On the first evening there was leisure for Flower personnel to have liberty, he wandered into the station mess… found Galey, whose face split into a broad and friendly grin at the sight of him; but Galey, of Saber, was with some of Saber's officers, his own friends, and Duncan found no place with them, a SurTac's peculiar rank less than comfortable in dealing with officers of the regular forces. He ate alone, from the automated bar, and walked alone back to Flower.

He had done his tour of the station. It was enough. He had no interest even in seeking out the curiosities of the regul ar­chitecture, that the men of the warships seemed to enjoy on their hours of liberty.

He went into Flower's lock, into familiarity, hi among men he knew, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Worth seeing, sir?" the duty officer asked him, envious: his own liberty had been deferred. Duncan shrugged, man­aged a smile; his own mood was not worth shedding on the regulars of Flower. "A bit like the Nom," he answered. "A curiosity. Very regul.”

And he received from the man's hand a folded message of the kind that passed back and forth frequently at the desk.

He started back toward the level of his own quarters, un­folding the message as he walked.

It was Boaz' hand. Urgent I talk with you. Lab #2.B.

Duncan crumpled it in his hand and stuffed it into his pocket, lengthening his stride: the mri program and an urgency; if running would have put him there appreciably fas­ter he would have run.

Number two lab contained Boaz' office. She was there, seated at her desk, surrounded by paper and a clutter of in­struments. She looked up at him as he entered. She was up­set, blue eyes looking fury at the world. Her mouth trembled.

"Have a seat," she said, and before he could do so: "Sa­ber's troops moved in; snatched the mri, snatched the artifact, the mri's personal effects, everything.”

He sank into the offered chair. "Are they all right?”

"I don't know. Yes. Yes they were all right. They were set into automeds for the transfer. If they just leave them in them, they'll fare well enough for a while. Stavros' orders. Stavros' orders, they said." She picked up a sealed cylinder from the center of the littered desk and gave it to him with a misgiving stare. "For you. They left it.”

He received the tube and broke the seal, eased out the pa­per it contained and read the message to himself. Conditions as discussed apply. Contingency as discussed has occurred. Observe patience and discretion. Stand by. Destroy message. Stavros.

Regul troubles: ship incoming. The mri were going out, off-station, and himself with them, soon enough. He looked sadly at Boaz, wadded the message in his hand, pocketed it; he would dispose of it later.

"Well?" asked Boaz, which she surely knew she should not ask; he stayed silent. She averted her eyes, pursed her lips, and laced her fingers under her plump chin. "I belong to a ship," she said, "which is unfortunately under the gover­nor's authority in some degree, where it regards putting us offworld or seizing what pertains to declared hostiles. For now, in those regards, that authority is absolute. I personally am not under his orders, and neither is Luiz. I shouldn't say this freely; but I will tell you that if you are personally not satisfied with the treatment of the mri there can be a protest filed at Haven.”

Brave Boaz. Duncan looked at her with an impulse of guilt in his heart. There was no word from her of canceled pro­grams, interrupted researches, the seizure of work on which she had labored with such care. The mri themselves occurred to her. This was something he had not foreseen; and yet it was like her.

"Boz," he said, the name the staff called her. "I think ev­erything is all right with them.”

She made a noncommittal sound, leaned back. She said nothing, but she looked a little relieved.

"They didn't take the dusei, did they?" he asked.

Boaz smiled suddenly, gave a fierce laugh. "No. The beasts wouldn't sedate. They tried. There was no way they would go down into that hold with them. They asked Flower staff to do it, got rather high-handed about it; and Luiz told them they could go down for themselves and throw a net over them. There were no volunteers.”

"I don't doubt," Duncan said. 'Td better get down there and see about them.”

"You can't tell me what this business is.”

"No. I'm sorry.”

She nodded, shrugged. "You can't tell me whether things are likely to reverse themselves.”

"I don't think they will.”

Again she nodded. "Well," she said sadly. That was all.

He took his leave of her and walked out, through the lab that was, he saw, in a disorder that had nothing to do with research, small items that had been on the shelves now gone, books missing.

Saber's men had been thorough.

But if they had taken the mri from the ship, then the dusei might pine and die, like one that he had seen grieving over a dead mri, a beast that would not leave for any urging.

He took that downward corridor that led him to the hold. His stomach was already knotting in dread, remembering what they could do in distress. He had been among them since that first night, brought them food and water, and they had reacted to that with content. But now they had been dis­turbed by strangers, attacked; and the fear of that feeling that had possessed him once was as strong as any fear of venomed claws.

The sensation did not recur. He entered the hold high on the catwalk, looked down at the brown shapes that huddled below, and cautiously descended to them, fearing them and determined not to yield to it. The regul avowed that the dusei thrived on synthetic protein, which was abundant enough in the station stores; that they would, in fact, eat anything they were offered, which presumably included humans and regul, as he had heard Luiz remark. The air was remarkably fresh, a clean though occupied aroma to the hold, not so pronounced as with the fastidious regul. The beasts were very neat in their habits, and remark­ably infrequent in their necessary functions, metabolizing fluids in such a fashion that Boaz and Luiz found exceedingly intriguing, with a digestion that exacted fluids and food value from anything available of vegetable or animal tissue, and gave off practically no waste compared to the bulk they had ingested and that quite dry. Regul information on them was abundant, for regul ships had kept kel'ein and dusei for many years. Dusei seemed to go dormant during long confinement, once settled and content. In general dusei put less demand on a ship's life-support than humans, mri, or regul. It was the awesome size of them that made them uncom­fortable companions, the knowledge that there was absolutely nothing that could be done should one of them run amok.

Duncan stepped from the last tread of the stairs, saw both dusei rise with a keening moan that echoed throughout the deep hold. They stood shoulder to shoulder, nostrils working, smelling the stranger. Their small eyes, which were perhaps not overly keen, glittered in the light. The larger of them was a ragged, scarred beast: this one Duncan took for Niun's own; and he thought he also knew the smaller, sleek one for a one-time companion of theirs.

The big one shambled forward with his pigeon-toed gait, looked Duncan up and down and rumbled a deep purring that evinced pleasure in the meeting. The smaller one came,, urgently thrusting with its broad nose at Duncan's leg.

He sat down on the last steps between them, and the big animals settled in an enormous mass about his feet, so that they touched. He stroked the velvet-furred hides remarkably pleasant, that velvet-over-muscle. There was no sound at all but the rumbling of the dusei, a monotonous, peaceful sound.

They were content. They accepted him, accepted a human because of Niun, because they had known him in Niun's company, he thought, although they had disdained his touch while Niun was there. When once he had attempted escape, the dusei had hunted him, had cornered him, all the while pressing at him with such terror as he began to understand was a weapon of theirs.

I wonder that they did not kill you, Niun had said that night.

Duncan wondered now that they rested so calmly after what had been done to them, after humans bad tormented them, trying to sedate them; but the dusei's metabolism ab­sorbed poisons, and perhaps absorbed the drug. There was no evidence of harm to them, not even any of disturbance in their manner.

Neither men nor fully animal, the dusei, but four-footed half-lings, shadow-creatures, that partook of the nature of both… that offered themselves to the mri, but were not taken: they were companions of the mri, and not property. He doubted that humanity could accept such a bargain. The regul could not.

He sat content, touching, being touched, and calm; he had not known that night whether admitting the dusei to the ship was right: now it seemed very right. He found himself sud­denly full of warmth he was receiving. He knew it all at once, knew the one that so touched him, the small one, the small one that was still more than three times the bulk of a big man. It purred with a steady, numbing rhythm, leached passion from him as water stole the salts of Kesrith from the soil and displaced them seaward.

It drowned them, overwhelmed them.

He drew back suddenly, panicked; and this the dusei did not like. They snorted and withdrew. He could not recover them. They stood and regarded him, apart, with small and glittering eyes.

Cold flooded into him, self-awareness.

They had come of their own accord, using him: they wanted and he had given them access; and still he needed them, them and the mri, them and the mri....

He gathered himself and scrambled up the narrow stairs, sweating and tense when he gained the safety of the catwalk. He looked down. One of them reared up, tall and reaching with its paws. Its voice shook the air as it cried out.

He hurled himself for the other side of the door and sealed and locked it, hands shaking. It was not rational, this fear. It was not rational. They used it. It was a weapon.

And they were where they wanted to be now: at a station orbiting Kesrith, and near the mri. He had done everything they wanted. He would do it again, because he needed them, needed the calming influence they might exert with the mri, who drew comfort from them, who relied on them. He began to suspect variables beyond his reckoning.

But he could not leave them. The thoughts wound him in upon himself, parric-fear and the gut-deep certainty of something wrong. He realized that he had been greeted by a man in the corridor some ten paces back, and absently turned and tried to amend the discourtesy, but it was too late; the man had walked on. Duncan enfolded himself in his private turmoil and kept walking, hands in his pockets, wadding into smaller and smaller balls the messages he had thrust there, Boaz' and Stavros'.

Confound you, Niun, he thought violently, and wondered if he were sane for the mere suspicion he entertained. The dusei, whatever they were, could not touch his conscious thoughts; it was at some lower level they operated, something elemental and sensual and sensory possible to reject if a man could master his fear of them and his need of them: that was surely the wedge they used for entry, fear and pleasure, either one or the other. It felt very good to please a dus; it was threatening to annoy one.

Yet the researchers had not picked it up. There was noth­ing of the kind reported in their observations of the beasts.

Perhaps the beasts had not spoken to them.

Duncan closed the door to his own small quarters, opposite the now-vacant compartments of the mri, and began packing, folding up the clothes that he had scarcely unpacked.

When he had done, he sat down in the chair by his desk and keyed in a call to Saber by way of Flower's communica­tions.

Transfer of dusei possible and necessary, he sent to Saber's commander.

Stand by, the message came back to him. And a moment later: Report personally Saber Command soonest.