That, was a heart-shot; she saw it. After a moment he bowed his head and lifted it again. "Then I have to report," he said in a still voice, "That we are missing one of the Kel. That kel Ras is not in camp. Should we do something in that matter, she'pan?"
She let go a slow breath, looked on the man and read pain. The eyes met hers, quite steady and miserable.
"I shall not ask what the Kel would do," she said. "You would judge harshly because you want not to. I am afflicted with an unruly Kel; can I heal it with impatience? Perhaps I should be concerned; but I am more concerned for those who remain. Let her go if she will; or return. I do not forbid. And as for the matter at hand," she said, going placidly about the matter of orders and looking instead at Anthil, "we abandon nothing, except by Kath's discretion. I do not urge it. Some of the least kel'ein can walk burdened, and some of the lesser sen'ein too. Settle that within your own castes. Divide the property of the dead according to kinship and need. I trust the Kel can bear another trek?”
"Aye," Hlil said quietly, earnestly. Sathas and Anthil added soft assent
"Then at dawn," she said, dismissing them with a gesture. They rose, pressed her hands in courtesy. Only Hlil held a moment more, looked at her as if he would speak… and did not.
They withdrew. She leaned back in her chair, touched at the pan'en, stared before her with an unfocused gaze on the lamps.
To manage others… had a bitter taste in the mouth, a taint of Intel, her own she'pan, who had known how to seize her children and wring the hearts out of them, who could choose one to live and one to die, who could use, and move, and wield lives like an edged blade.
So she had sent Niun; and in cold realization of necessity, selected another weapon, for its hour.
Only Ras.… She attempted, consciously, to use Sight, to know whether she was a danger or no; and Sight failed her, a vast blankness all about the name of Ras s'Sochil.
The vision was at times not comfort enough; when she doubted it altogether, it was far less.
Chapter Eight
They were still there. Duncan rolled aside on the dune face and turned his head to regard Niun, who still rested on his belly and his forearms, though he too had slid down somewhat. The beasts rested down in the trough, needing nothing of vision to tell them where their enemies were, spread wide about the horizon of dunes under a morning sun.
"Yail" Duncan said hoarsely, stopping that impulse, lest their followers use it to track to them.
"We need to keep moving," Niun said. "When you can.”
Duncan considered it, lay there, content to breathe. Food nauseated him; but he accepted the dried strip of meat Niun offered him while they waited. He thrust it into his mouth and finally chewed it and choked it down his raw throat. Things tasted of blood and copper, even the air he breathed. There were frequent moments when he lost vision, or when his knees threatened to bend the wrong way in walking the uneven ground. His head pounded. Alone, he would have burrowed into the first stony cover he could find and prepared to fight if hiding failed; Niun would make other choices, that would get him killed.
"Much farther?" he asked.
"Some," Niun said. "Tonight, maybe.”
Duncan lay still and considered that, which was better than he had thought. "And then what? You fight duel? You have walked twice their distance.”
"So," Niun said. "But it remains what I said; that between she'panei… the challenge is single; must be. If we started the matter here, we would have bloodfeud, and no end of challenges." He drew a short breath, himself near panting. "Hai, and their kel'anth may not be with them; in that case challenge falls to their kel-second. That can only be in our favor.”
Niun was very good. So, Duncan reckoned, might others be.
"Do you want to go on from here?" Duncan said. "They do not have us always in sight; if I walk over your tracks you might be a good way back to “
Dusei stirred below, uncomfortable. "No," Niun said. He touched his own face, where the veil crossed his cheeks and the blue edge of the kel-scars was visible. "You are unscarred; no kel'en should challenge you; but alone gods know what they would do.”
"That is my difficulty, is it not?”
By the look in Niun's eyes it was not.
"Aye," Duncan said. Much, Niun had taught him aboard the ship, much is mind; what one will, one can. He had survived jump without drugs, as mri did, and that was called a physical difference. He sucked air slowly, measuring his breaths, warming the air through his hands, finally gathered himself up off the face of the dune and started moving. Niun swiftly overtook him, and the dusei, shambling along at a better pace than they had been making.
"Do not overdo it," Niun said.
He slacked a little, went blind to his surroundings and concentrated on breathing and pace and the little bit of sand about diem. Until night He reckoned he might last that long.
It was back, the human ship Santiago, despite all maneuvers to shake it Bai Suth glared at the image of it, which was, even against Shirug's vast teardrop shape, a threat An elder human commanded Santiago, bai Silverman. We were only human younglings in question, Shirug might dispose of that nuisance and argue the point with bai Koch later, in confidence that human anger would not ascend to a hostile move against Shirug itself; humans had three ships; regul, one. It was a clear question of proportional damage.
The fighter simply maintained orbit, observing. The shuttles sown into atmosphere during the evasive maneuver could not return without another such. They performed maneuvers frequently, whether or not shuttles were going; and each brought Shirug closer than Suth liked to come to the planet There was no means to lose the human craft; a hard run and a threat toward jump might keep Santiago from their vicinity for days, but in fact all the fighter needed do was to sit at the objective, orbiting Kutath close-in, and all elusive maneuvers came to naught The fighter was far more maneuverable in close planetary orbit than was SMrug, being able to cut lower and get out again, as Shirug possessed similar advantage over giant Saber, and therefore Saber had the ultimate advantage while it had Santiago, a two-point flexibility which made eluding them nigh impossible.
To remove that ship permanently might well be worth the hazards of human reaction, if that reaction could be understood in advance.
No doubt remained at least that humans had decided an adult existed among regul. Suth fretted with disappointment that this realization had come sooner than he would have wished, but it did give them added safety assuming elder status meant what it should to human minds.
But elder status had not at all protected bai Sham from death. It might be argued that the youngling Duncan was thoroughly mri, and that what Duncan did, did not speak for humans; it might even be argued that Duncan was mad, and therefore apt to any act But the fact remained that humans had not shown sufficient disturbance at Duncan's act of elder-murder. Distress ... of course that was not to be anticipated; Sham's death was a political convenience to humans, and they could only be pleased at the opportunity which fell into their hands… but the lack of emotional disturbance in the presence of a dead elder, the cold haste in which they had been ejected from the ship and sent back to Shirug, in which they must wait a day on the release of their elder's body that was a reaction without sane emotion, a void where some emotion ought to exist and failed. Suth turned this circumstance over and over in his mind, day by day, smothering his own anger in an increasing preoccupation with this illogic, A reaction existed in regul which perhaps humans did not feel at all. This insensitivity had vast implications, and Suth felt keenly the lack of experience which was his. What he had once heard, what he had once seen, what things had impinged on his Me or what he had studied, every minute detail, he recalled unshakably.
Humans, he had observed, recalled things in time-ahead. Imagination, they called this trait; and since they committed the inanity of remembering the future Suth had been tempted to laughter when he first comprehended this inanity the whole species was apt to irrational actions. The future, not existing, was remembered by each individual differently, and therefore they were apt to do individually irrational things. It was terrifying to know tiiis tendency in one's allies and worse yet not to know it, and not to know how it operated.
They might do anything. The mri suffered from similar future-memory. Presumably two such species even thought they comprehended one another ... if two species' future-memories could possibly coincide in any points; and that possibility threatened to unbalance a sane mind.
This was one most profound difference between regul and human, that regul remembered only the past, which was observable and accurate as those who remembered it. Humans accustomed to the factual instabilities of their perceptions, even lied, which was to give deliberate inaccuracy to memory, past or future. They existed in complete flux; their memories periodically purged themselves of facts; this was perhaps a necessary reflex in a species which remembered things that had not yet happened and which falsified what had occurred or might occur.