He was safe with them. It was the men with the guns that were to be feared. "Go away from the door," he wished the remaining security men. "They are no danger to me. They belong to the mri.”
"Duncan?" That was Boaz' female voice, high-pitched and anxious. "Duncan, confound it, what's going on?”
"They've come for Niun. They're his. These creatures are halfway sapient, maybe more than halfway. I want clearance to bring them inside before someone sets them off.”
There was a flurry of consultations. Duncan waited, stroking the two massive backs. The dusei had settled down, sitting like dogs. They, too, waited.
"Come ahead," Boaz shouted. "Number one bow hold, equipment bay: it's empty.”
Duncan made to the dusei the low sound he had heard Niun make, started forward. The dusei heaved themselves to their feet and came, casually, as if entering human ships were an ordinary thing. But no human stayed to meet them: even Boaz fled, prudence overcoming curiosity, and nothing greeted them but sealed doors and empty corridors.
They walked, the three of them, a long, long descent without lifts, down ways awkward for the big dusei passed with a slow, measured clicking of claws on flooring. Duncan was not afraid. It Was impossible to be afraid, with the like of them for companionship. They had searched him and had no fear of him: though at the back of his mind reason kept trying to urge him that he had been right to be afraid of the beasts, he began to be certain that the beasts were utterly at ease with what he was doing.
He came down into the hold, and caressed the offered noses, the thrusting massive heads that, less gentle, could stave in ribs or break his back; and again came that blurred feeling, that surety that he had given mem something that pleased them.
He withdrew and sealed the doors, and trembled afterward, thinking what he had done. Food, water, other needs they had none, not at the moment. They wanted in. They had gained that, through him.
He fled, fear flooding him. He was panting as he ran the final distance to the medical wing. He saw the door that he wanted closed, like all other doors during the emergency. He opened it manually, closed it again.
"Sir?" the sentry on duty asked.
"Are they awake?" Duncan asked, with harsh intensity. The sentry looked confused.
"No, sir. I don't think so.”
Duncan shouldered past him, opened the door and looked at Niun. The mri's eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Duncan went to the bedside and seized Niun's arm, hard. ' "Niun. The dusei. The dusei. They have come.”
There was a fine sweat on the mri's brow. The golden eyes stared into infinity.
"They are here," Duncan almost shouted at him. Niun blinked.
"Yes," said Niun. "I feel them.”
And thereafter Niun answered nothing, reacted to nothing, and his eyes closed, and he slept, with a relaxed and tranquil expression.
"Sir?" the sentry asked, invading the room contrary to standing orders. "Do you want someone called?”
"No," Duncan said harshly. He edged past the man, walked out into, the corridor, and started for the upper levels of the ship. The intercom came on, the whole ship waking to the emergency just past. He heard that Boaz was paging him, urgently.
He did not remember the walk upstairs, the whole of it a blank in his mind when he reached the area of the lock and found Boaz anxiously waiting. He dreaded such lapses, remembering the dizzy blurring of senses that had assailed him before.
"They're domestic?" Boaz asked him.
"They seem to be. They are, for the mri. They're I don't know. I don't know.”
Boaz looked at him critically. "You're through for the day," she said. "No more questions. If they're bedded down and secure, no questions.”
"No one goes down there. They're dangerous.”
"No one is going to go near them.”
"They're halfway sapient," he said. "They found the mri. Across all that desert and out of all these buildings, they found them.”
He was shaking. She touched his arm, blonde, plump Boaz, and at that moment she was the most beautiful and kindly creature in all Kesrith. "Sten, go home," she said. "Get to your own quarters; get some rest. One of the security officers will walk you. Get out of here.”
He nodded, measured his strength against the distance to the Nom, and concluded that he had enough left in him to make it to his room without staggering. He turned, blindly, without a word of thanks to Boaz, remembered nothing until he was out the door and halfway down the ramp with a security man at his side, rifle over one arm.
The mental gaps terrified him. Fatigue, perhaps. He wished to believe so.
But he had not consciously decided to enter Flower with the dusei.
He had not decided.
He tore his mind away, far away from the dusei, fighting a giddy return to the warmth that was their touch.
Yes, Niun had said, I feel them.
I feel them.
He talked to the security man, something to drown the silence, talked of banal things, of nonsensical things with slurring speech and no recall later of what he said.
It was only necessary, until he was within the brightly lighted safety of the Nom, in its echoing halls that smelled of regul and humans, that there not be silence.
The security guard left him at the door, pressed a plastic vial into his hand. "Dr. Luiz advised it," he said.
Duncan did not question what the red capsules were. They killed the dreams, numbed his senses, made it possible for him to rest without remembering anything.
He woke the next morning and found he had not turned off the lights.
Chapter Four
STAVROS, SEATED outside his sled-console, in the privacy of his own quarters, looked like a man who had not slept. There was a thick folder of papers on the desk in front of him, rumpled and read: the labor of days to produce, of a night to read.
Duncan saw, and knew that there was some issue of his work, of the hours that he had spent writing and rewriting what he was sure only one man would ever see, reports that did not go to Boaz or Luiz, or even to security: that would never enter the records, if they ran counter to Stavros' purposes.
"Sit down," Stavros said.
Duncan did so, subject to the scrutiny of Stavros' pale eyes on a level with his own. He had no sense of accomplishment, rather that he had done all that was in him to do, and that it had probably failed, as all other things had failed to make any difference with Stavros. He had labored more over that report than over any mission prep he had ever done; and even while he worked he had feared desperately that it was all for nothing, that it was only something asked of him as a sop to his protests, and that Stavros would discard it half-read.
"This mri so-called shrine," said Stavros. "You know that the regul are disturbed about it. They're frightened. They connect all this mri business in their thinking: the shrine, the artifact, the fact that we've taken trouble to keep two mri alive and your influence, that not least. The whole thing forms a design they don't like. Do you know the regul claim they rescued you and Galey?"
Duncan almost swore, smothered it, "Not true.”
"Remember that to a regul your situation out there may have looked desperate. A regul could not have walked that distance. Night was coming on, and they have a terror of the dark in the open wilderness. They claim they spotted the grounded aircraft and grew concerned for your safety that they have been trying to watch over our crews in their explorations, for fear of some incident happening which might be blamed on them.”
"Do you really believe that, sir?”
"No," said Stavros flatly. "I rather put it down to curiosity. To Hulagh's curiosity in particular. He is mortally afraid of what the mri might do, afraid of anything that has their hand in it. I think he's quite obsessed with the fear that some may survive and locate him. I am being frank with you. This is not for conversation outside this room. Now tell me this: was there any touching, any overt threat from the regul you encountered?”
"No hand laid on us. But our property “
"I read that.”
"Yes, sir.”
"You handled it well enough," said Stavros, a slight frown on his face. "I think, though, that it does indicate that there is a certain interest in you personally, as well as in the mri relics. I think it was your presence drew them out there. And if I hadn't put Galey out there with you, you could have met with an accident. You neglected precautions.”