"You rest," Niun wished him when he persisted in trying to keep his schedule; Duncan shrugged and avowed the machinery would not run without him, which it would; but he was panicked now at the thought of idleness, sitting endlessly in the shell that he had left of the labs, of the rest of the ship, without books Niun had cast out the reading and the music tapes in his quarters without any occupation for hands or mind.
And when he was forced, he returned to the lab, that featureless white room, and settled in the corner, where at least his pallet and Niun's and the joining of the walls gave him some feeling of location. There, as he would do late at night to fall asleep, he sat and added chains of figures, did complex calculations of imaginary navigation, anything to fill the hours watched the unchanging starscreen that was the lab's only feature. There was for sound only the whisper of air in the ducts, the steady machine noise of the ship's inner workings.
And nothing.
Nothing.
Niun was long absent that day with Me'ei°» Duncan reckoned, in that part of the ship that was barred to him; even the dusei were gone, constantly attendant on Niun. In idleness Duncan found a bit of metal and made a design on the tiles next his pallet, and then, with a certain grim humor, made marks for the days that had passed, ship-time, desperately reckoning that there could come a time he would lose track of everything in this place.
Nine days, thus far. Even of this he was marginally uncertain.
He began a chain of figures, thrusting his mind away from the lattice-gaps he had begun to have in his memory, trying to lose himself in regularities.
Unlike the jo, he was not successfully camouflaging, he reckoned; even the jo, cast into this sterile cubicle, given nothing to pattern from, could not find a place. It would blacken like a wretched specimen he had seen in Boaz' lab, going through color change after color change until it settled on the most conspicuous of all a method of suicide, perhaps, death wish.
He thrust his thoughts away from that, too, but the image kept returning, the black winged creature in the silver cage; himself, from godlike perspective, sitting in the corner of a white and featureless room.
Nine days.
The afternoon of the tenth, Niun came back earlier than previously, banished the dusei to the far corner of the room, and unveiled, settled crosslegged on the floor a little removed from Duncan and facing him.
"You sit too much," Niun said.
"I am resting," Duncan said with an edge of bitterness.
Niun held up two metal rods, slender, and no more than a hand's length. "You will learn a game," Niun said, not: I will teach you; not: Would it please you? Duncan frowned, considered taking offense: but that the grim mri had entertainments: this pricked his interest, promised comradeship, a chance to talk with the kel'en as he had not been able to talk with him since the desert. And it promised something to fill the silence.
He bestirred himself on his pallet, assumed carefully the position that Niun held, crosslegged, hands on knees. Niun showed him the grip he had on the end of the rod in his right hand.
"You must catch," said Niun, and spun the rod toward him. Duncan caught it, startled, in his fist, not his fingers, and the butt of it stung his palm. '
The second followed, from Niun's left hand. Duncan caught it and dropped it. Niun held up both hands empty.
"Both at once," Niun said.
It was difficult. It was exceedingly difficult. Duncan's work-sore hands were less quick than Niun's slender fingers, that never missed, that snatched the most awkward throws from midair, and returned them always at the same angle and speed, singly until Duncan could make the difficult catch,-and then together.
"We call it shon'ai," said Niun. "Shonau is pass. In your language, then, the Passing game. It sings the People; each caste plays in its own way." He spoke, and the rods flew back and forth gently between them, Duncan's fingers growing more sure than they had been. "There are three castes of the People: Kath and Kel and Sen. We are of the Kel, we black-robes, we that fight; the Sen is the yellow-robes, the scholars; and the white, the she'pan; the Kath is the caste of women neither Kel nor Sen, the blue-robes, and the children they are Kath until they take caste.”
Duncan missed. The rod stung his knee, clattered to the floor. He rubbed the knee and then continued, back and forth, back and forth in turn with Niun. It was hard to listen and concentrate on the rods; in recklessness he tried to answer.
"Men," he said, "neither Kel nor Sen. What of them?”
The rhythm did not break. "They die," said Niun. "The ones without skill to be Sen, without skill to be Kel, the ones with no heart, die. Some die in the Game. We are playing as the Sen plays, with wands. The Kel plays with weapons." The throws became harder, faster. "Easy, with two players. More difficult with three. With larger circles, it grows most difficult. I played a circle of ten. If the circle becomes much larger, it becomes again a matter of accidents, of chance.”
The rods flew hard this time. Duncan flung his hands up to catch them, deflected one that could have injured his face, but could not catch it. It fell. The other he held. The rhythm ceased, broken.
"You are weak in the left hand," said Niun. "But you have the heart. Good. You will learn the skill before I begin to show you the yin'ein, the old weapons. The zahen'ein, the modern, you know as well as I; I have nothing there to teach you. But the yin'ein, one begins with shon'ai. Throw.”
Duncan threw. Niun held up his hand, easily received the separate rods cast back to him with one hand, sweeping them effortlessly from the air. Duncan blinked, dismayed at the skill of the mri, and measured his own.
"There is a time to rest," said Niun then. "I would not see you miss," He tucked the rods back into his belt. "It is time," he said, "that we begin to talk. I will not speak often in your language; I am ordered to forget it, and so must you. You know a few words of the mu'ara, the common speech; and even those you must forget, and stay to the hal'ari, the High Speech. It is the law of the Darks, that all the Between be forgotten, and the mu'ara that grows in the Between must die, too. So do not be confused. Sometimes there are two words for a thing, one mu'ara, one hal'ari, and you must forget even a mri word.”
"Niun," Duncan protested, holding up a hand for delay. "I haven't enough words.”
"You will learn. There will be time.”
Duncan frowned, looked at the mri from under his brows, carefully approached what had already been refused. "How much time?”
Niun shrugged.
"Does the she'pan know?" Duncan asked.
The membrance flicked across Niun's eyes. "Your heart is still tsi'mri;”
It was a mri kind of answer, maddening. Duncan traced the design he had scratched on the flooring, considering what he could do to reason with the mri; of a sudden Niun's hand stopped his. He jerked it free, looked up in deep offense.
"Another matter," said Niun. "A kel'en neither reads nor writes.”
"I do.”
"Forget.”
Duncan stared at him. Niun veiled himself and rose, an unbending upward that a few days ago he could not have done, a grace natural to a man who had spent Tiis life sitting on the ground; but Duncan, in attempting to rise and face him, was less graceful.
"Listen," he said.
And a siren sounded.
It was in Duncan's consciousness a subtle moment before panic took over, raw fear. Transition was approaching: they had made a jump point. The dusei had learned. Their feelings washed about the room like a tide fear, abhorrence.
"Yai!" Niun shouted at them, settling them. He walked to the doorway and took hold of the handgrip there. Duncan sought that on the other side of the room, feigning calm he did not feel; his gut twisted in dread of what was coming and no drugs, nothing. It was Niun's cold, unmoved example that kept him from sinking to the floor to await it.
The siren stopped. In a moment a bell signaled imminent jump, automatic alarm triggered by the ship as the tape played toward its destination. They had not yet learned where they had been. The nameless yellow star still hung as only one among others in the field of the screen. No ships had come. Nothing.
Suddenly came that initial feeling of uncertainty, and walls, floor, time, matter, rippled and shredded. The mind underwent something irretrievable on the outflow, as the process reversed itself; but there remained an impression of inconceivable depth, of senses over-stimulated. The walls rippled back into solidity. Hands felt. Breath and sight returned.