BROTHERS OF EARTH. C. J. Cherryh

“You went among humans,” said Kurt. “We are a chaotic people.”

“No,” said Kta. “The whole of creation is patterned. We live in patterns. And I do not like the pattern I see now.”

“What is that?”

“Death upon death, dying upon dead. None of us are safe save the dead. But what will become of us… is still in front of us.”

“You are too tired. Do your thinking in the morning, Kta. Things will seem better then.”

“What, and in the morning will they all be alive again? Will Indresul make peace with my nation and Elas be unharmed in Nephane? No. Tomorrow the same things will be true.”

“So may better things. Go to bed, Kta.”

Kta rose up suddenly, went and lit the prayer-light of the small bronze phusa that sat in its wood-and-bronze niche. The light of Phan illuminated the corner with its golden radiance and Kta knelt, sat on his heels and lifted his open palms.

In a low voice he began the invocation of his Ancestors, and soon his voice faded and he rested with his hands in his lap. Just now it was an ability Kurt envied the religious nemet like Kta, like Mim, to feel physical pain no longer. The mind utterly concentrated first on the focus of the light and then beyond, reaching for what no man ever truly attained, but reaching.

The stillness that had been in Elas came over the little cabin. There was the groaning of the timbers, the rush of water past the hull, the rocking of the sea. The quiet seeped inward. Kurt found it possible ‘at last to close his eyes.

He had slept some little time. He stirred, waking from some forgotten dream, and saw the prayer-light flickering on the last of its oil.

Kta still sat as he had before.

A chill struck him. He thought of Mim, dead before the phusa, and Kta’s state of mind, and he sprang from bed. Kta’s face and half-naked body glistened with sweat, though it was not even warm in the room. His eyes were closed, his hands loose in his lap, though every muscle in his body looked rigid.

“Kta,” Kurt called. Interruption of meditation was no trifling matter to a nemet, but he seized Kta’s shoulders nonetheless.

Kta shuddered and drew an audible breath.

“Kta. Are you all right?”

Kta let the breath go. His eyes opened. “Yes,” he murmured thickly, tried to move and failed. “Help me up, Kurt.”

Kurt drew him up, steadied him on his deadened legs.

After a moment the nemet ran a hand through his sweat-damp hair and straightened his shoulders.

He did not speak further, only stumbled to his cot and fell in, eyes closed, as relaxed as a sleeping child. Kurt stood there staring down at him in some concern, and at last concluded that he was all right. He pulled a blanket over Kta, put out the main light, but left the prayer-light to flicker out on its remaining oil. If it must be extinguished there were prayers which had to be said; and he knew them from hearing Mim say them, but it would be hypocrisy to speak them and offensive to Kta to omit them.

He sought the refuge of his own bed and lay staring at the nemet’s face in the almost-dark, remembering the invocation Kta had made of the Guardians of Elas, those mysterious and now angry spirits which protected the house. He did not believe in them, and yet felt a heaviness in the air when they had been invoked, and he wondered with what Kta’s consciousness or subconscious had been in contact.

He remembered the oracular computers of Alliance Central Command which analyzed, predicted, made policy… prophesied. He wondered if those machines and the nemet did not perceive some reason beyond rationality, if the machines men had built functioned because the nemet were right, because there was a pattern and the nemet came close to knowing it.

He looked at Kta’s face, peaceful and composed, and felt an irrational terror of him and his outraged Ancestors, as if whatever watched Elas was still alive and still powerful, beyond the power of men to control.

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