The ship left the world, while they belted in below. The engines kicked them hard and long.
Thorn shut his eyes. I can’t sleep, I can never sleep, he told himself, but the strength ebbed out of him and he felt the pain reminding him of what he was and what it cost, constantly, like the beats of his heart. “Drink,” Duun said, and fed him something through a straw that he wanted no more of after the first sip. “Drink it.” Again, in that voice that had drilled him all his life, and it left no choice. Thorn drank, and slept; and when he woke Duun slept by his side-his unscarred side toward him, that side that gave its own illusions, of what Duun had been before.
Thorn shut his eyes again. (Is Sagot alive? Did Manan and the other pilot live? The guild- did the missiles defend it?)
(Children standing on the rock at Sheon, seeing red suns bloom on their horizons. Smoke palls the sky. Thunder shakes the ground.)
(In the halls at Dsonen people run in confusion, not knowing where to go.)
The sun whirls past the canopy and men like great insects manage the controls. The plane hangs in the sky and time stops. The war goes on in a moment frozen forever, all war, all time.
Sagot sits in her lonely hall. There is thunder. She sits frail and imposing at the end of that room, waiting in front of all the empty desks.
A shuttle flies in place and the universe rushes past it, sweeping the world out of its reach.
There were mundane things. There had to be: there were bodily needs, and Thorn cared stubbornly for himself, once Duun had shown him how things worked; there was a breakfast of sorts, and Thorn found his hands a little less painful, Crew came drifting through their compartment in the urge of like necessities and coming back again. There was still the surreal about it, like the drifting course they took, a leisurely pace, a slowness like a dream.
“Where are we going, Duun?”
“Gatog.”
“Is that the station?” Thorn had never heard it called that.
“It’s one of them.” Duun said.
(Is there more than one?) Sagot’s teaching developed cracks, fractured in doubts. (Is no truth entire?)
“We had a report,” Duun said, “the ghotanin have sent a messenger to Tangan offering to talk. The kosan guild refused at first, but they’re going to relent.”
“Is that part of your solution?” Thorn asked. His mind worked again. Duun looked at him with that closed hatani stare to match what Thorn gave him.
“Balance is,” Duun said. “It was never my intention to destroy the ghota.”
“They call you sey Duun.”
“It’s a courtesy these days.”
“You led kosanin?”
“Once.”
No more than that. Duun would not be led.
More of sleep and meals and bodies. The gel on his hands began to peel. The crew grew familiar: Ghindi, Spart, Mogannen, Weig. Half-names. Pet-names. But it was enough. Duun knew them and talked with them in quiet tones, and talked sometimes with voices on the radio from one end or the other of their journey.
None of it concerned Thorn. And everything did. He eavesdropped in mortal dread and caught nothing but city names and Gatog’s name and jargon after that.
Intercept, Thorn heard once, and his heart delayed a beat. He looked Duun’s way and kept looking Duun’s way when Duun stopped the conversation.
“Minnow,” Duun said to him, drifting toward Thorn. And nodded to him that he ought to follow.
Duun drifted down into the place they slept in and came to a graceful stop. Thorn reached with his foot and a half-healed hand and did almost as well. “Are there ghotanin here?” Thorn asked.
“Maybe there are,” Duun said. “They’re not our job to fight.”
“Is it a game?” Thorn asked in anger. “Am I supposed to discover what we’re going to? Where I am? Isn’t it over, Duun?”
Duun looked at him in a strange, distant way. “It’s only beginning. It’s not the right question, Haras-hatani. None of those is the right question.”
Thorn grew very still inside.
“Think on it.” Duun said. “Tell me when you know.”