“Perhaps I could assist with the machines,” Duncan suggested when the kath’anth took his hands hi turn; and the kath’anth laughed, and so did Niun, and all the kath’ein that heard.
“He or I might,” Niun said, covering his embarrassment with grace. “We have many skills, he and I.”
“If the Kel would deign,” said the kath’anth.
“Send when we are needed,” said Niun.
And they passed from her to the line of kath’ein; Niun went first and gravely took the hands of a certain kath’en, bowed to her and took the hands of her little daughter and performed the same ritual.
Duncan understood then, and went to Sa’er, and did the same; and took the hand of her son as the boy offered his, wrist to wrist as men touched.
“He is kel Duncan,” said Sa’er to her son, and to Duncan: “He is Ka’aros.”
The child stared, wide-eyed with a child’s honesty, and did not return Duncan’s shy smile. Sa’er nudged the boy. “Sir,” he said, and the membrane flicked across his eyes. He did not yet have the adult’s mane: his was short and revealed his ears, that were tipped with a little curl of transparent down.
“Good day,” said Sa’er, and smiled at him.
“Good day,” he wished her; and joined Niun, who waited at the door. Silence reigned in the hall. They left, and then he heard a murmuring of voices after them, knowing that questions were being asked.
“I liked her,” he confessed to Niun. And then further confession: “We did nothing.”
Niun shrugged, and put on his veil. “It is important that a man have good report of the Kath. The kath’en was more than gracious in the parting. Had you offended her, she would have made that known, and that would have hurt you sorely in the House.”
“I was surprised that you took me there.”
“I had no choice. It is always done. I could not bring you into the Kel like a kel’e’en, without this night.”
Duncan tucked in his own veil, and breathed easier to know himself well-acquitted. “Doubtless you were worried.”
“You are kel’en; you have learned to think as we think. I am not surprised that you chose a resting-night. It was wise, And,” he added, “if you send the kath’en the ka’islai, and she does not return them, then you must go and fetch them.”
“Is that how it is done?”
Niun laughed, a soft breath. “So I have heard. I myself am naive in such matters.”
They came to main hall, and Duncan went behind Niun as he paid his morning respects at the shrine; he stood silently there, thinking strangely of a place in his childhood, sensing in another part of his thoughts a dus that was fretting and impatient, confined in kel-hall.
And of a sudden came the machine-voice, An-ehon, deep and thundering through all the halls, through stone and flesh: Alarm… alarm… ALARM.
He froze, dazed, as Niun thrust past him. “Stay here!” Niun shouted at him, and rushed for sen-hall access, where a kel’en had no business to be. Duncan stopped in mid-step cast about left and right, saw other kel’ein rushing down from kel-tower; and there were kath’ein; and Melein herself, descending from the tower of the she’pan, seeking sen-access at a near-run amid the frightened questions that were thrown at her.
“Let me come!” Duncan cried at her, overtaking her, and she did not forbid him. He followed her up, up into sen-hall, where alarmed sen’ein boiled about like disturbed insects, gold about Niun’s black, who stood before An-ehon’s flickering lights who questioned it, and obtained screens lighted with pictures the rudest kel’en could understand: the desert, and a dying glow in a rising cloud on the far horizon.
The ship.
Melein thrust her way through the sen’ein, that crowded from her path, and the while she laid hands on the panels her eyes were for the screens. Duncan tried to follow her, but the sen’ein caught at him, thrust out their hands in his path, forbidding.
“Strike was made from orbit,” An-ehon droned, the while the mad alarm dinned from another channel.
“Strike back,” Melein ordered.
‘Wo.'” Duncan shouted at her. But An-ehon’s flicker-swat reaction showed a line of retaliation plotted, intersecting orbit Lines flashed rapidly, perspectives shifting.