Galey absorbed that thought in several kilometers of silence, the white desert slipping beneath them, jagged with rocks. Duncan looked out, saw black dots below.
“Dusei,” he said. Galey rocked over and looked.
“Filthy beasts,” Galey said.
Duncan did not answer him or argue. Most of humankind would say the same, would wish the remaining mri dead, with just cause. He watched the desert slip under the airship’s nose, and the land roughen into highlands over which he had traveled at great cost, in great pain dreamlike, such speed, looking down on a world where time moved more slowly, where realities were different and immediate and he had learned for a time to live.
They circled out over Sil’athen, the long T-shaped valley remote in the highlands, a slash into the high plateau, much eroded, a canyon full of strange shapes carved by caustic rains and the constant winds that swept its length. There was wreckage there of ships not yet lifted back for salvage, aircraft that Niun had made the price of his taking; and wreckage too of nature, many an aeons-old formation of sandstone blasted into fragments.
When they landed at the crossing of the high valley and stepped out into that place, into the full heat of Aram’s red light, the silence came suddenly on them both, a weight that took the breath away. Duncan felt the air at once, a violent change from the pressurized and filtered air in the ship, and began coughing so painfully that he had at once to have recourse to the canteen. Filter masks and tinted goggles were part of the gear; he put his on, and adjusted the hood of his uniform to shield his head from the sun, while Galey did the same. The mask did not overcome the need to cough; he took another small sip of water.
“You all right?” Galey’s voice was altered by the mask. Duncan looked into the broad, freckled face and felt better for the company of someone in such silence; but Galey did not belong, he in no wise belonged. Duncan slung his canteen over his shoulder, gathered up the gear, and tried not to listen to the silence.
“I’m all right,” Duncan said. “Listen, if s a long ways down the canyon and up into those rocks. You don’t have to come.”
“My orders say otherwise.”
“Am I not trusted with this?” Duncan at once regretted the outburst, seeing how Galey looked at him, shocked and taken aback. “Come on,” he said then. “Watch your step.”
Duncan walked, at the slow pace necessary in the thin air, Galey walking heavy-footed beside him. The mri were right in the dress they adopted: to have any skin exposed in this sun was not wise; but when Galey began to drift toward the inviting shade of the cliffs, Duncan did not, and Galey returned to him.
“Don’t walk the shade,” Duncan said. “There are things you can miss there, that may not miss you. It’s dark enough where we’ll have to be walking, without taking unnecessary chances.”
Galey looked at him uneasily, but asked no questions. The wind sang strangely through the sandstone spires.
It was a place of ghosts: Sil’athen, burial place of the mri. Duncan listened to the wind and looked about him as they walked, at the high cliffs and caves that held their secrets.
A dead people, a dead world. Graves of great age surrounded them here, those on the east with weathered pillars to mark them, those on the west with none. There were writings, many already beyond reading, outworn by the sands, and many a pillar overthrown and destroyed in the fighting that had raged up and down Sil’athen.
And in the sand they found the picked bones of a great dus.
Sadness struck Duncan when he saw that, for the beasts were companions of the mri, and dangerous as they could be, they could also be gentle: sad-faced, slow-moving protectors of their masters.
This, too, was added to the destruction of a way of life.
Galey kicked at the skull. “Fast-working scavengers,” he said.
“Leave it alone,” Duncan said sharply. Galey blinked, straightened, and took a more formal attitude with him.