“Niun,” he said again, persistent in what had become a twice-daily ritual to let the mri know, if nothing more, that someone remained who could speak his name; to make the mri think, in whatever far place his consciousness wandered; to make some contact with the mri’s numbed mind.
Niun’s eyes briefly seemed to track and gave it up again, hazing as the membrane went over them.
“It’s Duncan,” he persisted, and closed his hand forcefully on the mri’s. “Niun, it’s Duncan.”
The membrane retreated; the eyes cleared; the slim fingers jerked, almost closed. Niun stared at him, and Duncan’s heart leaped in hope, for it was the first indication the mri had made that he was aware, proof that the mind, the man he knew, was undamaged. Duncan saw the mri’s eyes wander through the room, linger at the door, where the guard was visible.
“You are still on Kesrith,” Duncan said softly, lest the guard hear and notice them. “You’re aboard probe ship Flower, just outside the city. Pay no attention to the man. That is nothing, Niun. It’s all right.”
Possibly Niun understood; but the amber eyes hazed and closed, and he slipped back into the grip of the drugs, free of pain, free of understanding, free of remembering.
They were the last of their kind, Niun and Melein the last mri, not alone on Kesrith, but anywhere. It was the reason that the scientists would not let them go: it was a chance at the mri enigma that might never, after them, be repeated. The mri had died here on Kesrith, in one night of fire and treachery all, all save these two, who survived as a sad curiosity in the hands of then enemies.
And they had been put there by Duncan, whom they had trusted.
Duncan pressed Niun’s unfeeling shoulder and turned away, paused to look through the dark glass partition into the room where Melein lay sleeping. He no longer visited her, not since she had grown stronger. Among mri she would have been holy, untouchable: an outsider did not speak to her directly, but through others. Whatever she endured of loneliness and terror among her enemies was not worse than humiliation. Her enemies she might hate and ignore, slipping into unconsciousness and forgetting; but before him, whose name she knew, who had known her when she was free, she might feel deep shame.
She rested peacefully. Duncan watched the gentle rise and fall of her breathing for a moment, assuring himself that she was well and comfortable, then turned away and opened the door, murmured absent-minded thanks to the guard, who let him out of the restricted section and into the outer corridor.
Duncan ascended to the main level of the crowded probe ship, dodging white-uniformed science techs and blue-uniformed staff, a man out of place in Flower. His own khaki brown was the uniform of the SurTac, Surface Tactical Force. Like the scientific personnel of Flower, he was an expert; his skills, however, were no longer needed on Kesrith or elsewhere. The war was over.
He had become like the mri, obsolete.
He checked out of Flower, a clerical formality. Security knew him well enough, as all humans on Kesrith knew him the human who had lived among mri. He walked out onto the ramp and down, onto the mesh causeway humans flung across the powdery earth of Kesrith.
Nothing grew on the white plain outside, as far as the eye could see. Life was everywhere scant on Kesrith, with its alkali flats, its dead ranges, its few and shallow seas. The world was lit by a red sun named Arain, and by two moons. It was one of six planets in the system, the only one even marginally habitable. The air was thin, cold in shadow and burning hot in the direct rays of Arain; and rains that passed through it left the skin burning and dry. Powdery, caustic dust crept into everything, even the tightest seals, making men miserable and eventually destroying machinery. In most places Kesrith was uninhabitable by humans, save here in the lowland basin about Kesrith’s sole city, on the shore of a poisonous sea: one small area where moisture was plentiful, amid geysers and steaming pools, and crusted earth that would not bear a man’s weight.