He did as she asked, his knees finding the deck painful; he touched the dusei of necessity, and knew the trap, the contact with the beasts, the blurring flow of senses. He grew afraid, and the beasts knew it, stirring powerfully against him; he repressed the fear, and they settled.
“Once,” said Melein to him, her voice distant and soft, “I said that we would find a ship and a way off Kesrith; I said that I must have the pan’en, and you were there to hear. Kel Duncan, are these things your gift, yours alone?”
Not naive, this child-queen: she asked what she did not believe. He sensed depths opening at his feet. “Policy,” he said, “does not want you in regul hands. You are free. No, it is not my gift; I didn’t have it to give. Others arranged these things. If you linger in regul space or human you are done; this ship is not armed. But we have no escort now, she’pan. We are alone; and we will follow this tape to its end.”
She was silent a moment. Duncan looked at Niun, found ‘nothing of comfort, was not sure that he was believed in either quarter. Melein spoke in her own language; Niun answered in a monosyllable, but he did not turn his face or vary his expression. Tsi’mri, he heard: the mri word for outsider; and he was afraid.
“Do your kind hate you?” asked Melein. “Why are you aboard alone, kel Duncan?”
“To tend you and the machinery. Someone must. She’pan, from that from the object-scientists made our guidance tapes. We’re locked on it, and there’s nothing you or I can do to stop it. I will tend the ship; I will deliver you to your destination, whatever it is. And when I have done that, I will take the ship and meet my people and tell them that the mri want no more part of regul or human politics, and that the war is over, forever. Finished. This is why I’m aboard.”
A troubled frown grew upon Melein’s face as she gazed into his eyes. “I cannot read truth in you,” she confessed, “tsi’mri that you are; and your eyes are not right.”
“Medicines,” Niun said in a low voice, the first word he had spoken without invitation. “They use them during transition.”
The mri had none, refused medicines, even that: Niun’s they acquired demeaning force, and Duncan felt the sting of it, felt the danger of it at the same moment. For th” first time panic settled round him; the dusei jerked in alarm, and Niun rebuked them, steadied them with his hands.
“You do not know,” said Melein then, “what your superiors have done to you, kel Duncan. How long are you given to return?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“So long, so long a voyage. You should not be here. You should not have done this thing, kel Duncan.”
“It’s a long walk home, she’pan. We’re across jump.”
“This is a mri ship now. And where we go, no tsi’mri can go.”
The dusei stirred, heaved up: Duncan started to rise, but Niun’s hand seized his wrist, a pressure without strength, a warning without threat. “No,” Niun said. The eyes above the veil were no longer hard. “No. Be quiet, Duncan.”
The dusei had retreated into the recess to Melein’s left, making sounds of alarm, small puffs of breath. Their small eyes glittered dangerously, but after a moment they settled, sat, still watching.
And quietly, in his own language, Niun spoke to Melein received an answer and spoke again, urgently, as if he pleaded against her opinion. Duncan listened tensely, able only to catch the words mri, Kesrith, and tsi’mri tsi’mri: as mri meant simply the People, the word for any other species was not-people. It was their thinking; he had known it long since. There was no reasoning against it.
Finally, with a few words, Melein rose, veiled her face and turned away, deliberately turning her back.
It was a chilling gesture. Duncan gathered himself to his feet, apprehensive; and Niun arose, using the cushion to steady himself, standing between him and the dusei.
“She has said,” said Niun, “that I must not permit any stranger in her sight again. You are kel’en; I will fight you when I am able, or you may choose to stay with us and live as mri. You may choose.”