He went gingerly, on exhausted legs, into the bath, and looked pn what things were there that belonged to Duncan. These must go, the clothing, the personal items, everything: when he was no longer reminded of humans by the things that surrounded him, then neither would Duncan be reminded.
And if change was impossible to the human, then best to know it soon: it was one thing to reshape, and another to destroy and leave nothing in its place. Mri that he was, Niufl had not learned of his masters to be cruel, only to be pitiless, and to desire no pity.
He gathered up what of Duncan’s belongings he could find and bore them into the lab, where he knew there was a disposal chute: he thrust them in, and felt a pang of shame for what he did, but it seemed wrong to compel Duncan to do this himself, surrendering what he had prized, a lessening of the man and that he would not do.
And when that was done, Niun looked about him at the lab, at the cabinet from which Duncan had obtained his medicines, and resolved on other things.
The door would not yield to his hand: he drew his pistol and ruined the lock, and it yielded easily thereafter. Load after load of tsi’mri medicines and equipage he carried to the chute, and cast it out, while the dusei sat and watched with grave and glittering eyes.
And suddenly the beasts arose in alarm shied aside from. Duncan’s presence in the doorway.
Niun, his hands full of the last of the medicines, thrust them within the chute and only then faced Duncan’s anger, that had the dusei distraught and bristling.
“There is no need of such things,” he said to Duncan.
Duncan had attempted to robe himself as mri: the boots and the e’esin he had managed, the inner robe; but the siga, the outer, he wore loose; and the veil he carried in his “hand he had never found the arranging of it easy. Face-naked, he showed his anguish, a despair that wounded.
“You have killed me,” he said in a thin voice, and Niun felt he sting of that less than certain, in that moment, of the honesty of what he had done, trusting that the human would not challenge, could not. The dusei moaned, crowding into the corner. A container crashed from a table under their weight.
“If your life is those medicines,” said Niun, “then you cannot survive with us. You will survive. We do not need such things: you do not.”
Duncan cursed him. Niun stiffened, set his face against such tsi’mri rage, and refused to be provoked.
“Understand,” said Niun, “that you agreed. This is a mri ship, kel Duncan. You will learn to be mri, as a child of the Kath learns. I do not know any other way, only to teach you as I was taught. If you will not, then I will fight you. But understand, as all mri understand who enter the Kel, that kel-law works from the elder to the lesser to the least. You will hurt before you are done; so, once did I. And if you have it in you to be kel’en, you will survive. That is what my masters in the Kel once said to me, when I was of an age to enter the Kel. I saw twelve of my Kel who did not survive, who never took the seta’al, the scars of caste. It is possible that you will not survive. It is possible that you cannot become what I am. If I were convinced that you cannot, then I would not do what I have done.”
The human quieted; the dusei snuffed loudly and rocked, still uneasy. But Duncan’s naked face assumed a calm, untroubled look that was more the man they knew. “All right,” he said. “But, Niun, I needed those medicines. I needed them.”
Fear. Niun still felt it in the room.
And he was troubled after Duncan had gone away, whether he had in fact done murder. He had thought as mri, forgetting that alien flesh might indeed be incapable of what mri found possible.