And was it then wrong that aliens needed what mri law forbade?
It was not a kel-thought, not right for his caste to think or to wonder. He dared not even bring it to Melein in secret, knowing the thought beyond him and disrespectful to a young and less than certain she’pan, even from her kel’anth, senior of the Kel such of a Kel as she possessed.
He hoped desperately that he had not killed Duncan.
And in that thought he realized clearly that he wanted Duncan to live, not alone for Tightness’ sake, but because jwo were a desolate sort of House, and because the silence in kel-hall could become very deep and very long. He called the dusei to him, soothed them with his hands and his voice, and went to find where Duncan had gone.
CHAPTER Eleven
FOUR DAYS.
Duncan held them as a blur in his mind, a moiled confusion out of which he remembered little of reason. He worked to fill his hours, exhausted himself deliberately to cast himself to sleep of nights without long thought, without dreams. Niun did nothing except to exercise, quietly and often: I am not a bearer of burdens, the mri had insisted stiffly, when Duncan suggested he might well exercise by assisting him; and the mri then compounded the affront by reminding him that the dusei wanted tending.
Neither am I, Duncan had retorted, and bit off the oaths that rose into his mouth: the mri were not tolerant; they would kill or die for small cause, and there was time later to reason with Niun, whose limbs’ weakness doubtless fed his temper, and whose uncertainty about his total situation likely hardened his attitudes.
The dusei, in fact, did want tending; and after a suitable delay, Duncan went and saw to their wants rewarded by their pleasure-impulse, he felt shame for having put them off in spite and fled it, for he could not bear much of it.
It was not the last crossing of purposes with Niun; the mri asked things and insisted he should understand the mri language understand he did, in some words, with gestures and at times Niun affected not to understand until he used a mri expression, though “the mri was fluent. Starve, then, he was tempted to say; and did not, for there was later for quarrels, and the dusei that hovered about were becoming unpleasant and upset, contributing to the situation. In the end, Niun had his way.
It made sense, Duncan thought late, upon his bed, while the mri chose the floor. Niun fought to keep what was his, a way and a language that had almost entirely perished. It was a quiet battle, waged against him, who had most helped them and now most threatened them. It was something against which guns and skill did not avail, but life and death, all the same. It was why they were here at all, why they had been unable to live among humans, why he had argued with Stavros to free them. There was no compromise possible for them. They could not bear with strangeness. A human could; a human could adapt, facile as the jo, who looked like sand or stone, and waited. He considered this, and considered the sleeping mri, who lay with his head against his dus, unveiled as he would not unveil to an enemy.
Jo-fashion, a human could change and change again; the mri would obstinately die: and therefore it was inevitable that Niun should have his way.
In the morning Duncan set about his routines, and utterly bit back objections with Niun, went so far as to ask what he would have done.
Niun’s amber eyes swept the compartment; a long-fingered hand made an inclusive gesture. “E’nai,” he said, “i.” Remove it all. Duncan stared, drew a long breath, and considered the matter.
The ship grew cold in the passing days, the air gradually resembling Kesrith’s dry chill. Duncan was glad of the warmth of the mri robes that he wore from the skin outward. He learned the veil and the manners of it; he learned words and courtesies and gestures, and abandoned his own.
Niun sensed, surely, how far he was pressed, the frustration that welled upward in him at times, and averted his face and resumed the veil when matters came too close to impasse. There would be silence for a time, and finally words again. Niun named the things of which he did not approve: comforts and furnishings of all sorts. Duncan acquiesced, yielded up such of his own belongings as still remained, for the attachment he had to them seemed distant in this place, faced with what misery lay ahead for him; and as for damage to the ship, that seemed insufficient revenge on those that had sent him here. He worked at it, bewildered at first by what Niun asked, then grimly pleased in it. He stripped the accessible compartments of all furnishings, disassembled the furniture and stored what parts were useful metals and materials and cast the rest out the destruct chute. After that went all machinery the mri considered superfluous, medical and otherwise, and all goods in storage that were counted luxuries.