And came back into the living quarters and tried to walk across the naked center of it halfway across before his senses turned inside out and he reeled off balance. He hurled himself for the wall, reaching wildly, found it and collapsed against it.
Niun stood watching. He had not known. Niun looked him up and down, face veiled.
“You were kel’en,” Niun said then. “Now what are you?”
Duncan fought for words, found none that would come out. Niun went to his own pallet and sat down there, and Duncan sat where he was on the hard floor, wanting to rise and walk and give the lie to the mri. He could not. Niun’s contempt gnawed at him. He began to reckon time again, how many days he had lost in this fashion, mindless and disoriented.
“A question,” Duncan said in the hal’ari. “How many days how many gone?”
He did not expect Niun to answer, was inwardly prepared for silence or spite. “Four,” said Niun quietly. “Four since your illness.”
“Help me,” Duncan asked, forcing the words between his teeth. “Help me up.”
Silently the mri arose, and came to him and took his arm, drew him to his feet and helped him walk, providing him an anchor that made it possible to move. Duncan fought his senses into order, trying to lie to them persuaded Niun to guide him about the routines of maintenance in their sector, tried to do what he had been accustomed to do.
He rested, as best he could, muscles still taut; and began the next morning, and the next, and the next, with the determination that the next jump would not undo him.
It came, days hence; and this time Duncan stood fast by the handhold, fighting the sickness. Within a little time he tried to go to the hall, managed to walk, and returned again to his pallet, exhausted.
He might, he thought in increasing bitterness, have let the mri die; he might have had comfort, and safety; he hated Niun’s ability to endure the jumps, that set of mind that could endure the phasing in and out without unraveling.
And Niun, whether sensing his bitterness or not, deigned to speak to him again sat near him, engaged in one-sided conversation in the hal’ari, as if it mattered. At times he spoke chants, and insisted Duncan repeat them, learn them: Duncan listlessly complied, to have peace, to be let alone eventually, endless chains of names and begettings and words. that meant nothing to him. He cared little pitied the mri, finally, who poured his history, his myths, into such a failing vessel. He felt himself on the downward side of a curve, the battle won too late. He could no longer keep food down; his limbs grew weak; he grew thin as the mri, and more fragile.
“I am dying,” he confided to Niun finally, when he had learned hal’ari enough for such a thought. Niun looked at him soberly and unveiled, as he would when he wished to speak personally; but Duncan did not drop the vefl, preferring its concealment.
“Do you wish to die?” Niun asked him, in a tone fully respectful of such a wish. For an instant Duncan was startled, apprehensive that the mri would help him to it on the spot: Would you like a cup of water? The tone would have been the same.
He searched up words with which to answer. “I want,” he said, “to go with you. But I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. No, I do not want to die. But I am dying.”
A frown furrowed Niun’s brow. The eyes nictitated. He put out a slim, golden hand and touched Duncan’s sleeve. It was a strange gesture, an act of pity, had he not better learned the mri.
“Do not die,” Niun wished him earnestly.
Duncan almost wept, and managed not to.
“We shall play shon’ai,” Niun said.
It was mad. Duncan would have refused, for his hands shook, and he knew that he would miss: it occurred to him that it was a way of granting him his death. But Niun’s gentility promised otherwise, promised companionship, occupation for the long hours. One could not think of anything else, and play shon’ai.