He offered that with a cynical tone, and slowly rose, still looking at the scanners. “That world is dead,” he said then. “And that is strange, given other things I read in scanning.”
“You are mistaken,” said Melein harshly. “Read your instruments again, tsi’mri. That is a world called Nhequuy and the star is Syr, and it is a spacefaring race that lives there and all about these regions, called the etrau.”
“Look at the infrared. Look at the surface. No plants. No life. It’s a dead world, she’pan, whatever your records tell you. This is a dead system. A spacefaring people would have come to investigate an intrusion this close to their home-world. But none have. Not here, not anywhere we have been, have they? You could not have answered a challenge. You could not have reacted to their ships. You would have needed me for that, and you have not. World after world after world. And nothing. Why do you suppose, she’pan?”
Melein looked on him with shock in her unveiled face, a helpless anger. She did not answer, and Niun felt a chill creeping over his skin in her silence.
“The People are nomads,” Duncan said, “mercenaries, hiring out whatever you have been. You have gone from star to star, seeking out wars, fighting for hire. And you have forgotten. You close each chamber after you, and forbid the Kel to remember. But what became of.all your former employers, she’pan? Why is there no life where you have passed?”
Niun looked at the screens, at the deadness they displayed, at instruments he could not read and looked to Melein, to hear her deny these things.
“Leave,” she said. “Niun, take him back to kel-hall.”
Duncan thrust back from the panel, swept a glance from her to Niun, and in the instant Niun hesitated, turned on his heel and walked out, striding rapidly down the corridor in the direction of kel-hall.
Niun stared at Melein. Her skin was pale, her eyes dilated: never had she looked so afraid, not even with regul and humans closing on them.
“She’pan?” he asked, still hoping.
“I do not know,” she said. And she wept, for it was an admission a she’pan could not make. She sank down on the edge of a cushion and would not look at him.
He stayed, ventured finally to take her by the arms and draw her out of that place, back to her own hall, where the chatter of the machines could not accuse her. He settled her in her chair and knelt beside her, smoothed her golden mane as he had done when they were both only kath’dai’ein, and with his own black veil he dried her tears and saw her face restored to calm.
He knew that she was lost, that the machines were beyond, her capacity; she knew that he knew; but he knelt at her knees and took her hands, and looked up at her clear-eyed, offering with all his heart.
“Rest,” he urged her. “Rest. Even your mercies were well-guided. Is it not so that even the she’panei do not always know the Sight when it moves them? So I have heard, at least. You kept Duncan, and that was right to do. And be patient with him, for my sake be patient. I will deal with him.”
“He sees what is plain to be seen. Niun, I do not know what we have done.”
He thought of the dead worlds, and pushed the thought away. “We have done nothing. We have done nothing.”
“We are heirs of the People.”
“We do not know that his reckoning is right.”
“Niun, Niun, he knows. Can you be so slow to understand what we have seen along the track of the People? Can there be so many worlds that have failed of themselves after we have passed?”
“I do not know,” he said desperately. “I am only kel’en, Melein.”
She touched his face, and he felt the comfort that she meant, apology for her words, and they did not speak for a time. Long ago it seemed long ago, and impossibly far he had sat by another she’pan, Intel of Edun Kesrithun, and leaned his head against the arm of her chair, and she had been content in her drugged dreams to touch, to know that he was there. So he did now, with Melein. Her hand restlessly stroked his mane, while she thought; and he sat still, unable to share, unable to imagine where her thoughts ran, save that they went into darkness, and into things of the Pana.