“Duncan. What else will you have of us?”
Duncan’s dus was with Melein, touched and touching; he was betrayed. When his eyes shifted toward Niun there was no defense there, nothing but pain.
“I argued,” said Duncan, “with my superiors, for your sake. I fought for you. And for what? Did she have an answer? She knew the world’s name. What happened to it?”
“We do not know.”
“And to the other worlds?”
“We do not know, Duncan.”
“Killers,” he said, his eyes fixed elsewhere. “Killers by nature.”
Niun clenched his hands, that had gone chilL “You are with us, kel Duncan.”
“I have often wondered why.” His dark eyes returned to Niun’s. Of a sudden he pulled the veil away, swept off the tasseled headcloth, making evident his humanity. “Except that I am necessary.”
“Yes. But I did not know that. We did not know it before.”
It touched home, he thought; there was a small reaction of the eyes. And then Duncan turned, a wild, distracted look on his face as he looked to the door.
Dus-feelings. Niun received them too, even before he heard the click of claws on tiling. Senses blurred. It was hard to remember what bitterness they had been about.
“No!” Duncan shouted as it came in. The beast shied and lifted a paw in threat, then dropped it and edged forward, head slightly averted. By degrees it came closer, settled, edged the final distance to Duncan’s side. Duncan touched it, slid his arm about its neck. At the door appeared the other beast, that came quietly to Niun, lay down at his back. Niun soothed it with gentle touches, his heart pounding from the misery that radiated from the other schism between man and dus: the very air ached with it.
“You are hurting it,” Niun said. “Give way to it. Give it only a little.”
“It and I have an accommodation. I do not push it and it does not push me. Only sometimes it comes too fast. It forgets where the line is.”
“Dusei have no memories. There is only now with them.”
“Fortunate animals,” Duncan said hoarsely.
“Give way to it. You lose nothing.”
Duncan shook his head. “I am not mri. And I cannot forget.”
There was weariness in his voice; it trembled. For a moment there was again the man who had been long absent from them. Niun reached out, pressed his arm in a gesture he would have offered a brother of the Kel. “Duncan, I have tried to help you. All that I could do, I have tried.”
Duncan closed his eyes, opened them again; his fingers at the dus’ neck lifted in a gesture of surrender. “I think that, at least, is the truth.”
“We do not lie,” he said. “There are the dusei. We cannot.”
“I can understand that.” Duncan pressed his lips together, a white line, relaxed again, his hand still caressing the dus.
“I would not play at shon’ai with a man in your mood,” Niun said, baiting him, searching after hidden things. They had not, in fact, played in some time.
The dus began slowly to give forth its pleasure sound, relaxed to Duncan’s fingers as Duncan eased his arm about its fat-rolled neck; it sighed, oblivious to past grief, delighting in present love.
The human pressed his brow to that thick skull, then turned his face to look at Niun. His eyes bore a bruised look, like one long without rest. “It has no happier a life than mine,” Duncan said. “I cannot let it have what it wants, and it cannot make me over into a mri.”
Niun drew a deep breath, tried to keep images from his mind. “I might destroy it,” he said, hushed and quickly. The human, in contact with the beast, flinched, soothed the dus with his hands. Niun understood; he felt soiled even in offering but sometimes it was necessary, when a dus, losing its kel’en, could not be controlled. This one had never gained the kel’en it wished.
“No,” Duncan said at last. “No.”
He pushed the animal away, and it rose and ambled over to the corner. There was peace in the feeling of the beasts. It was better than it had been.