The mri chose to ignore what pursued, to ask no further, to do nothing. Niun lived with him, slept beside him at night in apparent trust and cultivated only the ancient skills of his kind, the weapons of ritual and duel, as if they could avail him at the end.
The yin’ein, ancient blades, against warships, against the likes of Saber. Niun chose, advisedly. An image came: night, and fire, and mri obstinacy. Duncan pushed it aside, and it came back again, recollection of mri stubbornness that would not surrender, that would not compromise, whose concept of modern was lapped in Darks and Betweens and the ways of tsi’mri who were only a moment in the experience of the People.
Modern weapons.
Duncan felt the taint of the word, the scorn implicit in the hal’ari, and hated the human in him that had been too blind to see.
The last battle of the People.
To meet it with modern weapons if it came to that that the People should come to a hopeless fight….
Niun would not, then, plan to survive: the last mri would choose the things that made sense to his own logic, which was precisely what he was doing.
To seek his home.
To recover his ancient ways.
To be mri until the holocaust ended it.
It was all Niun could do, if he chose to think about it, save yield to tsi’mri. Duncan reckoned the depth of the mri’s patience, that had borne with an outsider under such conditions even Melein’s, who endured Niun’s tolerance of a tsi’mri, even that was considerable.
And Niun only practiced at duel with him, patiently, gently practiced, as if he could forget the nature of him.
The yin’ein. They were for Niun the only reasonable choice.
Duncan rested his arm on his knee and gnawed at his lip, felt the disturbance of the dus at his back and reached to settle it guilty in his humanity, that troubled Niun. And yet the thought worried at him and would not let him go that, human that he was, he could not do as Niun did.
That there were for him alternatives that Niun did not possess.
Perhaps, at the end, the mri would let him go.
Or expect him to lift arms against humankind. He tried to imagine it; and all that he could imagine in his hand was the service pistol that rested among his belongings to deal large-scale death for his death: the inclination came on him. He could fight, cornered; he would wish to take a dozen of the lives, human or not, that would take his. But to take up the yin’ein… he was not mri enough.
There were means of fighting the mri would not use. Human choices.
Slowly, slowly, shattered bits of what had been a SurTac began to sort themselves into order again. “Niun,” he said.
The mri was shaping a bit of metal into a thing that looked like an ornament. For several days he had been working at it, painstaking in his attention. “A?” Niun answered.
“I have been thinking: we suffered one failure in instruments. If the she’pan would permit it, I would like to go back to controls, to test the instruments.”
Niun stopped. A frown was on his face when he looked up. “I will ask the she’pan,” he said.
“I would like,” Duncan said, “to give her the benefit of what skills I do have.”
“She will send if there is need.” “Niun, ask her.”
The frown deepened. The mri rested hands on his knees, his metalwork forgotten, then expelled a deep breath and gathered up his work again.
“I want peace with her,” Duncan said. “Niun, I have done all that you have asked of me. I have tried to be one of you.”
“Other things you have done,” said Niun. “That is the problem.”
“I am sorry for those things. I want them forgotten. Ask her to see me again, and I give you my word I will not offend against her. There is no peace on this ship without peace with her and none with you.”
For a moment Niun said nothing. Then he gave a long sigh. “She has waited for you to ask.”