“I am sorry,” he said, and came and sat at her feet, while the dus came and cast itself down between them. The beast was uneasy. He soothed it with his hand.
“Why,” asked Melein, “have you been driven to come to me?”
The question struck him with confusion rude and abrupt, she was, and able to read him. He shrugged, tried to think of something at the edge of the truth, and could not. “She’pan, I am a resource you have. And I wish that you would make use of what I know while there is time.”
The membrane flashed across her eyes, and the dus lifted its head. She leaned forward and soothed the beast, her fingers gently moving on its velvet fur. “And what do you know, kel Duncan, that so suddenly troubles you?”
“That I can get you home alive.” He laid his hand on the dus, fearless to do so, and looked into the she’pan’s golden eyes. “He has taught me; is not managing ships a part of the skill of a kel’en? If he will learn, I will teach him; and if not then I will take what care of the ship I can do myself. His skill is with the yin’ein, and mine never will approach his but this I can do, this one thing. My gift to you, she’pan, and worth a great deal to you when you reach your home.”
“Do you bargain?”
“No. There is no if in it. A gift, that is all.”
Her fingers did not cease to stroke the dus’ warm hide. Her eyes lifted again to his. “Are you my kel’en, kel Duncan?”
Breath failed him an instant. The hal’ari, the kel-law had begun to flow in his mind like blood in his veins: the ques-tion’stood, yes or no, and there was no going back afterward.
“Yes,” he said, and the word almost failed of sound.
Her slim fingers slipped to his, took his broad and human hand. “Will you not turn on us, as you turn on your own kind?”
The dus moved at his shock: he held it, soothed it with both his hands, and looked up after a moment at Melein’s clear eyes.
“No,” she judged, answering her own question, and how, or of what source he did not know. Her sureness disturbed him.
“I have touched a human,” she said, “and I did not, just then.”
It chilled. He held to the dus, drawing on its warmth, and stared at her.
“What do you seek to do?” she asked.
“Give me access to controls. Let me maintain the machinery, do what is needful. We went wrong once. We cannot risk it again.”
He expected refusal, expected long days, months of argument before he could win that of her.
But controls, he thought, had never been locked. And Melein’s amber eyes lowered, by that silent gesture giving permission. She lifted her hand toward the door.
He hesitated, then gathered himself to his feet, made an awkward gesture of courtesy to her, and went.
She followed. He heard her soft footfalls behind the dus. And when he settled at the console in the brightly lit control room, she stood at his shoulder and watched: he could see her white-robed reflection in the screens that showed the star-fields.
He began running the checks he desired, dismissing Melein’s presence from his concerns. He had feared, since last he was dismissed from controls, that the ship was not capable of running so long and hard a voyage under total automatic; but to his relief everything checked out clean, system after system, nothing failed, no hairbreadth errors that could ruin them, losing them forever in this chartless space.
“It is good,” he told Melein.
“You feared something in particular?”
“Only neglect,” he said, “she’pan.”
She stood beside him, occasionally seeming to watch the reflection of his face as he glanced sometimes to that of hers. He was content to be where he was, doing what his hands well remembered: he ran through things that he had already done, only to have the extra time, until she grew weary of standing and departed his shoulder to sit at the second man’s post across the console.