C. Cherryh - Kutath

There was a harsh oath from Boaz.

Galey folded the paper, slid it into the clip by the seat, sat still a moment. "How many with you?" he asked Harris.

"Magee and North; we opted Bright out to get cargo in.”

"Demolitions?”

Harris nodded. "Enough, at least to start.”

Galey ventured a look toward Boaz, toward a face gone old, red-marked with the breather-mask, her gray-blonde braids wind-shredded. Agony was in her eyes. Kadarin rested a hand on her shoulder, his own face saying nothing.

"We lost Mike Lane," Galey said. "A mistake with those machines. They have defenses.”

There was silence. He ran a hand through his knotted hair, haunted still by Boaz's eyes. His heart labored like something trapped.

"TThey're going to take everything we've done," she said, "and use that to destroy the sites. To wipe out their past and their power sources. They take that on themselves.”

No one spoke. A muscle in Boaz's cheek jerked convulsively.

"And mri aren't the only ones involved. You don't know. You don't know what you've got your hand to.”

He shook his head.

"Refuse the order.”

He considered it ... actually considered it. It was madness. Harris's presence brought sense back. "Can't," he said. They've got us, you understand. They can blow the world under us if we don't do this. You, all of us, we're expendable in a going operation, in a policy they've got set. It's better than losing them, isn't it? It's better than killing kids.”

"To Idll their past? Isn't that the other face of it?”

There was an oppression in the narrow cabin, a difficulty in breathing. Boaz's anger filled it, stifled, strangled.

"No choice." He reached out toward Harris, made a weary gesture toward a cushion; his neck ached too much looking up. "Sit down.”

Harris did. "We run the doctor back to base?”

Galey lifted a hand before Boaz could spit out the next word. "She's ours," he said. "She goes back only if she wants.”

"She doesn't," Boaz said.

"She doesn't." Galey drew a deep breath, wiped at his blurred eyes, looked from one to the other of them. “Ye penetrate the sites; that's easy; we carry the stuff in on our backs, set it, the margin we know, walk out, get the ship clear… nothing easier. Chances are we'll trigger something that will blow us all. I figure if Saber says there's no one in position for relays, that means they and the regul are backing off for fear of a holocaust down here. We're in the furnace. Flowers safe, maybe; you understand that, Boz; you'd have a better chance on the ship; and maybe there's nothing more you can do out here.”

She shook her head.

"Got a message for you," Harris told her, fished it from his pocket, a crumpled envelope.

"Luiz," Boaz said without having to read the name. She opened it, read it, lips taut. "'My blessing,'" she said in a small voice. "That's all it says." She rubbed at her cheek, wadded the paper and pocketed it "Who does this profit? Answer me that, Mr. Galey?”

"The mri themselves. They live.”

"Excluding that doubtful premise.”

"I'm not sure I follow.”

"Our command ship is backing off. We've got a regul operation onworld. Whose benefit?" He sat there with an increasing pulse, adding that up. "I'm sure that's been calculated at higher levels than this one.”

"Don't give me 'calculated.' The admiral's been taking advice from Sim Averson and he can't see past his papers.”

"Boz-”

She said nothing more. He gnawed at his lip and looked at Harris. "You stay on standby, here. If we go out there afoot, I want to be sure we don't have any regul prying about here.”

"How do we stop them?" Harris asked.

"Shoot," he said, reckoning on protest from Boaz; he knew her principles. She said nothing. "You and Boaz stay here; if we get any regul contact, I want her by a com set in a hurry. And you listen to her, Gene. She doesn't carry guns. Doesn't approve. She knows regul. If she calls strike, she'll have reason. You monitor everything that moves; make sure Boz understands the limits of our scan and how long it takes to react And if she says go, go to kill. Agreed?”

Harris nodded without a qualm evident. "You're going back?”

"Better," he said. He rose up in the narrow confines, rubbed his beard-rough face, wishing at least for the luxury of washing; could not. He took a drink from the dispenser and started gathering supplies from the locker, replenishing what they had used out of the kits. Kadarin did the same, and Harris went with Shibo to gather up the demolitions supplies.

He let them; that gave a little time for rest. When it was all ready he gave Boaz a squeeze of the hand and walked out down the ramp, with Kadarin, and Shibo, and Harris's man Magee. He pulled the breathing mask up and started them moving. He was cold already; his feet were numb, beyond hurting. He could have sent Harris.

Could have.

Duncan was lost. He admitted that now. Lost; dead; or lost; with the mri. There was no hope, no miracle, only this ugly act that was better than other choices.

Their past, Boaz had called it, killing the past. He looked about him; reckoned there was for this barren, dying world… little else left. He shook his head, set his eyes on the city whose name he did not even know, and walked.

Pillars rose, spires of the same hue as the hills against which they stood, such that they might have been made by nature… but they were baroque and identical, and there were others round about them in the distance, marching off toward the south; there was beyond that a jewel-gleam, a shining the eyes could not resolve.

Ele'et.

Duncan gazed on it in sometime view beyond the shoulders of kel'ein before him ... he was lost among them, a head shorter than most, when all his life among humans he had been tall; as for all his thinness now, he was still wider-boned than they, broader of hand, of foot, of shoulder; different, anomaly among them. And mingled with other thoughts was unease, the thought that they faced something more different still.

"The People served the elee," he said to Taz, who walked hard by him, with a burden slung to his shoulder. "Do you know what they look like?'

"I have not seen one," Taz said. And after a space more; "They are tsi'mri," which dismissed interest in them.

He said no more then, having enough to do only to walk, with the veils wrapped thickly about nose and mouth, and his joints remembering the pain of the long trek before. He had the dus by him, and through it, sometime sense of Niun, which comforted him.

He was afraid; it came down to that

Why they were going to this place, what they hoped to have of the race which lived there, which perhaps had resources uninvolved in the catastrophe, weapons. ... he had no clear imagination. To fight, Niun had said. He had given them the breath of a chance to do so, that much; had killed the regul; that much.

They rested had done so several times during the day, for it was Kath's pace which dictated their progress; and this time a ripple of orders went down the line; make camp.

Kel'ein muttered surprise, gathered themselves up from the places where they had settled, to aid Kath. Duncan began to, and remembered orders, and sat still, by the dus, his arm across it. Unease would not leave him. Dus-sense, the realization came on him; the beast itself was stirred. They were making camp as if all were well, and the dus-sense had the discomfort of a cliffs edge, a dizziness, a profound sense of strangeness.

Niun would know; would be aware of it. He rose up, ignored in the confusion of assembling canvas and the assembling of the tall poles, wended his way among them, his way blocked by a little child who looked up at him and blinked in shock, scrambled aside from him and the beast at once.