C. Cherryh - Shon'jir

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.

Lonely, perhaps, interested in what he did: he recalled that she was not ignorant of such machinery, only of that human-made, and he dared not try too much in her presence. She surely knew that he was repeating operations.

He took the chance.

Elapsed time, he asked of the records-storage.

It flashed back refusal. No record.

Other details he asked. No record. No record, it answered.

Something cold and hard swelled in his throat. Carefully he checked the status of the navigational tapes, whether re­trace was available, to bring him home again.

Classified, the screen flashed at him.

He stopped, mindful of the auto-destruct linked into the tape mechanism. Suspicion crept horridly through his recol­lections.

We want nothing coming home with you by accident.

Stavros' words.

Sweat trickled down his side. He felt it prickling on his face, wiped the edge of his hand across his mouth and tried to disguise the gesture. Melein still sat beside him.

The dus came nearer, moved between them, close to the delicate instruments. "Get out of there," Duncan wished it. It only lay down.

"Kel'en," said Melein, "what do you see that troubles you?”

He moistened his lips, shifted his eyes to her. "She'pan we have found no life ... I have lost count of the worlds, and we have found no life. What makes you think that your homeworld will be different?”

Her face became unreadable. "Do you find reason there, kel'en, to think we shall not?”

"I have found reason here ... to believe that this ship is locked against me. She'pan, when that tape runs to its end, it may have no navigational memory left.”

Amber eyes flickered. She sat still with her hands folded in her lap. "Did you plan to leave?”

"We may not be able to run. We will have no other op­tions, she'pan.”

"We never did.”

He drew in his breath, wiped at the moisture that had gone cold on his cheek, and let the breath go again. Her calm was unshakable, thoroughly rational: Shon'ai ... the throw was cast, for them by birth. It was like Niun with his weapons.

"She'pan," he said quietly, "you have named each world as we have passed. Do you know the number that we have yet to see?”

She nodded in the fashion of the People, a tilt of the head to the left. "Before we reach homeworld," she said, "Mlara and Sha, and Hlar and Sa'a-no-kli'i.”

"Four," he said, stunned at the sudden knowledge of an end. "Have you told ?”

"I have told him." She leaned forward, her arms twined on her white-robed knees. "Kel Duncan, your ships will come. They are coming.”

"Yes.”

"You have chosen your service.”

"Yes," he said. "With the People, she'pan." And when she still stared at him, troubled by his treachery: "On their side, she'pan, there are so many kel'ein one will not be missed. But on the side of the People, there is only one twice that, with me. Humankind will not miss one kel'en.”

Melein's eyes held to his, painfully intense. "Your mathe­matics is without reproach, kel Duncan.”

"She'pan," he said softly, moved by the gratitude he real­ized in her.

She rose, and left.

Committed the ship to him.

He sat still a moment, finding everything that he had sought under his hands, and suddenly a burden on him that he had not thought to bear. Had he intended betrayal, he did not think he could commit it now; and to do to them again what he had done on Kesrith, even to save their lives

That was not an act of love, but of selfishness… here, and hereafter. He knew them too well to believe it for their own good.

He scanned the banks of instruments, that hid their horrid secrets, programs locked from his tampering, things triggered perhaps from the moment he had violated orders and thrown them prematurely onto taped running.

Or perhaps as SurTacs had been expended before it was planned from the beginning, that Fox would not come home, save as a rider to Saber.

There was the pan'en, and the record in that; but under Saber's firepower, Fox was nothing… and it was not im­possible that the navigational computer would go down as the tape expired, crippling them.

He reached for the board again, plied the keys repeatedly, receiving over and over again No Record and Classified.

And at last he gave over trying, and pushed himself to his feet, reached absently for the dus that crowded wistfully against him, sensing his distress and trying to distract him from it.

Four worlds.

A day, or more than a month: the span between jumps was irregular.

The time seemed suddenly very short.

MLARA AND Sha and Hlar and Sa'a-no-kli'i.

Niun watched them pass, lifeless as they were, with an ex­citement in his blood that the somber sights could not wholly kill.

They jumped again, and just after ship's noon there ap­peared a new star centered in the field.

"This is home," said Melein softly, when they gathered in the she'pan's hall to see it with her. "This is the Sun.”

In the hal'ari, it was Na'i'in.

Niun looked upon it, a mere pinprick of light at the dis­tance from which they entered the system, and agonized that it would be so long a journey yet. Na'i'in. The Sun.

And the World, that was Kutath.

"By your leave," Duncan murmured, " I had better go to controls.”

They all went, even the dusei, into the small control room.

And there was something eerie in the darkness of that sec­tion of the panels that had been most active. Duncan stood and looked at it a moment, then settled in at controls, called forth activity elsewhere, but not in that crippled section.

Niun left the she'pan's side to stand at the panel to Duncan's right: little enough he knew of the instruments, save only what Duncan had shown him but he had knowledge enough to be sure there was something amiss.

"The navigational computer," Duncan said. "Gone.”

"You can bring us in," Niun said without doubt.

Duncan nodded. His hands moved on the boards, and the screens built patterns, built structures about a point that was Na'i'in.

"We are on course," he said. "We have no starflight navi­gation, that is all.”

It was not of concern. Long after the she'pan had returned to her own hall, Niun still stayed by Duncan, sitting in the cushion across the console, watching the operations that Duncan undertook.

It was five days before Kutath itself took shape before them, third out from Na'i'in… Kutath. Duncan guided them, present at controls surely more than reason called for: he took his meals in this room, and entered kel-hall only to wash and to take a little sleep in night-cycle. Restlessly he would go back before the night was done, and Niun knew where to find him.

Nothing required his presence at controls.

There were no alarms, nothing.

It was, Niun began to reckon with growing despair, the same as the others. Melein surely made her own estimation of the lasting silence, and Duncan did, and none spoke it aloud.