C. Cherryh - Shon'jir

There was a touch, tentative, not the warding impulse.

"Come," he called it aloud, held out his hands to it. He cast it fellowship, mri-wise together, man and dus.

Life, he cast it.

There was hesitance. The warding impulse lashed fear across his senses, and he would not accept it Life, he insisted.

It came. All about him he felt warding impulse, strong and full of terrors, such that the sweat broke out on him and dried at once in the wind. But his dus was there. It began to walk with him, warding with all its might.

Traitor to its kind. Traitor human and traitor dus. He had corrupted ft, and it served him, went with him, began to be as he was.

Fear cast darkness about them and the afternoon sun seemed dimmer for a time; and then the others were gone, and there appeared finally black dots along a distant ridge, watching.

Children of Kutath, these dusei, flesh of the flesh that had come from Kesrith, and partaking not at all of it.

Only the old one remembered not events, but person, remembered him, and stayed.

By late afternoon the wind began rising, little gusts at first that skirled the sand off the dune crests and swept out in great streamers over the dead sea chasm. Then came the flur­ries of sand that rode on battering force, that made walking difficult, that rattled off the protective visor and made Duncan again wrap the met doubled about his face. The dus itself walked half-blind, tear-trails running down its face. It moaned plaintively, and in sudden temper reared up, shook itself, blew dust and settled again to walk against the wind.

The others appeared from time to time, walking the ridges, keeping their pace. They appeared as dark shadows in the curtain of sand that rode the wind, materialized as now a head and now less, or a retreating flank. What they sent was still hostile, and full of blood.

Duncan's beast growled and shook its head, and they kept moving, though it seemed by now his limbs were hung with lead and his muscles laced with fire. He coughed, and blood came, and he became conscious of the weight of the weapons that he bore, weapons that were useless where he was bound, and more useless still were he dead, but he would not give them up. He clenched in one hand the sole j'tai he wore, and remembered the man that had given it, and would not be less.

Su-she'pani kef en. The she'pan's kel'en.

Pain lanced up his leg. He fell, cast down by the treacher­ous turn of stone, carefully gathered himself up again and leaned on the dus. The leg was not injured. He tried to suck at the wound the stone had made on his hand, but his mouth was dry and he could not. There was no pipe hereabouts. He hoarded what moisture he had and chose not to use the little supply that remained to him, not yet

And one of the lesser dusei came close to him, reared up so that his own interposed its body. There was a whuffing of great lungs, and the lesser backed off.

Ship, he thought suddenly, and for no reason.

Desire.

There was no warding impulse from the stranger. He felt only direction, sensed presence.

He called to his dus, softly, from a throat that had almost forgotten sound, and went, felt a presence at his left side, a warm breathing on the hand that hung beside him.

Doubly attended now he went. Another was with them, thought of destination, desired what they desired.

Men.

Shapes wandered his subconscious. Memory, no. Some elsewhere saw, cast vision, guided him. He knew this.

Shapes obscured in sand, a half-dome. Jaws closed on his hand, gently, gently ... he realized that he was down, and that the dus urged him. He gathered himself up again and started moving, staggered as his boot hit something buried and something whipped at the leather, but it did not pene­trate, and whipped sinuously away in the amber murk. Dus-feelings raged at it, and ignored it thereafter, preferring his company.

Night was on them, storm-night and world-night, friendly to them, hiding them. He knew the ship near, stumbled on pieces of it, bits of wreckage, bits of heat-fused sand, before its alien hulk took shape in the ribbons of sand, and he saw the havoc that had been made there.

And a half-dome, squat half-ovoid on stilts, the red wink of lights beaconing through the murk.

Dusei ringed him, all of them; fear-desire-fear, they sent.

"Yai!" he cried at them, voice lost in the wind. But his stayed, plodded its turn-toed way beside him as he walked toward that place, that alien shape on Kutath's dead seashore.

He knew it as he came near, vast and blind as it was, knew the patterning of its lights

And for an instant he did not know how to name it

Flower.

The word for it came back, a shifting from reality to real­ity.

"Flower," he hailed it, a cracked and unrecognizable voice in the living wind. "Flower open your hatch.”

But nothing responded. He gathered up a fist-sized stone and threw it against the hull, and another, and nothing an­swered. The storm grew, and he knew that he had soon to seek shelter.

And then he saw the sweep of a scanner eye, and light fol­lowed it, fixing him and the dus together in its beam. The beast shied and protested. He flung his arm up to shield his visored eyes, and stood still, mind flung back to another night when he had stood with this dus hi the lights, before guns.

There was long silence.

"Flower!" he cried.

The lights stayed fixed. He stood swaying in the gusts of wind, and held one hand firm against the dus' back so that the beast would stand.

Suddenly the hatch parted and the ramp shot down, invita­tion.

He walked toward it, set foot on the ringing metal, and the dus stayed beside him. He lifted his hands, lest they mistake, and moved slowly.

"Boz," he said.

It was strange to see her, the gray suddenly more pro­nounced in her hair, reminding him of time that had passed. He was conscious of the guns that surrounded him, of men that held rifles trained on him and on the dus. He took off the mez and zaidhe, so that they might know him. He smoothed his hair, that he had let grow: there was the stubble of beard on his face, that no mri would have. He felt naked before them, before Boaz and Luiz. He looked at their faces, saw dismay mirrored in their eyes.

"We've contacted Saber," Luiz said. "They want to see you.”

He saw the hardness in their looks: he had run, taken the enemy side; this, not even Boaz was prepared to understand.

' And they had seen the mri track, the desert of stars.

"I will go," he said.

"Put off the weapons," said Liuz, "and put the dus out­side.”

"No," he said quietly. "You would have to take those, and the beast stays with me.”

It was clear that there were men prepared to move on him. He stood quietly, felt the dus' ward impulse, and the fear that was thick in the room.

"There are arguments you could make hi your defense," Boaz said. "None of them are worth anything if you make trouble now. Sten, what side are you playing?”

He thought a moment. Human language came with diffi­culty, a strange, deja-vu reference in which he knew how to function, but distantly, distantly. There were ideas that re­fused clear shaping. "I won't draw my weapons unless I'm touched," he said. "Let Saber decide. Take me there. Peace." He found the word he had lost for a time. "It's peace I bring if they'll have it.”

"We'll consult," said Luiz.

"We can lift and consult later. Time is short.”

Boaz nodded slowly. Luiz looked at her and agreed. Orders were passed with gestures, and a man left.

"Where are the others?" Luiz asked.

Duncan did not answer. Slowly, carefully, lest they misin­terpret any move, he began to resume the zaidhe, which made him more comfortable. And while Luiz and Boaz con­sulted together, he put back the veil, and adjusted it to the formal position. The dus stood beside him, and the men with guns remained in their places.