He realized with burning indignation that the she'pan sought this comparison between them in their age, furnishing her people with the spectacle of the helplessness of a regul elder without his sleds and his chairs.
Among mri, light and quick, and mobile even in extreme age, this weakness must be a curiosity. Hulagh wondered if mri made jest of regul weakness in this regard as regul did of mri intelligence. No one had ever seen a mri laugh outright, not in 2,202 years. He feared there was laughter now on their veiled faces.
He looked on the face of Chul, seeking whether Chul understood. The youngling looked only bewildered, frightened; it panted and wheezed with the burden of its own and another's weight. The young mri at the other side did not look directly at either of them, but kept his eyes respectfully averted, a model of decorum, and his veiled face could not be read.
They left the steel doors and entered the dizzying windings of the painted halls, down and down agonizingly painful steps. For Hulagh it was a blur of misery, of colors and cloying air and the possibility of a fatal fall, and when they finally reached level ground it was blessed relief. He lingered there a moment, panting, then began to walk again, leaning on them, step by step. They passed the doors, and the stinging, pungent air outside came welcome, like the hostile sun. His senses cleared. He stopped again, and blinked in the ruddy light, and caught his breath, leaning on them both.
"Niun," he said, remembering the kel'en's name.
"Lord?" responded the young mri.
"How if I should choose you to go on the ship with me?"
The golden eyes lifted to his, wide and, it seemed, frightened. He had never seen this much evidence of emotion in a mri. It startled him. "Lord," said the young mri,"I am duty-bound to the she'pan. I am her son. I cannot leave."
"Are you not all her sons?"
"No, lord. They are mostly her Husbands. I am her son."
"But not of her body, all the same."
The mri looked as if he had been struck, shocked and offended at once."No, lord. My truemother is not here anymore."
"Would you go on the ship Hazan?'
"If the she'pan sent me, lord."
This one was young, without the duplicities, the complexities of the she'pan; young, arrogant, yes, but such as Niun could be shaped and taught. Hulagh gazed at the young face, veiled to the eyes, finding it more vulnerable than was the wont of mrirudeness to stare, but Hulagh took the liberty of the very old among regul, who were accustomed to be harsh and abrupt with younglings. "And if I should tell you now, this moment, get into the sled and come with me?"
For a moment the young mri did not seem to know how to answer; or perhaps he was gathering that reserve so important to a mri warrior. The eyes above the veil were frankly terrified, agonized.
"You might be assured," Hulagh said,"of safety."
"Only the she'pan could send me," said the young kel'en."And I know that she will not."
"She had promised me one mri."
"It has always been the privilege of the edun to choose which is to go and which to stay. I tell you that she will not let me go with you, lord."
That was plainly spoken, and the obtaining of permission through argument would doubtless mean another walk to the crest of the structure, and agony; and another debate with the she'pan, protracted and infuriating and doubtful of issue. Hulagh actually considered it and rejected it, and looked on the young face, trying to fix in mind what details made this mri different from other mri.
"What is your name, your full name, kel'en?"
"Niun s'Intel Zain-Abrin, lord."
"Set me in my car, Niun."
The mri looked uncertainly relieved, as if he understood that this was all Hulagh was going to ask. He applied his strength to the task with Chul's considerable help, and slowly, carefully, with great gentleness, lowered Hulagh's weight into the cushion. Hulagh breathed a long sigh of exhaustion and his sight went dim for a moment, the blood rushing in his head. Then he dismissed the mri with an impatient gesture and watched him walk back to the doorway, over the eroded walk. The dus by the door lifted his head to investigate, then suddenly curled in the other direction and settled, head between its forelegs. Its breath puffed at the dust. The young mri, who had paused, vanished into the interior of the edun.
"Go," said Hulagh to Chul, who turned on the vehicle and set it moving in a lumbering turn. And again: "Youngling, contact my office and see if there are any new developments."
He thought uneasily of the incoming ship, distant as it surely was, and of everything which had seemed so simple and settled this morning. He drew a breath of the comfortably filtered and heated air within the vehicle and tried to compose his thoughts. The situation was impossible. Humans were about to arrive; and if humans perceived mri near Kesrith and suspected treachery or ambush, humans could arrive sooner. They could arrive very much sooner.
Without a doubt there would be confrontation, mri and human, unless he could rid Kesrith and Kesrith's environs of mri, by one method or another; and of a sudden reckoning she'pan Intel into matters, Hulagh found himself unable to decide how things were aligned with mri and regul.
Or with mri and humans.
"Bai," came Hada Surag-gi's voice over the radio."Be gracious. We have contacted the incoming mri ship directly. They are Ahanal."
"Tell me something I do not already know, youngling."
There was a moment's silence. Hulagh regretted his temper in the interval, for Hada had tried to do well, and Hada's position was not enviable, a youngling trying to treat with mri arrogance and a bai's impatience.
"Bai," said Hada timidly,"this ship is not based on this world, but they are intending to land. They saybai"
"Out with it, youngling."
"that they will be here by sunfall over Kesrith's city tomorrow. They have arrived closedangerously close, bai. Our station was monitoring the regular approaches, the lanesbut they ignored them."
Hulagh blew his breath out softly, and refrained from swearing.
"Be gracious," said Hada.
"Youngling, what else?"
"They rejected outright our suggestion to dock at the station. They want to land at the port. We disputed their right to do so under the treaty, and explained that our facilities were damaged by the weather. They would not hear. They say that they have need of provisioning. We protested they could obtain this at the station. They would not hear. They demand complete reprovisioning and re-equipage of a class-one vessel with armaments as on war status. We protested that we could not do these things. But they demand these things, bai, and they claimthey claim that they number in excess of 400 mri on that ship."
A chill flowed over Hulagh's thick skin.
"Youngling," said Hulagh,"in all known space there are only 533 of the species known to survive, and thirteen of these are presently on Kesrith and another is recently deceased."
"Be gracious," pleaded Hada."Bai, I am very sure I heard accurately. I asked them to repeat the figure.It is possible," Hada added in a voice trembling and wheezing with distress, "that these are all the mri surviving anywhere in the universe."
"Plague and perdition," said Hulagh softly and reached forward to prod Chul in the shoulder."The port."
"Bai?" asked Chul, blinking.
'The port," Hulagh repeated."O young ignorance, the port. Make for it."
The car veered off left, corrected, followed the causeway the necessary distance, then left along the passable margin of the city, bouncing over scrub, presenting occasionally a view of the pinkish sky and the distant mountains, Kesrith's highlands, then of white barren sands and the slim twisting trunks of scrub luin.