Regul younglings watched himthe mobile ones, the young of regul. Their squat bodies would thicken further in adulthood, greyish-brown skin darken, loosenfat accumulate until they found themselves enveloped in weight almost too great for their atrophying muscles to lift. Mri seldom saw elder regul; Niun himself had never seen an elder in the flesh, only heard them described by his teachers of the Kel. Adult regul kept to their city, surrounded by machines that carried them, that purified their air; they were attended by younglings that must wait on them constantly, who themselves lived precarious lives until they chanced to reach maturity. The only violence regul perpetrated was against their own young.
The younglings on the square looked at him now in sidelong glances and talked in secretive tones that carried to his sensitive hearing, more clearly surely than they realized it could. Ordinarily this spitefulness would not have troubled him in the least: he had been taught less liking for them, and despised them and all their breed. But here he was the petitioner, desperately anxious, and they held what he wanted and had the power to deny it to him. Their hate breathed about him like the tainted city atmosphere. He had veiled himself long before he entered the town; but with a little more encouragement he would have dropped the visor of the zaidhe also. He had done so on his last visit to this city, being a very young kel'en and uncertain of the proprieties of conduct between regul and mri. But now, older, a man in his own right, he had the face to leave the visor up and glare back at the younglings who stared too boldly; and most could not bear the direct contact of his eyes and flinched from meeting them. A few, older and braver than the others, hissed soft displeasure, warning. He ignored them. He was not a regul youngling, to fear their violence.
He knew his way. He knew the Norn's proper entrance, fronting the great square around which the city was built in concentric squares. It faced the rising sun, as main entrances of central regul buildings must. He remembered this. He had been here as escort to his father, who was about to take his last service; but he had not been inside. Now he came to the door before which he had waited on that day, and at his presence the regul youngling on duty in the vestibule arose in alarm.
"Go away, " said the youngling flatly; but he paid no attention to it, and walked into the main foyer of the echoing place, at once stifled by the heat and the musky flavor of the air. He found himself in a great place surrounded by doors and windowed offices, all with titles written on them; he was quickly sick and dizzy from the air and he stood confused and ashamed in the middle of the hall, for here it was a matter of reading to know where he must go next, and he could not read.
It was the regul youngling from the vestibule desk that came to him in his distress, stumping across the floor in short, scuffing steps. The youngling was flushed dark with anger or with the heat, and breathing heavily from the exertion of overtaking him. "Go away," the youngling repeated. "By treaty and by law you have no business coming here."
"I will speak to your elders," he told the youngling, which he had been taught was the ultimate and unanswerable appeal among reguclass="underline" no youngling could make an ultimate decision. "Tell them that a kel'en is here to speak with them."
The youngling blew air, fluttering, through its nostrils. "Come with me, then," it said, and cast him a disapproving glance, a flash of white, red-veined, from the corner of a rolling eye. It wasit, for regul could not determine their own gender until maturitylike all regul, a squat figure, body almost touching the floor even while it was standing. It was also a very young regul to have been given the (among regul) considerable honor of tending the Nom door. It still bore itself erect, bones showing through the skin, the brown, pebbly hide fine-grained yet and delicate with beige tones and a casting of metallic highlights. It walked beside him, a rolling gait that needed considerable leeway."I am Hada Surag-gi," it said,"secretary, guardian to the door. You are doubtless one of Intel's lot."
Niun simply did not answer this rudeness on the part of the tsi'mri guard, naming the she'pan by her name with such insolent familiarity. Among regul, elders would be the reverence, or the honorable, or the lord..., and he reckoned the familiarity for calculated insult, marking it down for a later date, if so happened he found himself holding what Hada Surag-gi desired. The youngling at present was doing what he wanted it to do, and this, between mri and tsi'mri, was sufficient.
Steel tracks ran the bowed edges of the walls, and a vehicle whispered past them at a speed so great the presence was only an instant. The tracks went everywhere, on the wall opposite the doors, and another and another vehicle passed, missing one another by a hand's breadth. He did not let himself appear amazed at such things.
And neither did he thank the youngling when it had shown him through a door and into a waiting room where another, seeming adult, kept a metal desk; he simply turned his back on the youngling when it had ceased to be of use, and heard it leave.
The official leaned back from its desk, cradling its body in the mobile chair thatamazinglymoved under power: another such vehicle, a gleaming steel device such as he had heard the adult regul used to move about without rising.
"We know you," the regul said."You are Niun, from the Hill. Your elders have contacted us. You are ordered to return to your people immediately."
Heat rushed to his face. Of course they would have done this, forestalling him. He had not even thought of it.
"That does not matter," he said, carefully formal."I am asking service with your ships. I renounce my edun."
The regul, a brown mass, folded and over-folded, its face a surprising bony smoothness within this weight, sighed and regarded him with small, wrinkle-edged eyes. "We hear what you say," it said. "But our treaty with your folk does not permit us to accept you with your elders protesting. Please return to them at once. We do not want to quarrel with your elders."
"Do you have a superior?" Niun asked harshly, out of patience and fast losing hope as well. "Let me speak to someone of higher authority."
"You ask to see the Director?"
"Yes."
The regul sighed again and made the request of an intercom: a grating voice refused, flatly. The regul looked up, rolling its eyes in an expression that was more satisfied and smug than apologetic. "You see," it said.
Niun turned on his heel and strode out of the office and out of the foyer, ignoring the amused eyes of the youngling Hada Surag-gi. He felt his face burning, his breath short as he exited the warm interior of the Nom and walked onto the public square, where the cold wind swept through the city.
He walked swiftly, as if he had a place to go and went there of his own will. He imagined that every regul on the street knew his shame and was laughing secretly. This was not beyond all possibility, for regul tended to know everyone's business.
He did not slow his pace until he was walking the long causeway back from the city's edge to the edun, and then indeed he walked slowly, and cared little for what passed his eyes or his hearing on the road. The open land, even on the causeway, was not a place where it was safe to go inattentive to surroundings, but he did so, tempting the Gods and the she'pan's anger. He was sorry that nothing did befall him and that, after all, he found himself walking the familiar earthen track to the entrance of the edun and entering its shadows and its echoes. He was sullen still as he walked to the stairs of the Kel tower and ascended, pushing open the door of the hall, reporting to kel'anth Eddan, dutiful prisoner.