"No," she said, adjusting the straps. Fiftyish, stout to the extent she could not fit into one of their flightsuits, she wore an insulated jacket and breeches that in no wise made her slighter. Her crown of gray-blonde braids lent her a curious dignity. She looked at him, questioning. "Out," he said. She paused for another look at Luiz and went.
The question had occurred to him more than once, how much Saber knew, whether Luiz had communicated to Koch precisely which civ had been included. There was at the back of his mind a doubt on that point, the suspicion that he was ultimately responsible, and that Koch would lay matters to his account. Boaz was not expendable.
So what good, she had cornered him, what good is some assistant of mine with good legs and no comprehension of what he's seeing? What's known of mri customs is my work; what's known of the mri writings I broke in the first place. You need me to get the answers you're going for. Tm your safety out there.
He wanted her, trusted her attitudes that did not want holocaust. He offered his own hand to Luiz, forbore the question and walked out, after the others.
Cold, thin air. Without the breathers for the short trip between hatch and shuttle, they were all panting by the time they had the shuttle hatch closed, and settled into the cheerless, cramped interior. Galey took his place at controls, gave them light other than what came in from outside, started up the engines.
He cast a look back and to the side of him, found nothing but calm faces in the greenish glow wondered if Boaz was afraid; no less than the rest of them, he reckoned.
He cleared with Flower and started lift, disturbing the sand. He did not seek any great altitude; the ground ripped past in the dawning, a blur of infrequent irregularities in the sands. Eventually the chasm gaped beneath them and he banked and dropped. He passed no orders, kept scan audio in his ear, and Shibo, beside him, watched as intently.
They went for the nearest of the sites; and it was the safest approach in his calculation, the best approach to that site potentially ready and hostile ... to fly below rim level. Dizzying perspective opened before them in the dawn, rocks blurring past on the left. Air currents jerked at them. In places sand torrented off the heights before them, cables and ribbons of sand which fell kilometers down to the bottom of the sea chasm stained with sun colors. Rounded peaks rose disembodied out of the chasm haze.
And nearer and nearer they came to the city, to that point at which he had designated on their charts a limit to air approach.
His hands sweated; no one had spoken a word for the duration of the flight. He gathered a little altitude, peering over the rim and hoping to live through the probe.
"No fire," Lane breathed at his shoulder ... for confirmation, perhaps, that they were still alive.
The ruins were in sight now; he slipped over the plateau, settled down, shut down the engines.
No one seemed to breathe for the moment.
"Out," Galey said, freeing himself of the restraints. There was no question, no hesitation, no sorting of gear; all of that on their part was already done. They went for the exit and scrambled down, himself last, to secure the ship. After that there was the ping of metal cooling, the whisper of the sand and die wind, nothing more. They shouldered the burden of breather-tanks, pulled up the masks which rasped with their breaths, adjusted equipment.
And walked, an easy pace, heavily booted against the denizens of the sands. Breathing seemed easier out of the vulnerable vicinity of the ship.
Boaz meddled with a pocket, fished out black and gold cloth which fluttered lightly in the breeze. "Suggest you adopt the black," she said. Galey took one, and the other three did, while Boaz tied the conspicuous gold to her arm.
"Black is Kel," he said, "and gold is scholars.
"Noncombatant If they respect that, you've a chance in an encounter.
"Because of you.
"It's something they might at least question.
It was something, at least. There was the city before them, a far, far walk, and a lonely one. They were smaller targets apart from the ship, less deserving of the great weapons of the city.
Most of all was the cold, the knife-sharp air, and an abiding consciousness that they had no help but themselves.
Mri did not take prisoners. Humanity had learned that long ago.
Chapter Nine
The tents were in sight, appearing out of the evening and a roll of the land, and there was still no forcing. Duncan tried, and had soon to sink down and rest all the same, senses completely grayed for the moment, so that all he felt was his dus and the touch of its hot velvet body.
More came, then; dus-carried Niun's presence, the cold blankness that was Ras Kov-Nelan. It was one with the sickness that throbbed in bis temples, that muddle of anxiousness and cold.
"Go on," Duncan said after a moment. "Am I a child, that I cannot walk to what I can see? You go on. Send someone out for me if you must.
Niun paid no heed to him. He moved his numb hands over the shoulder of the dus, bis vision clearing finally. Niun was kneeling near fam} Ras standing. Somewhere was consciousness of what they sought; somewhere was the sense of their pursuers, anger and desire, an element in which he had moved for uncounted time, that gnawed persistently at them, far, far east and north, dus-carried.
"Duncan," Niun urged at him.
Unjust, that they would not let him walk his own way, in his own time; he began to reason like a child, and knew it, at some remote distance from his own intelligence. Niun seized his arm and pulled him up, and he stayed on his feet, moved when they did, reckoning to make it this time. He shut his eyes and simply followed dus-impulse, lost to it for a time, feeling occasionally Niun's touch when he would falter. The coppery taste of blood grew more pronounced. He coughed, and the moisture began to trickle inward, so that he wove in his steps and began to shake in his joints frightened, mortally frightened. A knee gave, and Niun had him before he fell, keeping him on his feet. There was a touch at his other side, likewise holding him. He bent and coughed and cleared his senses, dully aware of both of them, aware of dus-sense, that was roused and angry.
Kel'ein. Ahead of them, between them and the camp in the dusk, appeared a shadow like fluid rolling across the land. It moved out toward them. Dus-feelings moiled in the air like the scent of storm. "Yoir Niun rebuked them both, and stilled it "Send them away, Duncan. Send them off.
It was hard. It was like yielding up a part of him. He dismissed the dus, felt suddenly cold, and clearer minded. The beasts strayed off a distance. He took more of his own weight, looking at that line of kel'ein who stopped before them, recognized the one who walked forward, saw sudden yielding in the line which flowed about them and included them. Hlil. He remembered the name as the kel'en tugged the veil down.
"She is well?" Niun asked.
"Well," Hlil answered, and it dimly occurred to Duncan that she was Melein. "Ras," Hlil said then, acknowledging her presence with a curious prickle of coldness in that tone. And for only a moment the kel'en stared directly at him, no more warmly.