C. J. Cherryh - Faded Sun 2 - Shon'jir

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Shonjir
By
C.J. Cherryh
Elsie Wollheim... for being Elsie
The Faded Sun Triology Book 2
Contents
Chapter One 3
Chapter Two 18
Chapter Three 30
Chapter Four 36
Chapter Five 42
Chapter Six 47
Chapter Seven 54
Chapter Eight 62
Chapter Nine 69
Chapter Ten 74
Chapter Eleven 79
Chapter Twelve 88
Chapter Thirteen 96
Chapter Fourteen 101
Chapter Fifteen 109
Chapter Sixteen 116
Chapter Seventeen 119
Chapter Eighteen 125
Chapter Nineteen 128
Chapter Twenty 137
Chapter Twenty-One 147
Chapter Twenty-Two 157
Chapter One
THE MRI was still sedated. They kept him that way constantly, dazed and
bewildered at this place that echoed of human voices and strange machinery.
Sten Duncan came to stand at the mri's bedside as he did twice each day, under
the eye of the security officer who stood just outside the windowed partition.
He came to see Niun, permitted to do so because he was the only one of all at
Kesrith base that knew him. Today there was a hazy awareness in the golden,
large-irised eyes. Duncan fancied the look there to be one of reproach.
Niun had lost weight. His golden skin was marked in many places with healing
wounds, stark and angry. He had fought and won a battle for life which, fully
conscious, he would surely have refused to win; but Niun remained ignorant of
the humans who came and went about him, the scientists who, in concert with
his physicians, robbed him of dignity.
They were enemies of mankind, the mri. Forty years of war, of ruined worlds
and dead numbered by the millions and yet most humans had never seen the
enemy. Fewer still had looked upon a mri's living and unveiled face.
They were a beautiful people, tall and slim and golden beneath their black
robes: golden manes streaked with bronze, delicate, humanoid features, long,
slender hands; their ears had a little tuft of pale down at the tips, and
their eyes were brilliant amber, with a nictitating membrane that protected
them from dust and glare. The mri were at once humanlike and disturbingly
alien. Such also were their minds, that could grasp outsiders' ways and yet
steadfastly refused to compromise with them.
In the next room, similarly treated, lay Melein, called she'pan, leader of the
mri: a young woman and while Niun was angular and gaunt, a warrior of his
kind, Melein was delicate and fine. On their faces both mri were scarred,
three fine lines of blue stain slanting across each cheek, from the inner
corner of the eye to the outer edge of the cheekbone, marks of meaning no
human knew. On Melein's sleeping face, the fine blue lines lent exotic beauty
to her bronze-lashed eyes; she seemed too fragile to partake of mri ferocity,
or to bear the weight of mri crimes. Those that handled the mri treated her
gently, even hushed their voices when they were in the room with her, touched
her as little as possible, and that carefully. She seemed less a captive enemy
than a lovely, sad child.
It was Niun they chose for their investigations Niun, unquestionably the
enemy, who had exacted a heavy price for his taking. He had been stronger from
the beginning, his wounds more easily treated; and for all that, it was not
officially expected that Niun survive. They called their examinations medical
treatments, and entered them so in the records, but in the name of those
treatments, Niun had been holographed, scanned inside and out, had yielded
tissue samples and sera whatever the investigators desired and more than once
Duncan had seen him handled with unfeeling roughness, or left on the table too
near waking while humans delayed about their business with him.
Duncan closed his eyes to it, fearing that any protest he made would see him
barred from the mri's vicinity entirely. The mri had been kept alive, despite
their extensive injuries; they survived; they healed; and Duncan found that of
the greatest concern. The mri's personal ethic rejected outsiders, abhorred
medicine, refused the pity of their enemy; but in nothing had these two mri
been given a choice. They belonged to the scientists that had found the means
to prolong their lives. They were not allowed to wake and that too was for the
purpose of keeping them alive.
"Niun," Duncan said softly, for the guard outside was momentarily staring
elsewhere. He touched the back of Niun's long-fingered hand, below the webbing
of the restraint; they kept the mri carefully restrained at all times, for
Niun would tear at the wound if he once found the chance: so it was feared.
Other captive mri had done so, killing themselves. None had ever been kept
alive.
"Niun," he said again, persistent in what had become a twice-daily ritual to
let the mri know, if nothing more, that someone remained who could speak his
name; to make the mri think, in whatever far place his consciousness wandered;
to make some contact with the mri's numbed mind.
Niun's eyes briefly seemed to track and gave it up again, hazing as the
membrane went over them.
"It's Duncan," he persisted, and closed his hand forcefully on the mri's.
"Niun, it's Duncan."
The membrane retreated; the eyes cleared; the slim fingers jerked, almost
closed. Niun stared at him, and Duncan's heart leaped in hope, for it was the
first indication the mri had made that he was aware, proof that the mind, the
man he knew, was undamaged. Duncan saw the mri's eyes wander through the room,
linger at the door, where the guard was visible.
"You are still on Kesrith," Duncan said softly, lest the guard hear and notice
them. "You're aboard probe ship Flower, just outside the city. Pay no
attention to the man. That is nothing, Niun. It's all right."
Possibly Niun understood; but the amber eyes hazed and closed, and he slipped
back into the grip of the drugs, free of pain, free of understanding, free of
remembering.
They were the last of their kind, Niun and Melein the last mri, not alone on
Kesrith, but anywhere. It was the reason that the scientists would not let
them go: it was a chance at the mri enigma that might never, after them, be
repeated. The mri had died here on Kesrith, in one night of fire and treachery
all, all save these two, who survived as a sad curiosity in the hands of then
enemies.
And they had been put there by Duncan, whom they had trusted.
Duncan pressed Niun's unfeeling shoulder and turned away, paused to look
through the dark glass partition into the room where Melein lay sleeping. He
no longer visited her, not since she had grown stronger. Among mri she would
have been holy, untouchable: an outsider did not speak to her directly, but
through others. Whatever she endured of loneliness and terror among her
enemies was not worse than humiliation. Her enemies she might hate and ignore,
slipping into unconsciousness and forgetting; but before him, whose name she
knew, who had known her when she was free, she might feel deep shame.
She rested peacefully. Duncan watched the gentle rise and fall of her
breathing for a moment, assuring himself that she was well and comfortable,
then turned away and opened the door, murmured absent-minded thanks to the
guard, who let him out of the restricted section and into the outer corridor.
Duncan ascended to the main level of the crowded probe ship, dodging white-
uniformed science techs and blue-uniformed staff, a man out of place in
Flower. His own khaki brown was the uniform of the SurTac, Surface Tactical
Force. Like the scientific personnel of Flower, he was an expert; his skills,
however, were no longer needed on Kesrith or elsewhere. The war was over.
He had become like the mri, obsolete.
He checked out of Flower, a clerical formality. Security knew him well enough,
as all humans on Kesrith knew him the human who had lived among mri. He walked
out onto the ramp and down, onto the mesh causeway humans flung across the
powdery earth of Kesrith.
Nothing grew on the white plain outside, as far as the eye could see. Life was
everywhere scant on Kesrith, with its alkali flats, its dead ranges, its few
and shallow seas. The world was lit by a red sun named Arain, and by two
moons. It was one of six planets in the system, the only one even marginally
habitable. The air was thin, cold in shadow and burning hot in the direct rays
of Arain; and rains that passed through it left the skin burning and dry.
Powdery, caustic dust crept into everything, even the tightest seals, making
men miserable and eventually destroying machinery. In most places Kesrith was
uninhabitable by humans, save here in the lowland basin about Kesrith's sole
city, on the shore of a poisonous sea: one small area where moisture was
plentiful, amid geysers and steaming pools, and crusted earth that would not
bear a man's weight.
No men were indigenous to Kesrith. The world had first belonged to the dusei,
great brown quadrupeds, vaguely ursine in appearance, velvet-skinned and slow-
moving, massively clawed. Then had come the mri, whose towers had once stood
over toward the high hills, where now only a heap of stone remained, a tomb
for those that had died within.
And then had come the regul, hungry for minerals and wealth and territory, who
had hired the mri to fight against humankind. It was the regul city that
humanity had inherited, humans the latest heirs to Kesrith: a squat
agglomerate of ugly buildings, the tallest only two stories, and those stories
lower than human standard. The city was laid out in a rectangle: the Nom, the
sole two-storied building, was outermost, with other buildings arranged in the
outline of the square before it. All streets followed that bow about the Nom
square narrow streets that were designed for regul transport, not human
vehicles, streets crossed by the fingers of white sand that intruded
everywhere on Kesrith, constantly seeking entry. At the left of the city was
the Alkaline Sea, that received the runoff of Kesrith's mineral flats.
Volcanic fires smouldered and bubbled under the surface of that sea as they
did below that of the whole valley, that had once been a delicate land of thin
crusts and mineral spires a land pitted and ruined now by scars of combat.
There was a water-recovery plant, its towers extending out into the sea.
Repairs were underway there, trying to release the city from its severe
rationing. There had been a spaceport too, on the opposite side of the city,
but that was now in complete ruin, an area of scorched earth and a remnant of
twisted metal that had once been a regul and a mri ship.
Of ships onworld now, there was only Flower, an out-worlds probe designed for
portless landings, squatting on a knoll of hard rock that rose on the water-
plant road. Beside her, an airfield had been improvised by mesh and by fill
and hardening of the unstable surface work that would quickly yield to the
caustic rains. Nothing was lasting on Kesrith. Endure it might, so long as it
received constant attention and repair; but the weather and the dust would
take it in the end. The whole surface of Kesrith seemed to melt and flow under
the torrential rains, the whole storm pattern of the continent channeled by
mountain barriers toward this basin, making it live, but making life within it
difficult.
It was an environment in which only the dusei and the mri had ever thrived
without the protections of artificial environments; and the mri had done so by
reliance on the dusei.
To such an inheritance had humanity come, intruders lately at war with the mri
and now at war with their world, almost scoured off its face by storms,
harassed by the wild dusei, befriended only by the regul, who had killed off
the mri for them, an act of genocide to please their human conquerors.
Duncan traversed the causeway at his own slow pace, savoring the acrid air.
His bare face and hands were painfully assaulted by Arain's fierce radiation
even in this comparatively short walk. It was noon. Little stirred in the wild
during the hours of Arain's zenith; but humans, safe within their filtered and
air-conditioned environments, ignored the sun. Human authority imposed a human
schedule on Kesrith's day, segmenting it into slightly lengthened seconds,
minutes, hours, for the convenience of those who dwelled in the city, where
daylight was visible and meaningful, but those were few. Universal Standard
was still the yardstick for the scientific community of Flower, and for the
warship that orbited overhead.
Duncan walked with eyes open to the land, saw the camouflaged body of a
leathery jo, one of the flying creatures of Kesrith, poised to last out the
heat in the shadow of a large rock saw also the trail of a sandsnake that had
lately crossed the ground beside the causeway, seeking the nether side of some
rock to protect itself from the sun and from predators. The jo waited,
patiently, for its appointed prey. Such things Niun had taught Duncan to see.
Across the mineral flats, in the wreckage wrought by the fighting, a geyser
plumed, a common sight. The world was repairing its damage, patiently setting
about more aeons of building; but hereafter would come humans in greater and
greater numbers, to search out a way to undo it and make Kesrith their own.
The mesh gave way to concrete at the city's edge, a border partially overcome
by drifting sand. Duncan walked onto solid ground, past the observation deck
of the Nom, where a surveillance system had been mounted to watch the
causeway, and up to the rear door that had become main entry for human
personnel, leading as it did toward Flower and the airfield and shuttle
landing.
The door hissed open and shut. Nom air came as a shock, scented as it was with
its own filtered human-regul taint, humidified and sweeter than the air
outside, that sunlight-over-cold heat that burned and chilled at once. Here
were gardens, kept marginally watered during rationing, botanical specimens
from regul worlds, and therefore important: a liver-spotted white vine that
had shed its lavender blooms under stress; a sad-looking tree with sparse
silver leaves; a hardy gray-green moss. And the regul-built halls high in the
center, at least by regul standards gave a tall human a feeling of
confinement. The corridors were rounded and recessed along one side, where
gleaming rails afforded regul sleds a faster, hazard-free movement along the
side without doors. As Duncan turned for the ramp, one whisked past almost too
fast to distinguish, whipped round the corner and was gone. At that pace it
would be a supply sled, carrying cargo but no personnel.
Regul tended much to automation. They moved slowly, ponderously, their short
legs incapable of bearing their own weight for any distance. The regul who did
move about afoot were younglings, sexless and still mobile, not yet having
acquired their adult bulk. The elders, the muscles of their legs atrophied,
hardly stirred at all, save in the prosthetic comfort of their sleds.
And, alien in the corridors of the Nom, humans moved, tall, stalking shapes
strangely rapid among the squat, slow forms of regul.
Duncan's own quarters were on the second level, a private room. It was luxury
in one sense: solitude was a comfort he had not had in a very long time, for
he had come to Kesrith as attendant to the governor; but he was keenly aware
what the small, single room represented, a fall from intimacy with the
important powers of Kesrith, specifically with Stavros, the Honorable George
Stavros, governor of the new territories of human conquest. Duncan had found
himself quietly preempted from his post by a military medical aide, one Evans,
E.; he had come back from Kesrith's backlands and from sickbay to find that
state of affairs, and although he had hoped, he had received no invitation to
move back into his old quarters in the anteroom of Stavros' apartments that
post of regul protocol which, among their conquered hosts, humans yet observed
meticulously in public. An elder of Stavros' high rank must have at least one
youngling to attend his needs and fend off unwelcome visitors; and that duty
now belonged to Evans. Duncan was kept at a distance; his contact with
Stavros, once close, was suddenly formal: an occasional greeting as they
passed in the hall, that was the limit of it. Even the debriefing after his
mission had been handled by others and passed second-hand to Stavros, through
the scientists, the medics and the military.
Duncan understood his disfavor now as permanent. It was Stavros' concession to
the regul, who hated him and feared his influence. And what his position on
Kesrith would be hereafter, he did not know.
It was, for his personal hopes, the end. He might have promoted himself to a
colonial staff position by cultivating Stavros' favor. He was still due
considerable pay for his five year enlistment in the hazardous stage of the
Kesrithi mission pay and transport to the world of his choice, or settlement
on Kesrith itself, subject to the approval of the governor. He had been lured
by such hopes once and briefly, half-believing them. He had taken the post
because it was an offer, in an area and at a time when offers were scarce; and
because he was nearing his statistical limit of survival on missions of
greater hazard. It had seemed then a way to survive, marginally at least, as
he had always survived.
He had survived again, had come back from Stavros' service scarred and
sunburned and mentally shaken after a trek through the Kesrithi backlands
which the lately arrived regulars would never have survived. He had learned
Kesrith as no human would after him; and he had been among mri, and had come
back alive, which no human had done before him.
And in his distress he had told Stavros the truth of what he had learned,
directly and trustingly.
That had been his great mistake.
He passed the door that belonged to Stavros and Evans, and opened his own
apartment, Spartan in its appointments and lacking the small anteroom that was
essential to status in the Nom, among regul. He touched the switch to close
the door, and at the same panel opened the storm shields. The windows afforded
a view of the way that he had come, of Flower on her knoll, a squat half-ovoid
on stilts; of a sky that, at least today, was cloudless, a rusty pink. There
had not been a storm in days. Nature, like the various inhabitants of Kesrith,
seemed to have spent its violence: there was an exhausted hush over the world.
Duncan stripped and sponged off with chemical conditioner, a practice that the
caustic dust of Kesrith made advisable, that his physician still insisted
upon, and changed into his lighter uniform. He was bound for the library, that
building across the square from the Nom, accessible by a basement hallway: it
was part of the regul university complex, which humans now held.
He spent his afternoons and evenings there; and anyone who had known Sten
Duncan back in humanity's home territory would have found that incredible. He
was not a scholar. He had been well-trained in his profession: he knew the
mechanics of ships and of weapons, knew a bit of geology and ecology, and the
working of computers all in areas necessary for efficiency in combat, in which
he had been trained from a war-time youth, parentless, single-minded in the
direction of his life. All his knowledge was practical, gathered at need,
rammed into his head by instructors solely interested in his survival to kill
the enemy.
That was before he had seen his war ended before he had seen his enemy
murdered by regul; or shared a camp with the survivors; or seen the proud mri
on human charity.
Two thousand years of records and charts and tapes lay in the regul library,
truths concealed in regul language and regul obscurities. Duncan studied. He
searched out what the mri had been on Kesrith, what they had been elsewhere,
with an interest infinitely more personal than that of Flower's scientists.
Stavros disapproved. It flaunted attitudes and interests that regul feared and
distrusted; and offending the regul ran counter to humanity's new policies. It
embarrassed Stavros; it angered him, who had vast authority on Kesrith and in
its new territories.
But the library still remained Duncan's choice on his hours of liberty, which
were extensive in his useless existence. He had begun by making himself a
nuisance among Flower's personnel, who themselves were mining the library for
what could be gained, duplicating tapes and records wholesale for later study
back in the labs of Elag/Haven and Zoroaster. Duncan searched out those
particular records that had to do with mri, and made himself helpful to
certain of the Flower personnel who could be persuaded to share his interest.
With his own stumbling command of the regul tongue, he could do little himself
toward solving the tapes or interpreting the charts; but he talked with the
scientists who could. He reasoned with them; he tried to make them understand,
with all his insistence, that which he did not understand himself.
To learn what it was he had spent his life destroying, what he had seen
utterly obliterated.
He gathered up his notes and his handmade dictionary and prepared to leave the
room. The light on the panel flashed.
"Kose Sten Duncan," a regul voice said, still giving him his old title as
Stavros' assistant, which surprised him. "Kose Sten Duncan."
He pressed the button for reply, vaguely uneasy that anyone in the Nom chose
to intervene with him, disturbing his obscurity. His earnest ambition now was
simple: to be let alone, to take those assignments that might be given him
through lower channels, and to be forgotten by the higher ones.
"I am here," he told the regul.
"The reverence bai Stavros sends you his order that you join him in his
offices immediately."
Duncan hesitated, heart clenched at the foreknowledge that his period of grace
was over. Somewhere in the labyrinth of Flower papers must have been signed,
declaring him fit for service; somewhere hi the Nom papers were being prepared
that would similarly mark him down in someone's employ. Nothing on colonial
Kesrith could remain without some designated use.
'Tell the reverence," he said, "that I am coming now."
The regul returned some curt syllable, ending the communication; it lacked
respect. Duncan flung his notes onto the table, opened the door and strode out
into the corridor.
It was no accident that Stavros had summoned him at this hour. Duncan had
become precise in his habits: from his treatment before noon, to his apartment
at noon, and from his apartment to the library by a quarter til.
And concerning the library, he had received his warning.
He began, feverish in his anxiety, to anticipate the worst things that might
await him: a reprimand, a direct order to abandon his visits to the library or
barring him from Flower, and from the mri. He had already defied Stavros'
hinted displeasure; and did he receive and refuse a direct order he would find
himself transferred permanently station-ward, to Saber, Kesrith's military
guard.
Where you belong, he could imagine Stavros saying. Leave the mri to the
scientists.
He stalked through the corridor that wound down the ramp, shouldering aside a
slow-moving regul youngling at the turn and not apologizing. Nor would the
regul apologize to him, a human it needed not fear. A hiss of anger followed
him, and other younglings paused to glare at him.
Stavros' offices, again a matter of status within a regul community, were on
the ground floor of the stairless Nom, beyond broad doors that afforded easy
access to the regul sleds.
The office doors were open. The secretary at Stavros' reception office was
human, another of Saber's personnel, a ComTech whose specialized linguistic
skills were wasted at this post; but at least Stavros considered security, and
did not install a regul youngling at this most sensitive post, where too much
might be overheard and, by a regul, memorized verbatim at the hearing. The
tech stirred from his boredom, recognized Duncan with an expression of sudden
reserve. A SurTac, Duncan was outside the regular military, but he was due a
ComTech's respect.
"The governor says go on in," the tech said; and with a flicker of a glance to
the closed inner door and back again: "The bai is in there, sir."
Hulagh.
Elder of the regul on Kesrith,
"Thank you," Duncan said, jaw set.
"Sir," the ComTech said. "With apologies: the governor advises you to walk in
softly. His words, sir."
"Yes," Duncan said, and restrained his temper with a visible effort for the
ComTech's benefit. He knew how he was reputed at Kesrith base for rashness
marked with official disfavor. He also knew his way among the diplomats better
than any deskbound tech.
It was not the moment for temper. His transfer to Saber would be complete
victory for the regul bai. He could throw away every remaining influence he
had on the behalf of the mri, with a few ill-chosen words between himself and
Stavros or between himself and the bai, and he was resolved to keep them
unspoken. The regul would not understand any difference of opinion between
elder and youngling; any intimation of dissent would reflect on Stavros, and
Stavros would not ignore that, not on a personal basis, not on an official
one.
The secretary opened the door by remote and Duncan entered with a meek and
quiet step, with a bow and a proper deference to the two rulers of Kesrith.
"Duncan," said Stavros aloud, and not unkindly. Both human and regul bai were
encased in shining metal, alike until the eye rested on the flesh contained in
the center of the sled-assembly. Stavros was exceedingly advanced in years,
partially paralyzed, his affliction which he had suffered on Kesrith still
hindering his speech to such an extent that he used the sled's communication
screen to converse with regul, in their difficult language; but to humans he
had begun to use speech again. The stricken limbs had regained some strength,
but, Stavros still kept to the sled, regul-made, the prestige of a regul
elder. Speed, power, instant access to any circuitry in the Nom: Duncan
understood the practical considerations in which Stavros refused to give up
the machine, but he hated the policy which it represented human accommodation
with the regul, human imitation of regul ways.
"Sir," Duncan said quietly, acknowledging the greeting; and he faced bai
Hulagh in the next breath, serenely courteous and trembling inside with anger,
smiling as he met the small dark eyes of the regul elder. Great hulking
monster in silver-edged gossamer, his flesh fold over fold of fat in which
muscle had almost completely atrophied, particularly in the lower limbs:
Duncan loathed the sight of him. The regul's face was bony plate, dark as the
rest of his hide, and smooth, unlike the rest of his hide. The composite of
facial features, their symmetry, gave an illusion of humanity; but taken
individually, no feature was human. The eyes were brown and round, sunk in
pits of wrinkled skin. The nose was reduced to slits that could flare or close
completely. The lips were inverted, a mere tight-pressed slash at the moment,
edged in bony plate. Hulagh's nostrils were tightly compressed now, save for
quick puffs of expelled air, a signal of displeasure in the meeting as ominous
as a human scowl.
Hulagh turned his sled abruptly aside, a pointed rebuff to a presumptuous
youngling, and smiled at Stavros, a relaxing of the eyes and nostrils, a
slight opening of the mouth. It was uncertain whether such a gesture was
native to the regul or an attempt at a human one.
"It is good," said Hulagh in his rumbling Basic, "that the youngling Duncan
has recovered."
"Yes," said Stavros aloud, in the regul tongue. The com screen on the sled
angled toward Duncan and flashed to Basic mode, human symbols and alphabet. Be
seated. Wait.
Duncan found a chair against the wall and sat down and listened, wondering why
he had been called to this conference, why Stavros had chosen to put him on
what surely was display for Hulagh's benefit. Duncan's inferior command of the
regul language made it impossible for him to pick up much of what the regul
bai said, and he could gather nothing at all of what Stavros answered, for
though he could see the com screen at this angle, he could read but few words
of the intricate written language, which the eidetic regul almost never used
themselves.
One hearing of anything, however complex, and the regul never forgot. They
needed no notes. Their records were oral, taped, reduced to writing only when
deemed of some lasting importance.
Duncan's ears pricked when he heard his own name and the phrase released from
duty. He sat still, hands tightening on the edge of the thick regul chair
while the two diplomats traded endless pleasantries, until at last Hulagh
prepared to take his leave.
The bai's sled faced about. This time Hulagh turned that false smile on him.
"Good day, youngling Duncan," he said.
Duncan had the presence of mind to rise and bow, which was the courteous and
proper response for a youngling to an elder; and the sled whisked out the
opened door as he stood, fists clenched, and looked down at Stavros.
"Sit down," Stavros said.
The door closed. Duncan came and took the chair nearest Stavros' sled. The
windows blackened, shutting out the outside world. They were entirely on room
lights.
"My congratulations," Stavros said. "Well played, if obviously insincere."
"Am I being transferred?" Duncan asked directly, an abruptness that brought a
flicker of displeasure to Stavros' eyes. Duncan regretted it at once further
proof, Stavros might read it, that he was unstable. Above all else, he had
wished to avoid that impression.
"Patience," Stavros counseled him. Then he spoke to the ComTech outside, gave
an order for incoming calls to be further delayed, and relaxed with a sigh,
still watching Duncan intently. "Hulagh," said Stavros, "has been persuaded
not to have your head. I told him that your hardship in the desert had
unhinged your mind. Hulagh seems to accept that possibility as an excuse that
will save his pride. He has decided to accept your presence in his sight
again; but he doesn't like it."
"That regul," Duncan said, doggedly reiterating the statement that had ruined
him, "committed genocide. If he didn't push the button himself, he ordered the
one that did. I gave you my statement on what happened out there that night.
You know that I'm telling the truth. You know it."
"Officially," said Stavros, "I don't. Duncan, I will try to reason with you.
Matters are not as simple as you would wish. Hulagh himself suffered in that
action: he lost his ship, his younglings, his total wealth and his prestige
and the prestige of his doch. A regul doch may fall, one important to mankind.
Do you comprehend what I'm telling you? Hulagh's doch is the peace party. If
it falls, it will be dangerous for all of us, and not only for those of us on
Kesrith. We're talking about the peace, do you understand that?"
They were back on old ground. Arguments began from here, leading to known
positions. Duncan opened his mouth to speak, persistently to restate what
Stavros knew, what he had told his interrogators times beyond counting.
Stavros cut him off with an impatient gesture, saving him the effort that he
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ShonjirByC.J.CherryhElsieWollheim...forbeingElsieTheFadedSunTriologyBook2ContentsChapterOne3ChapterTwo18ChapterThree30ChapterFour36ChapterFive42ChapterSix47ChapterSeven54ChapterEight62ChapterNine69ChapterTen74ChapterEleven79ChapterTwelve88ChapterThirteen96ChapterFourteen101ChapterFifteen109ChapterSi...

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分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：187 页 大小：403.41KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-11

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