Destroyer by C. J. Cherryh Page A

considerable on the other side of their space, something they were very much afraid of. Kyo had fairly well demonstrated their ability to slag a complex human structure. And kyo, for reasons likely as convolute as the atevi sensitivity to math, didn’t relinquish any contact they’d once made. More, the kyo authority seemed, at least on very superficial examination of their attitudes, to be homogenous—without dissidence. Without a concept of permissible dissidence. This was, in interspecies relations as much as in internal politics, worrisome.
    Maybe they’d swallowed their internal opposition. Or destroyed it. Or just ignored it.
    Sticky. Damned sticky.
    Sorry, he’d have to say to Tabini. I did the best I could. We all did. But the kyo are out there. Something else is out there. We’re not sure, on the example of kyo behavior with the Reunioners, if we can keep the kyo away from us.
    He’d shut his eyes without knowing he’d shut them. When he realized he had, he decided to try sleeping, finding himself very tired and not quite knowing why. Maybe it was just the letdown after a long, long voyage.
    He was aware of a hand on his shoulder. Someone wanting his attention. The intercom panel was flashing red, a flood of blinking light dyeing the cabin walls, all its strands and streamers of spider plants. And he had slept.
    “We are about to make the drop, nandi.” It was Narani looming over him, not Jago. “Be sure you are secure.”
    “Indeed,” he murmured. It was the predawn watches. Jago hadn’t come to bed. “Is everything all right, Rani-ji?”
    “Proceeding very well,” Narani said. “We are nearly ready. I have put out appropriate clothing, nandi, for the event. We shall be here as soon as possible after the arrival to assist you to dress.”
    “Your safety comes first, nadi,” he said. He felt guilty, privileged to sleep while his staff had surely been up and working through the night. But that was the order of the universe. “Go, go quickly, nadi-ji.”
    Narani left. Left the door open, admitting a white light that ameliorated the red flash of the panel and made the spider plants look less nightmarish. And he was tired, caught up out of sleep. He had no idea what time it was. If he just lifted his head he might be able to see the clock, but that effort took energy.
    The siren jolted him out of a drift toward sleep, and Sabin’s voice echoed from on high.
    “Sabin here. We’re about to make drop. Three minute warning. Take hold. Take hold, take hold.”
    Jago was usually beside him when they went through one of these transitions. He wasn’t used to fending for himself, which, when he thought about it, was ridiculous. He ordered the room lights on, gave a fast scan of the premises—but no, Narani hadn’t left the clothing on the chair as he usually did. The items must be in a locker. Nothing was going to fly loose, nothing was going to float. He was safe. He lay back again.
    And depend on Sabin, no emotion, no promises, no flourishes about homecoming, and no bets laid, nothing to indicate this wasn’t just one of the many ordinary transitions.
    Eyes fixed on the ceiling.
    Slight feeling of floating. It wasn’t that they exactly stopped spin—so Jase informed him—but that the effects of the shift did that to them. Things became highly uncertain for a moment, stomach-wrenching.
    Home, he told himself. Home. And tried not to think about the circumsolar rocks.
    The sight of all those spider plants lifting their tendrils at once was always too strange for words.
    Then the green curtain sank and hung as before.
    “We’re in, cousins,” Sabin’s voice, uncharacteristically full of feeling this time. “We are in.”
    Emotion from Sabin. God. Unprecedented.
    And he needed his clothes. Needed to move. He scrambled up, went to the bath for a quick apology to hygiene, and when he came out to dress, lo and behold, Jeladi and Bindanda had made it in, had clothes ready for him to step into,