Dalshon

Chapter 2

"Calann," Firuun greeted his kinsman, wide-eyed. Firuun whispered so as not to disturb the wounded. "I thought you were going to the sea."

"I did. Sailed right across. I was still alive when I reached the other side. So I went to the sea of stars."

Firuun and his elderly clan-mate exchanged a heart-touch and bow.

"What an adventure you must have had," Firuun said.

"Oh, yes. I'll tell you all about it, when you get all our folk together. I see some Windswords waiting for the doctors over there. How is Dilis?"

"Dilis—Dilis went into m—" manufacturing, except he could not talk about that out here in the open, where just anyone could hear him. Dilis's failsafe factories were supposed to be a secret. "—medicine," Firuun finished. Which was true enough. "She decided the military life was not for her. It was my fault. I sent her on a raid where she saw people killed, and I chose her because the team needed to pass for doctors to get inside. I chose her for her ability to talk on at length about medical research, for a commando raid! What was I thinking?"

Firuun had never expressed his remorse that baldly before. He could not, to the crew, or he would undermine his authority. He could not, to Carla, because he sent Dilis there to rescue her. Well, and Sheridan, of course.

Calann looked at him kindly. "I have always said Dilis has the heart of a healer. Do not blame yourself for another's calling."

"I wanted her to be with me. I wanted to turn Whitestar 97 into a Windsword clan ship, like we used to have in the time before Valen."

"You have. We're nearly a third of the crew now, aren't we?"

"Yes. Look! The Captain's coming our way. Captain Carla Punch, Calann of Clan Imbalo. He was the clan chief before me."

"An honor to meet you," Carla said, bowing in the Minbari way, her hands up in triangle points.

Calann returned the gesture. "And you." Calann smiled and said softly, "Even here, the Dalshon come to me. What a strange thing it is, to hear those cadences and tonal vowels from a human mouth."

Calann started humming. The melody raised the hairs on the back of Carla's neck.

"What is it?" Firuun asked her. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

Calann stopped humming and said, "The Dalshon see many ghosts. They see them off, to the land that is no land."

"I know that song," Carla said raggedly. Suddenly she did not feel very well. She had not really been all that drunk before the bomb went off, but her reduced stomach was roiling terribly now. She was afraid she was going to upchuck more of that green fizz that had come out the first week after the surgery that stitched what was left of her guts back together.

She put a hand to her mouth and dashed off in what she hoped proved to be the direction of the head, or at least an empty room.

She rounded a corner and nearly mowed down a small Minbari male. Rebounding from him, she automatically offered an apology in the military caste language, while he did the same in the religious caste language. He was already through a door when she finally placed his face and voice.

"In Valen's name! It's the deserter! What's his name—Lennier!"

Carla followed him, but he was gone like a deer into the forest. She went off to find her unwounded soldiers, and set them to tracking down the Anla'shok deserter. He could not get very far as long as the pressure doors were down.

She was not quite sure what to do with him when she found him. There was no actual order for his arrest. That absence was a glaring omission, a silence that spoke volumes. Lennier had been Delenn's aide before he joined the Anla'shok, as all the Anla'shok knew. Delenn's personal history was an obsession among some of the Rangers, and Carla had heard all the official stories and all the Anla'shok scuttlebutt too. If there was no detention order, it might Delenn did not want him found.

But nobody deserted the Anla'shok.

Carla located the room her men had appropriated, and sent them off to find Lennier. Carla did not bother to tell them that she wanted him alive; they were Minbari, after all, and so was he.

Although she was fairly sure that at least some of her crew must have killed other Minbari during her rescue. She and Sheridan surely had not killed all those warriors and police by themselves.

Or maybe they had. Carla did not really remember her den'bok spree very well, but the commando team certainly did. Last week, when she had returned to the den'bok matches for the first time since being shot—the first time since the Battle of Tifar—those who dared face her in the sparring ring moved with extreme defensiveness. None of them held back anymore, despite her sudden big-knuckled skinniness and straw-brittle hair, evidence of ill health brought on by the damage to her stomach.

Carla shook out her hands on the way back to the evac center, as if shaking away the reverberating memory of the first shockingly hard, ringing blow directed her way in last week's den'bok matches. She had not realized how much they had been holding back while fighting the 'fragile human' until they saw her kill their kind with the Pike.

Carla touched the Minbari Fighting Pike at her belt. It was the same one someone had given her during the escape. Whoever it was had not wanted it back after she had gotten it slick with Minbari blood.

Carla found Firuun and Calann and her injured crew, including Khunnier, who was awake and did not appear to be in need of a dalshon just yet. She gathered them all into 'their' room, to wait for her scouts to come back. They sat with the backs against the walls, in the Minbari posture of relaxation. Carla did too. Between her knee and her stomach, she was no longer comfortable sitting on the floor in the American way with her legs squared up in front of her.

When they were all settled, she told them, "I've seen the Anla'shok deserter, Lennier. Here on Untika. I sent the rest to track him down."

Khunnier asked, "Do you think he has anything to do with the bombing?"

"I don't know," Carla said. "When we find him, you can ask him."

"I'm looking forward to it," Khunnier said. His eyes were dark and sunken. There was something in his voice she had never heard before. Something cold. "We live for the One. We die for the One. Nobody just walks away."

Carla shuddered. For the first time, she realized Khunnier's official military specialty with the Anla'shok, intelligence specialist, was exactly the same military specialty as Comac's.

"You Anla'shok can be frightening," said Calann, "do you know that? And here I have floated on the sea, and thought myself beyond all fear."

"Oh," said Carla. So it wasn't just her. "Tell us."

"Yes, please tell us your tale," boomed Firuun enthusiastically. Here in the white metal isolation of a private hull, away from the medical facility and the non-Minbari bombing victims, he let his voice return to its usual volume.

Calann stood up and made a grand gesture. The other Minbari, most of them his own clansmen, listened attentively. So did Carla.

"The sea has a sharp scent," he began.

Carla knew it well. It did not smell at all like the oceans of Earth, even though it was a salt sea just like Earth's oceans. She had never seen Minbar's sea, but she would never forget the smell of the saltwater tank where Comac kept his little pets. The baltor mar.

"I never thought about it, but of course the dalshon have villages," Calann said. "They don't just sail around committing acts of piracy for a living. Who else is on the sea but the dying, who have left behind all material possessions in search of the purity of the soul? I reached a village, and saw them all out with their big boots, wading in the rocky tidal pools, harvesting the edible creatures of the shore."

He smiled at the memory and continued, "Some of them came to me when I walked down to the shore. They steered me away from the tidepools, and out to a berm built up out of wet sand. A boat was prepared for me. It had no sail, no mast, no oars, nothing that would cast a shadow. I gave them all I had left for the boat, which was not much by then. I had spent more than I thought I would getting there. They sang for me. The Song of the Dalshon."

Calann started humming again. He sang a few lines, then gave up. "My memory is not what it used to be. I wish I could remember it. It was such a beautiful song."

Carla cleared her throat. She did not have a great singing voice at the best of times, and today she had abused her stomach, gotten an armful of shrapnel, and was on the verge of tears over the memory of that tune. But she was Anla'shok. She confronted her fears.

She sang.

"He comes to me, the dalshon.

Out of the sea he comes,

Singing, joyful and solemn.

He knows the safe way,

Between the creatures of the shore.

The sea birds sing with him.

The sea winds sing with him.

He leads me by the safe way,

So that I do not misstep.

He guides me to the boat

He has prepared for me.

He loads it with flowers

And the perfume of them

Is a prayer of life.

I go to the sea.

The mists part for me.

There is only sun.

There is only light.

I drift. I have no sail, no mast.

Nothing here will cast a shadow.

The water is gold fire.

It glitters, always moving.

I do not fear death.

I float, calm.

Noon on a flat still sea:

Where no shadows fall."

The Minbari were all staring at her.

"I knew it," said Calann. "You are a dalshon. You do not merely speak like them. You know the Song."

"I heard it many times," she said. "Every time we went on gravedigging detail. We wanted to go. We loved all work details, even that. We cheered inside when one of us died. It meant some of us would get to go out with shovels, and not be… not…" She realized her face was wet, and wiped away tears. "There is more to paradise that a day's relief. But it was all we ever had."

Carla's crew all knew her story. She had never actually told it to them, but Khunnier knew all about it, and she could tell by their faces that the only person there who did not understand was Calann.

The elderly Minbari said, "I'm lost. Dalshon do not bury people. They help people go to the sea."

"Humans bury our dead," said Carla. "He respected our customs. And he sang the Song for each of us who died. To help their souls get to the afterlife OK. Sometimes, when he sang, I almost thought he was—human. A little bit. Nobody's all evil, not even Comac."

"Comac?" Calann asked. "Comac of Clan Itma? Comac the Torturer? He is a dalshon, of course, his clan is a Coastline clan. But how would a human know him?"

Firuun whispered, "Calann, you are not so old that you've lost your senses. How would you think an ex-Gropo would know him?"

"Oh."

Carla said, "Please, continue your story. You got into the boat, and then?"

"And then I drifted out on the tide. Drifted. A long time I drifted. Days, nights. The sun. The wind. The cold. And yet I lived. One day I woke up to find myself on a beach. And I left the boat rocking in the waves and just walked up the beach and left. I had nothing, but I wandered, on foot, until I came to a spaceport. I just walked aboard a ship, not a passenger liner, a working freighter, and nobody questioned me. Well, it was a Minbari ship, and I know my skin is as wrinkled as my robe, slept in for weeks. I suppose they knew I was going to the sea."

The scouts came back. They reported, "The deserter is not here, Captain. He's gotten out of the sealed zone somehow. He must have planned his escape in advance. He's got to be working with the bombers."

"Maybe," Carla said. "He could have been the target, for all we know. I'll see what I can get out of the local authorities when we've all rested and the chaos outside is under control. They'll be more willing to talk to us then. The bombing is really not our business. But the deserter is an Anla'shok matter."

Khunnier said, "I volunteer to co-ordinate the search."

"Fine," Carla said. "See to it. But don't go out scouting yourself, the doctor said you're supposed to rest."

"I can command the search from here. I cannot rest while one who spat on his oath to the Anla'shok lurks nearby. I will not rest until I have him under my hands. Then he will pay."

"Careful, Khunnier. We're the good guys, remember."

"Of course, Captain," Khunnier said. It was mere obedience. Carla would have felt better if he had said, of course, Carla. Then she would have known he spoke from his heart.

But she wanted the traitor found and punished as much as Khunnier did. Lennier would not leave Untika alive if he did not have a very, very good explanation for his desertion.

End of Chapter 2