The Legate shook his head, as if he could read Kerwin’s thoughts. He looked tired, worn, an old man, a weary man, struggling with a world too complex for him. “I’m sorry, son,” he said, kindly. “I guess I know how you feel. But I’ve got a job to do and not an awful lot of leeway in how I do it. That’s the way it is; you’re going to be on the next ship out of here. And don’t put in an application to come back, because you won’t get it.” He stood up. “I’m sorry, kid,” he said, and offered his hand.
Kerwin did not touch it. The Legate’s face hardened.
“You’re relieved from duty as of now; inside twenty-eight hours, I want a formal transfer request filled out, with your preferred routing for assignment; if I have to do it for you, I’ll put you through for the penal colony on Lucifer Delta. You’re confined to quarters till you leave.” He bent over his desk, shuffling the papers there. Without looking up, he said, “You can go.”
Kerwin went. So he had lost, then—lost entirely. It had been too big for him, the mystery he faced; he had run up against something entirely beyond him.
The Legate had been lying. He had known that, when the man offered him his hand at the last. The Legate had been forced to send him into exile, and he didn’t particularly want to…
Going back into his bleak rooms, Kerwin told himself not to be a fool. Why would the Legate lie? Was he a dreamer, a fool with delusions of persecution, compensating for his orphan childhood with dreams of grandeur?
He paced the floor, went restlessly to the window, staring at the red sun dipping toward the hills. The bloody sun. Some romantic poet had given Cottman’s Star that name a long time ago. As the swift dark came rushing from the mountains, he clenched his fists, staring into the sky.
Darkover. It’s the end of Darkover for me. The world I fought for, and it’s kicking me out again. I worked and schemed to get back here, and it’s all going for nothing. All I get is frustration, closed doors, death…
The matrix is real. I didn’t dream that, or invent it. And that belongs to Darkover…
He put his hand into his pocket and drew out the blue jewel. Somehow this was the key to the mystery, the key to all the closed doors slammed in his face. Maybe he should have shown it to the Legate… no.
The Legate knew perfectly well that Kerwin was telling the truth; only, for some reason, he had chosen not to admit it. Faced with the matrix, he would simply have invented some other lie.
Kerwin wondered how he knew the man had been lying. But he knew. Beyond a doubt, without hesitation, he knew the man had been lying, for some obscure reason of his own. But why?
He drew the curtains against the blackness outside, the lights of the spaceport below, and set the crystal on the table. He paused, hesitant, seeing in his mind’s eye the picture of a woman sprawled in unlovely death, the terror that had risen in him…
I saw something when she was looking into the matrix, but I can’t remember what it was. I only remember that it scared the hell out of me. … A woman’s face flickered in his mind, dark forms against an opening door… He set his teeth against the surging panic, battering against the closed door of his memory, but he could not remember; only the fear, the scream in a child’s voice and darkness.
He told himself sternly not to be a fool. The man Ragan had used this crystal and it hadn’t hurt him. Feeling self-conscious, he laid the crystal on the table and shaded his eyes as the woman had done, staring into it.
Nothing happened.
Damn it, maybe there was a special knack to it, maybe he should have hunted up Ragan and persuaded him, or bribed him, to teach him how to use it. Well, too late for that now. He stared fiercely into the crystal, and for a moment it seemed that a pale light flickered inside it, crawling blue lights that made him feel vaguely sick. But it vanished. Kerwin shook his head. He had a crick in his neck and his eyes were playing tricks on him, that was all. The old “crystal-gazing” trick was just a form of self-hypnosis, he’d have to guard against that.
The light remained. It crept, a small faint pinpoint of color moving inside the jewel. It flared, and Kerwin jumped; it was like a red-hot wire touching something inside his brain. And then he heard something, a voice very far away, calling his name… no. There were no words. But it was speaking to him, to no one else who had ever existed, a vastly personal message. It was something like, You. Yes, you. I see you.
Or, even more, I recognize you.
Dizzily he shook his head, gripping at the edge of the table with his fists. His head hurt, but he could not stop now. It seemed that he could hear speech, just random syllables… a low murmuring voice, or voices, that went on and on just below the threshold of awareness, like a running, whispering stream murmuring over sharp stones.
Yes, he is the one.
You cannot fight it now.
Cleindori worked too hard for this to waste it.
Does he know what he has or what is happening?
Be careful! Don’t hurt him! He’s not accustomed…
A barbarian, Terranan…
If he is to be any good to us, he must find his way alone and unaided, that much of a test I must insist upon.
We need him too much for that. Let me help…
Need that? A Terranan—
That voice sounded like the redhead in the Sky Harbor Hotel, but when Kerwin whirled, half expecting to find that the man had somehow made his way into the very room, there was no one there and the bodiless voices were gone
He leaned forward, staring into the crystal. And then, as it seemed to expand, to fill the room, he saw the face of a woman.
For a moment, because of the glint of red hair, he thought it was the small, pixielike girl they had called Taniquel. Then he realized that he had never seen her before.
Her hair was red, but a pale red, almost more golden than red; she was small and slender, and her face was round, childish, unmarred. She could not, Kerwin thought, be very far out of her teens. She looked straight at him, with wide, dreamy grey eyes that seemed to look, unfocused, through him.
I have faith in you, she said somehow, wordlessly, or at least the words seemed to reverberate inside his head, and we have such need of you that I have convinced the others. Come.
Kerwin’s hands clenched on the table.
“Where? Where?” he shouted.
But the crystal was blank and blue again, and the strange girl was gone; he heard his own cry echo foolishly on empty walls.
Had she ever been there? Kerwin wiped his forehead, damp with cold sweat. Had his own wishful thinking tried to give him an answer? He swept the crystal into his pocket. He couldn’t waste time on this. He had to pack for space, dispose of his gear, and leave Darkover, never to return. Leave his dreams behind, and the last of his youth. Leave behind all those vague memories and teasing dreams, those will-o‘-the-wisps that had led him halfway to destruction. Make a new life for himself somewhere, a smaller life somehow, bounded by the KEEP OUT sign of the old dead hopes and longings, make a life somehow out of the fragments of his old aspirations, with bitterness and resignation…
And then something rose up inside Jeff Kerwin, something that was not the meek CommTerra employee, something that stood up on its hind legs and pawed the ground and said, cold and clean and unmistakable: No.
That wasn’t the way it was going to be. The Terranan could never force him to go.
Who the hell do they think they are, anyway, those damned intruders on our world?
The voice from the crystal? No, Kerwin thought, the inner voice of his own mind, flatly rejecting the commands of the Legate. This was his world, and he’d be damned if they were going to force him off it.
He realized that he was moving automatically, without thought, like a long-buried other self. Kerwin watched himself moving around the room, discarding most of his gear; he thrust half a dozen minor keepsakes into a pocket, left the rest where they were. He put the matrix on its chain around his neck and tucked it carefully out of sight. He started to unbutto
n his uniform, then shrugged, left it the way it was, but went to a wardrobe and got out the embroidered Darkovan cloak he had bought his first night in Thendara, drew it around his shoulders and did up the fastenings. He glanced briefly in the mirror. Then, without a backward glance, he walked out of his quarters, the thought dimly skittering across the surface of his mind that he would never see them again.
He walked through the central living rooms of bachelor quarters, took a short cut through the deserted dining commons. At the outer door of the section he paused; a clear and unmistakable inner voice said, no, not now, wait.
Not understanding, but riding the hunch—what else was there to do?—he sat down and waited. He felt, oddly, not impatient at all. The waiting had the same wary certainty of a cat at a mousehole; a secureness, a—a rightness. He sat quietly, hands clasped, whistling a monotonous little tune to himself. He did not feel restless. Half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half went by; his muscles began to feel cramped and he shifted automatically to relieve the tension, but he went on waiting, without knowing what he was waiting for.
Now.
He stood up and stepped out into the deserted corridor. As he walked swiftly down the hall, he found himself wondering if there would be a pickup order out for him if he should be missed from his quarters. He supposed so. He had no plans, except the very basic one of refusing to obey the deportation order. This meant he must somehow get out, not only of the HQ, but of the Spaceport Zone and the entire Terran Zone unobserved. What would come after he did not know and, strangely, did not care.
Still riding the strange hunch, he turned out of the main corridor where he might meet off-duty acquaintances heading for the quarters, and went toward a little-used freight elevator. He told himself that he ought, at least, to take off the Darkovan cloak; if anyone met him wearing it, inside the HQ, it would lead to question and discovery. He put up his hand to unfasten the clasps and sling it over his arm; back in uniform, he’d just be another invisible employee walking in the halls.
No.
Clear, unmistakable, the negative warning in his mind. Puzzled, he dropped his hand and let the cloak be. He emerged from the elevator into a narrow walkway and paused to orient himself; this part of the building was not familiar to him. There was a door at the end of the walkway; he pushed it open and emerged into a crowded lobby. What looked like a whole shift of maintenance workers in uniform was milling around, getting ready to go off duty. And a large group of Darkovans in their colorful dress and long cloaks were making their way through the crowd toward the outer door and the gates. Kerwin, at first taken aback by the crowd, realized quickly that no one was paying the slightest attention to him. Slowly, unobtrusively, he made his way through the crowd, and managed to join the group of Darkovans. None of them took the slightest notice of him. He supposed they were some formal delegation from the city, one of the committees that helped administer the Trade City. They formed a random stream in the crowd, going in their own special direction, and Kerwin, at the edge of the group, streamed along with them, into the street, outside the HQ, through the gateway that led out of the enclosure. The Space-force guards there gave them, and Kerwin, only the most cursory of glances.
Outside the gate the group of Darkovans began to break up into twos and threes, talking, lingering. One of the men gave Kerwin a polite look of non-recognition and inquiry. Kerwin murmured a formal phrase, turned quickly and walked at random into a side street.
The Old Town was already shadowed with dimness. The wind blew chill, and Kerwin shivered a little in the warm cloak. Where was he going, anyhow?
He hesitated at the corner of the street where, once in a restaurant, he had faced Ragan down. Should he seek out the place and try and see if the little man could be useful to him?
Again the clear, unmistakable no from that inner mentor. Kerwin wondered if he was imagining things, rationalizing. Well, it didn’t matter much, one way or the other, and it had gotten him out of the HQ; so whatever the hunch he was riding, he’d stay with it a while. He looked back at the HQ building, already half wiped out in the thickening mist, then turned his back on it and it was like the slamming of a mental door. That was the end of that. He had cut himself adrift and he would not look back again.
A curious peace seemed to descend over him with this decision. He turned his back on the known streets and began to walk quickly away from the Trade City area.
He had never come quite so far into the Old Town, even on that day he had sought out the old matrix mechanic, the day that had ended with her death. Down here the buildings were old, built of that heavy translucent stone, chill againt the blowing wind. At this hour there were few people in the streets; now and then a solitary walker, a workman in one of the cheap imported climbing jackets, walked head down against the wind; once a woman carried in a curtained sedan chair on the shoulders of four men; once, moving noiselessly in the lee of the building, a silver-mantled, gliding nonhuman regarded him with uninvolved malice.
A group of street gamins in ragged smocks, barefoot, moved toward him as if to pester him for alms; suddenly they drew back, whispered to each other, and ran off. Was it the ceremonial cloak, the red hair they could see beneath the hood?
The swift mist was thickening; now snow began to fall, soft thick heavy flakes; and Kerwin became quickly aware that he was hopelessly lost in the unfamiliar streets. He had been walking almost at random, turning corners on impulse, with that strange, almost dreamish sensation that it didn’t matter which way he went. Now, in a great and open square, so unfamiliar that he had not the slightest idea how far he had come, he stopped, shaking his head, coming up to normal consciousness.
Good God, where am I? And where am I going? I can’t wander around all night in a snowstorm, even wearing a Darkovan cloak over my uniform! I should have started out by looking for a place to hide out for a while; or I should have tried to get right out of the city before I was missed!
Dazed, he looked around. Maybe he should try and get back to the HQ, take whatever punishment was coming. No. That way lay exile. He had already settled that. But the curious hunch that had been guiding him all this way seemed to be running out, and now it deserted him entirely. He stood staring this way and that, wiping snowflakes from his eyes and trying to decide which way he should go. Down one side of the square there was a row of little shops, all fast-shuttered against the night. Kerwin mopped his wet face with a wet sleeve, staring through the thick snow at a solitary house; a mansion, really, the town house of some nobleman. Inside there were lights, and he could see, through the translucent walls, dark blurred forms. Drawn almost magnetically to the lights, Kerwin crossed the square and stood just outside the half-open gate. Inside was a flight of shallow steps, which led to a great carved door. He stood there, fighting the invisible pull of that door.
What am I doing? I can’t just walk in there, into a strange house! Have I gone completely crazy?
No. This is the place. They’re waiting for me.
He told himself that was madness; but his steps carried him on, automatically, toward the gate. He put a hand on it, and when nothing happened, he opened it and went through and stood on the lower step. And there he stopped, sanity and madness fighting in him, and the worst part of it was, Kerwin wasn’t quite sure which was which.
You’ve come this far. You can’t stop now.
You’re being an awful God-damned fool, Jefferson Andrew Kerwin. Get out—just turn right around and get the hell out of here before you get yourself into something you really can’t handle. Not just something predictable like being slugged and rolled in an alley.
Step by slow step, he went up the sleet-slipperied steps toward the lighted doorway. Too late to turn back now. He grasped the handle, noticing peripherally the design, in the shape of a phoenix. He twisted it slowly, and the door opened and Kerwin stepped inside.
Miles away, in the Terran Zone, a man had gone to a communicator and requested a specially coded priority circuit to speak with
the Legate.
“Your bird’s flown,” he said.
The Legate’s face on the screen was composed and smug.
“I thought so. Push hard enough and they’d have to make a move. I knew they wouldn’t let us deport him.”
“You sound awfully sure, sir. He sounds like an independent cuss. Maybe he just walked off on his own; went over the wall. He wouldn’t be the first. Not even the first one named Kerwin.”
The Legate shrugged. “We’ll soon find out.”
“You want him tailed any further, then?”
The answer was immediate. “No! Hell, no! These people are nobody’s fools! In the state he was in he might not have spotted a tail; it’s for damn sure they would. Let him go; no strings. It’s their move. Now —we wait.”
“We’ve been doing that for more than twenty years,” the man grumbled.
“We’ll wait twenty more if we have to. But the catalyst’s working now; somehow I don’t think it will be that long. Wait and see.”
The screen went blank. After a while the Legate pushed another button and hit a special access code marked KERWIN.
He looked satisfied.
* * *
Chapter Seven: Homecoming
« ^ »
Kerwin stood blinking against the warmth and light of the spacious hallway. He mopped snow from his face again, and for a moment all he could hear was the wind and snow outside, slapping against the closed door. Then a bright tinkle of laughter broke the silence.
“Elorie has won,” said a light, girlish voice, somehow familiar to him. “I told you so.”
A thick velvet curtain parted, just before him, and a girl stood there; a slender young woman with red hair in a green dress with a high collar, and a pixie-pretty face. She was laughing at him. Behind her two men came through the curtains, and Kerwin wondered if he had somehow wandered into a daydream —or nightmare. For they were the three redheads from the Sky Harbor Hotel; the pretty woman was Taniquel, and behind her, the feline and arrogant Auster, the thickset, urbane man who had introduced himself as Kennard. It was Kennard who spoke now.
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