It was a fairly stiff walk from the quarter of the city where my father and his forefathers had kept their town house, to the gates of the Terran Zone. A high wind was blowing, and I felt stiff. I wasn’t used to this kind of walk, and for six years I had lived on a world, Terra or Vainwal, where urgent business could be settled by mechanical communicators—anywhere in the Empire I could have settled the formalities for the dissolution of a marriage by communicator and video-screens—and where, if personal appearance had really been necessary, I could have all kinds of mechanical transport at a moment’s notice. Darkover has never had much interest in roads—it takes either machine labor, man-hours or matrix work to build good roads, and our world has never wanted to pay the price of any of those three. I’d spent my share of time in a Tower, providing the kind of communication you can get through the relays, telepathically operated; and I’d done my share of mining, too, and chemically purifying minerals. I’d monitored, and trained monitors. But I knew how hard it was to find enough talent for the matrix work, and it was no longer required of my caste, who had laran, that they spend their lives behind Tower walls, working for the people they served.
Were we Comyn the rulers of our people, because of our laran…or were we their slaves? And which was which? A slave is a slave, even if, for his laran work, the people he serves surround him in every luxury and bow to his every word. A protected class quickly becomes an exploited and exploiting class. Look at women.
The gates of the Terran HQ, stark and sombre, loomed before me, a black-leathered spaceman at their gates. I gave my name and the guard used his communicator; they admitted I was on legitimate business, and let me in. My father had gone to some trouble to arrange double citizenship for me, and the Terrans claimed that Darkover was a lost Terran colony anyhow, which meant it was part of their policy to grant citizens rights to anyone who went to the trouble of applying for them. I had never troubled to vote for a representative in the Imperial Senate or Parliament, but I had a shrewd suspicion that Lerrys always did. I don’t have much faith in parliamentary governments—they tend to pick, not the best man, but the one who appeals to the widest mass temperament, and, in general, majorities tend to be always wrong—as the long history of culture and the constant return of certain types of slavery and religious bigotry show us. I didn’t trust the Empire to make decisions for Darkover, and why in all of Zandru’s nine hells—or the four hundred known and inhabited worlds of the Empire—should the Darkovans have any voice in making decisions for such worlds as Vainwal? Even in small groups—such as Comyn Council—politicians are men who want to tell their fellows what to do; and thus criminal at heart. I seldom thought about it much, and preferred it that way. My father had tried, many times, to point out the flaws in that reasoning, but I had better things to do with my life than worry about politics.
Better things? Had I anything to do with my life at all? At the back of my brain it seemed there was a familiar mutter. I kept my thoughts resolutely away from it, knowing that if I focused on it, it would be the clamor of my father’s voice, the nag of the Sharra matrix at my brain— no, I wouldn’t think of it.
The marriage was a line in a computer, hardly more than that. My occupation? When I went offworld, drugged and only half alive after being seared in Sharra’s fires, my father had had to name his occupation and he had put both his and mine down as Matrix mechanic. What a joke that was! He could have called himself rancher—Armida produces about a twentieth of the horses traded in the Kilghard Hills—or, because of his post as commander of the Guards, soldier; or, for that matter, because of his Council seat, claimed equal rank with a Senator or Parliamentarian. But, knowing the mystique the Terrans attach to our matrix technology, he had called himself, Matrix Technician, and me, mechanic. What a joke that was! I couldn’t monitor a pebble from the forge-folk’s cave! Not with my matrix still overshadowed by Sharra—
There were technicians and Keepers on Darkover still. Perhaps I could be freed… but later, later. The business at hand was trouble enough. Lewis-Kennard Montray-Lanart, Lord Alton, resident of Cottman Four—which is what the Empire calls Darkover—occupation, matrix mechanic, residence, Armida in the Kilghard Hills, temporary residence— I gave them the name of the street and the square of the town house. Damned if I wanted Comyn Castle brought into this! Wife’s name: Diotima Ridenow-Montray. Wife’s middle name. I didn’t think she had any, I said. I was sure she did, and probably didn’t use it; half the Ridenow of Serrais named their daughters Cassilda, perhaps because there was some doubt about their status as genuine descendants of Hastur and Cassilda, who probably never existed anyhow. Wife’s residence. Well, she was certainly in the custody of her brother, so I gave the estate of Serrais, where the Ridenow ought to live, and I heartily wished they were all out there. Reason for dissolution of marriage?
Here I stopped, not sure what to say, and the clerk, who acted as if loves like this were disrupted a hundred times a day, and in the anthill population of the Empire they probably were, told me irritably that I must state a reason for dissolving the marriage. Well, I could hardly say that her brother threatened to murder me otherwise!
The clerk prompted: “Barrenness if you both wish for children; impotence; irreconcilable differences in life-styles; desertion…”
That would do; she had certainly deserted me.
But the clerk was yammering on.
“Allergy to the other’s planet or residence; failure to support the children of the marriage; inability to father viable offspring if both wish for children…”
“That will do,” I said, though I knew in principle that this, or barrenness, were seldom actually cited for divorces; usually they cited less offensive reasons by mutual consent, such as desertion or irreconcilable difference of life-styles. But Dio had asked for it, and I would state the real reason.
Slowly he put it into the computer in code; now it was on record that I was incapable of fathering viable offspring. Well, they must have it somewhere in the records of that Terran hospital on Vainwal— what had been born to Dio on that night of disaster. I smothered an agonized picture of Dio, smiling up at me as she talked about our son… no. It was over. She wanted to be free of me, I would not cling to a woman who had every reason to despise me.
While the clerk was finishing up the details, a communicator beeped somewhere, and he answered it, looked up.
“Mr. Montray, if you will stop at the Legate’s office on your way out—”
“The Legate?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. I had seen the Terran Legate once, a stuffy functionary named Ramsay, when he attended a conference where I had been Honor Guard; I was still one of my father’s officers, then. Perhaps he too wished to pay courtesy condolences after my father’s death, the sort of meaningless social formality not limited to Darkover or to Terra. The clerk said, “That’s finished, then,” and I saw our marriage, and our love, reduced to meaningless lines of print, stored somewhere in a computer. The thought filled me with revulsion.
“Is that all there is to it?”
“Unless your wife contests the divorce within a tenday,” said the clerk, and I smiled bitterly. She wouldn’t. I had caused enough havoc in her life; I could not blame her if she wanted no more.
The clerk pointed me in the direction of the Legate’s office, but when I got there, (wishing, because of the stares, that I had worn my hand) I found the Legate was not the man I remembered, but that his name was Dan Lawton.
I had known him briefly. He was actually a distant relative of mine, though closer kin to Dyan—who was, after all, my father’s cousin. Lawton’s story was something like mine; only reversed, Terran father, a mother who was a kinswoman of Comyn. He could have claimed a seat in Comyn Council if he had chosen; he had chosen otherwise. He was tall and lean, his hair nearer to Comyn red than my own. His greeting was friendly, not over-hearty, and he did not, to my great relief, offer to shake hands; it’s a custom I despise, all the more since I had no longer a proper handshake to
offer. But he didn’t evade my eyes; there are not many men who can, or will, look a telepath full in the eyes.
“I heard about your father,” he said. “I suppose you’re sick of formal condolences; but I knew him and liked him. So you’ve been on Terra. Like it there?”
I said edgily, “Are you implying I should have stayed there?”
He shook his head. “Your business. You’re Lord Armida now, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so. It’s up to Council to confirm me.”
“We can use friends in Council,” he said. “I don’t mean spies; I mean people who understand our ways and don’t automatically think all Terrans are monsters. Danvan Hastur arranged for your younger brother to be educated here at the Terran HQ; he got the same education a Senator’s son would have had: politics, history, mathematics, languages— you might encourage him to go in that direction when he’s old enough. I always hoped your father would apply for a place in the Imperial Senate, but I had no chance to persuade him. Maybe your brother.”
“That would be one direction for Marius, if the Council won’t accept him as my formal Heir,” I said, temporizing. It did make more sense than putting him at the head of the Guards. Gabriel wanted that and would be good at it. “I’ll talk to him about it.”
“Before he would be eligible for Imperial Senate,” he said, “he must live on at least three different planets for a year apiece, and demonstrate understanding of different cultures. It’s not too soon to start arranging it. If he’s interested, I’ll put him in the way of a minor diplomatic post somewhere— Samarra, perhaps. Or Megaera.”
I did not know if Marius was interested in politics. I said so, adding that I would ask him. It might be a viable alternative for my brother.
And I need not test him for the Alton Gift, need not risk his death at my hands… as my father had risked mine…
“Is he, too, a matrix mechanic?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t even know how much of a telepath he is.”
“There are telepaths on some worlds,” he said. “Not many, and this is the only culture where they’re really taken for granted. But if he’d be more comfortable on a world where the population accepted telepathic and psi powers as a matter of course—”
“I’ll ask him.” I hoped that when I broached the subject Marius wouldn’t think I was trying to get rid of him. In history, brothers were allies; in fact they had all too often been rivals. Marius ought to know how little I cared to dispute with him for the Domain! I made a move to rise. “Was there anything else?”
“As a matter of fact,” Lawton said, “there was. What do you know about a man named Robert Raymon Kadarin?”
I flinched. I knew too much about the accursed traitor Kadarin, who had—once—been friend, almost brother; who had brought the Sharra matrix from its forges, given it over to me, given me these scars, forced Marjorie to the pole of Sharra’s power— no! I made myself stop thinking about that; my teeth clenched. “He’s dead.”
“We thought so too,” said Lawton. “And even in the course of nature and time, he ought to be dead. He was on Terran Intelligence considerably before I was born—hell, before my grandfather was born, which means he’s probably about a hundred, or older.”
I remembered the gray eyes, colorless— there was chieri blood in the Hellers, as there had been in Thyra, in Majorie herself and her unknown mother. And the mountain men with the half-human chieri blood were abnormally long-lived, as some of the old Hastur kings had been.
“He’s dead anyway if he crosses my path,” I said. “His life is mine, where, as and how I can; if I see him, I warn you, I will kill him like a dog.”
“Blood-feud—?” Lawton asked, and I said, “Yes.” He was one of the few Terrans who would understand. Unsettled blood-feud outweighs any other obligation, in the hills— I could, if need be, stall the formal proceedings for claiming the Alton Domain by speaking of blood-feud in the old way.
I should have killed him before…I thought he was dead.
I had been offworld, forgetting my duty, my honor—I thought him dead already— and a voice whispered in my mind, but ready to roar again, my last command… return to Darkover, fight for your brother’s rights— the Alton Domain could not survive with the stain of unsettled blood-feud—
“What makes you think he’s alive?” I asked. “And why do you ask me about him anyway? I’ve been offworld, in any case, even if I hadn’t, he’d hardly be likely to hide himself under my cloak!”
“Nobody accused you of sheltering him,” Lawton pointed out. “I understood, though, that you and he were allies during the rebellion and the Sharra troubles, when Caer Donn burned…”
I said quickly, to ward off questions, “No doubt you’ve heard some of the story from Beltran—”
“I haven’t. I’ve never met the present Lord Aldaran,” Lawton said, “though I saw him once. Did you know there’s a very strong resemblance? You’re cousins, aren’t you?”
I nodded. I have seen twins who were less like than Beltran and I; and there had been a time when I had been glad of that resemblance. I said, touching the scars on my face, “We’re not so much alike now.”
“Still, at a quick look, anyone who knew you both might take either of you for the other,” Lawton said. “Half a gram of cosmetic would cover those scars. But that’s neither here nor there… what did Kadarin have to do with Beltran, and with you?”
I gave him a brief, bald, emotionless outline of the story. Spurred on by Beltran of Aldaran, when old Lord Aldaran— who was my great-uncle—lay dying, the old man who called himself Kadarin had brought the Sharra matrix from the forge-folk.
“The name Kadarin is just defiance,” I said. “In the Hellers, any—bastard—is known as a ‘son of the Kadarin’ and he adopted it.”
“He was one of our best intelligence men, before he left the Service,” Lawton said, “or so the records say. I wasn’t out of school then. Anyhow, there was a price on his head—he’d served on Wolf; nobody knew he’d come back to Darkover until the Sharra trouble broke out.”
I fought against a memory: Kadarin, lean, wolfish, smiling, telling me of his travels in the Empire; I had listened with a boy’s fascination. So had Marjorie. Marjorie— time slid, for a moment, I walked the streets of a city which now lay in burned ruins, hand in hand with a smiling girl with amber eyes… and we shared a dream which would bring Terran and Darkovan together as equals.
I told the story flatly, as best I could.
“Beltran, with Kadarin, had a plan, to form a circle around one of the old, high-level matrixes; show the Terrans that we had a technology, a science, of our own. It was one of the matrixes that could power aircraft, mine metals—we thought, when we learned to handle it, we could offer it to the Empire in return for some of the Empire sciences. We formed a circle—a Tower circle, but without a Tower; a mechanic’s circle—”
“I’m no expert at matrix technology,” said Lawton, “but I know something about it. Go on. Just you and Kadarin and Beltran, or were there others?”
I shook my head. “Beltran’s half-sister Thyra; her mother was said to be part chieri, a foundling of the forest-folk. She—the chieri woman, I don’t remember her name—also had two children by one of Lord Aldaran’s Terran officers, a Captain Scott.”
“I know his son,” said Lawton. “Rafael Scott—do you mean to tell me he was one of you? He wouldn’t have been more than nine or ten years old, would he? You’d take a child into a thing like that?”
“Rafe was twelve,” I said, “and his laran was awake, or he couldn’t have been one of us. You know enough about Darkover to know that if a child’s old enough to function as a man—or a woman—then he’s old enough, and that’s all there is to it. I know you Terrans tend to keep young men and women in the playroom long after they’re grown; we don’t. Do we have to debate social customs now? Rafe was one of us. And so was Thyra, and so was Rafe’s sister Marjorie.” And then I stopped. There was n
o way I could talk about Marjorie; not now, with old wounds torn fresh.
“The matrix got out of control. Half of Caer Donn went up in flames. I suppose you know the story. Majorie died. I—” I shrugged, moving the stump of my arm slightly. “Rafe didn’t seem much the worse when I saw him last. But I thought Kadarin, and Thyra, were both dead.”
“I don’t know about the woman,” Lawton said. “I haven’t heard. Wouldn’t know her if she walked into this office. But Kadarin’s alive. He was seen in Thendara, less than a tenday ago.”
“If he’s alive, she’s alive,” I said. “Kadarin would have died before letting her be hurt.” Guilt clawed me again; as I should have died before Marjorie, Marjorie… and then I had a disquieting thought. Thyra was Aldaran as well as chieri. Had she foreseen the return of Sharra to Darkover… and come to Thendara, drawn by that irresistible pull, even before I knew, myself, that I would bring it back?
Were we nothing more than pawns of that damned thing?
Lawton said, “What is Sharra? Just a matrix—”
“It’s that, certainly,” I said. “A very high-level one; ninth or tenth,” and I forestalled his question. “In general, a ninth-level matrix is a matrix which can only be operated or controlled by at least nine qualified telepaths of mechanic level.”
“But I gather it’s more—”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s probably—I’m not sure what it is. The forge-folk thought it was the talisman controlling a Goddess who brought fire to their forges…”
Lawton said, “I was not asking for an account of Darkovan superstitions about Sharra. I’ve heard the stories of the flame-hair—”
“They’re not stories,” I said. “You weren’t there when Caer Donn burned, were you? Sharra appeared—and struck fire down on the ships—”
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