Heritage and Exile (14 page)

“Lord Hastur, this is an ethical question, not a legal one at all. We enforce Comyn laws within the jurisdiction of the Comyn. In Caer Donn and the Hellers, where the laws are made by Lord Aldaran, we enforce what laws
he
requires. If he cannot be bothered to enforce the Compact you value so highly, it is not our business to police it for him—or, my lord, for you.”

Callina Aillard said in her quiet clear voice, “Mr. Ramsay, the Compact is not a law, in your sense, at all. I do not believe either of us quite understands what the other means by
law
. The Compact has been the ethical basis of Darkovan culture and history for hundreds of years; neither Kermiac of Aldaran nor any other man on Darkover has any right to disregard or disobey it.”

Ramsay said, “You must debate that point with Aldaran himself, my lady. He is not an Empire subject and I have no authority over him. If you want him to keep the Compact, you'll have to make him keep it.”

Edric Ridenow spoke up for the first time. He said, “It is your responsibility, Ramsay, to enforce the substance of your agreement on our world. Are you intending to shirk that duty because of a quibble?”

“I am not shirking any responsibility which comes properly within the scope of my duties, Lord Serrais,” he said, “but neither is it my duty to settle your disagreements with Aldaran. It seems to me that would be to infringe upon the responsibility of the Comyn.”

Dyan opened his mouth again, but Hastur gestured him to silence. “You need not teach me my responsibilities, Mr. Ramsay. The Empire's agreement with Darkover, and the status of the spaceport, was determined with the Comyn, not with Kermiac of Aldaran. One stipulation of that agreement was enforcement of the Compact; and we intended enforcement, not only in the Domains, but all over Darkover. I dislike using threats, sir, but if you insist upon your right to violate your own agreement, I would be within my authority in closing the spaceport until such time as the agreement is kept in every detail.”

The Legate said, “This, sir, is unreasonable. You have said yourself that the Compact is not a law but an ethical preference. I also dislike using threats, but if you take that course, I am certain that my next orders from the Administrative Center would be to negotiate a new agreement with Kermiac of Aldaran and move the Empire headquarters to Caer Donn Trade City, where we need not trouble Comyn scruples.”

Hastur said bitterly, “You say you are prohibited from taking sides in local political decisions. Do you realize that this would effectively throw all the force of the Terran Empire against the very existence of the Compact?”

“You leave me no choice, sir.”

“You know, don't you, that such a move would mean war? War not of the Comyn's making but, the Compact once abandoned, war would inevitably come. We have had no war here for many years. Small skirmishes, yes. But the enforcement of the Compact has kept such battles within reasonable limits. Do you want the responsibility for letting a different kind of war loose?”

“Of course not,” Ramsay said. He was a nontelepath and his emotions were muddy, but I could tell that he was distressed. This distress made me like him just a little more. “Who would?”

“Yet you would hide behind your laws and your orders and your superiors, and let our world be plunged into war again? We had our Ages of Chaos, Ramsay, and the Compact brought them to an end. Does that mean nothing to you?”

The Terran looked straight at Hastur. I had a curious mental picture, a flash picked up from someone in the room, that they were like two massive towers facing one another, as the Comyn Castle and the Terran headquarters faced one another across the valley, gigantic armored figures braced for single combat. The image thinned and vanished and they were just two old men, both powerful, both filled with stubborn integrity, each doing the best for his own side. Ramsay said, “It means a very great deal to me, Lord Hastur. I want to be honest with you. If there was a major war here, it would mean closing and sealing the Trade Cities to be certain of keeping to our law against interference. I don't want to move the spaceport to Caer Donn. It was built there, a good many years ago. When the Comyn offered us this more convenient spot, down here in the plains at Thendara, we were altogether pleased to abandon the operation at Caer Donn, except for trade and certain transport. The Thendara location has been to our mutual advantage. If we are forced to move back to Caer Donn we would be forced to reschedule all our traffic, rebuild our headquarters back in the mountains where the climate is more difficult for Terrans to tolerate and, above all, rely on inadequate roads and inhospitable countryside. I don't want to do that, and we will do anything within reason to avoid it.”

Dyan said, “Mr. Ramsay, are you not in command of all the Terrans on Darkover?”

“You have been misinformed, Lord Dyan. I'm a legate, not a dictator. My authority is mostly over spaceport personnel stationed here, and only in matters which for one reason or another supersede that of their individual departments of administration. My major business is to keep order in the Trade City. Furthermore, I have authority from Administration Central to deal with Darkovan citizens through
their
duly constituted and appointed rulers. I have no authority over any individual Darkovan except for a few civilian employees who choose to hire themselves to us, nor over any individual Empire citizen who comes here to do business, beyond determining that his business is a lawful one for a Class D world. Beyond that, if his business disturbs the peace between Darkover and the Empire, I may intervene. But unless someone appeals to me, I have no authority outside the Trade City.”

It sounded intolerably complicated. How did the Empire manage to get its business done at all? My father had, as yet, said nothing; now he raised his head and said bluntly, “Well, we're appealing to you. These Empire citizens selling blasters in the marketplace of Caer Donn are
not
doing lawful business for a Class D Closed World, and you know it as well as I do. It's up to you to do something about it, and do it now. That
does
come within your responsibility.”

The Legate said, “If the offense were here in Thendara, Lord Alton, I would do so with the greatest pleasure. In Caer Donn I can do nothing unless Lord Kermiac of Aldaran should appeal to me.”

My father looked and sounded angry. He
was
angry, with a disrupting anger which could have struck the Legate unconscious if he had not been trying hard to control it. “Always the same old story on Terra, what's your saying,
pass the buck
? You're like children playing that game with hot chestnuts, tossing them from one to another and trying not to get burned! I spent eight years on Terra and I never found even one man who would look me in the eye and say, ‘This is my responsibility and I will accept it whatever the consequences.' ”

Ramsay sounded harried. “Is it your contention that it is the Empire's business, or mine, to police your ethical systems?”

“I always thought,” Callina said in her clear, still voice, “that ethical conduct was the responsibility of every honest man.”

Hastur said, “One of our fundamental laws, sir, however law is defined, is that the power to act confers the responsibility to do so. Is it otherwise with you?”

The Legate leaned his chin on his clasped hands. “I can admire that philosophy, my lord, but I must respectfully refuse to debate it with you. I am concerned at this moment with avoiding great inconvenience for both our societies. I will inquire into this matter and see what can legitimately be done without interfering in your political decisions. And if I may make a respectful suggestion, Lord Hastur, I suggest that you take this matter up directly with Kermiac of Aldaran. Perhaps you can persuade him of the rightness of your view, and he will take it upon himself to stop the traffic in weapons, in those areas where the final legal authority is his.”

The suggestion shocked me. Deal, negotiate with that renegade Domain, exiled from Comyn generations ago? But no one seemed inordinately shocked at the idea. Hastur said, “We shall indeed discuss this matter with Lord Aldaran, sir. And it may be that since you refuse to take personal responsibility for enforcing the Empire's agreement with all of Darkover, that I shall myself take the matter directly before the Supreme Tribunal of the Empire. If it is adjudged
there
that the agreement for Darkover does indeed require planetwide enforcement of the Compact, Mr. Ramsay, have I then your assurance that you would enforce it?”

I wondered if the Legate was even conscious of the absolute contempt in Hastur's voice for a man who required orders from a supreme authority to enforce ethical conduct. I felt almost ashamed of my Terran blood. But if Ramsay heard the contempt, he revealed nothing.

“If I receive orders to that effect, Lord Hastur, you may be assured that I will enforce them absolutely. And permit me to say, Lord Hastur, that it would in no way displease me to receive such orders.”

A few more words were exchanged, mostly formal courtesies. But the meeting was over, and I had to gather my scattered thoughts and reassemble the honor guard, conduct the Council members formally out of the headquarters building and the spaceport and through the streets of Thendara. I could sense my father's thoughts, as I always could when we were in each other's presence.

He was thinking that no doubt it would be left to him to go to Aldaran. Kermiac would have to receive him, if only as my mother's kinsman. And I felt the utter weariness, like pain, in the thought. That journey into the Hellers was terrible, even in high summer; and summer was fast waning. Father was thinking that he could not shirk it. Hastur was too old. Dyan was no diplomat, he'd want to settle it by challenging Kermiac to a duel. But who else was there? The Ridenow lads were too young. . . .

It seemed to me, as I followed my father through the streets of Thendara, that in fact almost everyone in Comyn was either too old or too young. What was to become of the Domains?

It would have been easier if I could have been wholly convinced that the Terrans were all evil and must be resisted. Yet against my will I had found much that was wise in what Ramsay said. Firm laws, and never too much power concentrated in one pair of hands, seemed to me a strong barrier to the kind of corruption we now faced. And a certain basic law to fall back on when the men could not be trusted. Men, as I had found out when Dyan was placed at the head of the cadets, were all too often fallible, acting from expedience rather than the honor they talked so much about. Ramsay might hesitate to act without orders, but at least he acted on the responsibility of men and laws he could trust to be wiser than himself. And there was a check on his power too, for he knew that if he acted on his own responsibility against the will of wiser heads, he would be removed before he could do too much damage. But who would be a check on Dyan's power? Or my father's? They had the power to act, and therefore the right to do it.

And who could question their motives, or call a halt to their acts?

The day remained clear and cloudless. At sunset Regis stood on the high balcony which looked out over the city and the spaceport. The dying sunlight turned the city at his feet to a gleaming pattern of red walls and faceted windows. Danilo said, “It looks like the magical city in the fairy tale.”

“There's nothing much magical about it,” Regis said. “We learned that this morning on honor guard. Look, there's the ship that takes off every night about this time. It's too small to be an interstellar ship. I wonder where it's going?”

“Port Chicago, perhaps, or Caer Donn. It must be strange to have to send messages to other people by writing them, instead of by using linked minds as we do through the towers,” Danilo said. “And it must feel very, very strange never to know what other people are thinking.”

Of course, Regis thought. Dani was a telepath. Suddenly he realized that he'd been in contact with him again and again, and it had seemed so normal that neither had recognized it as telepathy. Today at the Council had been different, terribly different. He must have
laran
after all—but how and when, after Lew had failed?

And then the questions and the doubts came back. There had been so many telepaths there, spreading
laran
everywhere, even a nontelepath might have picked it up. It did not necessarily mean anything. He felt wrung, half desperately hoping that he was not cut off anymore and half fearing.

He went on looking at the city spread out below. This was the hour off-duty, when if a cadet had incurred no demerit or punishment detail, he might go where he chose. Morning and early afternoon were spent in training, swordplay and unarmed combat, the various military and command skills they would need later as Guards in the city and in the field. Later in the afternoon, each cadet was assigned to special duties. Danilo, who wrote the clearest hand among the cadets, had been assigned to assist the supply-officer. Regis had the relatively menial task of walking patrol in the city with a seasoned veteran or two, keeping order in the streets, preventing brawls, discouraging sneak-thieves and footpads. He found that he liked it, liked the very idea of keeping order in the city of Comyn.

Life in the cadet corps was not intolerable, as he had feared. He did not mind the hard beds, the coarse food, the continual demands on his time. He had been even more strictly disciplined at Nevarsin, and life in the barracks was easy by contrast. What troubled him most was always being surrounded by others and yet still being lonely, isolated from the others by a gulf he could not bridge.

From their first day, he and Danilo had drifted together, at first by chance, because their beds were side by side and neither of them had another close friend in the barracks. The officers soon began to pair them off for details needing partners like barrack room cleaning, which the cadets took in turns; and because Regis and Danilo were about the same size and weight, for unarmed-combat training and practice. Within the first-year group they were good-naturedly, if derisively, known as “the cloistered brethren” because, like the Nevarsin brothers, they spoke
casta
by choice, rather than
cahuenga
.