Heritage and Exile (28 page)

Beltran swung around to face me. “Why
did
you come here?” he demanded. “After all these years, Kennard cannot be all that eager for you to know your mother's kin, otherwise you would have been my foster-brother, as Father wished.”

I thought of that with a certain regret. I would willingly have had this kinsman for foster-brother. Instead I had never known of his existence till now, and it had been our mutual loss. He demanded again, “Why have you come, cousin, after so long?”

“It's true I came at my father's will,” I said at last, slowly. “Hastur heard reports that the Compact was being violated in Caer Donn; my father was too ill to travel and sent me in his place.” I felt strangely pulled this way and that. Had Father sent me to spy on kinsfolk? The idea filled me with revulsion. Or had he, in truth, wished me to know my mother's kin? I did not know, and not knowing made me uncertain, wretched.

“You see,” said the woman Thyra, from her place in Kadarin's shadow, “it's useless to talk to him. He's one of the Comyn puppets.”

Anger flared through me. “I am no man's puppet. Not Hastur's. Not my father's. Nor will I be yours, cousin or no. I came at my free will, because if Compact is broken it touches all our lives. And more than that, whatever my father said, I wished to know for myself whether what they had told me of Aldaran and Terra was true.”

“Spoken honestly,” Beltran said. “But let me ask you this, cousin. Is your loyalty to Comyn . . . or to Darkover?”

Asked that question at almost any other time, I would have said, without hesitation, that to be loyal to Comyn
was
to be loyal to Darkover. Since leaving Thendara I was no longer so sure. Even those I wholly trusted, like Hastur, had no power, or perhaps no wish, to check the corruption of the others. I said, “To Darkover. No question, to Darkover.”

He said vehemently, “Then you should be one of us! You were sent to us at this moment, I think, because we needed you, because we couldn't go on without someone like you!”

“To do what?” I wanted no part in any Aldaran plots.

“Only this, kinsman, to give Darkover her rightful place, as a world belonging to our own time, not a barbarian backwater! We deserve the place on the Empire Council which we should have had, centuries ago, if the Empire had been honest with us. And we are going to have it!”

“A noble dream,” I said, “if you can manage it. Just how are you going to bring this about?”

“It won't be easy,” Beltran said. “It's suited the Empire, and the Comyn, to perpetuate their idea of our world: backward, feudal, ignorant. And we have become many of these things.”

“Yet,” Thyra said from the shadows, “we have one thing which is wholly Darkovan and unique. Our psi powers.” She leaned forward to put a log on the fire and I saw her features briefly, lit by flame, dark, vital, glowing. I said, “If they are unique to Darkover, what of your theory that we are all Terrans?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “these powers are all recorded and remembered on Terra. But Terra neglected the powers of the mind, concentrating on material things, metal and machinery and computers. So their psi powers were forgotten and bred out. Instead we developed them, deliberately bred for them—that much of the Comyn legend is true. And we had the matrix jewels which convert energy. Isolation, genetic drift and selective breeding did the rest. Darkover is a reservoir of psi power and, as far as I know, is the only planet in the galaxy which turned to psi instead of technology.”

“Even with matrix amplification, these powers are dangerous,” I said. “Darkovan technology has to be used with caution, and sparsely. The price, in human terms, is usually too high.”

The woman shrugged. “You cannot take hawks without climbing cliffs,” she said.

“Just what is it you intend to do?”

“Make the Terrans take us seriously!”

“You don't mean war?” That sounded like suicidal nonsense and I said so. “Fight the Terrans, weapons against weapons?”

“No. Or only if they need to be shown that we are neither ignorant nor helpless,” Kadarin said. “A high-level matrix, I understand, is a weapon to make even the Terrans tremble. But I hope and trust it will never come to that. The Terran Empire prides itself on the fact that they don't conquer, that planets
ask
to be admitted to the Empire. Instead, the Comyn committed Darkover to withdrawal, barbarianism, a search for yesterday, not tomorrow. We have something to give the Empire in return for what they give us, our matrix technology. We can join as equals, not suppliants. I have heard that in the old days there were matrix-powered aircraft in Arilinn—”

“True,” I said, “as recently as in my father's time.”

“And why not now?” He did not wait for me to answer. “Also, we could have a really effective communications technique—”

“We have that now.”

“But the towers work only under Comyn domination, not for the entire population of the world.”

“The risks—”

“Only the Comyn seem to know anything about those risks,” Beltran said. “I'm tired of letting the Comyn decide for everyone else what risks we may take. I want us to be accepted as equals by the Terrans. I want us to be part of Terran trade, not just the trickle which comes in and out by the spaceports under elaborate permits signed and countersigned by their alien culture specialists to make certain it won't disturb our primitive culture! I want good roads and manufacturing and transportation and some control over the God-forgotten weather on this world! I want our students in the Empire universities, and theirs coming here! Other planets have these things! And above all I want star-travel. Not as a rich man's toy, as with the Ridenow lads spending a season now and then on some faraway pleasure world and bringing back new toys and new debaucheries, but free trade, with Darkovan ships coming and going at our will, not the Empire's!”

“Daydreams,” I said flatly. “There's not enough metal on Darkover for a spaceship's hulk, let alone fuel to power it!”

“We can trade for metal,” Beltran said. “Do you think matrices, manned by psi power, won't power a spaceship? And wouldn't that make most of the other power sources in the Galaxy obsolete overnight?”

I stood motionless for a moment, gripped by the force of his dream. Starships for Darkover . . . matrix-powered! By all the Gods, what a dream! And Darkovans comrades, competitors, not forgotten stepchildren of the Empire. . . .

“It can't be possible,” I said, “or the matrix circles would have done it in the old days.”

“It
was
done,” Kadarin said. “The Comyn stopped it. It would have diluted their power on this world. We turned our back on a Galactic civilization because that crew of old women in Thendara decided they liked our world the way it was, with the Comyn up there with the Gods and everyone else running around bowing and scraping to them! They even disarmed us all. Their precious Compact sounds very civilized, but what it's done, in effect, is to make it impossible to organize any kind of armed rebellion that could endanger the Comyn's power!”

This went along, all too uncomfortably, with some of my own thoughts. Even Hastur spoke noble words about the Comyn devoting themselves to the service of Darkover, but what it came to was that he knew what was best for Darkover, and wanted no independent ideas challenging his power to enforce that “best.”

“It's a noble dream. I said that before. But what have I to do with it?”

It was Marjorie who answered, squeezing my hand eagerly. “Cousin, you're tower-trained. You know the skills and techniques, and how they can be used even by latent telepaths. So much of the old knowledge has been lost, outside the towers. We can only experiment, work in the dark. We don't have the skills, the disciplines with which we could experiment further. Those of us who are telepaths have no chance to develop our natural gifts; those who are not have no way to learn the mechanics of matrix work. We need someone—someone like you, cousin!”

“I don't know . . . I have only worked within the towers. I have been taught it is not safe . . .”

“Of course,” Kadarin said contemptuously. “Would they risk any trained man experimenting on his own and perhaps learning more than the little they allow? Kermiac was training matrix technicians here in the Hellers when you people in the Domains were still working in guarded circles, looked on as sorceresses and warlocks! But he is very old and he cannot guide us now.” He smiled, a brief, bleak smile. “We need someone who is young and skilled and above all fearless. I think you have the strength for it. Have you the will?”

I found myself recalling the fey sense of destiny which had gripped me as I rode here. Was this the destiny I had foreseen, to break the hold of a corrupt clan on Darkover, to overthrow their grip at our throats, set Darkover in its rightful place among the equals of the Empire?

It was almost too much to grasp. I was suddenly very tired. Marjorie, still stroking my hand gently in her small fingers, said without looking up, “Enough, Beltran, give him time. He's weary from traveling and you've been jumping at him till he's confused. If it's right for him, he'll decide.”

She was thinking of me. Everyone else was thinking of how well I could fit into their plans.

Beltran said with a rueful, friendly smile, “Cousin, my apologies! Marjorie is right, enough for now! After that long journey, you're more in need of a quiet drink and a soft bed than a lecture on Darkovan history and politics! Well, the drink for now and the bed soon, I promise!” He called for wine and a sweet fruit-flavored cordial not unlike the
shallan
we drank in the valley. He raised his glass to me. “To our better acquaintance, cousin, and to a pleasant stay among us.”

I was glad to drink to that. Marjorie's eyes met mine over the rim of her glass. I wanted to take her hand again. Why did she appeal to me so? She looked young and shy, with an endearing awkwardness, but in the classic sense, she was not beautiful. I saw Thyra sitting within the curve of Kadarin's arm, drinking from his cup. Among valley folk that would have proclaimed them admitted lovers. I didn't know what, if anything, it meant here. I wished I were free to hold Marjorie like that.

I turned my attention to what Beltran was saying, about Terran methods used in the rapid building of Caer Donn, of the way in which trained telepaths could be used for weather forecasting and control. “Every planet in the Empire would send people here to be trained by us, and pay well for the privilege.”

It was all true, but I was tired, and Beltran's plans were so exciting I feared I would not sleep. Besides, my nerves were raw-edged with trying to keep my awareness of Marjorie under control. I felt I would rather be beaten into bleeding pulp than intrude, even marginally, on her sensitivities. But I kept wanting to reach out to her, test her awareness of me, see if she shared my feelings or if her kindness was the courtesy of a kinswoman to a wearied guest. . . .

“Beltran,” I said at last, cutting off the flow of enthusiastic ideas, “there's one serious flaw in your plans. There just aren't enough telepaths. We haven't enough trained men and women even to keep all nine of the towers operating. For such a galactic plan as you're contemplating, we'd need dozens, hundreds.”

“But even a latent telepath can learn matrix mechanics,” he said. “And many who have inherited the gifts never develop them. I believed the tower-trained could awaken latent
laran
.”

I frowned. “The Alton gift is to force rapport. I learned to use it in the towers to awaken latents if they weren't too barricaded. I can't always do it. That demands a catalyst telepath. Which I'm not.”

Thyra said sharply, “I told you so, Bob.
That
gene's extinct.”

Something in her tone made me want to contradict her. “No, Thyra,” I said, “I know of one. He's only a boy, and untrained, but definitely a catalyst telepath. He awakened
laran
in a latent, even after I failed.”

“Much good that does us,” Beltran said in disgust. “Comyn Council has probably bound him so tight, with favors and patronage, that he'll never see beyond their will! They usually do, with telepaths. I'm surprised they haven't already bribed and bound
you
that way.”

I thought, but did not say, that they had tried.

“No,” I said, “they have not. Dani has no reason at all to love the Comyn . . . and reason enough to hate.”

I smiled at Marjorie and began to tell them about Danilo and the cadets.

Regis lay in the guest chamber at Edelweiss, tired to exhaustion, but unable to sleep. He had come to Edelweiss through a late-afternoon fall of snow, still too stunned and sickened to talk, or to eat the supper Javanne had had prepared for him. His head throbbed and his eyes flickered with little dots of light which remained even when his eyes were shut, crawling, forming odd visual traceries behind the eyelids.

Dyan, he kept thinking. In charge of cadets, misusing power like that, and no one knew, or cared, or interfered.

Oh, they knew, he realized. They must have known. He would never believe Dyan could have deceived Kennard!

He remembered that curious unsatisfactory talk in the tavern with Dyan and his head throbbed harder, as if the very violence of his emotions would burst it asunder. He felt all the worse because he had, in truth, liked Dyan, had admired him and been flattered by his attention. He had welcomed the chance to talk to a kinsman as an equal . . . like a stupid, silly child! Now he knew what Dyan was trying to find out, so subtle it was never even an invitation.