Heritage and Exile (40 page)

“From three inches off the ground?” He sounded contemptuous now. That also troubled me but I was too tired to care. I said, “Suit yourself. It's your craft. If this is what comes of having you in the circle, I'll make damned sure you're a good long way away from it.” I turned my back on him.

Marjorie was leaning on Rafe. She had stopped crying but her eyes and nose were red. Absurdly I loved her more than ever like that. She said in a small shaking voice, “I'm all right now, Lew. Honestly.”

I looked at the ground at our feet. It was covered with more than an inch of snow. You always lost track of time inside a matrix. It was snowing harder than ever, and the sky was darkening. The shaking of my own hands warned me. I said, “We all need food and rest. Run ahead, Rafe, and ask the servants to have a meal ready for us.”

I heard a familiar clattering roar and looked up. The other helicopter was circling overhead, descending. Beltran was walking away toward it. I started to call after him, summon him—he too would be drained, needing the replenishment of food and sleep. At that moment, though, my only thought was to let him collapse. It would do him good to learn this wasn't a game! We left him behind.

I'd have an apology to make to Kermiac, too. It didn't matter that it had been done against my orders. I was operating the matrix. I had trained this circle. I was responsible for everything that happened to it.

Everything.

I shook myself out of the maelstrom of misery and pain, staring at the quiet path, the dark sky, the gently falling snow. None of it was real. I was hallucinating. Merciful Avarra, if, after three years at Arilinn, any matrix ever built could make
me
hallucinate, I was in trouble!

Kermiac's servants had laid a splendid meal for us, though I was so hungry I could as readily have eaten bread and milk. As I ate the drained weakness receded, but the vague, formless guilt remained. Marjorie. Had she been burned by the flare of fire? I kept wanting to touch her and make sure she was there, alive, unhurt. Thyra ate with tears running down her face, the bruise gradually swelling and darkening until her eye was swollen shut. Beltran did not come. I supposed he was with Kermiac. I didn't give a damn where he was. Marjorie self-consciously thrust aside her third plateful, saying, “I'm ashamed to be so greedy!”

I began to reassure her. Kadarin did it instead. “Eat, child, eat, your nerves are exhausted, you need the energy. Rafe, what's the matter, child?” The boy was restlessly pushing his food around on his plate. “You haven't touched a bite.”

“I can't, Bob. My head aches. I can't swallow. If I try to swallow anything I'm afraid I'll be sick.”

Kadarin met my eyes. “I'll take care of him,” he said. “I know what to do, I went through it when I was his age.” He lifted Rafe in his arms and carried him, like a small child, out of the room. Thyra rose and went after them.

Left alone with Marjorie, I said, “You should rest, too, after all that.”

She said in a very small voice, “I'm afraid to be alone. Don't leave me alone, Lew.”

I didn't intend to, not until I was sure she was safe. A Keeper in training has stresses no other matrix mechanic suffers, and I was still responsible for her. Although emotional upheavals were common enough when first keying into one of the really big matrices, such frightful blowups as this between Beltran and Thyra were not common. Fortunately. No wonder we were all literally sick from it.

I had never seen Marjorie's room before. It was at the top of a small tower, isolated, reached by a winding stair, a wedge-shaped room with wide windows. In clear weather it would have looked out on tremendous mountain ranges. Now it was all a dismal gray, gloomy, with hard beating snow rattling and whining against the glass. Marjorie slipped off her outdoor boots and knelt by the window, looking into the storm. “It's lucky we came in when we did. I've known the snow to come up so quickly you can lose your way a hundred paces from your own doorway. Lew, will Rafe be all right?”

“Of course. Just stress, maybe a touch of threshold sickness. Beltran's tantrum didn't help any, but it won't last long.” Once a telepath gained full control of his matrix, and to do this he must have mastered the nerve channels, recurrences of threshold sickness were not serious. Rafe was probably feeling rotten, but it wouldn't last.

Marjorie leaned against the window, pressing her temples to the cold glass. “My head aches.”

“Damn Beltran anyway!” I said, with violence that surprised me.

“It was Thyra's fault, Lew. Not his.”

“What Thyra did is Thyra's responsibility, but Beltran must bear the responsibility for losing control, too.”

My mind slid back to that strange interval within the matrix—whether it had been a few seconds or an hour I had no way of knowing—when I had sensed my father's presence. It occurred to me to wonder if at any of the towers, Hali or Arilinn or Neskaya, they had sensed the wakening of this enormous matrix, stirring to life. My father was an extraordinary telepath; he had served in Arilinn under the last of the old-style Keepers. He must have felt Sharra's wakening.

Did he know what we were doing?

As if following my thoughts Marjorie said, “Lew, what is your father like? My guardian has always spoken well of him.”

“I don't want to talk about my father, Marjorie.” But my barriers had been breached and that furious parting came back to me, with all the old bitterness.
He had been willing to kill me, to have his own way. He cared no more for me than a
. . .

Marjorie said in a low voice, “You're wrong, Lew. Your father loved you. Loves you. No, I'm not reading your mind. You were . . . broadcasting. But you are a loving person, a gentle person. To be so loving, you must have been loved. Greatly loved.”

I bent my head. Indeed, indeed, all those years I had been so secure in his love, he could never have lived a lie. Not to me. We had been open to one another. Yet somehow that made it worse
Loving me, to risk me so ruthlessly
. . .

She whispered, “I know you, Lew. You could not have lived—would you have wanted to be without
laran
? Without the full potential of your gift? He knew your life wouldn't have been worth living without it. Blind, deaf, crippled . . . so he let you risk it. To become what he knew you
were
.”

I laid my head on her knees, blind with pain. She had given me back something I never knew I had lost; she had returned to me the security of my father's love. I couldn't look up, couldn't let her see my face was contorted, that I was crying like a child. She knew anyway. I supposed this was my form of throwing a tantrum. Thyra disobeyed orders. Rafe got threshold sickness, Kadarin and Beltran started slamming each other . . . I started crying like a child. . . .

After a time I lifted her hand and kissed the slender fingertips. She looked worn and exhausted. I said, “You must rest too, darling.” I was deeply proud of the skill with which she had seized control. She lay back against her pillows. I bent and, as I would have done at Arilinn, ran my fingertips lightly along her body. Not touching her, of course, simply feeling out the energy flows, monitoring the nerve centers. She lay quietly, smiling at the touch that was not a touch. I felt that she was still depleted, drained of energy, but that would not last. The channels were clear. I was glad she had come through this strenuous beginning so well, so undamaged.

I was not, at the moment, actively suffering because she was forbidden to me, that even a kiss would have been unthinkable. I was remotely aware of her but there was no sexual element in it. I simply felt an intense and overwhelming love such as I had never known for anyone alive. I didn't have to speak of it. I knew she shared it.

If I couldn't have reached Marjorie's mind I'd have gone mad with wanting her, needing her with every nerve in me. But we had this, and it was enough. Almost enough, and we had the promise of the rest.

I knew the answer, but I wanted to say the words aloud.

“When this is over, you will marry me, Marjorie?”

She said, with a simplicity that made my heart turn over, “I want to. But will the Comyn let you?”

“I won't ask them. By then the Comyn may have learned it's not for them to arrange everyone's life!”

“I wouldn't want to make trouble, Lew. Marriage doesn't mean that much to me.”

“It does to
me,
” I said fiercely. “Do you think I want our children to be bastards? I want them at Armida after me, without the struggle my father had to get it for me. . . .”

Her laugh was adorable. Quickly, she sobered. “Lew, Lew, I'm not laughing at
you,
darling. Only it makes me so happy, to think that it means all this to you—not just wanting me, but thinking of all that will come afterward, our children, our children's children, a household to stand into the future. Yes, Lew. I want to have your children, I'm sorry we have to wait so long for them. Yes, I'll marry you if you want me to, in the Comyn if they'll have it, if not, then any way we can, any way you choose.” For a moment, a feather-touch, she laid her lips against the back of my hand.

My heart was so full I could bear no more. I had desired women before, but never with this wholeness, going far beyond any moment of desire, stretching into the future, all our lives. For a moment time went out of focus again . . .

. . . I was kneeling beside the cot of a little girl, five or six perhaps, a tiny child with a heart-shaped face and wide eyes fenced in long lashes, golden eyes just the color of Marjorie's . . . I felt a strange wonder, pain in my right hand,
dismayed, torn with anguish
. . .

Marjorie whispered, “What is it, Lew?”

“A flash of precognition,” I said, coming back to myself, strangely shaken. “I saw—I saw a little girl. With your eyes.” But why had I felt so bewildered, so agonized? I tried to see it again, but as these flashes come unbidden, so they can never be recalled. I felt Marjorie's thoughts, and hers were wholly joyful:
It will be all right then. We will be together as we wish, we will see that child
. Her lashes were dropping shut with weariness and, kneeling beside her, I looked into her face again. She thought drowsily,
We should have a son first,
and I knew she had seen the child's face in my mind. She smiled with pure happiness and her lids slipped shut. Her hand tightened on my own.

“Don't leave me,” she whispered, half asleep.

“Never. Sleep, beloved.” I stretched out beside her, holding her fingers in mine, my love encircling her sleep. After a moment, I slept too, in the deepest happiness I had ever known.

Or was ever to know again.

 

It was dark when I woke, the snow still rattling the windows. Kadarin was standing above us, holding a light. Marjorie was still deeply asleep. His glance at her was filled with a deep tenderness that warmed me to him as nothing else could have done.

And then, for a moment, I felt his face wrenched, contorted with rage . . . It was gone. He said softly, “Beltran sent to ask if you would come down. Let Margie sleep if you like, she's very tired.”

I slid from the bed. She stirred, made a faint protesting noise—I thought she had murmured my name. I covered her gently with a shawl, picked up my boots in my hand and noiselessly went out, feeling her sink back into deep sleep.

“Rafe?”

“He's fine. I gave him a few drops of
kirian,
got him to drink some hot milk and honey, left him asleep.” Kadarin wore his sad, tender smile on his face. “I've been looking for you everywhere. After all your warnings, I never expected—it was Thyra who suggested you might be with Marjorie.” He laughed. “But I hadn't expected to find you in her bed!”

I said stiffly, “I assure you—”

“Lew, in the name of all the damned obscene gods of the Dry-Towners, do you think it matters a damn to me?” He was laughing again. “Oh, I believe you, you're just scrupulous enough, and bound hand and foot with your own idiot superstitions! I think you're putting a considerable strain on human nature, myself—I wouldn't trust myself to lie down with a woman I loved and never touch her—but if you happen to enjoy self-torture, that's your own choice. As the Dry-Towner said to the
cralmac
. . .” And he launched into a long, good-humored and incredibly obscene tale which took my mind off my embarrassment as nothing else could have. Not a word of it was suitable for repeating in polite company, but it was exactly what the situation demanded.

When we reached the fireside room, he said, “You heard the helicopter land this afternoon?”

I was still chuckling at the adventures of the Dry-Towner, the spaceman and the three nonhumans; the sudden gravity of his voice shocked me back to normal.

“I saw it, yes. Has it to do with me?”

“A special guest,” Kadarin said. “Beltran feels you should speak with him. You told us he is a catalyst telepath with no reason to love the Comyn, and Beltran sent to persuade him—”

Seated on one of the stone benches near the fire, his dark hair awry, looking cold and ruffled and angry, was Danilo Syrtis. Beltran said, “Perhaps you can explain that we mean no harm, that he is not a prisoner, but an honored guest.”

Danilo tried to sound defiant, but despite his best efforts I could hear that his voice was shaking. “You carried me off with armed men and my father will be ill with fright! Is this how you mountain men welcome guests, taking them away in infernal Terran machines?” He looked no older than Rafe.