Heritage and Exile (84 page)

But there were other things to think about now.

“Marius should be tested before the formal challenge,” I said. “You're First at Arilinn; you can do that, can't you?”

“Certainly,” Jeff said. “Why not? I suspect he has some
laran,
perhaps Ridenow gift—there's Ridenow in the Alton lineage, and Ardais, too; Kennard's mother was Ardais and I always suspected he had a touch of catalyst telepathy.”

Marius had been tearing a buttered roll to pieces. He said now, without looking up, “What I have, I think, is—is the Aldaran Gift. I can see—ahead. Not far, not very clearly; but the Aldaran gift is precognition, and I—I have that.”

That he would have had from our half-Terran mother. In these days the gifts were entangled anyhow, bred out by intermarriage between the Domains. But I stared at him and demanded, “How would you know about the Aldaran Gift?”

He said impatiently, “The Aldarans are all the kin I have! And hell, Lew, the Comyn weren't very eager to claim me as kin! I spent one summer with Beltran—why not?”

This was a new factor to be reckoned with.

“I know he didn't treat you well,” Marius went on, defensively, “but your quarrel was a private one, after all. What do you expect, that I should declare blood-feud for three generations because of that? Are we the barbarians the Terrans call us, then?”

There was no answer to that, but I didn't know what to say.

“We could all use some information about the future,” I said. “If you've got
that
Gift, for the love of Aldones tell me what's going to happen if I claim the Domain? Will they accept you as my Heir?”

“I don't know,” he confessed, and once again he seemed young, vulnerable, a boy half his age. “I—I tried to find out. They told me that sometimes that happened, you couldn't see too clear for yourself or anyone close to you . . . ”

That was true enough, and since it was true, I wondered, not for the first time, what good that Gift was to anyone. Perhaps, in the days when Aldarans could see the fate of rulers, kingdoms, even of the planet . . . and that was another disquieting thought. Maybe the Aldarans, with their foresight, saw that Darkover would go the way of the Terran Empire and that was why they had joined forces, for so long, with Terra. I wondered if Beltran had entirely broken with them after the Sharra rebellion.

Well, there was one way to find out, but there was no time for it now. I strode restlessly to the window, looked out across the bustle of the cobbled square. Men were leading animals to the market, workmen going about carrying tools; a quiet familiar bustle. Because of the season, there was only a light thin powdering of snow on the stones; Festival, and High Summer, were upon us. Still it seemed cold to me after Vainwal and I dressed in my warmest cloak. Let the Terrans call me
barbarian
if they liked, I was home again, I would wear the warm clothes my own world demanded. The fur lining felt good even at this season as I drew it round me. Both Marius and Jeff offered to accompany me; but this was private business and I must attend to it by myself, so I refused.

It was a bright day; the sun, huge and red—the Terrans called it Cottman's Star, but to me it was just the sun, and just the way a sun should be—hung on the horizon, coming free of layers of morning cloud, and there were two small shadows in the sky where Liriel and Kyrddis were waning. Once I could have told you what month we were in, and what tenday of which month, by the position of the moons; as well as what to plant, in season, or what animals would be rutting or dropping their young; there is a month called Horse Month because more than three-quarters of the mares will foal before it fades, and there are all kinds of jokes about Wind Month because that is when the stallions and chervines and other animals run in rut; I suppose, where people live very close to the land, they work too hard to have much time for rutting, like the stallions, except at the proper season, and it becomes an uneasy joke.

But all that land . . . knowledge was only a dim memory, though I supposed, as I lived here longer, it would come back to me. As I strode through the morning streets, I felt comfortable under morning light and shadowed moons, something in my brain soothed and fed by the familiar lights. I've been on several planets, with anywhere from one to six moons—with more than that, the tides make the place uninhabitable—and suns yellow, red and blazing blue-white; at least I knew this one would not burn my skin red or brown!

So Marius, in addition to a Terran education, had the Aldaran Gift. That could be a dangerous combination, and I wondered how the Council would feel when they knew. Would they accept him, or would they demand that I adopt one of Gabriel's sons?

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 Ram-say, 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.”