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"Not blood-kin," he said, "or not so close as to be a grave risk to your children. It might be a suitable

match after all."

I took a spoonful of the food on my plate. It tasted revolting and I swallowed and set the plate down. "Sir, I love Linnell dearly. We were children together. If it were only to share my life, I could think of nohappier person to spend it with. But," I fumbled to explain, a little embarrassed, "after you've slapped agirl for breaking your toys, taken her into bed with you when she had a nightmare or was crying with atoothache, pinned up her skirts so she could wade in a brook, or dressed her, or brushed her hair-it'salmost impossible to think of her as a-a bedmate, Lord Hastur. Forgive this plain speaking."

He waved that away. "No, no. No formalities. I asked you to be honest with me. I can understand that. We married your father very young to a woman the Council thought suitable, and I have been told theylived together in complete harmony and total indifference for many years. But I don't

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want to wait until you've fixed your desire on someone wholly unsuitable, either. Your father married at the last to please himself and-forgive me, Lew-you and Marius have been suffering for it all your lives. I am sure you would rather spare your own sons that."

"Can't you wait until I have sons? Don't you ever get tired of arranging other people's lives for them?"

His eyes blazed at me, "I got tired of it thirty years ago but someone has to do it! I'm old enough to sitand think over my past, instead of carrying the burden of the future, but it seems to be left to me! Whatare you doing to arrange your life in the proper way and save me the trouble?" He took another forkful ofsalad and chewed it wrathfully.

"How much do you know of the history of Comyn, Lew? In the far-back days, we were given power and privilege because we served our .people, not because we ruled them. Then we began to believe we had these powers and privileges because of some innate superiority in ourselves, as if having laran made us so much better than other people that we could do exactly as we pleased. Our privileges are used now, not to compensate us for all the things we have given up to serve the people, but to perpetuate our own powers. You're complaining that your life isn't your own, Lew. Well, it isn't and it shouldn't be. You have certain privileges-"

"Privileges!" I said bitterly. "Mostly duties I don't want and responsibilities I can't handle."

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"Privileges," he repeated, "which you must earn by serving your people." He reached out and lightly touched the mark of Comyn, deeply blazed hi my flesh just above the wrist. His own arm bore its twin, whitened with age. He said, "One of the obligations which goes with that, a sacred obligation, is to make certain your gift does not die out, by fathering sons and daughters to inherit it from you, to serve the people of Darkover in their turn."

Against my will, I was moved by his words. I had felt this way during my journey to the outlands, thatmy position as heir to Comyn was a serious thing, a sacred thing, that I held an important link in anendless chain of Altons, stretching from prehistory to the future. For a moment I felt that the old manfollowed my thoughts, as he laid his fingertip again on the mark of Comyn on my wrist. He said, "I knowwhat this cost you, Lew. You won that gift at risk of your life. You have begun well by serving at Arilinn. What little re-

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mains of our ancient science is preserved there against the day when it may be fully recovered or rediscovered. Do you think I don't know that you young people there are sacrificing your personal lives, giving up many things a young man, a young woman, holds dear? I never had that option, Lew, I was born with a bare minimum of laran. So I do what I can with secular powers, to lighten that burden for you others who bear the heavier ones. So far as I know, you have never misused your powers. Nor are you one of those frivolous young people who want to enjoy the privilege of rank and spend your life in amusements and folly. Why, then, do you shrink from doing this duty to your clan?"

I suddenly wished that I could unburden my fears and misgivings to him. I could not doubt the old man'spersonal integrity. Yet he was so completely entangled in his single-minded plan for political aims on Darkover that I distrusted him, too. I would not let him manipulate me to serve those aims. I feltconfused, half convinced, half more defiant than ever. He was waiting for my answer; I shrank fromgiving it. Tele-paths get used to facing things head-on-you have to, in order to stay even reasonablysane-but you don't learn to put things easily into words. You get used, in a place like Arilinn, to knowingthat everyone in your circle can share all your feelings and emotions and desires. There is no reticencethere, none of the small evasions and courtesies which outsiders use in speaking of intimate things. But Hastur could not read my thoughts, and I fumbled at putting it into words that would not embarrass eitherof us too much.

"Mostly I have never met a woman I wished to spend my life with . . . and, being a telepath, I am not willing to ... to gamble on someone else's choice." No. I wasn't being completely honest. I would have gambled on Linnea willingly, if I had not felt I was being manipulated, used as a helpless pawn. My anger flared again. "Hastur, if you wanted me to many simply for the sake of perpetuating my gift, of fathering a son for the Domain, you should have had me married off before I was full-grown, before I was old enough to have any feelings about any woman, and would have wanted her just because she was a woman and available. Now it's different." I fell silent again.

How could I tell Hastur, who was old enough to be my grandfather, and not even a telepath, that when Itook a woman, all her thoughts and feelings were open to me and

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mine to her, that unless rapport was complete and sympathy almost total, it could quickly unman me? Few women could endure it. And how could I tell him about the paralyzing failures which a lack of sympathy could bring? Did he actually think I could manage to live with a woman whose only interest in me was that I might give her a laran son? I know some men in the Comyn manage it. I suppose that almost any two people with healthy bodies can give each other something in bed. But not tower-trained telepaths, accustomed to that full sharing. ... I said, and I knew my voice was shaking uncontrollably, "Even a god cannot be constrained to love on command."

Hastur looked at me with sympathy. That hurt, too. It would have been hard enough to strip myself thisway before a man my own age. Finally he said gently, "There's never been any question of compulsion, Lew. But promise me to think about it. The Storn-Lanart girl has applied to Neskaya Tower. We need Keepers and psi technicians. But we also need sensitive women, telepaths, to marry into our families. Ifyou could come to like one another, we would welcome her."

I said, drawing a deep breath, "I'll think about it." Linnea was a telepath. It might be enough. But to put itbluntly, I was afraid, Hastur gestured to a servant to take his emptied plate and my nearly untouched one. "More wine?"

"Thank you, sir, but I have already drunk more than I usually do in a week. And I promised my

foster-sister another dance."

Kind as he had been, I was glad to get away from him. The conversation had rubbed me raw-edged,rousing thoughts I had learned to keep firmly below the surface of my mind.

Love-to put it more precisely, sex-is never easy for a telepath. Not even when you're very young andstill childishly playing around, discovering your own needs and desires, learning to know your own bodyand its hungers.

I suppose, from the way other lads talk-and there's plenty of talk in the cadets and the Guards-for mostpeople, at least for a time, anyone of the right sex who is accessible and not completely repulsive will do. But even during those early experiments I had always been too conscious of the other party's motivesand reactions, and tbey would rarely stand up to so close an examination. And after I went to Ar-ilinnand submerged myself in the intense sharing and

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closeness there, it had changed from merely difficult to impossible.

Well, I had promised Linnell a dance. And what I had told Hastur was true. Linnell was not a woman tome and she would not disturb me emotionally at all.

But Callina was alone, watching a group of classic dancers do a rhythmic dance which mimicked theleaves in a spring storm. Their draperies, gray-green, yellow-green, blue-green, flickered and flowed inthe lights like sunshine. Callina had thrown back her hood and, preoccupied in watching the dancers,looked rather forlorn, very small and fragile and solemn. I came and stood beside her. After a momentshe turned and said, "You promised Linnell to dance again, didn't you? Well, you can save yourself thetrouble, cousin, she and the Storn-Lanart child are in the balcony, watching and chattering to one anotherabout gowns and hair-dressing." She smiled, a small whimsical smile which momentarily lightened herpale stern face. "It's foolish to bring little girls that age to a formal ball, they'd be just as happy at a

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dancing class!"

I said, letting out my pent-up bitterness, "Oh, they're old enough to be up for auction to the highestbidder. It's how we make fine marriages hi the Comyn. Are you for sale too, damiselal"

She smiled faintly. "I don't imagine you're making an offer? No, I'm not for sale this year at least. I'm

Keeper at Neskaya Tower, and you know what that means."

I knew, of course. The Keepers are no longer required to be cloistered virgins to whom no man daresraise even a careless glance. But while they are working at the center of the energon relays, they arerequired, by harsh necessity, to remain strictly chaste. They learned not to attract desires they dared notsatisfy. Probably they learned not to feel them, either, which is a good trick if you can manage it. I wished I could.

I relaxed. Against Callina, tower-trained and a working Keeper, I need not be on my guard. We shareda deeper kinship than blood, the strong tie of the tower-trained telepath,

I've been a matrix technician long enough to know that the work uses up so much physical and nervousenergy that there's not much left over for sex. The will may be there, but not the energy. The Keepers arerequired, for their physical and emotional safety, to remain celibate. The others in the

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circle-technicians, mechanics, psi monitors-are usually generous and sensitive about satisfying what little remains. In any case you get too close for playing the elaborate games of flirt and retreat that men and women elsewhere are given to playing. And Callina understood all this withoug being told, having been part of it

She was also sensitive enough to be aware of my mood. She said, with a faint tinge of gentle malice, "Ihave heard Linnea will be sent to Arilinn next year, if you both choose not to marry. You'll have time forsecond thoughts. Shall I ask them to be sure she is not made Keeper, in case you should change yourmind?"

I felt somewhat abashed. That was an outrageous thing to say! But what would have infuriated me froman outsider did not trouble me from her. Within a tower circle such a statement would not haveembarrassed me, although I would not have felt constrained to answer, either. She was simply treatingme like one of our own kind. In the rapport of the tower circles, we were all very much aware of eachother's needs and hungers, eager to keep them from reaching a point of frustration or pain.

But now my circle was scattered, others serving hi my place, and somehow I had to cope with a worldfull of elaborate games and complex relationships. I said, as I would have said to a sister, "They'repressuring me to marry, Callina. What shall I do? It's too soon. I'm still-" I gestured, unable to put it intowords.

She nodded gravely. "Perhaps you should take Linnea after all. It would mean they couldn't put anyconstraint on you for someone less suitable." She was seriously considering my problem, giving it her fullattention. "I suppose, mostly, what they want is for you to father a son for Armida. If you couid do that,they wouldn't care whether you married the girl or not, would they?"

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It wouldn't have been difficult to have fathered a child on one of the women in my circle at Arilinn, eventhough pregnancy makes it too dangerous for a woman to remain in the tower. But the thought of thatwas like salt in a raw wound. I said at last, and heard my voice crack, "I am a bastard myself. Do youhonestly think I would ever inflict that on any son of mine? And Linnea is very young and she was ...honest with me." This whole conversation troubled me for obscure reasons. "And how do you come toknow so much

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about this? Has my love life become a subject for Council debate, Callina comynara?"

She shook her head pityingly. "No, of course not. But Javanne and I played dolls together, and she stilltells me things. Not Council gossip, Lew, just women's talk."

I hardly heard her. Like all Altons, I sometimes have a disturbing tendency to see time out of focus, and Callina's image kept wavering and trembling, as if I saw her through running water or through flowingtime. For a moment I would lose sight of her as she was now, pale and plain and crimson-draped, as sheshimmered in an ice-blue glittering mist. Then she would seem to float, cold and aloof and beautiful,shimmering with a darkness like the midnight sky. I was tormented, struggling with mingled rage andfrustration, my whole body aching with it-