Thendara House (6 page)

Inside the windowless room she lost track of time, and only when she looked up and discovered that others were closing up their desks and stations did she realize that her stomach was reminding her fiercely of her sketchy and inedible lunch.

When she stepped from the building into the spaceport HQ plaza, it was past sunset, and fine drizzling rain was falling. In the central cafeteria, which was at least spacious and well-windowed, she felt less claustrophobic than in the shut-in office with its clutter of desks; but everyone looked so alike in uniform that she did not see Peter until he actually touched her on the shoulder.

“Jaelle! What are you doing-out of uniform?” But before she could explain, he went on, “I heard that somebody had tripped the monitors all over the station, but I never dreamed it was you!”

She was astonished at the anger in his voice; she started to explain, but he was not listening.

“Let’s get on line for dinner - there’s always a crowd about this time.”

The food looked and smelled better than the synthetics which were all that had been provided in the other building at lunch; some of it was almost familiar, roasted meats and local grains and vegetables. She was relieved to see that Peter’s choices and her own were almost identical. Well, of course; he too had been brought up near Caer Donn and was used to Darkovan food. In every way that really mattered to her he was Darkovan, though his protective coloration was so good, here among the other Terrans. It was a disquieting thought; which one was the real Peter?

He explained, too, why she had had to thrust her identity badge into the slot before releasing the food. “We’re entitled to a certain number of meals as an employee; extras are deducted from our pay. Let’s find a quiet corner, shall we?”

There were no really quiet corners in the cafeteria, not as she understood the word, but they did find a table for two, and sat down together. Around them were laughing, talking workers, mostly in uniform or the white smocks with the emblem of Medic Services. There was a crew of what looked like road workers, still brushing snow from the heavy parkas they wore over their uniforms. It was not, she thought, so different from supper in the Guild House. She felt, for a moment, fiercely homesick. She thought of Magda, eating her first meal there. Then she looked across at Peter and smiled. No, she was here with Peter and it was where she wanted to be.

But he still looked angry. “Damn it, you’ve got to wear uniform while you’re in the building, Jaelle.”

She said stiffly, carefully, “It was explained to me that it creates a problem with the - the machinery. I will - try.”

“What’s the problem, Jaelle?”

She wondered if she could really make him understand.“It is - is immodest. It makes me look - too much woman.”

Was he being deliberately obtuse? He smiled enticingly at her and said, “That’s the good part of it, isn’t it? Why don’t you want to look like a woman?”

“That’s not what I meant - ” she began, crossly, then broke off. “Why does it matter to you, Piedro? It is my problem, and I must deal with it in my own way. It you wish, I will explain that it has nothing to do with you - that you asked me to, and I refused.”

“You can’t do that,” he said, harried. “I’m working under Montray now, and I’m in enough trouble with him without having him think - ” he stopped, but to Jaelle, surprisingly, it was as if he had spoken aloud what was in his mind;
think I can’t manage my wife
.

That did make her angry. She said, between clenched teeth, “Why should you think that it reflects on you?”

“Damn it, woman,” he burst out. “You’re wearing my name! Everything you do reflects on me, whether you mean it to, or not! You’re certainly intelligent enough to understand that!”

She stared at him in consternation, knowing that she would never understand. She wanted to get up and walk out of the cafeteria; she wanted to scream at him. She only stared at him, her hands shaking. But before she could move, a voice said behind her, “Peter? I was looking for you. And this must be Jaelle.”

A tall, brown-skinned woman, with hair silvered white, picked up a chair and set it down at their table. “May I join you? I was talking to Magda this morning.”

Peter’s face changed so rapidly that Jaelle began to doubt the evidence of her senses. “Cholayna? I heard on the grapevine that you were here. Jaelle, this was the head of Intelligence school when Mag and I trained there; Cholayna Ares.”

The woman had a tray of the synthetics Jaelle had refused at lunch, but she ignored the meat and steaming vegetables on their trays. “May I join you? Or am I breaking in on a private discussion?”

“Please do,” Jaelle said. There was nothing she wanted less than to be alone with Peter in this mood. Cholayna put her tray on the table and slid into a seat.

“It’s nice to see someone dressed properly for this climate. I understand Magda tried to set an example by wearing clothes that fit the weather here, but those half-headed half-brains in the department couldn’t think of anything except their wretched machines. Who’s running this show, anyway? Old Russell Montray?” She made a small sound of scorn. “I wish someone in Head Center would show some intelligence and transfer him back to a Space Station; he might manage that and do it quite well. He’s not really stupid, you know, he simply has no patience with strange planets and alien customs.
I
thought the essence of being Coordinator on a Closed Planet was to understand the people and the native culture, so that when they got around to setting up a Legate they would know what kind of person to choose. But Montray seems to have made so many mistakes already that it will take a century or more to smooth out the troubles he has caused.I knew that before I had been on the job three days. Who sent him here? And whatever could they have been thinking?”

“Political pull, I expect,” Peter said, “the wrong kind; not where he wanted the job and somebody with clout fixed it for him, but the kind where somebody wanted to get rid of him, pulled strings, and kicked him upstairs - and he wound up here. They may have thought it was isolated enough that he couldn’t make much trouble. Typical bureaucratic thinking - let him go make trouble somewhere else.”

“Particularly stupid,” Cholayna confirmed with a nod. “This planet may not have a great deal of trade potential, but because of its location, it’s an important transit point; in twenty or so years, this will be one of the major intersecting spaceports anywhere in the Galaxy. If this fellow Montray has already created trouble with the locals, as it seems, it could take centuries to repair the damage. I’ve made a start, I hope, by putting Magda on detached duty, to try and analyze how we ought to be treating Darkovans, in contrast to how we
are
treating them. I will want information from you too on that, Jaelle. As for you, Peter, you know you really ought to be working out of my office, not Montray’s; I hope he isn’t going to make it a status point to keep you there.”

Peter muttered something Jaelle knew to be a polite noncommittal social noise, but once again her erratic
laran
carried his thoughts as if he had spoken them aloud.

Not fair, dammit, I spent five years setting things up so that when Darkover got an Intelligence service I’d be at its head, and now some damned
woman
walks in and takes over. Bad enough playing second fiddle to Magda
…

She lost the contact then, but she had heard enough to make her look at Peter in dread and dismay. She liked Cholayna, and thought she would like working with her, in spite of the strange color of the woman’s skin and her unreadable dark eyes; but if Peter felt this way, what should she do?

CHAPTER THREE

Magda

As the doors of Thendara Guild House swung shut behind her, Magda thought, with a strange, desperate intuition,
I must never look back. Whatever I was before this, I must leave it forever behind me, and look only ahead
…

Around her a great hall arose, panelled in dark woods and hung with curtains which gave an effect of space and air and light. The snub-nosed young girl had opened the door for her, directed her across the hall and said “The Guild Mother Lauria is waiting for you.” She looked curiously at Magda, but only shoved her through another door, where the Guild Mother, Lauria n’ha Andrea, head of the Independent Guild of Craftswomen in Thendara, and one of the most powerful women in the city, waited for her. Lauria was a tall, sturdy woman, her gray hair shorn close about her head, one ear bearing an earring with a carved ensign and a crimson stone. She rose and extended her hand to Magda.

“Welcome, my child. You have been told, I know, that this will be your only home for half a year; until two moons past midsummer-day. During this time you will be instructed in our ways, and while you have the freedom of house and garden, you may not step outside the wall nor into the street, except on Midsummer-Festival when all rules are suspended, or under the direct orders of your oath-mother or one of the Guild Mothers.” She smiled at Magda and said, “You have shown us that you are willing to honor your oath, even though you took it unwilling; you will promise me to keep this rule, will you not? You are a woman grown, and not a child.”

“I will obey,” said Magda, but it seemed a bleak prospect, half a year, through the long, bitter Darkovan winter, oath-bound not to step outside. Well, she had wanted this, why should she complain at getting what she wanted?

“Mind you,” Mother Lauria said, “this is within reason. Should the house take fire, or some other catastrophe occur, which all Gods forbid, use your own soundest judgment; you are not pledged to lunatic obedience! You are bound to the house only so that you will not be confused by daily meetings with women who live in ways you must learn not to imitate. Do you understand?”

“I think so.” They used to call it
deprogramming;
women on Darkover are brainwashed by the social roles expected of them, till it is a miracle that any of them are free enough to rebel and join the Renunciates. She remembered hearing Jaelle say once,
Every Renunciate has her own story and every story is a tragedy
. In such a traditional society as Darkover, only the desperately rebelling would dare break away.

I have rebelled against my home world and my adopted world too
… but she cut off that thought as self-pity and turned to the older woman, who beckoned her into a chair.

“I suppose you are hungry and weary? But you do not want to face everyone just now in the dining room for the noon meal, do you? I thought not…” and she touched a little bell. The snub-nosed girl who had let Magda inside, appeared in the door.

“Bring something from the dining room, for me and for our new sister,” she said, and as the little girl went out - she could not, Magda thought, be more than thirteen - Mother Lauria gestured to a chair beside the fireplace - no fire was burning, at this time of year. “Sit down and let us talk awhile; there are decisions to be made.”

At the far end of the office was a great wooden door with copper panels; the door was hacked about as if with an axe, and partially burnt. Magda stared at the battered relic, and Mother Lauria followed her eyes.

“It has been here for more than a hundred years,” she said. “The wife of a wealthy merchant in Thendara ran away to us, because her husband had ill-used her in ways too gross to repeat, and had finally required her to sleep in the attic and to wait on her husband and his new concubine in her own bed. The woman took oath with us; but her husband hired an army of mercenaries and we were forced to fight; he swore he would raze this house over our heads. Rima - this was her name - offered to return to him; she said she would not be the cause of our deaths. But we were not fighting for her alone, but for the right to live without male sufferance. We fought three days - you can see the marks of the battle.”

Magda shivered; the slashed, burnt door looked as if, at one point, an axe had chopped halfway through it.

“And you stood against them?”

“If we had not, neither you nor I should be here,” said Lauria. “All Gods grant that one day we shall all enjoy our freedom as of right, without keeping it at sword’s point; but until that day we are prepared to defend our rights with the sword. Now, tell me a little more about yourself. I have heard the story from Jaelle, of course. Your name is - “she stumbled over it. “Mak-ta-lin Lor-ran?” She made a wry face. “Will it suit you if you use Jaelle’s name for you, Margali?”

“That
is
my name,” Magda said. “The name my father and mother gave me; I was born in Caer Donn. I was never called Magda except in the Terran Zone.”