Marion Bradley - The Sword of Aldones

What happened when a pair of exact duplicates met? I couldn’t remember ever hearing.

It hurt to see her cry; she was so like Linnell, and Linnell’s tears had always upset me. Callina looked up at helplessly, trying to soothe the weeping girl. “You had better go away for now,” she said, and as Kathie’s sobs broke out afresh, “Go away! I’ll handle this!”

I shrugged, suddenly angry. “As you- please,” I said, and turned my back on them. Why couldn’t she trust me?

And that moment, when I left Callina in anger, was the moment when I snapped the trap shut on us all.

Once in every journey of Darkover around its sun, the Comyn, city folk, mountain lords, off-world consuls and ambassadors and Terrans from the Trade City, mingled together in carnival with a great outward show of cordiality. Centuries ago, this festival had merely brought Comyn and commoner together. Now it involved everyone of any importance on the planet; and the festival opened with the display of dancing in the great lower halls of the Comyn Castle.

Centuries of tradition made this a masked affair; in compliance with custom, I wore a narrow half-mask, but had made no further attempt at disguise. I stood at one end of the long hall, talking indifferently and listening with half an ear to a couple of youngsters in the Terran space service, and as soon as I decently could, I got away and stood staring out at the four miniature moons that had nearly floated into conjunction over the peak.-

Behind me the great hall blazed with colors and costumes that reflected every corner of Darkover and almost every known form of human or half-human life throughout the Terran Empire. Derik glittered in the golden robes of an Arturian sun-priest; Rafe Scott had assumed the mask, whip and clawed gloves of a kifirgh duelist.

In the corner reserved, by tradition, for young girls, Linnell’s spangled mask was a travesty of disguise, and her eyes were glowing with happy consciousness of all the eyes on her. As comynara, she was known to everyone on Darkover; but she rarely saw anyone outside the narrow circle of her cousins and the few selected companions permitted to a girl of the Comyn hierarchy. Now, masked, she could speak to, or even dance with perfect strangers, and the excitement of it was almost too much for her.

Beside her, also masked, I recognized Kathie. I didn’t know why she was here, but I saw no harm in it. She was safely barricaded by the bypass circuit I had built into her mind; and there was, probably, no better way of proving that she was not a prisoner, but an honored guest. From her resemblance to Linnell, they’d only think her some noblewoman of the Aillard clan.

Linnell laughed up at me as I joined them;

“Lew, I am teaching your cousin from Terra some of our dances! Imagine, she didn’t know them.”

My cousin. I suppose that was Callina’s idea. Anyway, it explained her badly accented Darkovan. Kathie said gently, “I wasn’t taught to dance, Linnell.”

“Not taught to dance? But what did you learn, then?” Linnell asked incredulously. “Don’t they dance on Terra, Lew?”

“Dancing,” I said dryly, “is an integral part of all human cultures. It is a group activity passed down from the group movements of birds and anthropoids, and also a social channeling of mating behavior. Among such quasi-human races as the chieri it becomes an ecstatic behavior pattern akin to drunkenness. Men dance on Terra, on Megaera, on Vainwal, and in fact, from one end of the civilized Galaxy to the other, as far as I know. For further information, lectures on anthropology are given in the city; I’m not in the mood.”

I turned to Kathie in what I hoped was properly cousinly fashion; “Suppose we do it instead?”

I added to Kathie, as we danced, “Of course you wouldn’t know that dancing is a major study with children here. Linnell and 1 both learned as soon as we could walk. I had only the public instruction, but Linnell has been studying ever since.” I glanced affectionately back at Linnell. “I went to a dance or two on Terra. Do you think our Darkovan ones are so different?”

I was studying the Terran girl rather closely. Why would a duplicate of Linnell have the qualities we needed for the work in hand? Kathie, I realized, had guts and brains and tact; it took them, to come here after the shock she had had, and play the part tacitly assigned to her. And Kathie had another rare quality. She seemed unconscious that my left arm, circling her waist, was unlike anyone else’s. I’ve danced with girls on Terra. It’s not common.

With seeming irrelevance, Kathie said, “How sweet Linnell is! It’s as if she were really my twin; I loved her, the minute I saw her. But I’m afraid of Callina. It’s not that she’s unkind — no one could have been kinder! But she doesn’t seem quite human. Please, let’s not dance? On Terra I’m supposed to be a good dancer, but here I feel like a stumbling elephant.”

“You probably weren’t taught as intensively.” That, to me, was the oddest thing about Terra — the casualness with which they regarded this one talent which distinguishes man from four-footed kind. Women who could not dance! How could they have true beauty?

I just happened to be watching the great central curtains when they parted and Callina Aillard entered the hall. And for me, the music stopped.

I have seen the black night of interstellar space flecked by single stars. Callina was like that, in a scrap torn from the midnight sky, her dark hair netted with pale constellations.

“How beautiful she is,” Kathie whispered. “What does the dress represent? I’ve never seen one just like it.”

“I don’t know,” I said. But I lied. I did not know why any girl on the eve of her marriage — even an unwilling marriage — should assume the traditional costume of la damnee; Naotalba, daughter of doom, bride of the daemon Zandru. What would happen when Beltran caught the significance of the costume? A more direct insult would have been hard to devise — unless she had come in the dress of the public hangman!

I excused myself quickly from Kathie and went toward Callina. She had agreed to the wishes of the Comyn; she had no right to embarrass her family like this, at such a late date.

But by the time I reached her, she was already getting that lecture from old Hastur; I caught the tail of it;

“Behaving like a naughty, willful child!”

“Grandfather,” said Callina, in that quiet, controlled voice, “I will neither look nor act a lie. This dress pleases me. It is perfectly suited to the way I have been treated by the Comyn all my life.” Her laugh was musical and unexpectedly bitter. “Beltran of Aldaran would endure more insults than this — for laran rights in council! You will see.” She turned away from the old man.

“Dance with me, Lew?”

It was no request but a command; as such I obeyed, but I was upset and didn’t care if she knew it. It was shameful, to spoil Linnell’s first dance like this!

“I am sorry about Linnell,” Callina said. “But the dress pleases my mood. And it is becoming, is it not?”

It was. “You’re too damned beautiful,” I said hoarsely. “Callina, Callina, you’re not going through with this — this crazy farce! I drew her into a recess and bent to kiss her, savagely crushing my mouth on hers. For a moment she was passive, startled; then went rigid, bending back and pushing me frantically away. “No!! Don’t!”

I let my arms drop and stood looking at her, slow fury heating my face. “That’s not the way you acted last night!”

She was almost weeping. “Can’t you spare me this?”