Marion Bradley - The Sword of Aldones

“I heard it all on Terra. Make the universe safe for democracy — and then for Terran Trade!”

“Maybe,” Lawton said, imperturbably. “While you rule peaceably, you “an rule till the planet crumbles. But there’s been disorder lately. Riots. Raiding. Smuggling. And too much telepathic dirty-work. Marius died after you had forced rapport on him.”

Regis said, “Who told you those lies. I saw him die with a knife in-his heart.”

“Marius wasn’t a citizen yet, so I can only ask questions about his death, not punish it,” he said. “But there’s another report that you’re holding a Terran girl here, prisoner.”

My heart pounded suddenly. Kathie. Had Callina and I rashly exposed this last secret of Darkovan science?

“The daughter of the Terran Legate on Samarra — Kathie Marshall. She was scheduled to leave Darkover on the Southern Cross, days ago; I thought she had gone. But she’s missing, and someone saw her here.”

Regis said indifferently, “There were a great many Terrans here Festival Night. Some one must have seen—” he raised his voice. “Andres? Bring the comynara here; she is with Dio Ridenow.”

His eyes held an intensity whose meaning escaped me; I started to open my mind, but sensed his instant prohibition. Lawton and Rafe would both know it, if we were exchanging telepathic messages, even if they couldn’t read what they were about.

Regis said, “I would not, of course, know anything about Miss — is it Marshall? But I know who you saw. The resemblance has caused us some amusement, and a little embarrassment. Since, of course, no comynara could possibly be permitted to behave in public as your Terrananis do.”

Inward I raged and worried. What now? Why must they drag the name of the dead into this? After an eternity, I heard light, familiar footsteps, and Kathie Marshall came into the room.

She wore Darkovan dress; a ruffled gown that hung loose from her slender shoulders, her unbound hair dusted with metallic fragments. Bangles tinkled on her ankles and slender wrists.

“Kathie?” said Lawton.

Kathie raised a pretty, uncomprehending face. “ Chi’zei ?”

“Linnell, my dear,” Regis drawled, “I have spoken of the foolish resemblance to some Terranis; I wished them to see at first hand.”

I was praying that none of them knew Kathie well. The difference was so haunting that it struck me with passionate grief; a ghost, a mockery.

Kathie put a hand down to touch my face. It was not a Terran gesture. She walked and moved like a Darkovan. “Yes, Regis, I remember,” she said, and I had all I could do to keep back a cry of astonishment. For Kathie was speaking the complicated, liquid-syllabled pure mountain Darkovan — not with her own harsh Terran accent but with soft quick fluency. “But should you have so many strangers around you when you are hurt? To tell you some fantastic story about the Terrans?”

It wasn’t Linnell’s intonation. But the fact remained, she was speaking Darkovan, and speaking it with an accent as good as my own or Dio’s.

Lawton shook his head. “Fantastic,” he muttered, “There certainly is a resemblance! But I happen to know Kathie couldn’t speak the language anything like that!”

The big Terran broke in. “Dan, I tell you, I saw—”

“You were mistaken.” Lawton was still looking intently at Kathie, but she did not move. Another false note. It is rudeness unspeakable to stare at an unmasked young girl on Darkover; men have been killed for it. Lawton knew it. Linnell would have been dying of confusion. But as that thought crossed my mind, Kathie blushed and ran out of the room.

“I’m trying to tell you,” Kendricks said, “I was on spaceport duty when the Marshall girl left. I checked the passenger list after they were all drugged and tied-in. She certainly didn’t get off after that, and it’s been reported from Samarra by relay, so how could she be here? The fastest ship made takes seventeen days hyperdrive, between there and here.”

Lawton muttered, “I guess we’ve made prime fools of ourselves. Alton, before I go, can you tell me how the Ridenow brothers died?”

Regis said, “I tried to explain—”

“But it didn’t make sense. You said someone had a trap-matrix out. I know a little about matrices, but that’s a new one on me.”

No Terran can really grasp that concept, but I tried. “It’s a sort of mechanical telepath that conjures up horrifying images from race-memory and superstition. The person who sets one can control the minds and emotions of others. The Ridenow are sensitives — disturbed mental atmospheres affect them physically. This one was so badly disturbed that it short-circuited all the neural patterns. They died of cerebral hemorrhage.”

It was a grossly over-simplified explanation, but Lawton at least seemed to understand. “Yes, I’ve heard of things like that,” he said, and I surprised a strange, bitter look on his face. Then, to my surprise, he bowed.

“Thank you for your co-operation,” he said. “There will be other matters to discuss when you are recovered.

Rafe Scott lingered when the others had gone.

“Look, if I could talk to you by yourself, Lew,” he said, glowering at Regis.

Regis only said with angry contempt, “Get out of here, you filthy Terran half-caste!” He put his hand in the middle of Rafe’s back, giving him a sharp push — more offensive than a blow.

Rafe turned around and hit him.

Regis’ fist slammed into Rafe’s chin. The Terran boy lowered his head, rushed in and clinched, and they swayed back and forth in a struggling, furious grip. AH Regis’ contempt, all the humiliation Rafe had suffered at the hands of the Comyn, exploded; they slammed at each other, the room filled with their pummeling violence. I lay there forgotten by both, yet somehow more a part of the fight than they were themselves. I felt, half deliriously,, that the two halves of myself were slugging it out; the Darkovan Lew, the Terran. Rafe, once almost a brother — Regis, my best friend in the Comyn — both were myself and I was fighting myself, and each blow struck was in my own quarrel.

Andres settled it abruptly by collaring both the angry young men and jerking them violently through the curtains. “If you’ve got to fight,” he growled, “do it outside!”

There was the brief sound of a scuffle, then Regis’ voice, clear and scathing. “I should dirty my hands!”

Somehow, being part of their contention, these words were strangely meaningful; as if my own inward struggle had been somehow resolved.

After a while Andres came in, keeping up a steady monotoned grumble that was vaguely soothing. His hands were gentle as he looked at the half-healed wound at the back of my head; he ignored my profane protests that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself, grinned when I swore at him, until finally I broke into rueful laughter that hurt my head, and let him do what he -would. He washed my face as if I were a fretful child, would have fed me with a spoon if he’d thought for a minute that I’d allow it — I didn’t — and finally dug out a pack of contraband cigarettes smuggled in from the Terran Zone. But when I had finally chased the old fussbudget off to rest, I could elude thought no longer.

Time had healed, a little, my grief for Marjorie. My father’s death, bitterly as I regretted it, was more the Comyn’s loss than mine. We had been close, especially toward the end, but I had resented the thing that made me half-caste. Much as I missed him, his death had set me at ease with my own blood. And the murder of Marius was a nightmare thing, mercifully unreal.

But Linnell’s death was a grief from which I have never been free; that night my own pain was only an obligato to the torture of my nerves.