Marion Bradley - The Forbidden Tower

Damon unwrapped the bundle of food Callista had given them for their journey, and broke out laughing. “Callista says — and is very apologetic — that she knows very little of housekeeping. But we are in luck, since she has not yet learned what is suitable food to give to travelers!” There was a cold roast fowl, which Damon divided with the knife at his belt, and a loaf of bread still faintly warm from the oven, and Andrew could not imagine why Damon was laughing.

He said, “I don’t see what’s funny about it. She asked me what I thought I would like to eat during a long ride, and I told her .”

Damon laughed, handing Andrew a generous portion of the roast meat. It was fragrant with spices which the Terran had not yet learned to identify by name. “For some reason, just custom, I suppose, about all the food one can ever get for the road would be hard journey-bread, dried meat rolls, dried fruits and nuts, that sort of thing.” He watched Andrew slicing up the bread, making a neat sandwich of the roast meat. “That looks good. I think I shall try it. And — will wonders never cease! — she gave us fresh apples too, from the cellar. Well, well!” He was laughing as he bit with gusto into the leg of the roast fowl. “It would never have occurred tof me to question traveler’s food and it would never have occurred to Elli to ask me if it was what I wanted! Maybe we can use some new ideas on our world!”

He sobered, lost in thought as he watched Andrew eating the sliced meat and bread. He himself had had heretical thoughts about matrix work outside the Towers. There ought to be a way. But he knew if he broached that to Leonie, she would be horrified, as horrified as if they were in the days of Regis the Fourth.

She would have known he was using a matrix, of course. Every legitimate matrix keyed to a Comyn telepath was monitored from the great screens in the Arilinn Tower. They could have identified Damon from his matrix, and Dezi, and, perhaps, though Damon was not sure, even Andrew.

If anyone had been watching. There was a shortage of telepaths for such inessential jobs as monitoring the matrix screens, so probably no one had noticed. But the monitor screens were there, and every matrix on Darkover was legally subject to monitoring and review. Even those like Domenic, who had been tested for laran and given a matrix, but never used it, could be followed.

That was another reason why Damon felt they should not waste such a telepath as Dezi. Even if his personality did not fit into the intimacy of a circle — and Damon was ready to admit Dezi would be hard to live with — he could be used to monitor a screen.

He thought wryly that today he was full of heresies. Who was he to question Leonie of Arilinn?

He finished off the leg of roast fowl, thoughtfully watching the Terran. Andrew was eating an apple, staring off thoughtfully at the far range of hills.

He is my friend. Yet he came here from a star so far away that I cannot see it in the sky at night. And yet, the very fact that there are other worlds like ours, everywhere in the universe, is going to change our world.

He looked at the distant hills, and thought, I do not want our world to change , then bleakly laughed at himself. He sat here planning a way to alter the use of matrices on Darkover, thinking of ways to reform the system of ancient Towers which guarded the old matrix sciences of his world, guarded them in safe ways established generations ago.

He said, “Andrew, why are you here? On Darkover?”

Andrew shrugged. “I came here almost by accident. It was a job. And then, one day, I saw Callista’s face — and here I am.”

“I don’t mean that,” Damon said. “Why are your people here? What does Terra want with our world? We are not a rich world to be exploited. I know enough about your Empire to know that most of the worlds they settle have something to give. Why Darkover? We are a world with few heavy metals, an isolated world with a climate your people find, I gather, inhospitable. What do the Terrans want with us?”

Andrew clasped his hands around his knees. He said, “There is an old story on my world. Someone asked an explorer why he chose to climb a mountain. And all he said was, ‘Because it’s there!’ ”

“That hardly seems enough reason to build a spaceport,” Damon said.

“I don’t understand all of it. Hell, Damon, I’m no empire-builder. I’d rather have stayed on Dad’s horse ranch. The way I understand it, it’s location . You do know that the galaxy is in the form of a giant spiral?” He picked up a twig and drew a pattern in the melting snow. “This is the upper spiral of the galaxy, and this is the lower arm, and here is Darkover, making it an ideal place for traffic control, passenger transfers, understand?”

“But,” Damon argued, “the travel of Empire citizens from one end of the Empire to the other doesn’t mean anything to us.”

Andrew shrugged. “I know. I’m sure Empire Central would have preferred an uninhabited world at the crossroads, so they needn’t have worried about who lived there. But here you are, and here we are.” He shrank from Damon’s frown. “ I don’t make their policy, Damon. I’m not even sure I understand it. That’s just the way it was explained to me.”

Damon’s laugh was mirthless. “And I was startled by Callista giving us roast meat and fresh apples for journey-food! Change is relative, I suppose.” He saw Andrew’s troubled look and made himself smile. None of this was Andrew’s fault. “Let’s hope the changes are all for the better, like Callie’s roast fowl!” He got off the log and carefully buried the apple core in a small runnel of snow behind it. Pain struck at him. If things had gone otherwise, he might have been planting this apple for his daughter. Andrew, with that uncanny sensitivity which he exhibited now and then, bent beside him, in silence, to bury his own apple core. Not till they were in the saddle again did he say, gently, “Some day, Damon, our children will eat apples from these trees.”

They were away from Armida more than three tendays. In Serrais, it took time to find ablebodied men who were willing to leave their villages, and perhaps their families, to work on the Armida estate for anywhere up to a year. Yet they could not take too many single men, or it would disrupt the life of the villages. Damon tried to find families who had ties of blood or fosterage with people at Armida lands. There were many of them. Then Damon wished to pay a visit to his brother Kieran, and to his sister Marisela and her children.

Marisela, a gentle, plump young woman who looked like Damon, but with fair hair where his was red, expressed grief at the news of Ellemir’s miscarriage. She said kindly that if they had no better fortune in a year or two, Damon should have one of their children to foster, an offer which surprised Andrew, but which Damon took for granted.

“Thank you, Mari. It may be needful, at that, since the children of double cousins seldom thrive. I have no great need for an heir, but Ellemir’s arms are empty and she grieves. And Callista is not likely to have a child very soon.”

Marisela said, “I do not know Callista well. Even when we were all little maidens, everyone knew she was destined for the Tower, and she did not mingle much with the other girls. People are such gossips,” she added vehemently. “Callie has a perfect right to leave Arilinn and marry if she chooses, but it is true we were all surprised. I know Keepers from the other Towers often leave to marry, but Arilinn? And Leonie has been there since I can remember, since our mother can remember. We all thought she would step directly into Leonie’s shoes. There was a time when the Keepers of Arilinn could not leave their posts if they would…”