Once again her small stately body seemed weighted with the cruelly heavy ceremonial robes. The golden chains at her waist and fastening her cloak seemed almost fetterlike with their weight; they clasped at her shoulders, heavy, a burden. In silence, not looking at any of them, she moved to the thronelike chair at the head of the table. Valdir’s deep bow startled Kerwin no less than the Lord Hastur, who rose in his place and bowed the knee deeply to Elorie.
Kerwin watched, paralyzed; this was the same girl who played with her pet birds in the great hall, and quarreled with Taniquel and made silly bets with Rannirl and rode like a hoyden with her hawks; he had not seen her before in the full regalia of the Keeper, and it was a shock and a revelation. He felt as if he too should bow, but Taniquel touched his wrist and he heard the unspoken thought:
The Tower Circle at Arilinn, alone in the Domains, need not rise for their Keeper. The Keeper of Arilinn is sacrosanct; but we are her own, her chosen. There was pride in Taniquel’s thought, and Kerwin felt a flicker of it, too; even Hastur could not refuse deference to the Keeper of Arilinn. So in a sense we are more powerful than the Regent of the Seven Domains. ...
“Welcome, in the name of Evanda and Avarra,” Elorie said in her soft throaty voice. “How may Arilinn serve the son of the Hasturs, vai dom?”
“Your words brighten the sky, vai leronis,” Hastur replied, and Elorie motioned him to resume his seat.
Kennard said, “It’s a long time since you honored us with a visit to Arilinn, Lord Hastur. And we are honored indeed, but if you’ll forgive me, we know you didn’t come to do us honor, or to have a look at Jeff Kerwin, or to bring me messages about the Council, or even to let me visit my father and ask about the health of my sons. Nor, I venture to say, even for the pleasure of our company. What do you want with us, Lord Hastur?”
The Regent’s face crinkled up in a pleasant grin.
“I should have known you’d see through me, Ken,” he said. “When Arilinn can spare you, we need someone like you in Council; Valdir is too diplomatic. You’re right, of course; I came from Thendara because we have a delegation waiting—with the big question.”
All of them, except Kerwin, seemed to know what he meant. Rannirl muttered, “So soon?”
“You haven’t given us much time, Lord Hastur,” Elorie said. “Jeff’s making good progress, but it’s slow.”
Kerwin leaned forward, gripping at the chair arm.
“What’s this all about, why are you looking at me?”
Hastur said, solemnly, “Because, Jeff Kerwin-Aillard, you have given us, for the first time in many years, a Tower Circle with a full complement of power, under a Keeper. If you do not fail us, we may be in a position to save the power and prestige of the Comyn—if you do not fail us. Otherwise—” He spread his hands. “The Terrans will have their entering wedge. The rest will follow and there won’t be any way to stop it. I want you—all of you—to come and talk to the delegation. What about it, Elorie? Do you trust your Terran barbarian as much as that?”
In the silence that followed, Kerwin felt Elorie’s glance, calm, childlike, resting on him.
Barbarian. Elorie’s barbarian. I’m still that, to all of them.
Elorie turned to Kennard and said quietly, “What about it, Ken? You know him best.”
By now Kerwin was used to being discussed before his face. In a telepath society there was no way to avoid it anyway. Even if they had tactfully sent him out of the room, he would have been aware of what was being said. He tried to keep his face impassive.
Kennard sighed and said, “As far as trusting goes, we can trust him, Elorie,” he said. “But the risk is yours and so the decision has to be yours. Whatever you decide, we’ll stand by you.”
“I speak against it,” Auster said passionately. “You know how I feel—you too, Lord Hastur!”
Hastur turned to the younger man and said, “Is it blind prejudice against Terrans, Auster?” His calm manner contrasted curiously with Auster’s tense, knotted face and angry voice. “Or have you some reason?”
“Prejudice,” Taniquel said angrily, “and jealousy!”
“Prejudice, yes,” Auster admitted, “but not, I think, blind. It was entirely too easy to get him from the Terrans. How do we know that the whole thing wasn’t concocted for our benefit?”
Valdir said, in his deep voice, “With Cleindori’s face written on his own? He has Comyn blood.”
“I think, by your leave,” Auster said, “that you, too, are prejudiced, Lord Valdir. You, with your Terran foster-son and half-caste grandson—”
Kennard leaped to his feet. “Now, damn it, Auster—”
“And you speak of Cleindori!” As he spoke it, the word was an epithet, a foulness. “She who was Dorilys of Arilinn—renegade, heretic—”
Elorie rose, angry and white. “Cleindori is dead. Let her lie in peace! And Zandru send scorpion whips to those who murdered her!”
“And to her seducer—and all his blood!” Auster flung back. “We all know Cleindori was not alone when she fled from Arilinn—”
New, unaccustomed emotions were battling in Jeff Kerwin. This was his father, his unknown mother, that they were cursing! For the first time in his life he felt a surge of sympathy for his Terran grandparents. Unloving and cold they had seemed; and yet they had taken him in as a son and never once had they reproached him with his unknown, alien mother or his mixed blood. He longed to rise, fling challenge at Auster; he half rose to his feet, but Kennard’s angry look fixed him in his seat; and Hastur’s ringing voice commanded, “Enough!”
“Lord Hastur—”
“Not a word!” Hastur’s angry, emphatic voice silenced even Auster. “We are not here to rake up the deeds and misdeeds of men and women a generation dead!”
“Then, under favor, Lord Hastur, why are we here?” asked Neyrissa. “I have given Kerwin the monitor’s oath; he will do for a mechanic’s circle.”
“But a Keeper’s circle?” Hastur asked. “Are you all ready to risk him for that? To do again what Arilinn could do in Leonie’s time and has not done since? Are you ready for that?”
There was silence, a deep silence, and Kerwin sensed that there was fear in it. Even Kennard was silent. At last Hastur added, urgently, “Only the Keeper of Arilinn can make that decision, Elorie. And the delegation awaits the word of Arilinn’s Keeper.”
“I don’t think we ought to risk it,” Auster said. “What is the delegation to us? The Keeper should choose in her own good time!”
“The risk is mine—to accept or refuse!” Two spots of angry color burned in Elorie’s cheek. “I have never before used my authority; I am not a witch, not a sorceress, I will not let men place on me the supernatural power. ...” She spread her hands in a little, helpless gesture. “Yet, for good or ill, I am Arilinn; authority rests by law in me, Elorie of Arilinn. We will hear the delegation. There is no more to be said; Elorie has spoken.”
There were bent heads, murmurs of assent, and Kerwin, watching, was shocked. Among themselves, they quarreled with Elorie and argued points with her without hesitation; this public assent had the feel of ritual.
Elorie turned to the door, stately and unbending. Kerwin watched her, and suddenly felt at one with her disquiet. He knew, not quite knowing how the knowledge had come to him, how Elorie hated to invoke her supreme and ritual authority; how much she disliked the superstitious awe surrounding her high office. Suddenly this pale, childish girl seemed real to him, her calmness merely a mask for passionate convictions, for emotions so severely controlled that they were like the eye of the hurricane.
And I thought her calm, emotionless? A mask she wears, no more, only a mask no one can remove, not even she herself. . . .
He felt Elorie’s emotions as if they were his own.
So I’ve done what I swore I would never do. I’ve used their conditioned reverence for a Keeper, just to force them to do what I want! But I had to, oh, I had to, or we’d have another hundred years of this superstitious ru
bbish.... And then a thought that, Kerwin knew, shocked Elorie as much as it shocked him, a flaring, frightening question: Was Cleindori right? And he felt Elorie’s thoughts flare into silence, knowing she had frightened herself with that last question.
CHAPTER NINE
Challenge to Arilinn
Riding down in the shaft, between Taniquel and Elorie, Kerwin was still shaken by the backlash of that contact with Elorie. What had Kennard called his gift? Empath—gifted with the power of sensing the emotions of others. He had accepted, intellectually, that this was true; had tested it a little under laboratory conditions and among the circle. Now, for the first time, it had hit him deep, on the level of his guts, and he felt it and knew it.
He didn’t know where they were going. He followed the others. But they went down through the Veil and outside, and into a building near the Tower that Jeff had never seen before. It was a long, narrow, silk-hung hall, and somewhere a ceremonial gong rang out as they filed into the room. There were a few spectators in the seats, and before them, at a long table, were half a dozen men.
They were prosperous looking men, most of them middle aged and more, wearing Darkovan dress in the fashion of the cities. They waited silently while Elorie was announced and took the central chair. The Tower circle seated themselves quietly around Elorie, not speaking.
It was Danvan of Hastur who spoke, at last.
“You are the men who call yourselves the Pan-Darkovan Syndicate?”
One of the men, a heavy-set and swarthy man with fierce eyes, bowed.
“Valdri of Carthon, z’par servu, my lords and ladies,” he confirmed. “By your leave I will speak for all.”
“Let me review the situation,” said Hastur. “You have formed a league—”
“To encourage the growth of manufacturing and trade on Darkover, in the Domains and beyond,” Valdrin said. “I hardly need to tell you the political situation—the Terrans and their foothold on our world. The Comyn and the Council, saving your presence, Lord Hastur, have tried to ignore the Terran presence here and its implications for trade—”
Hastur said quietly, “That is not precisely the situation.”
“I won’t bandy words with you, vai dom,” said Valdrin, respectfully but impatiently too. “The facts are these: In view of our agreements with the Terrans, we have an opportunity we’ve never had before, to bring the Domains out of our Dark Ages. Times change. Like it or not, the Terrans are here to stay. Darkover is being swept into the Empire. We can pretend they’re not there, refuse to trade with them, ignore their offers of trade, and keep them locked up inside their Trade Cities, but the barriers we put up will come tumbling down in another generation, maybe two at most. I’ve seen it happening on other worlds.”
Kerwin remembered what the Legate had said, that they left governments alone, but that the people saw what the Terran Empire had to give, and started demanding to come into it. It’s almost a mathematical formula—you can predict the thing.
Valdrin of Carthon was saying the same thing, quite passionately.
“In short, Lord Hastur, we protest the decision of Comyn Council; we want some of the advantages that come with being a part of the Empire!”
Hastur said quietly, “Do you understand the decision of the Council, to retain the integrity of the Darkovan way of life, rather than becoming just another Empire satellite state?”
“With all respect, Lord Hastur, when you talk about the Darkovan way of life, you’re talking about letting us stay a barbarian culture forever. Some of us want civilization and technology—”
Hastur said quietly, “I have seen the Terran civilization more closely than you. I tell you, Darkover wants none of it.”
“Speak for yourselves, vai dom, not for us! Perhaps in the old days there was some justification for the rule of the Seven Domains; in those days, Comyn gave us something to compensate for what we gave them in the way of allegiance and support!”
Valdir Alton said, “Man, am I listening to treason against the Council and Hastur?”
Valdir of Carthon said heavily, “Treason? Not that, sir. God forbid. And we don’t want to be part of the Empire any more than you do. We’re talking about trade, technological advance. There was a day when Darkover had its own science and technology. But those days are gone, and we’ve got to have something to replace them, or else sink into a second Ages of Chaos. It’s time to admit that they’re gone, and find something to replace them. And if the Terrans want to be here, they can offer us something—trade, metals, tools, technological consultants. Because it’s for certain that the old sciences of the Towers are gone forever.”
Kerwin was beginning to see it clearly. By virtue of their inborn psi powers, once, the Comyn had been rulers—and, in a certain sense, slaves—of Darkover and the Domains. Through the tremendous energy of the matrixes, not the small individual ones, but the great ones demanding linked circles of Tower-trained telepaths linked under a Keeper, they had given Darkover her own science and her own technology. This explained the vast ruins of a forgotten technology, the traditions of ancient sciences....
But what had the cost been, in human terms? The men and women possessed of these powers had lived, perforce, lives constrained and circumscribed, guarding their precious powers carefully, spoilt for ordinary human contacts.
Kerwin wondered if the natural drift of evolution, in nature, toward the norm and away from extremes, had been responsible for the waning of these powers. For they had waned. Arilinn, Mesyr had told him, had once held three circles, each with its own Keeper; and Arilinn had been only one of many Towers. Fewer and fewer were born in these days with a full measure of the precious laran. The science of Darkover had become a forgotten myth and a few psi tricks.... And this was not enough to keep Darkover independent of the lure of Terran trade and Terran technology.
“We have dealt with the Terrans,” Valdrin of Carthon said, “and I think, also, that we have won most of the people to our side.”
Valdir said, “In Thendara, the people are loyal to Comyn Council!”
“But, under favor, vai dom, Thendara is only a very small part of the Domains,” Valdrin said, “and the Domains are not all of Darkover. The Terrans have pledged that they will lend us technicians, engineers, industrial developers and experts—everything necessary to begin extensive mining and manufacturing operations here. Metals and ores are the key, my lord. Before we have technology we must have machinery, and before we have machinery we must have—”
Hastur raised a hand. He said, “I know it all like an old song. Before you have mines you must have machinery, and someone must make the machinery, and someone must mine the materials to make the machinery. We are not a mechanized civilization, Valdrin—”
“True, more’s the pity!”
“Is it such a pity? The people of Darkover are content on their farms and lands and cities. We have what industries we need; dairy farming, cheesemaking, the milling of grains, and weaving of cloth. There are papermills and felting-mills, the processing of nuts and cereals—”
“Transported at horseback pace!”
“And,” Hastur said, “No men to slave at the building of roads to keep them in condition for monstrous robot vehicles to whiz over at breakneck speed and make our clean air rotten with their chemical fuels!”
“We have a right to industries and wealth—”
“And to factories? To wealth gained by forcing men to labor in inhuman conditions, to build things that men do not really need or want? To work done by automatic machinery, leaving men with nothing to do but drug their senses with cheap amusements, and work at repairing the machinery? To mines, and people herded together in cities to build and repair these machines, so they have no time to grow and prepare the food they need? So that the raising of food becomes another monster factory enterprise, and a man’s children become a liability instead of an asset?”
Valdrin’s voice was calm, tinged with contempt. “You are a romantic, my lord, but your biased pictur
e will not convince those men who want something better than starving on their land from year to year and dying in a bad year. You cannot hold us back forever to a primitive culture, my lord.”
“Do you really want to become a replica of the Terran Empire, then?”
“Not that,” Valdrin said, “not what you think. We can take what we need from the Terran system without being corrupted by it.”
Hastur smiled faintly and said, “That is a delusion that has seduced many people and worlds, my good man. Do you think we can fight the Terrans on their own ground? No, my friend; the world that accepts the good things that come from the Terran Empire—and I am not deceived, there are many—must also accept the evil that comes with it. And yet perhaps you are right; we cannot bar the way forever, and keep our people poor and simple, an agricultural society in an interstellar age. It may be that your accusation is just. Once we were more powerful than now; it is true that we are just emerging from a Dark Age. But it is not true that we must go Terra’s way. What if the old powers were to return? What if the Comyn could do again all the things that legend said they could do? What if energy sources were available again, without the endless search for fuels, without the evils that blasted our land in the years before the Compact?”
“What if Durraman’s donkey could fly?” asked Valdrin. “It’s a good dream, but there hasn’t been a competent Keeper, let alone a fully qualified circle, for years.”
“There is now.” Hastur turned with a gesture. “A Comyn circle complete and ready to demonstrate their powers. I ask only this; that you keep free of the Terrans, and their ruinous, dehumanizing methods. Don’t accept their technicians and their engineers, to destroy our lands! And if you must trade with Terra, do it as equals, not as poor protégés, being helped up from barbarian status! Our world is old, older than Terra dreams, and prouder. Don’t shame us this way!”
He had caught them on their pride and their patriotism, and Kerwin saw it catch fire in the eyes of each of the delegation, although Valdrin still seemed skeptical.
A World Divided Page 36