The Apogian War

Chapter 25

That summer at Armiday, in his twelfth year. Because of his age, and because there was no one else, it had fallen to me to answer certain questions usually left to fathers or elder brothers, to instruct him in certain facts proper to adolescents. He had blurted those ques tions out, too, with the same kind of half-embarrassed urgency, and I'd found it just as difficult to answer them. There are some things it's al most impossible to discuss with someone who hasn't shared the experi ence. I said at last, slowly, "I hardly know how to answer. I've had it so long, it would be harder to imagine what it feels like not to have 'chosen'." "Were you born with it, then?" "No, no, of course not. But when I was ten, or eleven, I began to be aware of what people were feeling. Or thinking. Later my father found out-proved to them-that I had the Faltron gift, and that's rare even-" I set my teeth and said it, "even in legitimate sons. After that, they couldn't deny me Dover rights." "Does it always come so early? Ten, eleven?" "Have you never been tested? I was almost certain..." I felt a little confused. At least once during the shared fears of that last season together, on the fire lines, I had touched his mind, sensed that he had the gift of our caste. But he had been very young then. And the Faltron gift is forced rapport, even with nongaps, "Once," said Dakover "about three years ago. The leronis said I had the potential, as far as she could tell, but she could not reach it." I wondered if that was why the Regent had sent him to Evertin: either hoping that discipline, silence and isolation would develop his 'Chosen', which sometimes happened, or trying to conceal bis disap pointment in his heir

. "You're a licensed Patrix mechanic, aren't you, Lno? What's that like?" This I could answer. "You know what a Patrix is: a jewel stone that amplifies the resonances of the brain and transmutes psi power into en ergy. For handling major forces, it demands a group of linked minds, usually in a tower circle."

"I know what a matrix is," he said. "They gave me one when I was tested." He showed it to me, hung, as most of us carried them, in a small silk-lined leather bag about his neck. "I've never used it, or even looked at it again. In the old days, I know, they made these mind-links through the Keepers. They don't have Keepers any more, do they?" "Not in the old sense," I said, "although the woman who works cen terpola do the matrix circles is still called a Keeper.

In my father's time they discovered that a Keeper could function, except at the very highest levels, without all the old taboos and terrible training, the sacrifice, iso lation, special cloistering. His foster-sister Cleindori was the first to break the tradition, and they don't train Keepers in the old way any more. It's too difficult and dangerous, and it's not fair to ask anyone to give up their whole lives to it any more. Now everyone spends three years or less at Aril, and then spends the same amount of time out side, so that they can learn to live normal lives." I was silent, thinking of my circle at Arilinn, now scattered to their homes and estates. I had been happy there, useful, accepted. Competent. Some day I would go back to this work again, in the relays. "What it's like," I continued, "it's-it's intimate. You're completely open to the members of your circle. Your thoughts, your very feelings affect them, and you're wholly vulnerable to theirs. It's more than the closeness of blood kin. It's not exactly love. It's not s****l desire. It's like-like living with your skin off. Twice as tender to everything. It's not like anything else." His eyes were rapt. I said harshly, "Don't romanticize it. It can bewonderful, yes. But it can be sheer hell. Or both at once. You leam to keep your distance, just to survive Through the hare of his feelings I could pick up just a fraction of his thoughts. I was trying to keep my awareness of him as low as possible. He was, damn it, too vulnerable.

He was feeling forgotten, mited, alone. I couldn't help picking it up. But a boy his age would think it prying. "Lno, the Faltron gift is the ability to force rapport. If I do have Chosen, could you open it up, make it function I looked at him in dismay. "You fool. Don't you know I could kill you that way? "Without 'Chosen', my life doesn't amount to much." He was as tautas a strung bow.

Try as I might, I could not shut out the terrible hunger in him to be part of the only world he knew, not to be so desperately deprived of his heritage. It was my own hunger. I had felt it, it seemed, since my birth. Yet nine months before my birth, my father had made it impossible for me to belong wholly to his world and mine. I faced the t*****e of knowing that, deeply as I loved my father, I hated him, too. Hated him for making me bastard, half-caste, alien, belonging nowhere. I clenched my fists, looking away from Darkovan, He had what I could never have. He belongod, full Dover., by blood and law, legitimate And yet he was suffering, as much as I was. Would I give up lem to be legitimate, accepted, belonging? "Lno, will you try at least?" "Darkovan, if I killed you, I'd be guilty of murder." His face turned white. "Frightened? Good. It's an insane idea.

Give it up, Darkovan. Only a catalyst mind gaper can ever do it safely and I'm not one. As far as I know, there are no Catalyst Mind gapper alive now. Let well enough alone."Darkovan shook his head. He said, forcing the wonls through a dry mouth, "Lno, when I was twelve years old you called me brods. There is no one else, no one I can ask for this. I don't care if it kills me. I have heard-he swallowed hard "that bredin have an obligation, one to the other. Was it only an idle word, Lno? " "It was no idle word, brods," I muttered, wrung with his pain, "but we were children then. And this is no child's play, Darkovan, it's your life." "Do you think I don't know that?" He was stammering. "It is my life. At least it can make the difference in what my life will be." His voice broke. "Brods..." he said again and was silent, and I knew it was because he could not up on without seeingThe appeal left me defenseless to him. Try as I might to stay aloof, that helpless, choked "Brods had broken my last defense.

I knew I was going to do what he wanted. "I can't do what was done to me, I told him. That's a specific test for the Faltron gift-forcing rapport and only a full Faltron can live through it. My Esther tried it, just once, with my full knowledge that it might very well kill me, and only f about thirty seconds. If the gift hadn't bred true, I'd have died. The fact that I didn't die was the only way he could think of to prove to Council that they could not refuse to accept me." My voice wavered. Even after almost ten years, I didn't like thinking about it. "Your blood, or your paternity, isn't in question. You don't need to take that kind of risk." "You were willing to take it." I had been. Time slid out of foom, and once again I stood before my father, his hands touching my temples, living again that memory of ter ror, that staring agony.

I had been willing because I had shared my fa ther's anguish, the terrible need in him to know I was his true son-the knowledge that if he could not force Council to accept me as his son, life alone was worth nothing. I would rather have died, just then, than live to face the knowledge of failure. Memory receded. I looked into Darkovan' eyes "I'll do what I can. I can test you, as I was tested at Aril. But don't expect too much. I'm not a leronis, only a technician." I drew a long breath. "Show me your Patrix" He fumbled with the strings at the neck, tipped the stone out in his palm, held it out to me. That told me as much as I needed to know. The lights in the small jewel were dim, inactive. If he had worn it for three years and his Chosen' was active, he would have rough-keyed it even without knowing it. The first test had failed, then.

As a final text, with excruciating care, I laid a fingertip against the stone, he did not finch. I signaled to him to put it away, loosened the beck of the case of my own. I laid my Patrix, still wrapped in the inso lating tilk, in the palm of my hand, then bared it carefully. "Look into this. No, don't touch it," I warned, with a drawn breath. "Never touch a keyed matrix; you could throw me into shock. Just look into it. Darkovan bent, fooped with motionless intensity on the tiny ribbons of moving light inside the jewel. At last he looked away. Another bad sign. Even latent Mind gaps should have had enough energon patterns disrupted inside his brain to show some reaction: sickness, nausea, causeless euphoria.

I asked cautiously, not wanting to suggest anything to him, "How do you feel?" "I'm not sure," he said uneasily. "It hurt my eyes." Then he had at least latent 'Chosen' . Arousing it, though, might be a difficult and painful business. Perhaps a catalyst mind gaper could have roused it. They had been bred for that work, in the days when Dover did complex and life-shattering work in the higher level Patrices. I'd never known one. Perhaps the set of genes was extinct. Just the same, as a latent, he deserved futher testing. I knew he had the potential. I had known it when he was twelve years old. "Did the leronis test you with kirian?" I asked. "She gave me a little. A few drops." "What happened?" "It made me sick," Dakovan said, "dizzy. Flashing colors in front of my eyes. She said I was probably too young for much reaction, that in some people, 'Chosen'