The Apogian War

Chapter 65

only among the members of a circle, to feel myself truly one of his kin. Relieved, because what he had told Marjorie was true, and we all knew it. Thyra said rebelliously, "Does he understand how much we need him? Isn't it worth some risk?" I would have risked the hazards to us, not those to him. At Arilinn they recommended gradual relinquishing of the work after early middle age, as vitality lessened. "Always Arilinn," Thyra said impatiently, as if I had spoken aloud. "Do they train them there to be cowards?" I turned on her, tensing myself against that sudden inner anger which Thyra could rouse in me so easily. Then, sternly controlling my self before Marjorie or the others could be caught up in the whirlpool emotion which swirled and raced between Thyra and me, I said, "One thing they do teach us, Thyra, is to be honest with ourselves and each other." I held out my hands to her. If she had been taught at Arilinn she would have known already that anger was all too often a conceal ment for less permissible emotions. "Are you ready to be so honest with me?" Reluctantly, she took my extended hand between her own. I fought to keep my barriers down, not to barricade myself against her. She was trembling, and I knew this was a new and distressing experience to her, that no man except Kadarin, who had been her lover for so long, had ever stirred her senses. I thought, for a moment, she would cry. It would have been better if she had, but she bit her lip and stared at me, defiant. She whispered, half-aloud, "Don't-" I broke the trembling rapport, knowing I could not force Thyra, as I would have had to do at Arilinn, to go into this all the way and confront what she refused to see. I couldn't. Not before Marjorie. It was not cowardice, I told myself fiercely. We were all kinsmen and kinswomen. There was simply no need. I said, changing the subject quickly, "We can try keying the Sharra matrix tomorrow, if you want. Have you explained to your father, Bel tran, that we will need an isolated place to work, and asked leave to use the helicopter?" "I will ask him tonight, when we are at dinner," Beltran promised. After dinner, when we were all seated in the little private study we had made our center, he came to us and told us permission had been given, that we could use the old airstrip. We talked little that night, each thinking his or her own thoughts. I was thinking that it had cer tainly cost Kadarin a lot to turn the matrix over to me. All along, he had expected that he and Beltran would be wholly in charge of this work, that I would be only a helper, lending skill but with no force to decisions. Beltran probably still resented my taking charge, and his in ability to be part of the circle was most likely the bitterest dose he had ever had to swallow. Marjorie was a little apart from us all, the heartbreaking isolation of a Keeper having already begun to slip down over her, forcing her away from the rest. I hated myself for having condemned her to this. With one part of myself I wanted to smash it all and take her into my arms. Maybe Kadarin was right, maybe the chastity of a Keeper was the stupidest of Comyn superstitions, and Marjorie and I were going through all this hell unnecessarily. I let myself drift out of focus, trying to see ahead a day when we would be free to love one another. And strangely, though my life was here and I felt I had wholly renounced my allegiance to Comyn, I still tried to see myself breaking the news to my father. I came up to ordinary awareness and saw that Rafe was asleep on the hearth. Someone should wake him and send him to bed. Was this work too strenuous for a boy his age? He should be playing with button-sized matrices, not working seriously in a circle like this! My eyes dwelt longest, with a cruel envy, on Kadarin and Thyra, side by side on the hearthrug, gazing into the fire. No prohibition lay be tween them; even separated, they had each other. I saw Marjorie's eyes come to rest on them, with the same remote sadness. That, at least, we could share... and for now it was all we could share. I turned my hand over and looked with detached sorrow at the mark tattooed on my right wrist, the seal of Comyn. The sign that I was laran heir to a Domain. My father had sworn for me, before that mark was set there, for service to Comyn, loyalty to my people. I looked at the scar from my first year at Arilinn. It ached whenever I was doing matrix work like this; it ached now. That, not the tattoo mark of my Domain, was the real sign of my loyalty to Darkover. And now I was working for a great rebirth of knowledge and wisdom to benefit all our world. I was breaking the law of Arilinn by working with untrained telepaths, unmonitored matrices. Breaking their letter, per haps, to restore their spirit all over Darkovert When, yawning wearily, Rafe and the women went their way to bed, I detained Kadarin for a moment. "One thing I have to know. Are you and Thyra married?" He shook his head. "Freemates, perhaps, we never sought formal ceremonies. If she had wished I would have been willing, but I have seen too many marriage customs on too many worlds to care about any of them. Why?" "In a tower circle this would not arise; here it must be taken into ac count," I said. "Is there any possibility that she could be carrying a child?" He raised his eyebrow. I knew the question was an inexcusable in trusion, but it was necessary to know. He said at last, "I doubt it. I have traveled on so many worlds and been exposed to so many things ... I am older than I look, but I have fathered no children. Probably I cannot. So I fear if Thyra really wants a child she will have to have it fathered elsewhere. Are you volunteering?" he asked, laughing. I found the question too outrageous even to think about. "I only felt I should warn you that matrix circ work could be dangerous if there was the slightest chance of pregnancy. Not so much for her, but for the unborn child. There have been gruesome tragedies. I felt I should warn " you." "I should think you'd have done better to warn her," he said, "but I appreciate your delicacy." He gave me an odd, unreadable look and went away. Well, I had done no more than my duty in asking, and if the question distressed him, he would have to absorb and accept it, as I absorbed my frustration over Marjorie and accepted the way Thyra's physical presence disturbed me. My dreams that night were disturbing, Thyra and Marjorie tangling into a single woman, so that again and again I would see one in dreams and suddenly discover it was the other. I should have recognized this as a sign of danger, but I only knew that when it was too late. The next day was gray and lowering. I wondered if we would have to wait till spring for any really effective work. It might be better, giving us time to settle into our work together, perhaps find others to fit into the circle. Beltran and Kadarin would be impatient. Well, they would just have to master their impatience. Marjorie looked cold and apprehensive; I felt the same way. A few lonesome snowflakes were drifting down, but I could not make the snow an excuse for putting off the experiment. Even Thyra's high spirits were subdued. I unwrapped the sword in which the matrix was hidden. The forge folk must have done this; I wondered if they had known, even halfway, what they were doing. There were old traditions about matrices like this, installed in weapons. They came out of the Ages of Chaos, when,

it is said, everything it's possible to know about matrices was known, and our world nearly destroyed in consequence. I said to Beltran, "It's very dangerous to key into a matrix this size without a very definite end in mind. It must always be controlled or it will take control of us." Kadarin said, "You speak as if the matrix was a live thing." "I'm not so sure it's not." I gestured at the helicopter, standing about eighty feet away at the near edge of the deserted airfield, the snow faintly beginning to edge its tail and rotors. "What I mean is this. We cannot simply key into the matrix, say 'fly' and stand here watching that thing take off. We must know precisely how the mechanism works, in order to know precisely what forces we must exert, and in what direc tions. I suggest we begin by concentrating on turning the rotor blade mechanism and getting enough speed to lift it. We don't really need a matrix this size for that, nor five workers. I could do it with this." I touched the insulated bag which held my own. "But we must have some precise way of learning to direct forces. We will discover, then, how to lift the helicopter and, since we don't want it to crash, we'll limit ourselves to turning the rotors until it lifts a few inches, then grad ually diminish the speed again until we set it down. Later we can try for direction and control in flight." I turned to Beltran. "Will this demon strate to the Terrans that psi power has material uses, so they'll give us help in developing a way to use this for a stardrive?" It was Kadarin who answered, "Hell yes! If I know the Terrans!" Marjorie checked Rafe's mittened hands. "Warm enough?" He pulled away indignantly, and she admonished, "Don't be silly! Shiver ing uses up too much energy; you have to be able to concentratel" I was pleased at her grasp of this. My own chill was mental, not physical. I placed Beltran at a little distance from the circle. I knew it was a bitter pill to swallow, that the twelve-year-old Rafe could be part of this and he could not, and I was intensely sorry for him, but the first necessity of matrix work was to know and accept for all time your own limitations. If he couldn't, he had no business within a mile of the circle. There was really no need for a physical circle, but I drew us close enough that the magnetic energy of our bodies would overlap and rein force the growing bond. I knew this was folly, a partly trained Keeper, a partly trained psi monitor. . . an illegal, unmonitored matrix... and yet I thought of the pioneers in the early days of our world, first taming the matrices. Terran colonists? Kadarin thought so. Before the towers rose, before their use was guarded by ritual and superstition. And it was given to us to retrace their steps! I separated hilt and blade, taking out the matrix. It was not yet ac tivated, but at its touch the old scar on my palm contracted with a stab of pain. Marjorie moved with quiet sureness into the center of the cir cle. She stood facing me, laying one hand on the blue stone... vor tex seeking to draw me into its depths, a maelstrom.... I shut my eves, reaching out for contact with Marjorie, steadying myself as I made contact with her cool silken strength. I felt Thyra drop into place, then Kadarin; the sense of an almost-unendurable burden lessened with his strength, as if he shifted a great weight onto his shoulders. Rafe dropped in like some small furry thing nestling against us. I had the curious sense that power was flowing up from the stone and into the circle. It felt like being hooked up to a powerful battery, vibrat ing in us all, body and brain. That was wrong, that was very wrong. It was curiously invigorating, but I knew we must not succumb to it even for a moment. With relief I felt Marjorie seize control and with a de termined effort direct the stream of force, focusing it through her, out ward. For a moment she stood bathed in flickering, transparent flames, then for an instant she took on the semblance of a woman... golden, chained, kneeling, as the forge-folk depicted their goddess. . .. I knew this was an illusion, but it seemed that Marjorie, or the great flickering fire-form which seemed to loom around and over and through her, reached out, seized the helicopter's rotors and spun them as a child spins a pinwheel. With my physical ears I heard the humming sound as they began to turn, slowly at first under the controlling force, then winding to a swift spinning snarl, a drone, a shriek that caught the air currents. Slowly, slowly, the great machine lifted, hovering lightly a foot or so above the ground. Straining to be gone... Hold it there! I was directing the power outward as Marjorie formed and shaped it; I could feel all the others pressed tightly against me, though physically none of us were touching. As I trembled, feeling the vast outflow of that linked conjoined power, I saw in a series of wild flashes the great form of fire I had seen before, Marjorie and not Mar jorie, a raw stream of force, a n***d woman, sky-tall with tossing hair, each separate lock a streamer of fire... I felt a curious rage surging up and through me. Take the helicopter, hanging there useless a few inches high, hurl it into the sky, high, high, fling it down like a missile against the towers of Castle Aldaran, burning, smashing, exploding the