The Apogian War

Chapter 26

developed later." I thought that over. Kirian is used to lower the resistance against Mind gap contact; it's used in treating empaths and other psi techni cians who, without much natural Mind gap gift, must work directly with other Mind gaps . It can sometimes ease fear or deliberate resistance to telepathic contact. It can also be used, with great care, to treat threshold sickness-that curious psychic upheaval which often seizes on young telepaths at adolescence. Well, Darkovan seemed young for his age. He might simply be develop into the gift late. But it rarely came as late as this.

Damn it, I'd been positive. Had some event at Evertin, some emotional shock, made him block awareness of it? "I could try that again," I said tentatively.

The kirian might actually trigger latent Mindgap; or perhaps, under its influence, I could reach his mind, without hurting him too much, and find out if he was deliber ately blocking awareness of 'Chosen'. It did happen, sometimes. I didn't like using kirian. But a small dose couldn't do much worse than make him sick, or leave him with a bad hangover.

And I had the distinct and not very pleasant feeling that if I cut off his hopes now, he might do something desperate. I didn't like the way he was looking at me, taut as a bowstring, and shaking, not much, but from head to foot. His voice cracked a little as he said, "I'll try." All too clearly, what I heard was, I'll try anything, I went to my room for it, already berating myself for agreeing to this lunatic experiment. It simply meant too much to him.

I weighed the possibility of giving him a sedative dose, one that would knock him out or keep him safely drugged and drowsy till morning. But kirian is too unpredictable. The dose which puts one person to sleep like a baby at the breast may turn another into a frenzied berserker, maging and hallu cinating. Anyway, I'd promised; I wouldn't deceive him now. I'd play it safe though, give him the same cautious minimal dose we used with strange psi technicians at Aril.

This much kirian couldn't hurt him. I measured him a careful few drops in a wineglass. He swallowed it, grimacing at the taste, and sat down on one of the stone benches. After a minute he covered his eyes. I watched carefully. One of the first signs was the dilation of the pupils of the eyes. After a few minutes he began to tremble, leaning against the back of the seat as if he feared he might fall. His hands were icy cold. I took his wrist lightly in my fingers. Nor mally I hate touching people; mindgaps do, except in close intimacy. At the touch he looked up and whispered, "Why are you angry, Lno?" Angry? Did he interpret my fear for him as anger? I said, "Not angry, only worried about you. Kirian isn't anything to play with. I'm going to try and touch you now. Don't fight me if you can help it." I gently reached for contact with his mind. I wouldn't use the matrix for this; under kirian I might probe too far and damage him. I first sensed sickness and confusion-that was the d**g, no more-then a deathly weariness and physical tension, probably from the long ride, and finally an overwhelming sense of desolation and loneliness, which made me want to turn away from his despair.

Hesitantly, I risked a somewhat deeper contact. And met a perfect, locked defense, a blank wall. After a moment, I probed sharply. The Faltron gift was forced rapport, even with non Mind gaps He wanted this, and if I could give it to him, then he could prob ably endure being hurt.

He moaned and moved his head as if I was hurting him. Probably I was. The emotions were still blurring every thing. Yes, he had 'Chosen' potential. But he'd blocked it. Completely. I waited a moment and considered. It's not so uncommon; some Mindgapers live all their lives that way. There's no reason they shouldn't. Mindgap as I told him, is far from an unmixed blessing. But occa sionally it yielded to a slow, patient unraveling. I retreated to the outer layer of his consciousness again and asked, not in words, What is it you're afraid to know, Darkovan? Don't block it. Try to remember what it is you couldn't bear to know.

There was a time when you could do this knowingly. Try to remember.... It was the wrong thing. He had received my thought; I felt the re sponse to it-a clamshell snapping rigidly shut, a sensitive plant closingits leaves. He wrenched his hands roughly from mine, covering his eyes again. He muttered, "My head hurts. I'm sick, I'm so sick... I had to withdraw. He had effectively shut me out. Possibly a skilled, highly trained Keeper could have forced her way through the resistance without killing him. But I couldn't force it.

I might have battered down the barrier, forced him to face whatever it was he'd buried, but he might very well c***k completely, and whether he could ever be put to gether again was a very doubtful point. I wondered if he understood that he had done this to himself. Facing that kind of knowledge was a terribly painful process. At the time, building that barrier must have seemed the only way to save his sanity, even if it meant paying the agonizing price of cutting off his entire pri potential with it. My own Keeper had once explained it to me with the example of the creature who, helplessly caught in a trap, gnaws off the trapped foot, choosing maiming to death. Sometimes there were layers and layers of such barricades. The barrier, or inhibition, might some day dissolve of itself, releasing his potential. Time and maturity could do a lot. It might be that some day, in the deep intimacy of love, he would find himself free of it. Or I faced this too-it might be that this barrier was genuinely necessary to his life and sanity, in which case it would endure forever, or, if it were somehow broken down, there would not be enough left of him to go on living. A catalystMindgap probably could have reached him. But in these days, due to inbreeding, indiscriminate marriages with nonmind gaps and the disappearance of the old means of stimulating these gifts, the vari ous Dover pri powers no longer bred true.

I was living proof that the Faltron gift did sometimes appear in pure form. But as a general thing. no one could sort out the tangle of gifts. The Darkov gift, whatever that was even at Aril they didn't tell me-is just as likely to appear in the Coltus or Golden Domains. Catalyst mind gaps was once an Hardais gift. Cyan certainly wasn't only one.

As far as I knew, there were none left alive. It seemed a long time later that Darkovan stirred again, rubbing his fore head; then he opened his eyes, still with that temble eagerness. The d**g was still in his system-it wouldn't wear off completely for hours but he was beginning to have brief intervals free of it. His unspoken question was perfectly clear. I had to shake my head, regretfully. "I'm sorry, Darkovan." I hope I never again see such despair in a young face. If he had been twelve years old, I would have taken him in my arms and tried to comfort him. But he was not a child now, and neither was I. His taut, des perate face kept me at arm's length. "Darkovan listen to me," I said quietly.

"For what it's worth, the farm is there. You have the potential, which means, at the very least, you're carrying the gene, your children will have it." I hesitated, not wanting to hurt him further, by telling him straightforwardly that he had made the barrier himself. Why hurt him that way? I said, "I did my best, Brod's. But I couldn't reach it, the barriers were too strong.

Brods, don't look at me like that," I pleaded, "I can't bear it, to see you looking at me that way." His voice was almost inaudible. "I know. You did your best." Had I really? I was struck with doubt. I felt sick with the force of his misery. I tried to take his hands again, forcing myself to meet his pain head-on, not flinch from it. But he pulled away from me, and I let it go. "Darkovan, listen to me. It doesn't matter. Perhaps in the days of the Keepers, it was a terrible tragedy for a Darkov to be without 'Chosen'. But the world is changing. The Dover is changing. You'll find other strengths." I felt the futility of the words even as I spoke them. What must it be like, to live without 'Chosen'? Like being without sight, hearing. but, never having known it, he must not be allowed to suffer its loss. "Darkovan, you have so much else to give. To your family, to the Do mains, to our world. And your children will have it-" I took his hands again in mine, trying to comfort him, but he cracked. "Hade's hells, stop it," he said, and wrenched his hands roughly away again. He caught up his cloak, which lay on the stone seat, and ran out of the room. I stood frozen in the shock of his violence, then, in horror, ran after him. Gods! Drugged, sick, desperate, he couldn't be allowed to run off that way! He needed to be watched, cared for, comforted-but I wasn't in time. When I reached the stairs, he had already disappeared into the labyrinthine corridors of that wing, and I lost him. I called and hunted for hours before, reeling with fatigue since I, too, had been riding for days. I gave up finally and went back to my rooms. I couldn't spend the whole night storming all over Dover Castle, shouting his name! I couldn't force my way into the Regent's suite and demand to know if he was there! There were limits to what Poseidon Faltron's bastard son could do. I suspected I'd already exceeded them. I could only hope desperately that the kirian would make him sleepy, or wear off with fatigue, and he would come back to rest or make his way to the Darkov's apartments and sleep there.

I waited for hours and saw the sun rise, Mood-red in the mists hang ing over the Persian spaceport, before, cramped and cold, I ell lep on the stone bench by the fireplace But Darkovan did not retem.

Darkovan ran down the corridor, dazed and confused, the small points of color still flashing behind his eyes, racked with the interior crawling nausea. One thought was tearing at him: Failed.

I've failed. Even Lno, tower-trained and with all his skill, couldn't help me. There's nothing there. When he said what he did about potential, he was humoring me, comforting a child. He reeled, feeling sick again, clung momentarily to the wall and ma on. The Comyn Castle was a labyrinth, and Regis had not been inside it in years. Before long, in his wild rush to get away from the scene of his humiliation, he was well and truly lost. His senses, kirian-blurred, ro tained vague memories of stone cul-de-sacs, blind comers, archways, endless stairs up which he toiled and down which he blundered and sometimes fell, courtyards filled with rushing wind and blinding rain, hour after hour. To the end of his life he retained an impression of the Dover castle which he could summon at will to overlay his real mem ories of it: a vast stone maze, a trap through which he wandered alone for centuries, with no human form to be seen. Once, around a comer, he heard Lno calling his name. He flattened himself in a niche and hid for a few thousand years until, long after, the sound was gone. After an indeterminate time of wandering and stumbling and halluc nating, he became aware that it had been a long time since he had fallen down a flight of stairs; that the corridors were long, but not mile and miles long; and that they were no longer filled with uncanny crawl ing colors and silent sounds. When he came out at last on to a high balcony at the uppermost level, he knew where he was. Dawn was breaking over the city below him. Once before, during the night, he had stood against a high parapet like this, thinking that his life was no good to anyone, not to the Darkov's , not to himself, that he should throw himself down and be done with it. This time the thought was remote, nightmarish, like one of those terrible real dreams which wakes you shaking and crying out, but a few seconds later is gone in dis solving fragments. He drew a long, weary sigh.