"What does it mean for Darkover?" Mike did not particularly care what
happened to the Federation, which remained an abstract conglomeration of places
he had never seen or, in many cases, even heard of. No matter how much
Marguerida or Lew told him about it, it remained more imaginary than real in his
mind. More to the point, after he had received the great matrix stone, he had
realized that he would never be able to travel off-world, as he had longed to
when he was younger. So, although he remained interested and even curious,
Mike had discovered that it pained him to talk about faraway planets he would
never see. He was envious that Marguerida had traveled so extensively, and
sometimes he even resented his wife's travels a little, enough that that feeling
shamed him a good deal.
