“A governing body, I thought—”
She shook her head. “Only recently, and not very much; originally, the Comyn were the seven telepath families of Darkover, the Seven Domains, each holding one of the major Gifts of laran.”
Kerwin blurted, “I thought the whole place was crawling with telepaths!”
She shrugged that off. “Everyone alive has some small degree of laran. I’m speaking of special psycho-kinetic and psi gifts, the Comyn Gifts, bred into our families in the centuries past—in the old days it was believed that perhaps they were inherited, that the Comyn were descended from the seven children— some people say the seven sons, but personally I find that hard to believe—of Hastur and Cassilda; maybe it’s because in the old days the Comyn were known as the Hastur-kin, or the Children of Hastur. Specifically, the Gifts of laran center upon the ability to use a matrix. You know what a matrix is, I take it.”
“Vaguely.”
Her pale eyebrows lifted again. “I was told you had the matrix belonging to Cleindori, whose name is written here as Dorilys of Arilinn.”
“I do,” Jeff said, “but I haven’t the faintest idea what it is, essentially, and even less notion of what it’s good for.” He had decided, a long time ago, that the sort of thing Ragan did with his small matrix was essentially irrelevant; and these people were very serious about it.
She shook her head, almost in wonder. “And yet we found you, guided you with it!” she said. “That proved to us that you had inherited some of the—” She paused and said angrily, “I’m not being evasive! I’m trying to put it into words you can understand, that’s all! We traced Cleindori’s matrix through the monitor banks and relays, which proved to us that you had inherited the mark of our caste. A matrix, essentially, is a crystal that receives, amplifies, and transmits thought. I could talk about space lattices, and neuro-electronic webs, and nerve channels, and kinetic energons, but I’ll let Rannirl explain all that; he’s our technician. Matrixes can be as simple as this— ” she touched a tiny crystal that, in total defiance of gravity, suspended her filmy gown from her throat—“or they can be enormous, synthetically-made screens—the technical term is lattices—with immensely complex man-made interior crystalline structures, each crystal of which responds to amplification from a Keeper. A matrix—or rather, the power of thought, of laran, controlled by a skilled matrix technician or Keeper’s circle—can release pure energy from the magnetic field of a planet, and channel it, either as force or matter. Heat, light, kinetic or potential energy, the synthesis of raw materials into usable form—all those things were once done by matrix. You do know that thought rhythms, brain waves, are electrical in nature?”
Kerwin nodded. “I’ve seen them measured. We call the instrument an electro-encephalograph— He spoke the words in Terran Standard, not knowing if the Darkovans had a word for it, and began to explain how it measured and made visible the electrical energies of the brain, but she shrugged impatiently.
“A simple and clumsy instrument. Well, in general, thought waves, even those of a telepath, can’t have much effect in the material universe. Most of them can’t move a single hair. There are exceptions, special forces—well, you’ll learn about that. But in general, the brain waves themselves can’t move a single hair. But the matrix crystals somehow act to transform force into form. That’s all.”
“And the Keeper—
“Some matrixes are so complex that one person can’t handle them; it takes the energy of several minds, linked together and feeding through the crystal, to form a nexus of energy. A Keeper handles and coordinates the forces. That’s all I can tell you,” she said abruptly, and turned, pointing down the stairs. “Straight down that way.” She turned and walked away in a flutter of filmy draperies, and Kerwin watched her go, startled. Had he done something, again, to offend her? Or was this some childish whim? She looked childish enough, certainly!
He went down the stairs, finding himself again in the great firelit hall where, this morning at sunrise, they had welcomed him—welcomed him home? His home? The room was completely empty, and Kerwin dropped into one of the cushioned chairs, burying his head in his hands. If someone didn’t explain things fairly soon, he was going to go crazy with frustration!
Kennard found him there, that way; Kerwin looked up at the older man and said helplessly, “It’s too much. I can’t take it all in. It’s too much, coming all at once. I don’t understand it, I don’t understand any of it!”
Kennard looked down at him with a curious mixture of compassion and amusement. “I can see how it would be,” he said. “I lived a few years on Terra; I know all about culture shock. Let me get off my feet.“ He lowered himself, carefully, to the mass of cushions, and leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. ”Maybe I can clear it up for you. I owe you that.”
Kerwin had heard that the Darkovans, the nobility anyhow, had little to do with the Empire; the news that Kennard had actually lived on Terra amazed him, but no more than anything else that had happened in the last day or so, no more than his own presence here. He was all but immune to further shock. He said, “Start with this. Who am I? Why the devil am I here?”
Kennard ignored the question, staring into space over Kerwin’s head. After a while he said, “That night in the Sky Harbor Hotel; do you know what I saw?”
“Sorry. Not in the mood for guessing games.” Kerwin wanted to ask straight questions and get straight answers; he definitely didn’t want to answer more questions himself.
“Remember, I hadn’t the least notion who you were. You looked like one of us, and I knew you weren’t. I saw a Terran, but I’m an Alton, I have one of those screwy, out-of-phase time perceptors. So I looked at the Terran and I saw a child, a confused child, one who had never known who or what he was. I wish you had stayed and talked to us, then.”
“I do, too,” Kerwin said slowly. A child who had never known who or what he was. Kennard had put it very precisely. “I grew up, all right. But I left myself somewhere.”
“Maybe you’ll find yourself here.” Kennard got slowly to his feet, and Kerwin rose too; he held out a hand to assist the older man, but Kennard drew away; after a moment, Kennard smiled self-consciously and said, “You’re wondering why—”
“No,” said Kerwin, suddenly understanding that all of them had deftly avoided touching him. “I hate people jostling me; I’ve never gotten along with most people at close quarters. And I feel like hell in a crowd. Always have.”
Kennard nodded. “Laran,” he said. “You have just enough to find physical contact distasteful—”
Kerwin chuckled. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that— ”
Kennard said, with a sardonic shrug, “Distasteful except in circumstances of deliberate intimacy. Right?”
Kerwin nodded, thinking over the rare personal encounters of his life. He knew he had gravely distressed his Terran grandmother by his violent distaste for demonstrations of affection. And yet he had grown fond of the old lady, had loved her in his own way. His work associates—well, it occurred to him that he had treated them as Auster had treated him on the plane: violently rebuffing the slightest personal contact, shrinking physically from a random touch. It hadn’t made him particularly popular.
“You’re—how old? Twenty-six, twenty-seven? Of course I know how old you are, Darkovan—I was one of the first ones Cleindori told—but I never can convert that to Terran reckoning. It was too long ago I lived on Terra. Hell of a long time to live outside your proper element!”
“Proper element hell,” Kerwin retorted. “Show me where I fit into this mess, will you?”
“I’ll try.” Kennard went to a table in the corner and poured himself a drink from an assortment of bottles there; lifted his eyebrows in question at Kerwin.
“We’ll have drinks when the others come down; but I’m thirsty. You?”
“I’ll wait,” Kerwin said. He’d never been that much of a drinker. Kennard’s bad leg must be giving him considerable pain if he’
d break custom this way, the thought flickered through his mind and he wondered impatiently where it had come from, as the older man came cautiously back to his seat.
Kennard drank, set the glass down, locked his fingers meditatively. “Elorie told you; there are seven families of telepaths on Darkover, a ruling family for each of the Seven Domains. The Hasturs, the Ridenow, Ardais, the Elhalyn, the Altons—my family—and the Aillard. Yours.”
Kerwin had been counting. “That’s six.”
“We don’t talk about the Aldarans. Although some of us have Aldaran blood, of course, and Aldaran gifts. And there’s been some intermarriage —well, we won’t talk about that, that’s a long story and a shameful one; but the Aldarans were exiled from the Domains a long time ago; I couldn’t tell you all about that now, even if I knew it all, and even if we had the time—which I don’t and we don’t. But, with only six main telepath families—have you any idea how inbred we are?”
“You mean that normally you marry only within your caste? Telepaths?”
“Not entirely. Not—deliberately,” Kennard said, “but, being a telepath, and being isolated in the Towers, only with others of our own kmd—it’s like a drug.” His voice was not quite steady. “It completely unfits you for—for contact with outsiders. You, well, you get lost in it, and when you come up for air, as it were, you find you can’t breathe ordinary air any more. You find you can’t stand having outsiders around, people who aren’t tuned to your thoughts, people who—who jostle against your mind. You can’t come close to them; they aren’t quite real to you. Oh, it wears off, after a while, or you couldn’t live outside the Tower at all, but—but it’s a temptation. Non-telepaths feel to you like barbarians, or like strange animals, alien, wrong…” He was staring into space, over Kerwin’s head. “It spoils you for any kind of contact with ordinary people. With women. Even at your level, I should imagine, you’ve had trouble with women who can’t—can’t share your feelings and thoughts. After ten years at Arilinn, anything else is like—like bedding with a brute beast…”
The silence stretched while Kerwin thought about that, about the curious alienation, the sense of difference, which had come between him and every woman he had ever known. As if there had to be something more, deeper than the most intimate contact…
Abruptly with a little shiver, Kennard recalled himself, and his voice sounded harsh.
“Anyway. We’re inbred mentally, even more than physically; just because of that inability to tolerate outsiders. And the physical inbreeding is bad enough; some very strange recessives have come up. A few of the old Gifts are bred out altogether; I haven’t seen more than one or two catalyst telepaths in my lifetime. That’s the old Ardais gift, but Dom Kyril didn’t have it, or if he did he never learned to use it, and he’s mad as a banshee in a Ghost Wind. In the Aillards, the Gift has become sex-linked; shows up only in the women, and the men don’t carry it. And so forth, and so on… If you learn anything about genetics, you’ll find out what I mean. A solid outbreeding program might still save us, if we could do it; but most of us can’t. So— ” he shrugged. “Every generation fewer and fewer of us are born with the old laran Gifts. Mesyr told you; once there were three circles here at Arilinn, each with its own Keeper. Once there were over a dozen Towers; and Arilinn was not the largest. Now— well, there are three other Towers working a mechanic’s circle; we are the only Tower with a fully qualified Keeper, which means Elorie is virtually the only Keeper on Darkover. And, within the Comyn, and the minor nobility connected to us by blood, there are hardly enough of us, in each generation to keep them alive. So there are two lines of thought within the Comyn.” He spoke briskly now, without a trace of the earlier remoteness. “One faction felt we should cling to our old ways while we could, resist every change, until we died out, as we inevitably would in a generation or two, and it didn’t matter any more; but at least we would remain what we were. Others felt that, with change inevitable, or at least the only alternative to death, we should make what changes we could tolerate, before intolerable ones were forced upon us. These people felt that matrix science could be taught to anyone with the rudiments of skill at laran, developed and trained to work in the same ways that a Comyn telepath could do. There were a few of this faction in power in the Comyn a generation ago, and during those few years, matrix mechanics came into being as a profession. During that time we discovered that most people have some psi power—enough to operate a matrix, anyway—and could be trained in the use of matrix sciences.”
“I’ve met a couple,” Kerwin said.
“You’ve got to remember,” Kennard told him, “that this was complicated by a lot of intense, very emotional attitudes. It was virtually a religion, and the Comyn were almost a priesthood at one time. The Keepers, especially, were objects of religious fanaticism that amounted to worship. And now we come to where you fit into the story.”
He shifted his weight, uncomfortably, sighed and stared at Jeff Kerwin. Finally he said, “Cleindori Aillard was my foster-sister. She was a nedestro of her clan; that means she was not born in a legitimate marriage, but was the daughter of an Aillard woman and one of the Ridenow, a younger son of that clan. She carried the Aillard name because among us a child takes the name of the parent of higher rank, not necessarily the father’s name as you do on Terra. She and I were brought up together from the time she was a small girl, and she was handfasted—which is a sort of pledge of marriage, more between the families than the persons concerned—to my older brother Lewis. Then she was chosen to be trained as Keeper at Arilinn.”
Kennard was still, his face bitter and remote again. Then he said, “I don’t know all the story; and I swore an oath—they forced me to swear, when I came back to Arilinn—there are things I can’t tell you. Anyway, during part of it I was away, fostered on Terra; that’s a long story, too. My father chose a Terran foster-son, and I went to Terra as what you’d call, I suppose, an exchange student, while Lerrys was fostered here. And so I did not see Cleindori for six or seven years, and when I came back she was Dorilys of Arilinn. Keeper. Cleindori was—in some ways—the most powerful person in the Comyn, the most powerful woman on Darkover. Lady of Arilinn. She was a leronis of surpassing skill; and, like all Keepers, she was pledged virgin, living in seclusion and a rigid isolation… she was the last. Even Elorie was not trained as Cleindori had been trained, in the old ways; Cleindori accomplished that much, at least.” He slid away for a moment into the bitter remoteness again. Then, sitting upright on his cushions, his voice dry and emotionless, he said:
“Cleindori was a fighter; a rebel. She was a reformer at heart; and, as Lady of Arilinn, and one of the last surviving Aillard women in the direct line, she had considerable power and Council status in her own right.. So she tried to change the laws of Arilinn. She fought bitterly against the new Council, and the conviction they held, that the Comyn Towers should maintain their secrecy and their old, protected, semi-religious status. She tried to bring in outsiders to the Towers—she succeeded in that, a little. Neskaya Tower, for example, will take anyone with telepathic power—Comyn, commoner, or beggar born in a ditch. But then, they have not had a real Keeper for half a hundred years. But then she began to attack the taboos around her own special status. And that was too much, that kind of heresy raised up rebellion… Cleindori broke the taboos again and again, insisting that she could break them with impunity because, as Keeper, she was responsible only to her own conscience. And at last she ran away from Arilinn.”
Kerwin had begun to suspect that it would end there, but even so it was a shock. He said, very low, “With an Earthman. With my father.”
“I am not sure whether she left the Tower with him, or whether he came later,” Kennard evaded. “But yes, this is why Auster hates you, why there are many, many people who think your very existence is a sacrilege. It was not unheard of that a Keeper should lay down her powers and marry. Many have done so. But that a Keeper should leave the Towers and give up her ritual virginity and rem
ain a Keeper… no, that they would not tolerate.” The bitterness in his voice deepened. “After all, a Keeper is not so unusual; it was discovered, or rediscovered, in my father’s time, that any halfway competent technician can do a Keeper’s work. Including some men. I can, if I must, do it myself, though I am not especially skillful at it. But the Keeper of Arilinn—well, she is a symbol. Cleindori said once to me that what the Comyn really needed was a child’s waxen doll on a stick, to wear the crimson robe and speak the right words at the proper time, and there would be no need for Keepers at Arilinn; and since the doll could remain virgin forever without fuss or pain or sacrifice, all the troubles of Arilinn would be forever solved. I don’t suppose you can imagine just how shocking that was to the more conservative men and women of the Council. They were very bitter against Cleindori’s—sacrilege.”
He scowled at the floor. “Auster too has a special reason to hate you. He too was born among the Terranan, although he does not remember; for a time he too was in the Spacemen’s Orphanage, although we got him back from them before he had even learned their language. I have not heard him speak a word of Terran, or cahuenga, since he was thirteen years old; but that’s neither here or there. That’s a strange story.” Kennard raised his head and looked at Kerwin, saying, “It’s fortunate for you that the Terrans sent you to the Kerwins on Terra. There were plenty of fanatics who would have considered that they had done a virtuous deed—to avenge the dishonor of a vai leronis by killing the child she had borne to her lover.”
Kerwin found that he was shivering, although the room was warm. “If that’s the case,” he said, “what in the hell am I doing here at Arilinn?”
“Times have changed,” Kennard said. “As I told you, we’re dying out. There just aren’t enough of us any more. Here at Arilinn, we have a Keeper, but there are not more than two or three Keepers in all of the Domains, and a couple of little girls growing up who might grow into Keepers. The fanatics have died off or mellowed into old age; and even if there are still a few around, the ones who are left have learned to listen to the voice of expediency. I ought to say, of stark necessity; we cannot afford to waste anyone who might be carrying Aillard or Ardais gifts, or… others. You have Ridenow blood, and Hastur blood not too many generations back, and Alton. For a variety of reasons—” He checked himself. He said, “Different people are ruling the Council. When you came back to Thendara… well, it didn’t take me long to guess who you must be. Elorie saw you in the monitor screens—saw Cleindori’s matrix, rather— and confirmed it. That night in the Sky Harbor Hotel, half a dozen of us from the few remaining Towers gathered there—outside Comyn Castle, so that we could talk freely about it—and the reason we met was to try and reach some agreement about standards for admission to the Towers, so that we could keep more than one or two of them working. When you walked in—well, you remember what happened; we thought you were one of us, and it wasn’t just that you had red hair. We could sense what you were. So we called you. And you came. And here you are.”