Exile's Song

  Something nagged at the back of her mind, something important and maddening and frightening. Margaret frowned, knowing it was something she did not really want to think about. It all came back to her in a rush of feelings of desolation and rage. She allowed herself to shudder, and tried to hold the memory away, then surrendered, just to get it done with.

  It was her last night on Thetis, after the Old Man had finally agreed to her choice. It had begun well enough, with a good supper, toasts of Thetan wine, and her favorite dessert. Margaret had let herself start to relax, to believe everything would work out. Dio had retired early, which she often did. She said the sea air made her sleepy.

  Then the Senator had gotten ugly drunk and tried to tell her something that she had not wanted to hear. What had he shouted? “If you have the Alton Gift, if you are an untrained telepath, you are a danger to yourself and everyone around you. You are my daughter, and you probably have it! Gift! The Alton Curse is more like . . .” She hadn’t understood what he meant, but the tone of his voice had made her blood run cold. And then something else had happened—and she realized this was what she did not want to recall. For just a second she had felt as if there was another person in her head, a woman, and a very nasty one. She had a soft voice, but it was very strong and authoritative. You will not remember, and you will not destroy me! It was this, and not the Old Man’s ravings that sent her running from the living room, into the security of her own quarters. She had locked the door behind her, as if something were chasing her, and spent the entire night packing and re-packing her belongings, as if her very life depended on it.

  It was only a memory, Margaret told herself. The strange voice in her head was probably due more to unaccustomed wine and the tension of leaving for University than anything else. There, she was fine again. She was a Scholar of University, not an overwrought adolescent!

  Margaret forced her attention back to Master Everard’s scholarly discussion of the fiol. It was clearly a relative of the Terran violin or viola, though the belly was deeper than any Terran violin, and the sound holes were formed like a many-pointed star. Professor Davidson plucked the strings and sighed.

  “Would you fiddle it for me, Maggie? I’m afraid these old hands are beyond it.”

  “Mine, too,” Master Everard said. “And I give you my word of honor it is possessed of nothing but a lovely tone.”

  Margaret tucked the fiol beneath her chin and adjusted the tuning strings. It felt comfortable and familiar, though the neck was a bit longer than a Terran violin.

  Other than that she did not hesitate, for the Music Department on University made sure their students could handle anything constructed for eight fingers and two opposable thumbs. She began to play a little Bach gavotte from her student days, followed by one of Corbenic’s variations. She had four thousand years of Terran music to draw from, but Corbenic remained one of her favorites.

  Everard listened intently, his eyes sparkling. He smiled at her. “That was exquisite, my dear child. So crisp and clear, and yet there is deep feeling in it, at the same time. We must invite some of the other musicians in the street over for the evening. They would be delighted for the opportunity to hear you play that.”

  Margaret blushed. She knew she was no better than a good second fiddler, that her playing was not really concert quality, but his praise eased her fears and tensions. “I would be glad to do that.”

  Ivor made some mention of Mozart as a predecessor to Corbenic, and this demanded an exhaustive discussion, which strained her translating abilities to the utmost. She played the cadenza from the Fifth Violin Concerto, to demonstrate the influence of the earlier composer, and Everard nodded. The fiol did indeed have a lovely tone, despite, or maybe because of the oddly-shaped eff-holes.

  By the time she had demonstrated the six fiols in the museum—three soprano and three alto—and the woods used to make them had been explained, with a discussion on technical acoustics that made her headache start up again, Margaret was ravenous and exhausted. Ivor was looking wan, his eyes glazed and his color dreadful. Still, he wanted to go on to the larger harps, and Margaret hated the look he gave her when she suggested they pause for the midday meal.

  “Forgive me,” said Master Everard. “I am a poor host, indeed. Of course we must eat.”

  “There is so much to see, to learn,” Ivor grumbled.

  “It will still be here after lunch and a rest, Professor.” Margaret mustered her patience to persuade him.

  “When you get to be our age, young woman, you will want to do as we do.” Master Everard laughed softly. “The young think they have all the time in the world.”

  As they left the chamber, Margaret looked over her shoulder at the ryll standing in its niche in the wall. For an instant she saw slender hands, with an extra finger, play across the strings—ghost hands that both beckoned to her and repelled her at the same time. She was quite relieved to get out of the room and into the hall, banishing the vision and cursing her overactive imagination. It must have been a trick of the light. She told herself that, but she did not believe it.

  4

  The two old men were clearly enjoying sharing their mutual interest in music, but Margaret was finding translating for the professor while she tried to eat more than a little wearing. She was almost relieved when Master Everard was called away from the table as they consumed their midday meal of thick soup and heavy bread, then felt guilty about it. The headache that had started in the music room did not go away as she ate, but she dismissed it as the remnant of the drug hangover from traveling. It was the sort of headache she sometimes got when storms blew across the Sea of Wine on Thetis, something to do with barometric pressure and other weather phenomena. It almost certainly meant nothing on Darkover.

  Alone with Ivor, she found herself troubled as well by his frail appearance. His color was gray beneath the remnants of his Relegan tan, and she wondered if she should cancel her planned shopping expedition and try to convince him to return to the Terran Sector for a visit to the Medics. He loathed doctors, and would almost certainly resist her efforts, so she decided not to suggest it—at least for the moment.

  “Are you feeling all right, Ivor?” Margaret asked, in spite of her decision. She tried to mask her anxiety and to sound light and casual.

  “I confess I feel pretty tired, my Magpie-Maggie.” This was the seventh or eighth time he had used his pet names for her, and she found it a little disquieting. “The older I get, the harder it is for my belly to settle into new foods, for one thing. These Cottman dishes are very tasty, but they sit in my belly like bricks. I really want something less heavy—clear soup and crackers—the kind that Ida makes.” He sighed rather gustily, enjoying the thought. “I was really looking forward to the amenities of University—electric lights, the quiet of the library, catching up on my reading, and getting my notes on Relegan into order. I keep having this fantasy that I won’t have a chance to do it, and some downy-cheeked kid with a diploma with damp ink on it will make a total mess of our work.”

  And where am I in this fantasy, Ivor? “I know,” Margaret replied, ignoring the little prick of irritation his words gave her. She immediately felt dreadful and guilty because she realized she was not missing University at all. The sounds and smells of Darkover tantalized her, surrounding her with siren promises of comforts which had nothing to do with controlled heating, voice-activated light levels, and the many other benefits of an advanced technology. True, the flickering lamps, candles, and other primitive light sources in Master Everard’s house seemed to her a bizarre affectation—why wasn’t Thendara City electrified, she wondered? The Terrans had been on the planet for decades now, and still were confined to their little enclave around the spaceport. It didn’t fit. It was another enigma that nagged at her aching head. She looked at the red sun streaming in through the high windows of the dining room, and at the small lamps that burned on the table, and found they did not hurt her eyes. In fact, now that she thought about it, the light from
without seemed “right” as no light she had seen on any other planet had been.

  “I think I got a bit of a chill during our walk here,” Ivor continued, breaking into her thoughts. “At least, I can’t seem to get quite warm.

  “Ivor, no one can get really warm in these damn all-weather things the Service imagines are suitable clothing. Add to that the year we just spent running around nearly nude in a tropical climate—I’m chilled, too!” Actually, with the soup in her, Margaret was nearly comfortable, but she wanted to reassure herself that there was nothing wrong. “It’s hard to adjust to such a radical climate change.”

  He chuckled. “I am just an old man, with an old man’s complaints, child. It was fun, wasn’t it, wearing flowers and feathers and beads instead of uniforms. But you know how the Service feels about getting too native— the idiots. I know I looked quite foolish in my feathered finery—Ida had a good laugh over the holopics—but the freedom of it was wonderful. You know, this uniform isn’t very comfortable, Magpie. I think it is too small across the back or something.”

  This time the use of her nickname chilled her right down to the marrow. He was not himself, if he was being so openly affectionate. Margaret knew Ivor, his moods and crotchets, and this was just not like him. She gave him a hard look, but he seemed ordinary enough—a small, elderly man, wrinkled and tired-looking, and perhaps a little off his feed, but he appeared to be the person she knew well, whose every maddening habit and season was familiar to her. There was no reason to be alarmed. She was jumping at shadows, imagining ghosts in harps, and mistaking fatigue for illness.

  Darkover comforted her with its near-familiarity, but she found it disquieting as well. It was throwing her judgment off—that was all. One sound night’s sleep just wasn’t enough to restore her to her normal disgustingly good health, not after days of space travel and a total change of climate.

  Ivor smiled at her, stretching his withered mouth across his big teeth. It looked entirely too skeletal in her present state of heightened senses, and she held back a shudder. “Are you sure you are all right? With all the shots they gave us, you shouldn’t be . . .”

  “Don’t cluck over me, Magpie-girl. You go off with those young scamps and get some local togs. I know you are itching to get out of your uniform. If you see a good wool cloak—nothing fancy, mind you—that would suit me, get it. I’ll have a nap now, and by suppertime, I will be perfectly fine.” He gave another chuckle, and she knew he was remembering the black-and-white Thetis cape she had draped over her University uniform during her first lonely year there. That and her fondness for sparkling jewelry had given her the nickname, and it had stuck. Even in the hodgepodge of the academic community, she had remained different—a little strange and exotic for the hierarchies of the order that were the Terran way.

  “I’m not clucking! I just can’t help worrying about you.” Margaret tried to ignore the feeling of helplessness that suddenly threatened to overwhelm her.

  “What a good child you are. You have been like a daughter to me—even though the first time I saw you in Relegan garb I had several unfatherly thoughts.” Ivor smiled wistfully and sighed. “You made me wish I was fifty again.”

  “Did I?” She was fascinated by this admission, because the professor had never done anything to make her feel he knew she was an adult and a woman. There was a safety in his manner toward her, something which kept her from longing for the untidiness of love affairs and broken hearts which often seemed to be the bread and butter of her classmates. Not for the first time, but with a renewed sense of surprise, Margaret realized she had achieved nearly three decades of living without becoming sexually active. She was no prude, and she had heard the woeful tales of fellow students with curiosity and interest, but without the slightest urge to leap into bed with anyone she had ever met. She kept to herself, as if she were obeying some instinct or order. It struck her now that this was rather peculiar, but it didn’t seem important. It wasn’t as if she felt she had missed anything, was it?

  “My dear—I am old, but I am not dead yet! You are an extremely lovely woman. The Relegans assumed at first you were my wife, or at least my concubine, and they were very puzzled by our sleeping in separate huts. The Relegans were fascinated by our behavior, or rather the lack of it, and finally the hetman asked me if you were taboo. I told them you were as a daughter to me, which made sense to them in light of their profound incest prohibitions. Isn’t it funny how universal that one taboo is?”

  “Not really; it seems to be hard-wired into our brains. With a few notable exceptions,” Margaret answered, thinking of a few cultures she had studied where it was not forbidden. She knew that Ivor and Ida treated her like their child, but to hear it expressed moved her more than she could have imagined. She was warmed by the words.

  She cleared her throat, thickened with a sudden surge of emotions she did not wish to have. To cover her feelings, she asked, “Do you think Kuttner will ever finish that study of incest taboos?”

  “Possibly. If he doesn’t go off the deep end and wind up living in a grass shack on some God-forsaken planet on the rim of the galaxy. Anthropologists can be a little unbalanced.”

  “I know. Not like musicologists, who are entirely scientific and objective!” They laughed together at this old joke. The debate as to whether it was possible to objectively evaluate the disciplines of a non-Terran culture had been raging for centuries, and was no nearer to any solution. Margaret and Professor Davidson adhered to the belief that it was not only possible but necessary to study a culture within its own context. He had spent most of his academic career traveling to distant worlds to prove this thesis. His famous contemporary, Paul Valery, held that field work was, by definition, contaminated. Valery only stepped outside the comfortable Music Building on University to go home for meals. He had not been off-planet for decades, even to accept honors from other universities. On the rare occasions when the two men met in the corridors of the building, Valery would flare the nostrils of his narrow, aristocratic nose, as if he smelled something unpleasant and ask, “You still here, Davidson? Not off drumming with some ignorant natives?” Ivor always answered these barbed questions with a dignified silence, and swept into his own office. His reputation was excellent, and he felt no need to respond. Margaret, on the other hand, often had a desire to punch Valery on his overbred nose and leap to the defense of her mentor.

  The professor pushed his bowl away. “Well, I’m off for a sleep, my dear,” he said cheerfully. “Enjoy your visit to the tailor, Maggie, and be sure to keep your ears open for anything interesting. Weavers often have loom-songs that get overlooked in favor of other sorts of music. I have long thought there was a rich area of study in . . .”

  “Ivor—go to bed! You need rest, not another area of study.”

  He left, laughing. The sound of his delight made her feel less anxious for several minutes, as she lingered over a hot cup of herb tea, savoring the taste of it. Margaret’s worries came hustling back as she finally emptied the cup. Ivor looked “wrong,” and it was more than just fatigue. She wished she weren’t plagued with sudden flashes of premonition, and the ridiculous idea that she could somehow hear the thoughts of others. More, she wished the dread she felt in her bones would just go away and let her be. She was in a nice house, with good food, and there was nothing at all to worry about.

  Anya bustled into the dining room, bobbing a little curtsy. She was rosy-cheeked from the kitchen, and her jowls quivered with her movements. “Domna, the boys are here to take you to Threadneedle Street.”

  “Oh, splendid! Anya, can you tell me what would be the correct amount to pay for a cloak and boots, and such garments as you and Master Everard wear? Not that the boys would mislead me . . .”

  “No, they’re good, honest boys, or I would never have let them in this house, far less let a noble guest go off with them. Let me think.” While the housekeeper considered, Margaret wondered at the use of the word “noble.” Why were people acting as if she was
special? Could they have guessed she was the daughter of the Cottman Senator—she hadn’t said a word, because she had found that mentioning her connections in high places made people behave oddly. She had never traded on her father’s position in the Terran government, and often didn’t think about it for months at a time. It had nothing to do with her. But “noble guest?” A political functionary was hardly nobility as she knew of it—which was nearly nothing. There weren’t many nobles on University, unless one counted department heads and professors emeritus. It was just another Darkovan mystery she could not solve because she did not know the right questions to ask.

  “I believe five royals should get you a fine outfit, though things cost more than they did when I was a girl. That’s a blouse, three or four petticoats, a chemise and tunic. The underwear will be about seven sekals. A cloak of good spun wool, about three reis, one of leather about eight. Stockings, oh, four sekals or a bit more, unless you want spidersilk or something.”

  Anya gave a sniff of disdain. “That stuff you are wearing wouldn’t keep a dog warm in the mountains. I can’t understand why the Terranan wear it—it smells funny and it never seems to warm them. I’ve seen them, standing around looking down their noses at us, and pulling their clothes closer. What’s the matter with a good wool cloak instead of those shiny things they wear? What are they afraid of—do they think that wearing stuff grown on the backs of animals will make them . . .” Anya shrugged and stopped speaking.

  “There is just no accounting for taste, Anya.” Margaret was not about to try to explain the attitude common in the Terran Federation, that a civilized person was evident by his clothing, and that meant synthetics, except among the very rich, where the wearing of natural fabrics was a sign of wealth. It would have been insulting, implying that there was something less than civilized about simple Darkovan garb—which indeed was how the Terrans regarded it.