“I am sure it does,” she answered weakly. She felt she was going to drown in too much information, and too damn many relatives all at once. And the worst part was, the more she learned, the less she felt she knew.
Fifteen! Margaret did not doubt Lady Linnea, but she still found that disturbing. Why so young? It was easier to think about that than about the other things, the ones that buzzed like bees in her brain, warring with a compulsion to be silent. “That seems very young to marry. Why do you have that custom?” Her tactlessness demon prompted the question before she could censor it, and she blushed to the roots of her hair. A slight breeze ruffled the silky stuff, sending her bangs tickling her forehead and cooling her blazing cheeks.
“We have both a high infant mortality rate and a low birth rate. I have been fortunate with my children, but many others are less so.” Linnea answered her as if the question were perfectly appropriate. “We treasure our children here, and we want to have as many as we can.”
Margaret had spent most of her life on planets of the Federation, where the populations were both limited and controlled, either by law or custom, and she found the idea of having lots of children rather appalling. It was only on backwater worlds, primitive worlds, where children were born in large numbers. And she knew there was no good reason for infant mortality, for Terran technologies made child bearing almost risk-free.
There were so many puzzles about this planet. It wasn’t just the absence of motored vehicles, but something that looked as if they had rejected technology outright. “But did you want to get married at fifteen?”
“Certainly. It was my duty.”
“Duty?”
Regis gave his consort a sharp look, and Linnea lifted her brows in response. “We possess certain talents, here on Darkover, and we have discovered, over the centuries, that the best way to conserve them is to marry young,” she answered.
“Talents? You mean you have a sort of breeding program?”
Linnea made a small moue with her generous mouth. “You could say that—though I dislike the metaphor. It makes me feel too much like a brood mare.”
Margaret was shocked. More than that, she was disgusted. She realized that it had something to do with these Gifts Rafe and Hastur had mentioned, and that these apparently friendly new relatives were probably thinking of marrying her off to keep her genes on the planet. No wonder her father had left!
“How interesting,” she answered feebly. “I think I must go now. It has been a very long day, and I want to get back to Master Everard’s before it gets too dark.” I can’t take any more of this! If I don’t get away quickly, I will start to howl.
Lady Hastur looked distressed. “But, surely, you are staying here at the Castle, child.”
Not on your life! Margaret wanted to escape the huge building as expeditiously as possible. She knew that there was a chamber above, with a carpet she could recognize, unless it had been changed in the past twenty years. It belonged to the Altons, to her father, and that there were probably servants scurrying about, changing the linens and airing the rooms. She could almost feel the bustle of activity, and knew that she could have found her way to the rooms almost without a guide. The knowledge made her shiver with discomfort.
From the expressions on the faces of Lord and Lady Hastur and the enigmatic Danilo, she realized that her feelings had been almost shouted. Margaret wanted to be polite, to be properly diplomatic, a credit to her family, while at the same time she wanted to run away as fast as her tired legs would carry her.
With meticulous politeness, she said, “I am sure it would be wonderful to stay here, but I am leaving Thendara as soon as I can arrange it. I do have work to do, and the death of my companion, Ivor Davidson, has delayed me already.”
“Work? I don’t understand,” Lady Hastur responded.
Margaret decided that she had to take a firm line with these people. Otherwise they would continue to assume she was there to serve their ends, and not her own. She drew a ragged breath. “I am not here for your Telepathic Council or anything else. I am here to study and collect folk music as a Scholar of the University, and that is precisely what I intend to do. Nothing else!”
“Collect folk music?” Linnea sounded bemused. “I must have misunderstood.” Lady Hastur gave her husband a helpless look, as if to say: “I tried, dear.”
She could almost hear them, speaking in one another’s minds, trying to marshal arguments to manage her. She wasn’t having any of that! They could not understand her, and she did not feel she understood them. Her skull throbbed, and her knees ached, and she just wanted to get away.
“We certainly will not force you to stay here,” Danilo said, speaking for the first time since he had offered her wine. There was something in the way he said it that made her think this was not quite true, that he could have forced her to remain if he had chosen to. “However, it would be a good thing for Darkover if you did. You belong here, whether you realize it or not.”
Quite rudely, Margaret looked the paxman directly in the eyes. All she saw was a rather good-looking man somewhere between forty and fifty, with light-colored hair and deep lines along his mouth, as if he had suffered some great tragedy. There was, indeed, a kinship between Danilo’s somber expression and that of her father. But who was he to speak with such authority?
She found she did not dislike him, but that she mistrusted him deeply. He was clearly devoted to Hastur, and something more. Margaret wondered if he was Regis’ servant or his lover, and was mortified at herself. But she was certain that whatever his position was, Danilo would do anything necessary to protect Regis, even kill for him. “No doubt you believe that, but I don’t.” I won’t be involved with your local problems!
Margaret could feel waves of incomprehension drifting across her, but she just didn’t care. She knew she could have been more tactful to Lady Hastur and Danilo, but they were not listening to her. They were too involved with their damned breeding program and their Council to hear her. It was like trying to talk to Lew—he wasn’t good at listening either. Maybe it was a racial thing. Perhaps all the inbreeding they had done for centuries had done something to their hearing.
The utter ridiculousness of this thought lightened her mood a little. A year ago—hell, a week ago—the thought of meeting my father’s kinsmen would have delighted me. Now it just makes me angry—no, scared. I won’t be used again! The image of the silver-eyed man rose in her mind, and made her tremble. I just want to get away from these people, from feeling like they are walking around in my mind.
“Thank you for meeting me. I regret I can’t stay. Now, if you will excuse me.” She gave a little bow, a clumsy movement which betrayed her fatigue, and started for the door. Margaret saw her uncle standing just under the shadow of it, and almost ran toward him to escape from Regis, Linnea, and the ambiguous paxman.
“I’ll walk you back to Music Street,” Captain Scott announced when she came up to him.
Margaret wanted to weep with gratitude. “All right—so long as you promise not to plague me with more duties and obligations I have no intention of honoring.”
“You are determined to go on as if you were not the heiress of one of the Domains, then? To wander around doing this ‘work’ of yours, when Darkover needs you?” He sounded troubled and rather sad.
“Exactly!” The viciousness of her reply startled her a little. She was too close to the ragged edge of exhaustion to care.
“You are most decidedly Lew’s child,” he replied, with a somewhat sardonic smile.
“ ‘What’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh,’ ” she quoted tartly.
“If you only knew how true that was, Marguerida.” Rafe gave a little sigh. “You are going to need permits to leave Thendara, you know. Will you at least let me help you get them?”
Margaret laughed a little, comforted by his steady presence. At last someone was behaving rationally! “I may be stubborn, but I never object to anyone making themselves useful.”
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8
The cemetery was clothed in mist, and she wandered between the worn headstones, looking for something or someone. It was night, dark and star-pocked, and a violet moon was rising from the horizon. Finally she came to a mound of fresh earth, banked with wilted blooms. She could smell the balsam in the air, and the scent of turned earth beneath her feet.
A wraithlike figure rose from the mound of earth, and her breath caught in her throat. Perhaps Ivor was not dead! What if he had been buried alive? What if he was suffocating in the neat, Darkovan coffin he was laid in? The features of the figure were shadowed and indistinct, and she peered at the head, terrified and curious all at once. It had its back to her, and all she could see was smooth hair along a long skull.
The figure turned and moved toward her. She waited, tensed to flee, expecting the bare bones of a dead man. For a moment the face was too shrouded in mist to see clearly, and then she saw the squared jaw and scarred cheek of Lew Alton. He looked at her and gave a crooked smile, then extended his hand to her.
Margaret sat up in her bed, her heart pounding and her breath ragged. Her throat ached with terror, and it was dry and painful. Images spun in her mind as she tried to tell herself it was only a dream. What was her father doing in Ivor’s grave, and why was he reaching for her? She sank back into the pillows, fresh tears welling in her eyes, and pulled the blankets up around her. It was only a dream!
The morning following Ivor’s funeral, Margaret presented herself at Terran HQ, dressed once again in her Scholar’s uniform, and armed with all of the correct documents. Then she waited. It took two hours to get to see a bored clerk who sent her to a computer terminal to fill out forms. The smell of HQ gave her a nasty headache, and the overwarm air made her sweat.
After she completed the forms, which were complex, confusing, and ambiguous, she pressed the “transmit” command, rose, and headed for one of the refreshment machines. It accepted her credit chit without trouble, and gave her a cup of lukewarm mud pretending to be coffee in return. She was making a face over it when she heard her name called. She returned to the clerk, who handed her a disk and sent her on to another office. There she waited again, to see another bureaucrat, musing that efficient and bureaucracy seemed to be mutually antagonistic terms. She wished she had something to read, but the office was empty even of posted notices, let alone any publications. She was so bored she would have read the latest proceedings of the Federation Senate if it had been at hand.
The thought of the Senate brought back the nightmare, and she began to sink into a morbid mood. Margaret stared at her boots and tried to shake it away, but it seemed to have taken a firm grasp on her mind, and would not be shrugged off. She almost didn’t hear her name when it was called, as she was coiled deep in misery.
A stern-looking woman sat behind a metal desk, drumming her fingers. She did not rise when Margaret entered the office, and she did not look at all friendly. A modest metal sign sat on the desk. It read “Major Thelma Wintergreen,” and looking at the forbidding countenance, Margaret thought she was well-named.
“I doubt we can permit you to continue Professor Davidson’s survey of native folk music, Miss Alton,” Wintergreen began without preamble. “You are too young to undertake such a mission, you do not have the proper credentials, and besides, it is not a task for a solitary woman. I cannot imagine why permission was given for such an unnecessary and expensive undertaking in the first place. The local music can be of no interest to anyone but the locals.”
Margaret was outraged. Didn’t have the proper credentials? Who did Wintergreen think she was? She held in her temper by force of will and ignored the throbbing in her temples. “Are you a trained musicologist, Major?”
“Certainly not!”
“Then you are hardly in any position to make a judgment about the value of Darkovan music, are you?” Margaret forced her mouth into a smile that was, she knew, closer to a snarl. “Captain Scott led me to believe there would not be a problem transferring the grant to me.”
“Who?” Wintergreen’s mouth went pinched, and her eyes squinted.
“Captain Rafael Scott.” She realized she should have tried to find him while she was sitting around and waiting. Her brain seemed stuffed with cotton. He had offered his help, and she had agreed on their walk back from Comyn Castle. But this morning she had just started off without him. Why was she so damned independent? Margaret realized she didn’t even know what section he was in, or if he really had the influence to make it easier for her. On the other hand, the invocation of his name clearly carried a lot of weight with the woman.
The Major looked displeased, and tapped something into her terminal. Then she folded her hands in front of her on the desk and stared at Margaret. “Just how do you know Captain Scott?”
“We are related.”
Wintergreen’s jaw clenched. She tapped another command into the terminal, then stared at the screen with a look of fury that surprised Margaret. She could feel waves of rage and envy radiating toward her, and she could not imagine what cause the woman had to be jealous of her. “There is no record of it,” the woman snarled.
“Captain Scott is my mother’s brother, whether it is in your records or not.”
As if his name had conjured him into being, Rafe walked through the office door. Margaret had rarely been so glad to see anyone in her life. He gave her a smile, patted her shoulder, then turned to Wintergreen.
“What’s the problem, Major?”
Wintergreen looked apprehensive now, and, if anything, angrier than before. “This isn’t any business of yours, Scott! I am not going to let this young woman go traipsing off into the hinterlands. Cottman is no place for a woman to go wandering around alone!”
“How would you know, Major, when you never leave HQ at all?”
“Why should I? There is nothing out there but a bunch of backward indigenes who don’t even have the sense to want . . .”
“Thelma, your prejudice is showing.” Margaret could hardly believe the tone of Scott’s voice. It was hard and authoritative, quite unlike the pleasant and almost modest man she had met the day before. “You really should put in for a transfer, you know.”
“You keep your nose out of my business, Scott!”
“Gladly. Just give her the necessary documents, and we’ll be gone.”
Something like malice shadowed Wintergreen’s features. “I don’t think so, Captain. She isn’t a full professor, just a clerk.”
“She is fully trained, and she has been in the field for years, on more worlds than you have ever visited. And she is a Scholar, not a clerk. Stop this behavior—it does you no credit whatever.”
Margaret gave her uncle a glance. He must have called up her records after they parted in front of Master Everard’s the night before. She felt the warmth of gratitude flood her limbs.
“How dare you!”
“Thelma, everyone in HQ knows you loathe and despise Darkover and the Darkovans. I expect even people who have never met you know it. You are the wrong person for this job, and if that gets into your records, you know, you can kiss your chances of promotion good-bye. Now, be a lamb and let Margaret get on with her business.”
“It is out of the question. She knows nothing about . . .”
“I was born on Darkover, Major.”
“There is no record . . .”
“If you look under the correct spelling, A-L-T-O-N, you will find out that my niece was indeed born here.” Rafe cut in. He turned toward Margaret. “I noticed, when I logged on, that some idiot has used an E instead of an A.”
Margaret shrugged. “That has happened before, but I thought I had it straightened out.” Sometimes I think that Terrans are spelling impaired.
Precisely! “And the first name would be Marguerida, Major Wintergreen,” Rafe continued dryly. Margaret hardly noticed, so stunned was she by the brief mental interchange. She knew she had not imagined it, and she only wished she had.
If looks could have kil
led, Scott would have been dead on the floor. As it was, Major Wintergreen grudgingly accessed something on her terminal and gave a small grunt as she read the display. “I suppose you think that being the daughter of a Senator gives you some sort of special privileges,” she snarled.
“Actually, I don’t. I’ve never used my father’s influence. I have never needed to.” Margaret had a kind of quiet pride in the truth of that statement.
The Major made a face as if she had bitten into a ripe fruit and found half a worm, hit a command key, and waited. A stack of flimsies popped out of the slot which concealed the printer in her desktop, and she almost flung them at the girl. “Take these to room 411. And don’t blame me if you get raped and murdered out there in the hills!”
“What? And deny you the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so’? I promise I’ll come back and haunt you if anything happens to me,” Margaret replied, allowing her dislike of the Major to spill from her tongue.
Scott escorted her to 411, leading her through several corridors and up lifts and down two flights of stairs. “You never would have found your way alone,” he assured her.
“I can see that. This place is a worse maze than Comyn Castle. Why was she so hostile?”
“I don’t know the whole story, but she screwed up badly on her last posting, and it made her bitter. Darkover is not the sort of place that Terrans want to come to—it’s become a kind of demotion to come here, during the past few years.”
“Is everyone here like her?”
“Hardly. We have a lot of very good people here, dedicated people who have the best interests of Darkover at heart. At least they think they have the best interests—which is bringing Terran progress to Darkover. Regrettably, what the Darkovans want and what the Terrans imagine is good for them are not always the same thing. I have a foot in both places, and like you, I am a citizen of two worlds. That isn’t easy. The Terrans made some dreadful blunders in the past, and the Darkovans did, too. One of the things your father undertook to do was heal some of those wounds, by keeping Darkover protected but not excluded from the Federation.”