“Let them,” Elorie said indifferently. “I already asked them to take Arilinn out of the relay net tonight. It’s our affair.”
Kennard finished what he was doing with the damper, and began to lay the maps out on the table in front of them; and with them a large number of colored crayons. He asked, “Do you want me to mark the maps? Or shall we have Kerwin do it?”
“You mark them,” Elorie said. “I want Corus and Jeff in the outer circle. Corus has enough PK that sooner or later we’ll be able to do mining with him, and Jeff has a fabulous sense of structural perception. Jeff—” She placed him just beyond Rannirl. “And Corus here.”
The great matrix lattice lay in its cradle before her.
Auster said, “Ready here.”
To Kerwin the moonlit silence in the room seemed to deepen; in the quiet air, it seemed that they were somehow insulated, their very breathing deepening, echoing around them. A faint picture floated through his mind, and he knew that Corus had touched him with a fragment of rapport,
a strong glass wall surrounding us, clearly seen through, but impenetrable
. . . He could sense the very walls of the Arilinn Tower, not the real Tower somehow but a mental picture of it, like but unlike, an archetypal Tower, and he heard someone in the circle thinking,
It has stood here like this for hundred and hundreds of years ...
Elorie’s hands were folded before her; he had been cautioned again and again,
never touch a Keeper, even accidentally, within the circle,
and indeed none of them ever touched Elorie, though sometimes Rannirl, who was the technician, would support her briefly with a light hand on her shoulder; and Elorie never touched anyone. Kerwin had noticed that; she could come very close to them, could hand him pills, stand close to him, but she never actually
touched
anyone; it was simply part of the taboo that surrounded a Keeper, banning even the most fragmentary physical touch. And yet, even though he could see her slender hands folded on the table, he
felt
her reach out her hands to them, and all round the circle it seemed that they linked hands, meshing into a tight grip all round; and yet to Kerwin it seemed, and he knew that each of them shared the sensation, that Elorie held one hand, and Taniquel, the monitor, the other. Kerwin swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, as Elorie’s grey eyes met his; they glimmered, like the molten shimmer of the matrix, and he felt her pick them up like a meshed web drawn between her strong hands, a net of sparkling threads in which they were embedded like jewels, each its own flashing color; the warm rose-grey of Taniquel’s watchfulness, the diamond-hard brilliance of Auster, Corus with a bright colorless luster, each of them with his or her own individual sound and color in the moon glow net that was Elorie. ...
Through Kennard’s eyes they saw the map spread on the table. Kerwin floated toward it, and somehow felt himself soaring out, as if he flew, bodiless, wingless, over a great expanse of countryside, with the magnet strength of the pure metallic sample that lay in the cradle beside the matrix lattice. He seemed to stretch out, infinitely extended, unaware of the limits of his body; then Rannirl projected a swift, whirling pattern, and Kerwin, without surprise, found himself tracing, with all of his mind and consciousness, a molecular model as once his fingers had traced the clay balls and sticks of the kindergarten model. Through Corus’s sensitive fingertips he felt the whirling electrons, the strange amalgam of nucleus, protons, the atomic structure of the metal they sought.
Copper. Its structure seemed to glow and swirl from the map, attuned as it was to the terrain which the map had suddenly become, he could
feel
the metal there. It was not, quite, like sinking into the crystal structure of the glass. It was curiously different, as if, through map and photographs that had, somehow, the texture of soil and rock and grass and trees, he traced the palpable magnetic currents and brushed aside all irrelevant atomic patterns. He was hundreds of times as sensitive to the terrain under his—hands? Surely not! Under his mind, his thoughts, but still, somehow, he was sifting the very soil in search of the glowing and complex structure of copper atoms, to where they clustered ... rich deposits of ore ...
Dull, throbbing pain knifed him; he twisted
through
the copper atoms, he had
become
copper, hiding within the ground, entangled with other unfamiliar electrons, other structures, so thickly entangled that it was impossible to breathe, atoms whirling and meshing and colliding. He was
in
the energy currents; he wandered in them and flowed in them. For a moment, disembodied sentience, he looked out through Rannirl’s eyes at the complex patterns, looked down on a strange flat-squeezed countryside, which he knew intellectually was the map, but which was still somehow the great aerial perspective of the Kilghard Hills spread out below him, hilltop eyries and crags and chasms, rocks and trees—and through it all he traced the sequences of copper atoms.... He saw and felt through Kennard’s eyes, moved on the tip of an orange crayon down to the surface of the map, a mark that meant nothing, absorbed as he was in the whirl of structures and patterns, pure copper atoms entangled painfully into the complex molecules of rich ores ... Kennard, he knew, followed him, measuring distances and transmuted them into measurements and marks on the maps ... he moved on, interwoven with the meshing, sparkling layers of the matrix lattice, had, somehow, become the map and the very surface of the planet....
He never knew, for time ceased entirely to have meaning, how long he whirled and probed and flashed, soil, rock, lava, riding magnetic currents, how many times Rannirl’s perceptions picked him up and he rode down on the tip of Kennard’s crayon, for his whole substance to be transmuted into markings on the map. ... But at last the whirling slowed and stilled. He felt Corus (a liquid crystallizing, cooling into crystal) drop out of the mesh with a sensation like a shattering crash; heard Rannirl slide out of some invisible gap; felt Elorie gently open her hand and drop Kennard (invisible fingers set a doll on a table) out of the web; then pain, like the agony of breathing water, racked Kerwin as he felt himself drop in free-fall into nowhere; Auster (a glass shattering, freeing a prisoner) made a thick sound of exhaustion, sliding forward with his head on the table. An invisible rope broke and Neyrissa fell, crumpled, as if from a great height. The first thing Kerwin saw was Taniquel, sighing wearily, straightening her cramped body. Kennard’s knotted fingers, swollen and tight with pain, released a stump of crayon, and he grimaced, holding one hand with the other. Kerwin could see the swelling in the fingers, the tension in them, and for the first time was aware of the joint-disease that had crippled Kennard and would some day paralyze him if he lived so long. The map was covered with cryptic symbols. Elorie put her hands over her face with a sound like a sob of exhaustion, and Taniquel rose and went to her, bending over her with a look of concern and dismay, running her hands over her in the monitor’s touch, an inch away from her forehead.
Taniquel said, “No more. Corus’s heart nearly stopped; and Kennard is in pain.”
Elorie came on unsteady tiptoe to stand behind Rannirl and Kennard, looking at the maps. She touched Kennard’s swollen hand with the lightest of fingertip-touches, more a symbolic gesture than a real one. She said, with a swift sidelong glance at Kerwin, “Jeff did all the structural work; did you notice?”
Kennard raised his head to grin unsteadily at Kerwin. He was still absentmindedly rubbing his hands, as if they hurt him, and Taniquel came and took them gently into her own, holding them cradled softly between her soft fingers. Kerwin saw the taut lines of pain leaving the older man’s face. Kennard said, “He was there all the time, holding all the structures; it was easy with him in the net. He’s going to be as good a technician as you are, Rannirl.”
“That wouldn’t take much doing,” Rannirl said. “I’m a mechanic, not a technician; I can do a technician’s work, but I look pretty bad when there’s a real technician around. Kerwin can have my place any time he wants it;
you
could, Ken, if you were strong enough.”
“Thanks. I’ll leave it to Jeff,
bredu
,” Kennard said, with an affectionate smile at Rannirl. He leaned forward, resting his head for minute on Taniquel’s shoulder, and Kerwin caught a fragment of her thought,
he’s too old for this work,
and a furious surge of resentment,
we’re so damned short-handed
. . . .
“But we did it,” said Corus, looking at the map, and Elorie touched the surface of the map with a light finger. “Look, Kennard has measured every copper deposit in the Kilghard, and all the places where the ores are richest, as well as those places where they are so mixed with other ores as to be practically useless. Even the depth is marked, and the richness, and the chemical composition of the ores so they will know what equipment they will need for assaying and refining.” Suddenly, through her heavy-eyed weariness, her eyes were exultant. “Show me the Terrans who could do so much, for all their technology!”
She stretched, catlike. “Do you realize what we’ve
done
?” she demanded. “It worked, all of you—it worked! Now are you glad you listened to me? Who’s a barbarian
now
?” She went to Jeff, stretched her hands to him, and her delicate fingertips just touched his; a gesture, he sensed, as meaningful to Elorie, behind the structure of taboo and untouchability, as another girl’s spontaneous hug would have been. “Oh, Jeff, I knew we could do it with you, you’re so strong, so powerful, you helped us so much!”
Impulsively, his hands tightened on hers; but she drew away, her face suddenly white, and her eyes met his; he could see the flash of panic in them. She clasped her hands together in a terrified gesture, and there was sudden appeal in her eyes; but it was only a moment. Then she slumped, and Neyrissa caught the girl in her arms.
“Lean on me, Elorie,” she said gently. “You’re exhausted, and no wonder, after all that.”
Elorie swayed tiredly and covered her eyes, childishly, with her clenched fists. Neyrissa lifted her into strong arms, and said, “I’ll take her to her room and see that she eats something.”
Kerwin was aware again of his own agonizingly cramped muscles; he stretched and turned to the window, where the sun was flooding in, already high in the sky. He had not been aware of its rising. They had been within the matrix, and in rapport, for more than an entire night!
Rannirl folded the map carefully. “We’ll try again in a few days with iron samples,” he said. “Then tin, lead, aluminum—it will be easier next time, now that we know what Jeff can do in the network.” He grinned at Jeff and said, “Do you know this is the first time there’s been a full circle at Arilinn in twelve years or more?” He looked past Auster, frowning. “Auster, what’s the matter with you, kinsman? This is a time for rejoicing!”
Auster’s eyes were fixed on Kerwin with steady, unblinking malevolence. And Kerwin knew:
He’s not happy that I did it.
He wanted me—us—to fail. But why?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Shadows on the Sun
The depression lingered even after Kerwin had slept away the fatigue. As he dressed himself to join the others, near sunset, he told himself that he should not let Auster’s malice soil this for him. He had come through the acid test of full rapport within the Tower Circle, and it was his triumph. Auster had never liked him; it might even be that he was jealous of the fuss they were making over Kerwin. Probably there was no more to it than that.
And now, he knew, there would be a free interval, and he looked forward to spending some of it with Taniquel. Despite Kennard’s warning, he felt fresh and rested, eager to join her. He wondered if she would consent, as she had done often, to spend the night with him, and there was a pleasant anticipation in his thoughts as he went downstairs. But there was no hurry; if not tonight, then later.
The others had all wakened before him and were gathered in the hall. The very casualness of their greetings warmed him; he belonged, he was family. He accepted a glass of wine and sank down in his accustomed seat. Neyrissa came over to him, trailing an armful of some kind of needlework, and settled down near him. He felt a little impatient, but there was time. He looked around for Taniquel, but she was near the fireplace, talking to Auster, her back to him, and he could not catch her eye.
“What are you making Neyrissa?”
“A coverlet for my bed,” she said. “You do not know how cold it is here in the winter; and besides, it keeps my hands busy.” She turned it to show him. It was a white quilt, with cherries in three shades of red stitched on in clusters, with green leaves, and bands of the same three shades of red at the edges; and the whole now being quilted with delicate stitches in a pattern of loops and curls. He was astonished at the amount of work and thought that must have gone into the design; it had never occurred to him that Neyrissa, monitor of Arilinn and a Comyn lady, would occupy herself with a such tedious stitchery.
She shrugged—“As I say, it keeps my hands busy when there is nothing else to do,” she said. “And I am proud of my handiwork.”
“It is certainly very beautiful,” he said. “A piece of handiwork like this would be priceless on most of the planets I have visited, for most people now have their bedding made easily and quickly by machine.”
She chuckled. “I do not think I would care to sleep under anything that had been made by machinery,” she said. “It would be like lying down with a mechanical man. I understand they have such things on other worlds, too, but I do not suppose women are very pleased with them. I prefer genuine handiwork on my bed as well as in it.”
It took Jeff a moment to understand the double entendre—which was somewhat more suggestive in
casta
than in the language he spoke—but no one with a scrap of telepathic force could misunderstand her meaning, and he chuckled, a little embarrassed. But she met his eyes so forth-rightly that he could not retain his embarrassment and laughed heartily. “I suppose you’re right, some things are better when they’re the work of nature,” he agreed with her.