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Taniquel drowsily holding his hand, curled against him, jerked awake as if touched by a live wire.
Indignation flamed in her face.
“You—you
are
a barbarian,” she raged. “You— you
Terranan
!” She scrambled out of bed and
caught up her dressing-gown; quickly she was gone, her light footsteps dying away with an angry
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pattering on the uneven floor. Kerwin, baffled at her sudden rage, lay with his head throbbing. He told himself that this would not do, he had work to do the next day, and lay down, trying hard to apply the techniques Neyrissa had taught him, relaxing his body, slowing his breathing to normal, trying to calm the tensions in his body by controlling his breath, to ease the blood pounding in his temples. But he was too confused and dismayed for much success.
But when they met again, she was gentle and affectionate as ever, greeting him with her spontaneousembrace. “Forgive me, Jeff, I shouldn’t have been angry. It was unfair of me. It’s not for me to blameyou, that you’ve lived among the
Terranan
and picked up some of their—their strange ways. You’llcome to understand us better, in time.”
And with the reassurance of her arms around him, her emotions meshing with his, he could not doubt thesincerity of her feelings.
Thirteen days after Hastur’s visit to Arilinn, the matrixes were prepared; and later that same day, in thegreat hall, Elorie told them, “We can begin the first surveying operation tonight.”
Kerwin felt last-minute panic. This would be his first experience in the prolonged rapport of a matrixcircle.
“Why at night?” he asked.
It was Kennard who answered. “Most people sleep during the dark hours; we get less telepathicinterference—in radio you’d call it static. There’s telepathic static, too.”
“I want all of you to get some sleep during the day,” Neyrissa said. “I want you all fresh and rested for
tonight.”
Corus winked at Kerwin and said, “Better give Jeff a sedative; otherwise he’ll lie awake fretting.” Butthere was no malice in his words. Mesyr looked at him, questioningly.
“If you want something—”
He shook his head, feeling foolish. They talked a few minutes longer, then Elorie, yawning, said she wasgoing to take her own advice, and went upstairs. One by one, they began to drift away from the fireside. Kerwin, not sleepy in spite of his weariness, waited, hoping Taniquel would join him. Perhaps, if shewere with him, he might be able to forget the impending ordeal and relax.
“Neyrissa meant it, youngster,” said Kennard, pausing beside him.‘ “The monitor’s word is law, in cases
like this. Better get some rest, or tonight will be too much for you.”
A moment of silence; then Kennard’s heavy brows went into his hairline. “Oh,” he said, “it’s like that, isit?”
Kerwin exploded. “Damn it, is there no privacy at all here?”
Kennard looked at him with a wry, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m an Alton; we’re thestrongest telepaths in the Comyn. And—well, I’ve lived on Terra; I married a Terran woman. Soperhaps I understand more than some of the younger ones would. Don’t be offended, but—may I saysomething, as I would to—to a younger brother or a nephew?”
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Touched against his will, Kerwin said, “Yes, of course.”
Kennard thought for a minute, then said, “Don’t blame Taniquel for leaving you alone just now, justwhen you feel that you need her most. I know how you feel—Zandru’s hells, how well I know!” Hechuckled as if at some private joke. “But Tani knows, too. And when a matrix operation is in train, a bigone like this especially, celibacy is the rule, and necessary. She knows better than to play around withthat. For that matter, one of us should have talked to you about it before.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Kerwin said slowly, rebelling. “Why should it make any difference?”
Kennard answered with another question. “Why do you think the Keepers are required to be virgins?”
Kerwin hadn’t the faintest idea, but it suddenly struck him that it explained Elorie. On the surface, shewas a lovely young woman, certainly as beautiful as Taniquel, but as sexless as a child of seven or eight. Rannirl had said something about ritual virginity—and Elorie was certainly as unconscious of her ownbeauty and desirability as the youngest, most unaware of children. Or more so; most little girls, by eightor nine, were quite aware of their own femininity and one could see in them the seeds of desirability. Elorie, somehow, seemed entirely unaware of her own womanhood.
“In the ancient days it was regarded as a ritual thing,” Kennard said. “I think that’s drivel. The fact remains that it’s terribly dangerous for a woman to work in the centerpolar position in a matrix circle, holding the energon flows, unless she’s a virgin; it has something to do with nerve currents. Even on the edges of the circle, the women observe strict chastity for a considerable time beforehand. As for you—well, you are going to need every scrap of your nervous energy and strength tonight, and Taniquel knows that. Hence, you get some sleep. Alone. And I might as well warn you, if you haven’t already found it out, that you won’t be much good to a woman for some days afterward. Don’t let it worry you; it’s just a side effect of the energy drains.” He laid a kindly, almost fatherly hand on Kerwin’s wrist. “The trouble is, Jeff, you’ve become so much a part of us that we forget you haven’t always been here; we take it for granted that you’ll know all these things without being told.”
Jeff said in a low voice, touched by Kennard’s warmth, “Thank you—kinsman.” He used the wordwithout selfconsciousness, for the first time. If he had been foster-brother to Cleindori, Jeff’s mother— Kerwin already knew that fosterage, on Darkover, created family ties that were, in many cases, strongerthan those of blood.
He asked on an impulse, “Did you know my father, Kennard?”
Kennard hesitated. Then he said, slowly, “Yes. I suppose you could say I knew him quite well. Not—not as well as I could have wished, or things might have been different. It didn’t help me to changeanything.”
“What was my father like?” Kerwin asked.
Kennard sighed. He said, “Jeff Kerwin? Not much like you; you look like my sister. Kerwin was big anddark and practical; a no-nonsense kind of man. But he had imagination, too. Lewis—my brother—knewhim better than I did. He introduced him to Cleindori.” Kennard frowned suddenly and said, “Look, thisis no time for this. Go and rest.” He sensed that Kennard was troubled. Abruptly, whether because hesensed something, picked up an image from Kennard’s mind, Kerwin asked:
“Kennard, how did my mother die?”
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Kennard’s jaw set in a tight line. He said, “Don’t ask me, Jeff. Before they consented to let you comehere—” He stopped, obviously considering what to say, and Kerwin sensed that the older man washolding himself tightly blocked against Kerwin picking up even a fragment of thought. He said, “I was at Arilinn, too, then. And they asked me to come back because they were so short-handed, after—afterwhat happened. But before they consented to let you come here, they made me—made me swear Iwouldn’t answer certain questions, and that’s one of them. Jeff, the past is
past
. Think of today. Everybody at Arilinn, everybody in the Domains, has to put the past behind us and think of what we’redoing for Darkover and for our people.” There was a hint of old pain in his face, but he was still tightlybarriered.
“Jeff, when you came here, we were all very doubtful about you. But now, win or lose, you’re one of us. True Darkovan—and true Comyn. That thought may not be as reassuring as it would be to have Tani with you,” he added, with an attempt at flippancy, “but it should help, just a little. Now go and sleep—kinsman.”
They sent for him at moonrise. The Arilinn Tower felt strange and still in the deep night, and the matrixchamber was filled with the strange resonating quiet. They gathered, speaking in hushed voices, feelingthe stillness as a living thing around them, a very real presence they hated to disturb. Kerwin felt slack,empty, exhausted. He noticed that Kennard was limping more than usual; Elorie looked sleepy and cross,and Neyrissa spoke sharply when Rannirl made some jocular remark.
Taniquel touched Kerwin’s forehead, and he felt the faint feather-touch of her thoughts, the swift surerapport. He did not flinch away from it now. “He’s all right, Elorie.”
Elorie glanced from Taniquel to Neyrissa. “You monitor, Tani. We need Neyrissa in the circle,” sheexplained, at Neyrissa’s injured glance. “She’s stronger; and she’s been working longer.” To Kerwin,she explained, “When we’re working in a circle like this, we need a monitor outside the circle, and Taniquel’s the best empath we have; she’ll stay in rapport with all of us, so if one of us forgets to breathe,or gets a muscle cramp, she’ll know it before we do, and keep us from being too depleted or damaged. Auster, you hold the barriers,” she directed, adding, for the benefit of the newcomer, “we all drop ourindividual barriers, and he puts up a group barrier which keeps out telepathic eavesdropping; and he’llsense it if anyone tries to interfere with us. In the old days there were alien forces on Darkover; perhaps,for all we know, there still are. The barrier around the gestalt formed by our minds will protect us.”
Kennard was holding a smaller matrix lattice— one of the glass-surfaced screens like the one they hadconstructed. He was turning it this way and that, toward each of them, frowning and making some smalladjustments on a calibrated dial. Lights glowed here and there in its depth. He said, absentmindedly, “Auster’s barrier should hold, but just for safety’s sake I’ll put a damper on, and focus it around the Tower. Second level, Rannirl?”
“Third, I think,” Elorie said.
Kennard raised his eyebrows. “Everyone in the Domains will know that something’s going on in Arilinntonight!”
“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
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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 weresomehow insulated, their very breathing deepening, echoing around them. A faint picture floated throughhis mind, and he knew that Corus had touched him with a fragment of rapport,
a strong glass wallsurrounding 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 andhundreds 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 Elorienever 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 thatsurrounded a Keeper, banning even the most fragmentary physical touch. And yet, even though he couldsee her slender hands folded on the table, he
felt
her reach out her hands to them, and all round the circleit seemed that they linked hands, meshing into a tight grip all round; and yet to Kerwin it seemed, and heknew that each of them shared the sensation, that Elorie held one hand, and Taniquel, the monitor, theother. Kerwin swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, as Elorie’s grey eyes met his; they glimmered, like themolten shimmer of the matrix, and he felt her pick them up like a meshed web drawn between her stronghands, 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 abright colorless luster, each of them with his or her own individual sound and color in the moonglow netthat was Elorie…
Through Kennard’s eyes they saw the map spread on the table. Kerwin floated toward it, and somehowfelt himself soaring out, as if he flew, bodiless, wingless, over a great expanse of countryside, with themagnet strength of the pure metallic sample that lay in the cradle beside the matrix lattice. He seemed tostretch out, infinitely extended, unaware of the limits of his body; then Rannirl projected a swift, whirlingpattern, and Kerwin, without surprise, found himself tracing, with all of his mind and consciousness, amolecular 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.