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Kerwin scowled, impatient. Of course he looked familiar to himself. What was the
 
matter
 
with him?

And this was the answer, too; the clerk had simply taken him for a Darkovan, perhaps someone he knewby sight, and directed him into the reserved room. In fact, that would explain Ragan, too, and theredhead in the restaurant; he had a double, or near-double on Darkover, some big redhead of about hissize and coloring, and that deceived people, with a quick look.

“You’re here early,
 
com’ii
 
,” said a voice behind him, and Kerwin turned and saw her.

He thought at first that she was a Terran girl, because of the red-gold hair clustered in curls atop hersmall head. She was slight and slim, wearing a simple gown that clung to dainty curves. Kerwin quicklyaverted his eyes—staring at a Darkovan woman in public is insolence punishable by a beating or worse,if any of the woman’s relatives are around and care to take offense—but she returned his gaze frankly,smiling with welcome, and so, even on second thoughts, he believed for a moment she was a Terran,despite her Darkovan speech.

“How did you get here? I thought we had decided to come with our respective Towers,” she said, and Kerwin stared. He felt his face heating, and not from the fire. “My apologies,
 
domna
 
,” he said in the language of his childhood. “I didn’t realize that this was a private room; I was directed here by mistake. Forgive the intrusion; I will go at once.”

She stared at him, her smile fading. “But what are you thinking of?” she demanded. “We have manythings to discuss— ” She stopped. Then she said, uncertainly, “Have I made a mistake?”

Kerwin said, “Somebody’s made one, that’s for sure.” His voice trailed away on the last words,realizing that she was
 
not
 
speaking the language of Thendara, but some language he had never heardbefore. And yet he had understood her, so well that for a moment he had not realized that she hadspoken an unfamiliar language.

Her mouth dropped open, and she said, “In the name of the Son of Aldones and his divine Mother, whoare you?”

Kerwin started to say his name; then realized it could not possibly mean anything to her, and that red impof anger, held in abeyance for a few moments because he was talking to a beautiful woman, deviled himagain. This was the second time tonight—no, the third. Damn it, that double of his must be quite a fellow,

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if he was recognized simultaneously in a spaceport dive, and in the private reserved suite of Darkovan

aristocracy—for the girl could not possibly be anything else.

He said, with the heaviest irony he could manage, “Don’t you recognize me, lady? I’m your big brother Bill, the black sheep of the family, who ran away to space when he was six years old and I’ve been heldcaptive by space pirates in the Rim Worlds ever since. Find out in the next installment.”

She shook her head, uncomprehending, and he realized that language, and satire, and the allusions hehad made, would mean less than nothing to her. Then she said in that language he understood, if he didn’tthink too hard about it, “But surely you are one of us ? From the Hidden City, perhaps ? Who are you?”

Kerwin scowled impatiently, too annoyed to carry the game any further. He almost wished that the manshe had mistaken him for would walk in right now so he could punch him in the face.

“Look, you’re mistaking me for someone else, girl. I don’t know anything about your Hidden City—it’s hidden too well or something. What planet is it on? You’re not Darkovan, are you?” For her manners were certainly not those of a Darkovan woman.

If she had seemed startled before, now she appeared thunderstruck. “And yet you understood thelanguage of Valeron? Listen to me,” she began again, and this time she was speaking the City dialect of Thendara. “I think we must have this clearly understood. There is something very strange here. Wherecan we talk together?”

“We’re doing fine, right here and now,” Kerwin said. “I may be new to Darkover, but not
 
that
 
new; I’m not crazy about having your relatives file an intent-to-murder on me before I’ve been here twenty-four hours, in case you have some touchy male relatives. If you
 
are
 
Darkovan.”

The small pixielike face screwed up in a puzzled little smile. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “You don’tknow who I am, and what’s worse, you don’t know
what
 
I am. I was sure that you must be from one ofthe remoter Towers, someone I have never seen before face to face, but only in the relays. Perhapssomeone from Hali, or Neskaya, or Dalereuth…”

Kerwin shook his head.

“I’m no one you know, believe me,” he said. “I wish you’d tell me who you mistook me for; I’d like to

meet him, whoever he is, if I have a double in this city. It might answer a few questions for me.”

“I can’t do that,” she said, hesitant, and he sensed that now, under his opened Darkovan cloak, she had

seen the Terran uniform. “No, please don’t go. If Kennard were here—”

“Tani, what is this?” A low, harsh voice broke in, and in the mirrored wall Kerwin saw a man walking toward them. He turned to face the newcomer, wondering—so mad had the world become—if he would see a mirror image of himself. But he didn’t.

The newcomer was slight, tall, fair-skinned, with thick red-gold hair. Kerwin detested him on sight, evenbefore he recognized the red-haired man with whom he’d had that brief and unsatisfactory confrontationin the bar. The Darkovan took in the scene at a glance, and his face took on the look of scandalizedconventionality.

“A stranger here, and you alone with him, Taniquel?”

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“Auster, I only wanted—” the girl protested.

“A
 
Terranan
 
!”

“I thought, at first, he was one of us, perhaps from Dalereuth.”

The Darkovan favored Kerwin with a contemptuous glance. “He’s an Arcturian lizard-man— or so hetold me,” he said with a sneer. Then he spoke to the girl, a rush of words in, Kerwin thought, the samelanguage she had spoken, but so rapidly that he could not understand a single word of what the man said. He didn’t need to; the tone and gestures told Kerwin all he needed to know. The redhead was mad ashell.

A deeper, mellower voice interrupted. “Come, Auster, it can’t be as bad as all that. Come, Taniquel, tellme what this is all about, and don’t tease, child.” A second man had come into the room. And he toowas one of the redheads. Where were they all coming from, tonight? This one was heavy-set, a burlyman, tall and strongly built; but his red hair was dashed with long streaks of grey, and a close-cut, greyingbeard surrounded his face. His eyes were almost hidden behind ridged brows so thick as to approximatedeformity. He walked stiff-legged, leaning on a thick, copper-headed walking stick. He looked straight at Kerwin and said, “
 
S’dia shaya;
I’m Kennard, third in Arilinn. Who is your Keeper?”

Kerwin was sure he said
Keeper
 
. It was a word that could also be translated as
 
Warden
 
, or

Guardian
 
.

“They usually let me out without one,” he said dryly. “At least they have so far.”

Auster said, quickly and mockingly, “You’re wrong too, Kennard. Our friend is an—an Arcturiancrocodile-man, or so he claims. But, like all Terrans, he lies.”

“Terran!” Kennard exclaimed, “but that’s impossible!” And he seemed as shocked as the girl.

Kerwin had had enough of this. He said sharply, “Far from being impossible, it is perfectly true; I am acitizen of Terra. But I spent my early years on Darkover, and I learned to think of it as home, and tospeak the language well. Now, if I have intruded or offended, please accept my apologies; and I wishyou good night.” He turned on his heel and started to leave the room.

Auster muttered something that sounded like “crawling rabbithorn!”

Kennard said, “Wait.” Kerwin, already halfway out the door, paused at the man’s courteous, persuasivevoice. “If you have a few minutes, I’d really like to talk with you, sir. It could be important.”

Kerwin glanced at the girl Taniquel, and almost yielded. But one look at Auster decided him. He didn’twant any trouble with that one. Not on his first night on Darkover. “Thank you,” he said pleasantly. “Another time, perhaps. Please accept my apologies for intruding on your party.”

Auster spat out a mouthful of words, and Kennard gave in gracefully, bowed, and spoke a politeformula of farewell. The girl Taniquel stared after him, sobered and stricken, and he hesitated again, onan impulse, realizing that he should stop, change his mind, demand the explanation that he suspected Kennard could give. But he had gone too far to back down and keep any dignity at all. He said, “Again,good night,” and felt the door swing shut between himself and the redheads. He felt a curious sense ofdefeat and apprehension as he crossed the lobby. A group of Darkovans, most of them in longceremonial capes like his own—no surrender here to the cheap imported clothing—crossed the lobby in

Page 28

the other direction and went through the door he had just vacated. Kerwin noticed that there were some redheads among them, too, and there was murmuring among the crowd in the lobby; again he caught the murmured word
 
Comyn
 
.

Ragan had spoken that word, about the jewel he had around his neck;
fine enough for Comyn
 
. Kerwin searched his memory; the word meant, only,
 
equals
 
— those who stood in rank equal to one’sown. That wasn’t how they had used the word, though.

Outside, the rain had dissolved into stinging mist. A tall man in a green and black cape, red head heldhigh, brushed past Kerwin and said, “Inside, quick, you’ll be late,” and went on into the Sky Harbor Hotel. It seemed like a curious place for a group of Darkovan aristocrats to hold a family reunion, butwhat did he know about it? A wild thought darted into his mind that perhaps he ought to crash the partyand demand to know if anyone had lost a young relative about thirty years ago. But it was only a wildnotion, dismissed as soon as it had arisen.

In the dark street, glazed underfoot now with the icy rain, which froze as it fell, the thick sleet cut offmoon or stars. The lights of the HQ gates burned with a yellow glare. Kerwin knew that there he wouldfind warmth and familiar things, shelter, assigned place and even friends. Ellers had probably wakened,found him gone, and returned to the HQ.

But what would he find there if he did return? A set of assigned rooms exactly like those on his lastplanet, cold and bare with the antiseptic institutional smell; a library of films carefully censored so as notto raise too many unmanageable emotions; meals exactly the same as he would have had on any other Terran Empire planet, so that the workers likely to be transferred at any moment would not have to sufferany digestive discomforts or period of adjustment; and the society of other men like himself, who lived onfantastically alien worlds by turning their backs on them, to live in the same dull familiar world of the Terrans.

They lived on alien worlds under alien suns just as they lived on Terra—unless, that was, they wanted togo out and raise hell; when they sought the worst, not the best, of that alien beauty. Potent drink, womenwho were willing, if not too appealing, and a place to spend their spare pay. The real worlds lay, wouldalways lie, a million miles out of their reach. As far out of their reach as the red-haired, smiling girl whohad smiled and greeted him as
 
com’ii
 
, friend.

He turned, again, away from the gates of the HQ. Outside the circle of spaceport bars, tourist traps,whorehouses, and exhibitions, there must be a real Darkover out there somewhere, the world he hadknown when he was a boy in the city, the world that had haunted his dreams and jerked him out from hisnew roots on Terra. But why had he ever had those dreams? Where had they come from? Certainly notfrom the clean, sterile world of the Spacemen’s Orphanage!

Slowly, as if wading through mud, he walked toward the old town, his fingers knotting the fastenings ofthe Darkovan cloak about his throat. His Terran-made boots rang hard on the stone. Whatever peopletook him for, it wouldn’t hurt to go looking around a little. This was his own world. He had been bornhere. He was no naive Terran spaceman, unsafe outside the spaceport quarter. He knew the city, or hadknown it once, and knew the language. All right, so Terrans weren’t specially welcome in the Old Town. He wouldn’t go as a Terran! Wasn’t it a Terran who had once said,
 
Give me a child till he is sevenyears old, and anyone who wants him can have him after that
 
. That grim old saint had the right idea;by that reckoning, Kerwin was Darkovan and always would be, and now he was home again and hewasn’t going to be kept away!

There were not many people in the streets now. A few, in cloaks and furs, moving head-down against

Page 29

the bitter biting wind. A shivering girl, hugging an inadequate fur smock about her, gave Kerwin a hopeful glance and murmured to him in the old tongue of the city, which Kerwin had spoken before he could lisp three words of nursery Terran (how did he know that?). And he hesitated, for she was shy and soft-voiced and wholly different from the hard-eyed girl in the spaceport bar, but then her eyes raised to his red hair and she murmured unintelligibly and fled.