Thendara House (64 page)

“Come down and I will introduce you to Rafaella n’ha Doria,” she said, and they went down to the Gates.

After a few minutes she could see that the Transport Officer liked Rafaella and would listen to her judgment; so she found them a map, signed Monty’s Requisition order for supplies, and went to join Peter in the cafeteria.

He was gentle and solicitous as he chose foods he had seen her enjoy, but her mind was filled with knowledge of what needed to be said, and after a few bites she put down her fork and said what had been on her mind all morning.

“Peter, I’m sorry I sounded harsh the other night. But it’s true and we must admit it. Our marriage was a terrible mistake. It’s time to end it, dissolve it by whatever means you think suitable, and let it go.”

His face crumpled.

“Oh, Jaelle, I was drunk. Can’t you forgive me? There are compromises to make in every marriage - now, with a baby coming, is this any time for that kind of decision?”

“I think it is the best time for such a decision,” she said, “because everything in my life will change; so this is the right time for that change too.”

“And do I have nothing to say about it? It’s my son too - “

“Daughter,” she corrected automatically and wondered when she had begun believing it.

He fiddled nervously with his fork in a pile of some white mashed root. “Look,” he said, “I admit we’ve both made mistakes - serious ones. But if you’ll try and tell me what bothers you, I’ll try and change. Jaelle, it’s wrong to give up on each other now. Among other things, the kid’s going to need a father. And I want my kid to have the advantages of a Terran education - “

“Surely that can be arranged without continuing to live together,” she said, not looking at him. Where had it gone, all the love?

“It’s a rotten thing to do,” he said angrily. “I didn’t think you were that kind of person. Use me to get Empire citizenship for yourself and the kid, then walk out on me - “

She started to her feet, eyes blazing, physically holding herself back from flinging her crock of soup into his face. “If you can believe that of me, then there is not even any basis for trying further - “

“Oh, God, Jaelle, I didn’t mean it,” he said, rising in his turn, stretching across the table to try to enfold her hands in his. She wrenched them angrily away.

“Jaelle, forgive me. Let’s try again. Remember how it was at Ardais and how happy we were there?”

She did not want to remember; she felt tears raining down her face. He said, capturing her hands again and holding them to his heart, “Please, Jaelle. Darling, don’t cry, don’t. Not here; people will think I’ve been beating you - “

“If you care so much what they think - ” she began, then stopped. She owed him this at least, to finish this in decent privacy. She sighed and turned to follow him out of the cafeteria. But the intercom loudspeaker device interrupted them.

“Peter Haldane, Peter Haldane. Mrs. Haldane, Mrs. Haldane. Please report to the Coordinator’s office at once. Please report to the Coordinator’s office immediately.”

Peter swore. “I wonder what the old bastard wants now? For the love of God, Jaelle, stand by me now, don’t let him get this to hold over me too!” he pleaded. She did not fully understand but picked up something from his mind,
if he thinks I can’t stick out what I finish, if he knows I have nothing to tie me to Darkover
, and sighed. She said, “I won’t make any decision until we have agreed on it, if that’s what you mean,” and let him capture and hold her hand under his arm.

“I’ll never agree to let you go,” he said softly. It sounded like the old tenderness. But under the veneer of tenderness she knew that he was considering what this would do to his career and she hardened her heart again. Side by side, but inwardly as far apart as if they were on separate planets, they walked toward Coordinator Montray’s office.

Outside the clear glass expanse visible from the office, she could see heavy clouds hanging high in the pass. Before nightfall the city would be shrouded with it and the passes, perhaps, uncrossable. Montray was standing there, staring out into the storm, and again like a flash Jaelle caught the picture in his mind, a brilliant sun, a world of shining water and rainbows, and the pain he never allowed to surface because it would do him no good at all, marooned on this icy dark world where… “This doesn’t look much like midsummer to me,” he said grimly, without turning round, “Tell me, Haldane, you’ve lived on this planet all your life, do you ever have anything remotely resembling real summer here?”

“I understand that it’s much warmer in the Dry Towns and it’s much warmer down on the seacoast,” Peter said, “only almost no one lives there.”

“I’ll never understand Head Central,” Montray said, and Jaelle picked up the thought,
sending me here
, and wished she could comfort him somehow, but all he said aloud was “We could have built our spaceport there and not even interfered with the natives, which would have suited
us
and suited
them
and we’d all have been happy. Only first they set us down in a place like Caer Donn, and then they move down here - Jaelle, is there any proverb on this planet which means the same as we do when we say
going from the frying pan into the fire
?”

She picked it up in his mind that Magda had been accustomed to play this game with him, and that he missed Magda though he would never let himself say it or think it. She said gently “We would say,
the game that walks of itself from the trap to the cookpot
.” For the first and last time in her life she came close to liking Russell Montray. She wondered if everyone on the face of this world, or any other, covered desperate sadness with his own defenses, harsh cruelty, nasty humor, icy stone-cold refusal to communicate -
are we all barriered from one another that way? Is there never any way to break through it? Peter and I thought we had found a way, but it was only a pretense
. She was struck with such sadness that she wanted to cry, for herself, for Peter, even for Montray, who hated the very world on which he lived and the very air he breathed, and covered it by being hateful. But she was doing it too, she only wanted to cry and here she was covering her real feelings with obedient compliance because crying simply wasn’t done in offices like this one. She said, anticipating Peter by only a breath, “Surely you didn’t call us down here just to talk about proverbs, Mr. Montray, we were at lunch,” and then before he could answer, before she looked into the darker part of the room, she knew why he had summoned her there, and turned around to say coldly to Rohana “Lady.” She bowed.

But she felt tight all over.
She has come to ask me again what I do not want to do
.

Jaelle, no one living can do only what she wants
. She could read Rohana’s thoughts as if the woman had spoken.
I would have liked to spend my life in a Tower. You would have preferred to be only a Free Amazon. But do you think it is only women? Gabriel would have preferred to spend his life making songs to the lute. And you know better than I what Peter wants and cannot have, and what this man Montray would rather have
…

Is this what it is like to have
laran,
knowing so well what everyone else needs so well that you have no time for your own thoughts and wishes
? And then Jaelle slammed off the awareness, with an effort that turned her pale and cold, while Montray was blandly introducing them to Lady Rohana.

Rohana stretched out her hand and said, “But Jaelle is my kinswoman, Montray, the daughter of a cousin who was raised with me like a sister, and of course I have met her freemate many times. He was my guest last winter.” She went on to make some polite question about Peter’s health and his work.

“At least I don’t have to be out in the storm that’s coming,” Peter said, looking past Montray out the window. “I don’t envy Monty one single bit, starting out for Aldaran in this kind of weather.”

“Storm? I don’t see any damned storm,” said Montray truculently. “Dark and dismal, and nothing like Midsummer, or what I’d call Midsummer on any halfway human-type world - no offense intended, Lady Rohana, but do you
really
like this kind of weather? I suppose you must - “

“Not necessarily,” Rohana said, smiling. “There is an old story; at one time the Gods gave mankind control over the weather, but he foolishly asked only for sunny days, and the crops failed, because there was no rain and snow. So a merciful God took away control again…”

“On most civilized planets,” Montray said glumly, “we’ve
got
control of the weather. That story sounds damn simplistic to me. Don’t you have crop freezes, and floods, and more blizzards than you really need, and wouldn’t it be a blessing if you could have the kind of weather you need for optimum crops and the benefit of your people?”

Rohana shrugged. “It would be difficult to know who could be trusted to arbitrate the weather,” she said, “though I am sure you heard of the work done by people from one of the Towers during the forest fire last season, in bringing rain where it was needed. And that is one of the reasons I have come to you. I am sure you already know, for Peter has told you, that you have in your employ a young woman who is potentially material for a Tower. Jaelle - “

She whirled around, feeling trapped and betrayed. She said, spitting her words out angrily, “Rohana, we had all this out before ever I came here. I have no
laran
- “

Rohana said, very quietly, “Look in my eyes and say that, Jaelle.”

That is what it is; all these last days, the
laran
I barricaded so well all these years, why is it suddenly coming on me now
? “It is my life, and I have renounced that. How dare you come here, Rohana, among the Terrans, and throw this at me now?”

“Because I have no choice, Jaelle. I told you why it is so necessary that you take your rightful place among the Comyn and among the Council - and I have come here because I do not want you to say that your husband and the Terrans who have, I believe, some kind of claim on your services, will not allow you to do your duty to your kinsfolk and to the Domains.”

Jaelle? A seat in Council
? and at once, she knew, Peter was thinking how he could use this to his advantage.
And not even a secret now; my wife on Comyn Council and it will not demand secret Intelligence work, since Rohana has openly come here and spoken of it
.

She could no longer read Montray’s thoughts; perhaps, for her, it took a moment of close sympathy, which they had shared for a moment but not now. Montray said, “I don’t know a lot about the Council, Lady Rohana, but I know it’s been reasonably unsympathetic to our presence here in Thendara - “

“Your presence here in Thendara, Mr. Montray, is a fact, and there is no use quarreling with facts; we must simply determine how to make these facts less traumatic for everyone. I freely admit that there are those on Council who would rather that Jaelle was neither a Free Amazon nor the consort of a Terran, but those too are facts, and must be accepted and taken into account. Perhaps I came here merely to assure myself that you are not preventing Jaelle from doing her duty in this matter -

“We wouldn’t think of it,” Montray said quietly. “It’s none of my business, of course, what she does with her life, but I can assure you, if what she needs is time off to take her place on the Council - “

“This is ridiculous!” Jaelle said angrily. “Why are you doing this, Rohana, and what can it possibly have to do with the Terrans?”

“As I said; the Terrans are a fact; and if one of those who would normally sit on our Council has chosen to use her work for the Terrans as an excuse for not doing her duty - “

“Once and for all I renounced - “

Rohana cut her off with a gesture; but then she sighed, looking very tired. She said, “You and Magda have spoken with me about building a bridge between two worlds; doing this by helping to place Darkovan women, Renunciates, in the Terran HQ as Medical technicians and bringing the Terran medicine, which is excellent, into the life of our city. Would this not be even a better way to build a bridge between worlds, by taking a seat in the Council when you know the Terran ways well because you have married across the wall between our people? You are not, after all, the very first - ” she smiled faintly, “but of course you are not supposed to know that.”