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“I’m trying to tell you,” Kendricks said, “I was on spaceport duty when the Marshall girl left. I checked the passenger list after they were all drugged and tied-in. She certainly didn’t get off after that, and it’s been reported from Samarra by relay, so how could she be here? The fastest ship made takes seventeen days hyperdrive, between there and here.”
Lawton muttered, “I guess we’ve made prime fools of ourselves. Alton, before I go, can you tell me how the Ridenow brothers died?”
Regis said, “I tried to explain—”
“But it didn’t make sense. You said someone had a trap-matrix out. I know a little about matrices, but that’s a new one on me.”
No Terran can really grasp that concept, but I tried. “It’s a sort of mechanical telepath that conjures up horrifying images from race-memory and superstition. The person who sets one can control the minds and emotions of others. The Ridenow are sensitives — disturbed mental atmospheres affect them physically. This one was so badly disturbed that it short-circuited all the neural patterns. They died of cerebral hemorrhage.”
It was a grossly over-simplified explanation, but Lawton at least seemed to understand. “Yes, I’ve heard of things like that,” he said, and I surprised a strange, bitter look on his face. Then, to my surprise, he bowed.
“Thank you for your co-operation,” he said. “There will be other matters to discuss when you are recovered.
Rafe Scott lingered when the others had gone.
“Look, if I could talk to you by yourself, Lew,” he said, glowering at Regis.
Regis only said with angry contempt, “Get out of here, you filthy Terran half-caste!” He put his hand in the middle of Rafe’s back, giving him a sharp push — more offensive than a blow.
Rafe turned around and hit him.
Regis’ fist slammed into Rafe’s chin. The Terran boy lowered his head, rushed in and clinched, and they swayed back and forth in a struggling, furious grip. AH Regis’ contempt, all the humiliation Rafe had suffered at the hands of the Comyn, exploded; they slammed at each other, the room filled with their pummeling violence. I lay there forgotten by both, yet somehow more a part of the fight than they were themselves. I felt, half deliriously,, that the two halves of myself were slugging it out; the Darkovan Lew, the Terran. Rafe, once almost a brother — Regis, my best friend in the Comyn — both were myself and I was fighting myself, and each blow struck was in my own quarrel.
Andres settled it abruptly by collaring both the angry young men and jerking them violently through the curtains. “If you’ve got to fight,” he growled, “do it outside!”
There was the brief sound of a scuffle, then Regis’ voice, clear and scathing. “I should dirty my hands!”
Somehow, being part of their contention, these words were strangely meaningful; as if my own inward struggle had been somehow resolved.
After a while Andres came in, keeping up a steady monotoned grumble that was vaguely soothing. His hands were gentle as he looked at the half-healed wound at the back of my head; he ignored my profane protests that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself, gri
Time had healed, a little, my grief for Marjorie. My father’s death, bitterly as I regretted it, was more the Comyn’s loss than mine. We had been close, especially toward the end, but I had resented the thing that made me half-caste. Much as I missed him, his death had set me at ease with my own blood. And the murder of Marius was a nightmare thing, mercifully unreal.
But Li
What had killed Li
And then I understood.
I had killed Li
All evening, intuitively, Li
And the bypass circuit in Kathie!s mind had thrown Li
She had gone out like a burnt match.
Havoc had indeed raged in the Comyn. Li
A narrow chink of moonlight lay in a cold streak across my face; in the shadows there was a stir, a step and a whisper. “Lew, are you asleep?”
The dim light picked out a gleam of silvery hair, and Dio, like a pale ghost, looked down at me. She turned and slid the curtains back, letting the light flood the room and the moons peer over her shoulder.
The chilli radiance cooled my hot face. I found no words to question her. I even thought, incuriously, that I might have fallen asleep and be dreaming she was here. I could see the shadow of the bruise lying on her cheek, and murmured, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
She only smiled, half-bewildered. Her voice was as dreamy as the unreal light when she bent down to me.
“Lew, your face is so hot—”
“And yours is so cool,” I whispered. I touched the bruise with my good hand, wanting to kiss it. Her face was in shadow, very grave and still. Suddenly, forcefully, Callina came into my mind. Not the aloof Keeper, but the proud and passionate woman defying the council, refusing before Ashara to bare her mind to my touch—
Dio, too, had feared that. Could any woman endure that intimacy, that bond that was deeper than any physical touch? Callina, remote, precious, untouchable — and Dio, who had been everything to me that a woman can be to a man. Or almost everything. And why was I thinking of Callina, with Dio beside me? She seemed to be forcing the thought on me; so strongly, I was almost constrained to speak the name aloud. Her pallid face seemed to flicker, to be Callina’s own, so dreamishly that I could not believe I was awake.
“Why are you here?”
Dio said, very simply, “I always know when you are in pain or suffering.”
She drew my head to her breast. I lay there with my eyes closed. Her body was warm and cool at once and the scent of her was at once fresh and familiar, the mysterious salty smell of tears mingling with the honey and musk of her hair.
“Don’t go away.”
“No. Never.”
“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you.”
For a moment Callina’s sobs deepened — Callina? Callina? She was almost a physical presence between us; rather the two women blended and were one. To which one had. I whispered my love? I did not know. But the soft arms around me were real.
I held her close, knowing with a sort of sick certainty that — as a woman — I had nothing for her now. The telepath’s personal hell, just as painful as ever.
But it didn’t seem to matter. And suddenly I knew that the Dio I had loved on Vainwal, passionate and superficial and hoydenish, was not the real girl at all. This was the real one. I was not the man she had known there, either.