A World Divided (72 page)

He said, “How long have you been on Darkover?“

“Five years.” Barron asked, “Why?”

“No particular reason, except that—perhaps it is that you speak our language well for such a newcomer. But no man is so young he cannot teach, or so old he cannot learn; we shall be glad to know what you can teach us about the making of lenses. Be welcome to my hearth and my home.” He bowed again and withdrew. Several times during that long evening, the warm and plentiful meal, and the long, lazy period by the fire—which came between the end of supper and the time they were shown to their bed—-the Terran felt that the Darkovan lord’s eyes were resting on him with a curious intentness.

Nevertheless, his sense of confusion did not keep him from eating hugely of the warm, good meal served for the travelers, and enjoying the strange green, resinous wine they drank afterward. The fuzziness from the strong wine seemed to make him less confused about the fuzziness which blurred his surprise at all things Darkovan, and after a while it was pleasant to feel simply drunk instead of feeling that he was watching the scene through two sets of eyes. He sat and sipped the wine from the beautifully carved, green crystal of the goblet, listening to Valdir’s young foster daughter Cleindori playing a small harp which she held on her lap, and singing in a soft pentatonic scale some endless ballad about a lake of cloud where stars fell on the shore and a woman walked, showered in stars.

It was good to sleep in the high room hung with translucent curtains and filled with shifting lights; Barron, accustomed to sleeping in a dark room, looked for twenty minutes for a switch to shut them off, then gave up, got into bed and lay watching them drowsily. The shifting colors shifted his mind into neutral gear, and produced colored patterns even behind his closed eyelids, until he slept.

He slept heavily, dreaming strange swooping dreams of flight, watching landscapes tipping and shifting below, and hearing a voice calling in his dreams, again and again, “Find the road to Carthon! Melitta will await you at Carthon! To Carthon ... Carthon ... Carthon. ...”

He woke once, half-dazed, the words still ringing in his ears when he thought sleep had gone. Carthon. Why should he want to go there; and who could make him go? Banishing the thought, he lay down and slept again, only to dream again of the voice that called—murmuring, beseeching, commanding—
“Find the road to Carthon ...”

After a long time the dream changed. He was toiling down endless stairs, breaking sharp webs with his outstretched hands, blinded except for a greenish, phosphorescent glow from damp walls that pressed all around him. It was icy cold, and his steps came slow, and his heart beat hard, and the same question pounded in his head:
“Carthon. Where is Carthon?”

With the sunrise and the thousand small amenities and strangenesses of life in a Darkovan home, he tried to drive the dream away. He wondered again, dispassionately, if he was going mad.
In God’s name, what spell has this damned planet woven around me?

In an attempt to break the bondage of these compelling dreams or sorceries, half through the day, he sought out Lerrys and said to him, “Your foster father, or whatever he is, was supposed to explain my work to me, and I’m anxious to get started. We Terrans don’t like idling around when there is work to be done. Will you ask your father if he can see me now?”

Lerrys nodded. Barron had noticed before that he seemed to be more practical and forthright than the average Darkovan and less concerned with formalities. “There is, of course, no pressure on you to begin your work at once, but if you prefer it, my guardian and I are at your service whenever you wish. Shall I have your equipment brought up?”

“Please.” Something he had said touched Barron with incongruity. “I thought Valdir was your father.”

“Foster father.” Again Lerrys appeared to be on the point of saying something, but he withheld it. “Come, I’ll take you to his study.”

It was a smallish room, as Darkovans counted space. Barron thought that at home it would have been a good-sized banquet hall. It looked down on the enclosed court; with alternating layers of glass and translucent stone. It was bitterly cold, although neither Valdir nor Lerrys appeared to suffer from it; the two wore only the linen shirts Darkovan men wore beneath their fur tunics. Outside below them, men were coming and going in the courtyard; Valdir stood and watched them for some minutes, while seeming courteously not to notice how Barron hung over the one small brazier to warm his hands; then he turned back, smiling in welcome.

“Last night in the hall I could give you only formal greetings; I am very glad to see you here, Mr. Barron. It was Lerrys and I who arranged that someone from the Terran city should come to teach us something of lens grinding.”

Barron grinned a little sourly. “It’s not my regular work, but I know enough about it to show beginners. So you arranged for me to come here? I thought you people didn’t think much of Terran science.”

Valdir gave him a sharp look. He said, “We have nothing against Terran science. It is Terran
technology
we fear—that Darkover will become just another link in a chain of worlds, all as much alike as sands scattered on the shore, or weeds along the path of the Terrans. But these are matters of politics—or, perhaps, of philosophy, and to be discussed over good wine at night, not offhand while we work together. I think you will find us ready to learn.”

For the last several moments, while he spoke, Barron had been conscious of some low-keyed irritation, like a sound just at the edge of consciousness, which he couldn’t quite hear. It made his head ache, and made it hard to hear Valdir’s words. He looked around to identify, if he could, what was making the—noise? He couldn’t quite hear it. He tried to concentrate on what Valdir was saying; he had missed a sentence or two.

“—and so, you can see, in the foothills, the sight of a sharp-eyed man may be enough, but in the high Sierras, where it’s absolutely imperative that any trace of fire must be discovered before it gets out of hand, a lens—what do you call it, a telescope?—would be an invaluable help. It could save acres and acres of timber. Fire in the dry season is such a constant hazard—” He broke off; Barron was moving his head restlessly from side to side, his hand to his forehead. The sound or vibration or whatever it was seemed to fill every crevice of his skull. Valdir said in surprise, “The telepathic damper disturbs you?”

“Telepathic which? But
something
seems to be making one hell of a racket in here. Sorry, sir—”

“Not at all,” Valdir said. He went to what looked like an ornamental carving and twisted a knob on it; the invisible noise slackened, and Barron’s head quieted to normal. Valdir looked surprised.

“I am sorry; not one Terran in five hundred will know such a device exists, and I had simply forgotten to disconnect it. My deepest apologies, Mr. Barron; are you well? Can I offer you anything?”

“No, I’m all right,” Barron said, realizing that he was back to normal again, and wondering what the gadget was. He had the usual Terran notion that Darkover, being a planet without a great deal of manufacturing or technology, was a barbarian one, and the idea of some sort of electronic device functioning out here well beyond the Terran Zone seemed as incongruous as a tree growing in the middle of a spaceport.

“Is this your first trip into the mountains?” Valdir asked.

“No, but the first time I had crossed the plains.” Barron caught himself. What was the matter with him? That gadget and its weird noises seemed to have unsettled his brain. “Yes, I’ve never been outside the Terran Zone before this.”

“Of course you haven’t seen any real mountains yet,“ Lerrys said. “These are just foothills, really, compared to the Hellers or the Hyades or the Lorillard Ranges.”

“There’s quite enough mountain for me,” Barron said. “If these are foothills, I’m not in any hurry to see anything higher.”

As if to refute what he had said, a picture sprang to swift life in his brain:
I had expected Armida to be like this, a great gray peaked castle lying beneath the chasmed tooth of the mountain, beneath the snow-laden crag with its high plume of snow.

Barron let his breath out as the picture faded, but before he could think of anything to say, the door opened and Gwynn, now wearing what looked like a green and black uniform, came in, accompanied by two men carrying between them Barron’s crate of lens materials and grinding tools. They set it down, under his instructions, and removed the heavy straps, buckles and padding which had protected it on the trip. Valdir thanked the men in an unfamiliar dialect, Gwynn lingered to ask a couple of routine questions, and when the men went away, Barron was once more composed and in possession of himself.
Okay, maybe I’ve had something like a nervous breakdown in the Terran Zone, and it’s still showing in intermittent brainstorms. It doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going insane, and it certainly needn’t inhibit the work I’m going to be doing.
He was glad to have the chance to collect himself by talking about familiar things.

He had to admit that for men without a standard scientific education, Valdir and Lerrys showed a good deal of comprehension and asked intelligent questions about what he had told them. He gave them a very brief history of lenses—from microscope to telescope to refracting lens for myopia, to binocular lens.

“You realize this is all very elementary,” he added apologetically. “We’ve had simple lenses from our pre-history; it’s a pre-atomic development on most planets. Now we have the various forms of radar, coherent light devices, and the like. But when men on Terra first started experimenting with light, the lens was our first step in that direction.”

“Oh, it’s quite understandable,” said Valdir, “you needn’t apologize. On a planet like Terra, where the random incidence of clairvoyance is so low, it’s perfectly natural that men would turn to such experiments.” Barron stared; he hadn’t been apologizing.

Lerrys caught his eye and gave Barron a brief, humorous wink, then frowned slightly at his guardian, and Valdir caught himself and continued. “And of course, it’s our good fortune that you have developed this technique. You see, Mr. Barron, here on Darkover, throughout
our
pre-history, we were a world where the so-called ESP powers were used, in place of gadgets and machinery, to augment and supplement man’s five senses. But so many of these old powers have been lost, or forgotten, during what we call the Years of Chaos, just before the Compact, that now we are forced to supplement our unaided senses with various devices. It’s necessary, of course, to be very careful which devices we allow into our society; as the history of all too many planets will show, technology is a two-edged weapon, which can be abused more often than it is used. But we have studied the probable impact on our society quite carefully, and decided that with elementary caution the introduction of lenses will do no palpable harm in the forseeable future.”

“That’s good of you,” said Barron ironically. If Valdir was conscious of the sarcasm he let it pass without comment. He said, “Larry, of course, has a fairly good technical education, and can make things clear to me if I can’t understand. Now, about power sources for your machinery and equipment, Mr. Barron. I trust you were warned that very little electricity is available, and only in the lowest of voltages?”

“That’s all right. I have mostly hand equipment, and a small generator which can be adapted to work by wind power.”

“Wind is something we have plenty of back here in the mountains,” said Lerrys with a friendly grin. “I was the one who suggested wind power instead of storage batteries.”

Barron began putting the various bits of equipment back into their case. Valdir rose and went to the window, pausing beside the carved ornament which hid the strange electronic gadget. He asked abruptly, “Mr. Barron, where did you learn to speak Darkovan?”

Barron shrugged. “I’ve always been fairly quick at languages.” Then he frowned; he had a good working knowledge of the language spoken in the city near the Trade Zone; but he had given what amounted to a long and fairly technical lecture, without once hesitating, or calling on the young man—Larry or Lerrys or whatever Valdir called him—to interpret. He felt strangely confused and troubled.
Had
he been speaking Darkovan all that time? He hadn’t stopped to think what language he was speaking.
Damn it, what is wrong with me?

“Nothing is wrong,” said Lerrys quickly. “I told you, Valdir. No, I don’t understand, either. But—I gave him my knife.”

“It was yours to give, fosterling, but I don’t disapprove.”

“Look out,” Lerrys said quickly, “he can hear us.“ Valdir’s sharp eyes swept in the direction of Barron, who suddenly realized that the two Darkovans had been speaking in yet another language. Barron’s confusion made him angry. He said, with dry asperity, “I don’t know Darkovan courtesy, but among my people it is considered fairly rude to talk over someone’s head,
about
them.”

“I’m sorry,” Lerrys said. “I had no idea you could hear us, Dan.”

“My foster son, of all people, should know about latent telepaths,” Valdir said. “I am sorry, Mr. Barron; we intended no rudeness. Telepaths, among you Terrans, are not common, though they are not unknown, either.”

“You mean I’m reading your minds?”

“In a sense. It’s far too complex a subject to explain in a few minutes. For the moment I suggest you think of it as a very good sort of talent to have for the work you’re going to be doing, since it will make it easy for you to talk to people, when you know only a little of their language.”

Barron started to say,
But I’m no telepath, I’ve never shown any talent for that sort of thing, and when the Rhines gave me the standard psi test for the Space Service, I tested out damn near flat negative.
Then he withheld it. He had been learning a lot about himself lately, and it was certain that he wasn’t the same man he had been before. If he developed a few talents to go with his hallucinations, that was perhaps the law of compensation in action. It had certainly made it easier to talk to Valdir, so why complain?