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Kerwin mechanically shredded the paper into bits, his fingers knotting with the frustration he felt. “Tryone more thing,” he said. “Try my father. Jefferson Andrew Kerwin, senior.” He crushed his own printoutin his hands, remembering it had said, no marriages, no recorded liaisons. His father’s marriage, orliaison, with his unknown mother, would have
 
had
 
to be recorded, in order for the older Jeff Kerwin toget Empire citizenship for his son. The procedure had been carefully explained to him when he joined the Civil Service; how to record native marriages—few Empire planets were as tough on fraternization andmixing with natives as Darkover—and how to legitimize a child, with or without Terran marriage. Heknew how it would have to be done. “See when and where my father filed a 784-D application, willyou?”

The man shrugged. “Buddy, you sure are hard to convince. If you had ever been listed on a 784, itwould have showed up on that employment record.”

But he started to punch buttons again, staring at the glassed-in surface where the information appearedbefore the hard copy was printed. Abruptly, he started; his lips pursed. Then he turned and said civilly, “Sorry, Kerwin; no records. Somebody’s steered you wrong; we don’t have any record of a Jeff Kerwinin Civil Service. Nobody but you.”

Kerwin snapped, “You’ve got to be lying! Or what are you gawping at on that screen? Damn it, moveyour hand and let me see it myself!”

The clerk shrugged. “Suit yourself.” But he had punched another button and the screen was blank.

Fury and frustration surged up in Kerwin like a cresting wave. “Damn it, are you trying to tell me I don’texist?”

“Look,” the clerk said wearily, “you can erase an entry in a ledger. But show me anybody who can tamper with the memory banks of CommTerra records, and I’ll show you a cross between a man and a crystoped. According to official records, you came to Darkover for the first time two days ago. Now go down and see Medic and Psych, and quit bothering me!”

How naive do they think I am? CommTerra can be fudged so no outsider can get at the records,if you have the right codes for access
. Someone, for some obscure reason, had fixed it so that hecouldn’t get access to the data.

But why would they bother?

The alternative was what the woman had said. She had thought he was crazy, confabulating, that he hadnever been on Darkover before, that for some reason he was inventing an elaborate Darkovan past forhimself…

Kerwin reached into his pocket, extended a folded bill.

“Try my father again. Okay?”

The clerk looked up, and now Kerwin knew that his guess had been right. It was worth the money,though he couldn’t afford it, to know that he wasn’t crazy. Greed and fear wavered in the man’s face,and finally he said, whisking the bill quickly into his pocket, “Okay. But if the banks are being monitored,it could be my job. And whatever we get, that’s
 
it
 
; no more questions, okay?”

Kerwin watched the programming this time. The machine burped slowly to itself. Then the panel flashed

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a red light, blink-blink-blink, an urgent panic signal. The clerk said softly, “Shunting circuit.” Red letters

flashed on the panel.

REQUESTED INFORMATION AVAILABLE ON PRIORITY CODE ONLY: CLOSED

ACCESS. GIVE VALID ACCESS CODE AND AUTHORITY FOR FURTHER ACCESS.

The letters flashed on and off with hypnotic intensity. Kerwin finally shook his head and motioned andthe clerk shut off the lights. The screen stared back at them, blank and enigmatic.

“Well?” the clerk asked. Kerwin knew he wanted another bribe to try and break the access code, but Kerwin had as good a chance of breaking it as the clerk did. Anyhow, that proved there was
 
something
 
there.

He didn’t know what. But it explained the way the woman at the Orphanage had acted, too.

He turned and went out, resolve slowly hardening in him. He had been drawn back to Darkover—onlyto find greater mysteries awaiting him. Somewhere, somehow, he would find out what they were.

Only he didn’t know where to start.

Chapter Five: The Technician

«^»

He let it alone for the next few days. He had to; breaking in on a new job, however simple the job was,and however similar to the one on his last planet, demanded all his attention. It was a highly specializedbranch of Communications—the testing, calibrating, and occasional repair of the intercom equipmentboth in the HQ building itself and from point to point in the Terran Zone. It was time consuming andtedious rather than difficult, and he often found himself wondering why they bothered to bring Terranpersonnel in from outside, rather than training local technicians. But when he put the question to one of hisassociates, his friend only shrugged:

“Darkovans won’t take the training. They don’t have a technical turn of mind—no good with this sort of thing.” He indicated the immense bank of machinery they were inspecting. “Just naturally that way, I guess.”

Kerwin snorted brief, unamused laughter. “You mean something inborn—some difference in the qualityof their minds?”

The other man glanced at him warily, realizing that he had trodden on a sore place. “You’re Darkovan? But you were brought up by Terrans—you take machinery and technology for granted. As far as I know,they don’t have anything resembling it—never have had.” He scowled. “And they don’t want it, either.”

Kerwin thought about that, sometimes, lying in his bunk in the bachelor quarters of the HQ building, orsitting over a solitary drink in one of the spaceport bars. The Legate had mentioned that point—that the Darkovans were immune to the lure of Terran technology, and had kept out of the mainstream of Empireculture and trade. Barbarians, beneath the veneer of civilization? Or—something less obvious, moremysterious?

During his off-duty hours, sometimes, he strolled down into the Old Town; but he did not wear the

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Darkovan cloak again, and he made sure that his headgear covered the red head. He was giving himselftime to work it through, to be sure what his next move would be. If there was a next move.

Item: the orphanage had no record of a boy named Jefferson Andrew Kerwin, Junior, sent to Terrangrandparents at the age of thirteen.

Item: the main computer banks at the HQ refused to disclose any information about Jefferson Andrew

Kerwin, Senior.

Kerwin was debating what these two facts might have in common—added to the fact that the Terran HQ computer was evidently set in such a way as to give the casual inquirer no information whatever—not even that such a person as his father had ever existed.

If he could find someone he had known at the orphanage, presumably that would be proof, of a sort.

Proof at least that his memories of a life there were real—

They were real. He
 
had
 
to start from there because there was no other place to start. If he begandoubting his own memories, he might as well open the door right now to chaos. So he would go on theassumption that his memory was real, and that for some reason or other, the records had been altered.

During the third week he became aware that he had seen the man Ragan just a little too frequently forcoincidence. At first he thought nothing of it. In the spaceport café, when he saw Ragan at a far tableeach time he entered, he nodded a casual greeting and that was that. After all, the place was public, andthere were doubtless many steady customers and habitués. He was well on the way to being one himself,by now.

But when an emergency failure in the spaceport dispatch office kept him on duty overtime one evening,and he saw Ragan in his usual place at well past the usual hour, he began to notice it. So far, it was just ahunch; but he began to shift his mealtimes and eat at odd hours—and four times out of five he saw theswart Darkovan there. Then he did his drinking in another bar for a day or two; and by now he was surethat he was being shadowed by the man. No, shadowed was the wrong word; it was too open for that. Ragan was making no effort to keep out of Kerwin’s sight. He was too clever to try to force himself on Kerwin as an acquaintance—but he was putting himself in Kerwin’s path and Kerwin had the curioushunch that he wanted to be charged with it, questioned about it.

But why? He thought it through, long and slowly. If Ragan was playing a waiting game, perhaps it wastied in somehow with the other oddities. If he held aloof, and seemed not to notice, maybethey—whoever “they” were—would be forced to show a little more of their hand.

But nothing happened, except that he settled down to the routine of his new job and his new life. In the Terran Zone, life was very much like life in the Terran Zone of any other Empire planet. But he was veryconscious of the world beyond that world. It called to him with a strange hunger. He found himselfstraining his ears in the mixed society of the spaceport bars for scraps of Darkovan conversation;absentmindedly heard himself answer one too many casual questions in Darkovan. And sometimes atnight he would take the enigmatic blue crystal from its place around his neck and stare into its strangecold depths, as if by wanting it fiercely he could bring back the confused memories to which it nowseemed a key. But it lay in his palm, a cold stone, lifeless, giving back no answer to the poundingquestions in him. And then he would thrust it back into his pocket and walk restlessly down to one of thespaceport bars for a drink, again, straining ears and nose for a whiff of something beyond…

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It was three full weeks before the waiting suddenly snapped in him. He spun around from the bar onimpulse, not giving himself time to consider what he would do or say, and strode toward the corner tablewhere the little Darkovan, Ragan, sat over a cup of some dark liquid. He jerked out a chair with his footand lowered himself into it, glowering across the ill-lighted table at Ragan.

“Don’t look surprised,” he said roughly. “You’ve been on my tail long enough.” He fingered in his pocket the edges of the crystal, drew it out, slapped it on the table between them. “You told me about this, the other night—or was I drunker than I think? I’ve got the notion you have something more to say. Say it.”

Ragan’s lean, ferret face looked wary and guarded. “I didn’t tell you anything that any Darkovancouldn’t have told you. Almost anyone would h ave recognized it.”

“Just the same, I want to know more about it.”

Ragan touched it with the tip of a finger. He said, “What do you want to know? How to use it?”

Briefly, Kerwin considered that. No; at present, at least, he had no use for such tricks as Ragan haddone with the crystal, to melt glasses or—whatever else it might do. “Mostly I’m curious to know whereit came from—and why I happened to have one.”

“Some assignment,” Ragan said dryly. “There are only a few thousand of them, I should imagine.” But his eyes were narrowed, not casual at all, although his voice was elaborately casual. “Some of the people at the Terran HQ have been experimenting with the small ones. You could probably get a sizable bonus, or something, by turning this one over to them for experimental purposes.”

“No!” Kerwin heard himself speak the negative before he even knew he had rejected the idea.

“But why come to me?” Ragan asked.

“Because lately I’ve stumbled over you every damn time I turn around, and somehow I don’t think it’s just because you’ve got a yen for my company. You know something about this business, or you want me to think so. First of all, you might tell me who you mistook me for, that first night. Not just you. Everybody who saw me thought I was somebody else. That same night I got slugged and rolled in an alley…”

Ragan’s mouth dropped open; Kerwin could not doubt that he was genuinely shocked.

“… and pretty obviously, it was because I looked like that same
 
somebody
 
—”

“No, Kerwin,” Ragan said. “There you’re wrong. That would have protected you, if anything. It’s a messy business. Look,” he said, “I’ve got no grudge against
you
 
. I’ll tell you this much; it’s because of your red hair—”

“Hell, there are redheaded Darkovans. I’ve met them—”

“You have?” Ragan’s eyebrows lifted, “
 
You
?” He snorted brief, unamused laughter. “Look, if you’re lucky, you got yours from the Terran side. But I’ll tell you this much; if I were you, I’d be on the first ship offplanet, and I wouldn’t stop till I was halfway across the Empire. That’s my advice, dead sober.”