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They asked him questions, and then they didn’t like the answers. Kerwin held back nothing, except thefact of his own matrix, or why he had been there to consult the woman in the first place. But in the end,because there wasn’t a mark on her, and because the woman had obviously not been sexually molested,and because a Terran medic and a Darkovan both gave their independent opinion that she had died of aheart attack, they let him go, and escorted him formally to the edge of the spaceport. They said goodbyeto him there with a certain grim formality that warned him, without words, that if he was found in that partof the city again, they wouldn’t be responsible for what happened.

He thought, then, that he had seen the worst of it, when the blind alley led to a dead end and a deadwoman. Alone in his quarters, pacing the floor like a caged animal, he reviewed it again and again, tryingto make sense of it.

Damn it, there was
purpose
 
behind it! Some one, or something, was
 
determined
 
he should not tracedown his own past. The man and woman, refusing to help him, had said, “It is not for us to meddle in theaffairs of the
 
vai leroni
 
.”

Page 49

That word was unfamiliar to him; he tried to puzzle out the component parts.
 
Vai
 
, of course, was simplyan additional honorific, meaning something like
 
worthy
 
or
 
excellent;
 
as in
 
vai dom
 
, which meant,roughly,
 
worthy lord, good sir, your Excellency
 
, depending on context.
 
Leroni
 
he found under
 
leronis
 
(singular; mountain dialect) and defined as “probably derived from
 
laran
 
, meaning power or inheritanceright, especially inherited psychic power;
 
leronis
 
can usually be translated
sorceress
 
.”

But, Kerwin wondered, frowning, who then were the
 
vai leroni
 
, the worthy sorceresses, and why inthe world—
 
any
world—should anyone believe he was entangled in their affairs?

An intercom buzzer struck through his preoccupation; he growled response into it, then braced himself,for the face of the Legate, in the screen, looked very grim indeed.

“Kerwin? Get yourself up to Administration—on the double!”

Kerwin did as ordered, riding the long elevators to the high, glass-walled penthouse that was the Legate’s staff quarters. As he waited outside Administration, he stiffened, seeing through the open doortwo of the green cross-belted uniforms of City Guardsmen; they came out, walking stiffly on either side ofa tall, straight, silver-haired man whose rich dress and short, jeweled, blue-and-silver cloak betokenedhigh Darkovan aristocracy. All three of them looked straight through Kerwin, and Kerwin felt a naggingsensation that the worst had yet to come.

The receptionist motioned him in. The Legate scowled at him and this time did not ask him to sit down.

“So it’s the Darkovan,” he said, not kindly. “I might have known. What the hell have you been getting

yourself into now?”

He didn’t wait for Kerwin’s answer.

“You were warned,” he said. “You got yourself into trouble before you’d been here a full twenty-eight

hours. That wasn’t enough; you had to go looking for trouble.”

Kerwin opened his mouth to answer, but the Legate gave him no time. “I called your attention to thesituation on Darkover; we live here under an uneasy truce at best; and, such as it is, we have agreementswith the Darkovans. Which includes keeping nosey tourists out of the Old Town.”

The injustice of that made Kerwin’s blood boil.

“Look here, sir, I’m not a tourist! I was born and brought up here—

“Save it,” the Legate said. “You got me just curious enough to investigate that cock-and-bull story you told me about having been born here. Evidently you made the whole thing up, for some obscure reason of your own; there’s no record of any Jeff Kerwin anywhere in the Service. Except,” he added grimly, “the damned troublemaker I’m looking at right now.”

“That’s a lie!” Kerwin burst out in anger. Then he stopped himself. He had seen it himself, the red priority circuit for coded access warning. But he had bribed the man; and the man said,
 
it’s my job on the line
 
.

“This is no world for snoops and troublemakers,” the Legate said. “I warned you once, remember; but I

understand you had to do some pretty extensive nosing around…”

Page 50

Kerwin drew breath, trying to present his case calmly and reasonably. “Sir, if I made this whole thing upout of whole cloth, why would anyone be bothered by what you call my ‘nosing around’? Can’t you seethat if anything this proves my story—that there’s something funny going on?”

“All it proves to me,” said the Legate, “is that you’re a nut with a persecution complex; some notion that

we’re all in a plot to keep you from finding out something or other.”

“It sounds so damned logical when you put it that way, doesn’t it?” Kerwin said, and his voice was

bitter.

“Okay,” the Legate said, “just give me one good reason why anyone should bother plotting against one small-time civil servant, son of—as you claim— a spaceman in the Empire, somebody nobody ever heard of? Why would you be that important?”

Kerwin made a helpless gesture. What could he say to that? He knew his grandparents had existed, andhe had been sent back to them, but if there was no record on Darkover of any Jeff Kerwin excepthimself, what could he say? Why would the woman at the orphanage lie? She had said herself that theywere eager to retain contact with their boys. What proof did he have? Had he built the whole thing upfrom wishful thinking? His sanity reeled.

With a long sigh he let the memories go, and the dream.

“All right, sir, I’m sorry. I’ll stay out of it; I won’t try to find out anything more—”

“You won’t have the chance,” the Legate said coldly, “you won’t be here.”

“I won’t— ” Something struck, grim and knife-cold, in Kerwin’s heart. The Legate nodded, his face

rigid.

“The City Elders put your name on a list of
persona non grata
 
,” he said. “And even if they hadn’t,

official policy is to take a dim view of anybody who gets too mixed up in native affairs.”

Kerwin felt as if he had been pole-axed; he stood motionless, feeling the blood drain from his face,leaving him cold and lifeless. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I put you down for transfer out,” the Legate said. “You can call it that if you want to. In plain words, you’ve stuck your big nose into too many corners, and we’re making damned sure you don’t do it again. You’re going to be on the next ship out of here.”

Kerwin opened his mouth and then shut it again. He steadied himself against the Legate’s desk, feelingas if he might fall over if he didn’t. “You mean I’m being deported?”

“That’s about it,” the Legate confirmed. “In practice, it’s not that bad, of course. I signed it as if it were a routine transfer application; God knows, we get enough of them from out here. You have a clean record, and I’ll give you a clean-sheet recommendation. Within limits, you can have any assignment you’ve got the seniority for; see the Dispatch board about it.”

Kerwin said, through a queer thickening lump in his throat, “But sir, Darkover— ” and stopped. It washis home. It was the only place he wanted to be.

Page 51

The Legate shook his head, as if he could read Kerwin’s thoughts. He looked tired, worn, an old man, aweary man, struggling with a world too complex for him. “I’m sorry, son,” he said, kindly. “I guess Iknow how you feel. But I’ve got a job to do and not an awful lot of leeway in how I do it. That’s the wayit is; you’re going to be on the next ship out of here. And don’t put in an application to come back,because you won’t get it.” He stood up. “I’m sorry, kid,” he said, and offered his hand.

Kerwin did not touch it. The Legate’s face hardened.

“You’re relieved from duty as of now; inside twenty-eight hours, I want a formal transfer request filled out, with your preferred routing for assignment; if I have to do it for you, I’ll put you through for the penal colony on Lucifer Delta. You’re confined to quarters till you leave.” He bent over his desk, shuffling the papers there. Without looking up, he said, “You can go.”

Kerwin went. So he had lost, then—lost entirely. It had been too big for him, the mystery he faced; hehad run up against something entirely beyond him.

The Legate had been lying. He had known that, when the man offered him his hand at the last.

The Legate had been forced to send him into exile, and he didn’t particularly want to
…

Going back into his bleak rooms, Kerwin told himself not to be a fool. Why would the Legate lie? Washe a dreamer, a fool with delusions of persecution, compensating for his orphan childhood with dreams ofgrandeur?

He paced the floor, went restlessly to the window, staring at the red sun dipping toward the hills.
 
Thebloody sun
 
. Some romantic poet had given Cottman’s Star that name a long time ago. As the swift darkcame rushing from the mountains, he clenched his fists, staring into the sky.

Darkover. It’s the end of Darkover for me. The world I fought for, and it’s kicking me out again. I worked and schemed to get back here, and it’s all going for nothing. All I get is frustration,closed doors, death…

The matrix is real. I didn’t dream that, or invent it. And that belongs to Darkover…

He put his hand into his pocket and drew out the blue jewel. Somehow this was the key to the mystery,the key to all the closed doors slammed in his face. Maybe he should have shown it to the Legate… no.

The Legate knew perfectly well that Kerwin was telling the truth; only, for some reason, he had chosennot to admit it. Faced with the matrix, he would simply have invented some other lie.

Kerwin wondered how he knew the man had been lying. But he
 
knew
 
. Beyond a doubt, withouthesitation, he knew the man had been lying, for some obscure reason of his own. But
 
why
 
?

He drew the curtains against the blackness outside, the lights of the spaceport below, and set the crystalon the table. He paused, hesitant, seeing in his mind’s eye the picture of a woman sprawled in unlovelydeath, the terror that had risen in him…

I saw something when she was looking into the matrix, but I can’t remember what it was. I onlyremember that it scared the hell out of me
. … A woman’s face flickered in his mind, dark formsagainst an opening door… He set his teeth against the surging panic, battering against the closed door ofhis memory, but he could not remember; only the fear, the scream in a child’s voice and darkness.

Page 52

He told himself sternly not to be a fool. The man Ragan had used this crystal and it hadn’t hurt him. Feeling self-conscious, he laid the crystal on the table and shaded his eyes as the woman had done,staring into it.

Nothing happened.

Damn it, maybe there was a special knack to it, maybe he should have hunted up Ragan and persuadedhim, or bribed him, to teach him how to use it. Well, too late for that now. He stared fiercely into thecrystal, and for a moment it seemed that a pale light flickered inside it, crawling blue lights that made himfeel vaguely sick. But it vanished. Kerwin shook his head. He had a crick in his neck and his eyes wereplaying tricks on him, that was all. The old “crystal-gazing” trick was just a form of self-hypnosis, he’dhave to guard against that.

The light remained. It crept, a small faint pinpoint of color moving inside the jewel. It
flared
 
, and Kerwin jumped; it was like a red-hot wire touching something inside his brain. And then he heardsomething, a voice very far away, calling his name… no. There were no words. But it was speaking to
him
 
, to no one else who had ever existed, a vastly
personal
 
message. It was something like,
 
You. Yes,you. I see you
 
.

Or, even more,
 
I recognize you
 
.

Dizzily he shook his head, gripping at the edge of the table with his fists. His head hurt, but he could notstop now. It seemed that he could hear speech, just random syllables… a low murmuring voice, orvoices, that went on and on just below the threshold of awareness, like a running, whispering streammurmuring over sharp stones.

Yes, he is the one.

You cannot fight it now.

Cleindori worked too hard for this to waste it.

Does he know what he has or what is happening?

Be careful! Don’t hurt him! He’s not accustomed…

A barbarian, Terranan…

If he is to be any good to us, he must find his way alone and unaided, that much of a test I mustinsist upon.