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“I can,” she flared. “But I won’t! Do your own dirty work!”

“Kennard can,” Neyrissa said, and Auster frowned. “Yes. But he’s prejudiced—in Jeff’s favor. He’s

standing foster-father to him here!”

Kennard’s voice was quiet and dangerous. “If you dare assume that I, who have been mechanic at

Arilinn since before the Changes, would falsify my oath—”

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Rannirl raised his hand to stop them both. “I’ll build it,” he said. “Not because I’m on your side, Auster,but because we have to settle this one way or the other. Jeff—” He turned to Kerwin. “Do you trustme?”

Kerwin nodded. He wasn’t sure what a trap matrix was; but with Rannirl in charge of it, he was sure thetrap wouldn’t be set for
 
him
 
.

“All right, then,” Rannirl said. “That’s settled. So until we can set the trap matrix for the next circle, can’t

you two declare a truce?”

Jeff felt like saying,
 
the hell I can
 
, and he knew, looking at Auster’s sullen face, that the other man wasequally unwilling. How could telepaths pretend? But Taniquel was on the edge of tears; and Jeff suddenlyshrugged. What the hell, it wouldn’t hurt him to be civil; Auster only wanted to know the truth, and thatwas one thing they were agreed on anyhow. He said with a shrug, “I’ll let him alone if he lets me alone. Agreed?”

Auster’s taut face relaxed. He said, “Agreed.”

With the decision made, the tension relaxed and the next phase of the work began with an atmospherethat was, by contrast, almost friendly. This time they had to build a matrix lattice for the work known as “clearing”—which had not been done on this scale since the great days of the Comyn, when Towersdotted the land, giving power and technology to all the Domains.

They had located mineral and ore deposits and marked them for richness and accessibility. In the nextstep they would separate the deposits from the other minerals that contaminated them, so that the copperand other metals could be mined in a pure form without need for refining. Drop by drop, atom by atom,deep within the earth, by tiny shiftings of energy and force, the pure metals would be separated from theores and the rock. Corus spent more time with his molecular models, fussing over precise weights andproportions. And this time, Elorie, with Rannirl, specially asked for Kerwin’s help in placing the crystalswithin their lattices. He was required to hold complex molecular patterns clearly visualized on a monitorscreen, so that Elorie and Rannirl could place the blank crystals precisely inside the amorphous layers ofglass. He learned things about atomic structure that even the Terran scientists did not know—hiseducation in physics, for instance, had told him nothing about the nature of
energons
 
. It was wearyingwork, monotonous and nerve-racking rather than physically taxing, and always at the back of his mindwas the knowledge of the test that would come with the trap matrix, whatever that was.

I want to know the truth, whatever it is
.

Whatever it is?

Yes. Whatever it is.

One day they were working in one of the matrix laboratories, Jeff holding the complex internal crystalstructure visualized for the monitor screen, when suddenly he saw the lattice structure blur together; meltinto a blue flare and streak. Pain knifed through him; hardly knowing what he did, Jeff acted on pureinstinct. He swiftly cut the rapport between Rannirl and Elorie, blanked the screens, and caught Elorie’sfainting body as she fell. For a panicked moment he thought she was not breathing; then her eye-lashesmoved and she sighed.

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“Working too hard, as usual,” said Rannirl, staring down at the lattice. “She
 
will
 
keep on, even when I beg her to rest. Good thing you caught her, Jeff, just when you did; otherwise we’d have the whole lattice to rebuild, and that would cost us a tenday. Well, Elorie?”

Elorie was crying weakly in exhaustion, lying limp in Jeff’s arms. Her face was deathly white, and hersobs shallow as if she no longer had the strength to breathe. Rannirl took her from Jeff’s arms, lifting herlike a small child, and carried her out of the lab. He flung back over his shoulder, “Get Tani up here, andhurry!”

“Taniquel went with Kennard in the airlaunch,” Kerwin said.

“Then I’d better go up and try to get them in the relays,” Rannirl said, kicked the nearest door open with his foot. It was one of the unused rooms; it looked as if no one had set foot in it for decades. He laid the girl down on a couch covered with dusty tapestry, while Kerwin stood helplessly in the door. “Anything I can do?” he asked.

“You’re an empath,” Rannirl said, “and qualified as a monitor; I haven’t done it in years. I’ll go up and

try to get Neyrissa, but you’d better monitor her and see if her heart’s all right.”

And suddenly Kerwin remembered what Taniquel had done for him on that first night of testing, takinghis pain into herself, when he collapsed with the breaking of his barriers.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said, and came closer to her. Elorie moved her head from side to side, like a fractious child. “No,” she said irritably. “No, let me be, I’m all right.” But she had to breathe twice while she said it and her face was like scraped bone.

“She’s always like this,” Rannirl said. “Do what you can, Jeff, I’ll go and find Neyrissa.”

Jeff came and bent over Elorie.

“I don’t suppose I’m as good at it as Tani or Neyrissa,” he said, “but I’ll do what I can.” Quickly, heightening his sensitivity, he ran his fingertips along her body, an inch or two away, feeling deep into the cells. Her heart was beating, but thin, irregular, threadlike; the pulse was faint, almost unreadable. Her breathing was so faint he could hardly feel it. Cautiously, he reached for rapport, seeking, with that heightened awareness, the limits of her weakness, trying to take her exhaustion upon himself as Taniquel had taken his pain. She stirred and made a faint movement, reaching with her hands for his, and he remembered how Taniquel had taken his hands in her own. The searching movement of her hands went on, and after a moment Jeff put his own between them, feeling the faint effort she made to close hers over them. She was almost unconscious. But gradually, as he knelt there with her hands in his, he could feel her breathing steady, sensed that her heart had begun to beat smoothly again, and saw the deathly white of her face beginning to transmute into a healthy color again. He did not realize how frightened he had been until he heard her breathing, calm and steady; she opened her eyes and looked at him. She was still a little pale, her soft lips still colorless.

“Thank you, Jeff,” she whispered weakly, and her hands tightened on his; then, to his astonishment, she put out her arms, reaching up to him in appeal. Quickly responding, he gathered her close to him, sensing that she wanted the reassurance of contact; he held her for a moment, feeling her close to him, soft and limp, still weak. And then, without surprise, Kerwin felt the soft and exquisite blending of perceptions as their lips met.

He felt it with an intensely heightened dual consciousness, Elorie’s limp slight body in his arms, sensing

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the fragility mingled with steely strength, the childlike quality blended with the calm, ageless wisdom of her caste and her training.
 
(And dimly through all these things he felt what Elorie felt, her weakness and lassitude, the terror she had known when her heart faltered and she felt herself near to death, the need for the reassurance of contact, the strength of his own arms around her; he felt the lassitude and the eagerness with which she accepted his kiss, a strange and half-understood wakening in her senses; he shared with the woman her own wonder and surprise at this touch, the first touch she had ever known that was not fatherly and impersonal; shared her shy and shameless surprise at the strength of his man’s body, at the sudden rising heat in him; felt her reach out to him, unmistakably, for a deeper contact, and answered it
 
…)

“Elorie,” he whispered, but it was like a triumphant shout. “Oh, Elorie— ” And only to himself he whispered,
 
my love
 
, and for a moment he felt everything in the woman move toward him, felt her sudden warmth and flooding longing for his kiss…

Then there was a spasmodic moment of shattering, convulsive fear, clawing with anguish at every nervein him; the rapport between them smashed like a breaking crystal, and Elorie, white and terrified, wasstraining away from him, fighting like a cat in his arms.

“No, no,” she gasped. “Jeff, let me go, let me go— don’t-

Dazed, numb with shock, Kerwin released her; she scrambled quickly up and away from him, her handscrossed in terror over her breasts, which rose and fell with soundless, anguished sobs. Her eyes werewide with horror, but she was barriered tightly against him again. Her childish mouth moved silently, herface screwed up in a little girl’s grimace against tears. “No,” she whispered, again, at last. “Have youforgotten—forgotten what I am? Oh, Avarra pity me,” she said in a broken gasp, covered her face withher hands and fled blindly from the room, half tripping over a stool, evading Jeff’s automatic reach tosteady her, slipping through the door and running, running away down the hall. Far away, far up in the Tower, he heard the closing of a door.

He did not see Elorie again for three days.

For the first time, that night, she did not join them for the evening ritual of drinks in the great hall. Jeff,from the moment Elorie fled from him, felt cut off and alone, a stranger among them in a world suddenlycold and strange.

The others seemed to take Elorie’s seclusion for granted; Kennard said with a shrug that all Keepers didthat now and then, it was part of being what they were. Jeff, holding his barriers firm against involuntarybetrayal (of himself? Of Elorie?) said nothing. But Elorie’s eyes, luminous and haunted with dismay andthat shocking, sudden fear, as well as the memory of her warmth in his arms, seemed to swim before hiseyes in the darkness every night before he slept; he felt, with an almost tactile memory, her kiss on hismouth, her frail and frightened body in his arms, and the shock after she had broken away and run fromhim. At first he had been half angry:
 
She
 
had initiated the contact. Why now should she break away as ifhe had attempted rape?

Then, slowly and painfully, understanding came.

He had broken the strictest law of the Comyn. A Keeper was a pledged virgin, trained lengthily for herwork, body and brain given lengthy conditioning for the most difficult task on Darkover. To every man inthe Domains, Elorie was inviolate. A Keeper,
 
tenerésteis
 
, never to be touched by lust or even by the

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purest love.

He had heard what they said—and worse, felt what they felt—about Cleindori, who had broken thisvow. (And she, too, with one of the despised Terrans.)

In his old life Kerwin might have defended himself, saying that Elorie had invited his advances. She hadfirst touched him, first raised her lips to his. But after a time of training in the unsparing self-honesty of Arilinn, there were no such easy evasions. He had been aware of the taboo, and of Elorie’s ignorance; hewas aware of the forthright way with which she showed affection to the others of her circle, completelyconfident in the taboo that protected her; to all of them, she was sexless and sacrosanct. She hadaccepted Jeff in the same way—and he had betrayed her trust!

He loved her. He knew now that he had loved her from the first time he laid eyes on her; or perhapsbefore, when their minds touched through the matrix and he had heard her soft
I recognize you
 
. Andnow he saw nothing ahead of him but pain and renunciation.

Taniquel—his infatuation with Taniquel now seemed like a dream. He knew now that it had beengratitude for her acceptance, for her kindness and warmth; he was still fond of her, but what had beenbetween them, for a time, could not survive any interruption of the sexual tie between them. It had neverbeen anything like this overwhelming thing that swallowed up his whole consciousness; he knew that hewould love Elorie for the rest of his life, even if he could never again touch her and she never showed theslightest sign of returning his love.

(But she had, she had…)

But worse than this was a terrible fear, knifing at his consciousness. Kennard had warned him of thedangers of nervous exhaustion, counseling him to remain apart from Taniquel during the days immediatelybefore a heavy load of matrix work, to avoid depleting his energies. The Keepers, he knew, keyedthemselves completely, body and mind, into the matrixes they operated; this was why they must never betouched by a hint of emotion, and far less by sexuality. His memory went back to his first night in Arilinn; Elorie’s dismay at the mildest flirtatious or gallant remark, her comment that Keepers trained lifelong fortheir work and sometimes lost the ability for it after a very short time. Neyrissa had underlined that therewere no other Keepers, so that Elorie, unlike Keepers in the past, was not free to set aside her highoffice for marriage—or for love.

And now, when perhaps the very fate of Darkover rested upon the strength of the Arilinn Tower—andperhaps upon Elorie alone, when the strength of Arilinn rested upon the fortitude of their cherished Keeper—he, Jeff Kerwin, the stranger in their midst, the outsider they had taken to their hearts, hadbetrayed them and struck through the defenses of their Keeper.