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“It’s a riding-cape,” he said. “They wear them in the Kilghard Hills; and from the embroidery it probably belonged to a nobleman; could be his house colors, though I don’t know what it signifies, or how it came here. They’re warm and they’re comfortable, especially for riding, but even when I was a kid, this kind of

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cloak was going out of fashion down here in the city; stuff like that— ” he pointed to the offworld synthetic parka Ellers was wearing—“was cheaper and just as warm. These cloaks are handmade, hand dyed, hand embroidered.” He took the cloak from Ellers. It was not a woven fabric, but a soft, supple leather, fine as woven wool, flexible as silk, and richly embroidered in metallic threads: The rich dyes were a riot of color spilling over his arm.

“It looks as if it had been made for a prince,” commented Ellers in an undertone. “Look at that fur! What

kind of beast is
 
that
 
from?”

The shopkeeper burst out into a voluble sales pitch about the costliness of the fur, scenting customers;but Kerwin laughed and cut him off with a gesture.

“Rabbithorn,” he said. “They raise them like sheep. If it was wild marl-fur, this
 
would
be a cloak for a prince. As it is, I suppose it belonged to some poor gentleman attached to a nobleman’s household—one with a talented and industrious wife or daughter who could spend a year embroidering it for him.”

“But the embroideries, nobles, the patterns, fit for
 
Comyn
 
, the richness of the dyed leather…”

“What it looks, is
 
warm
 
,” Kerwin said, settling the cloak over his shoulders. It felt very soft and rich.

Ellers stepped back, regarding him with consternation.

“Good lord, are you going native already? You aren’t going to wear
 
that
 
thing around the Terran Zone,

are you?”

Kerwin laughed heartily. “I should say not. I was thinking it might be something to wear around my roomin the evenings. If bachelor quarters in HQ are anything like they were at my last assignment, they’redamn stingy with the heat, unless you want to pay a double assessment for energy use. And it gets fairlycold in the winter, too. Of course it’s nice and warm here now—”

Ellers shivered and said gloomily, “If this is
 
warm
 
, I hope I’m at the other end of the Galaxy when itgets
 
cold
 
! Man, your bones must be made of some kind of stuff I don’t understand. This is
freezing
 
! Oh, well, one man’s planet is another man’s hell,” he said, quoting a proverb of the Service. “But man,you aren’t going to spend a month’s pay on that damn thing, are you?”

“Not if I can help it,” Kerwin replied out of the corner of his mouth, “but if you don’t shut up and let me

bargain with him, I just might!”

In the end he paid more than he had expected, and told himself he was a fool as he counted it over. Buthe wanted the thing, for no reason he could explain; it was the first thing that had taken his fancy after hisreturn to Darkover. He wanted it, and in the end he got it for a price he could afford, though not easily. He sensed, toward the end of the bargaining, that the shopkeeper was uneasy, for some reason, abouthaggling with him, and gave in much easier than Kerwin had expected. He knew, if Ellers didn’t, that hehad really gotten the thing for somewhat less than its value. Considerably less, if the truth be told.

“That kind of money would have kept you happily drunk for half a year,” Ellers mourned as they came

out on the street again.

Kerwin chuckled. “Cheer up. Fur isn’t a luxury on a planet like this, it’s a good investment. And I’ve stillgot enough in my pocket for the first round of drinks. Where can we get them?”

They got them in a wineshop on the outer edge of the sector; it was clear of tourists, although a few of

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the workhands from the spaceport were mingled with the Darkovans crowded around the bar or sprawled on the long couches along the walls. They were all giving their attention to the serious business of drinking, talking, or gambling with what looked like dominoes or small cut-crystal prisms.

A few of the Darkovans glanced up as the two Earthmen threaded their way through the crowd and satdown at a table. Ellers had cheered up by the time a plump, dark-haired girl came to take their order. Hegave the girl a pinch on her round thigh, ordered wine in the spaceport jargon, and, hauling the Darkovancloak across the table to feel the fur, launched into a long tale about how he had found a particular furblanket particularly worthwhile on a cold planet of Lyra.

“The nights up there are about seven days long, and the people there just shut down all their work until the sun comes up again and melts off the ice. I tell you, that babe and I just crawled inside that fur blanket and never put our noses outside…”

Kerwin applied himself to his drink, losing the thread of the story—not that it mattered, for Ellers’sstories were all alike anyhow. A man sitting at one of the tables alone, over a half-emptied goblet, lookedup, met Kerwin’s eyes, and suddenly got up—so quickly that he upset his chair. He started to cometoward the table where they were sitting; then he saw Ellers, whose back had been turned to him,stopped short and took a step backward, seeming both confused and surprised. But at that moment Ellers, reaching a lull in his story, looked round and grinned.

“Ragan, you old so-and-so! Might have known I’d find you in here! How long has it been, anyhow?

Come and have a drink!”

Ragan hesitated, and it seemed to Kerwin that he flicked an uneasy glance in his direction.

“Ah, come on,” Ellers urged. “Want you to meet a pal of mine. Jeff Kerwin.”

Ragan came and sat down. Kerwin couldn’t make out what the man was. He was small and slight, witha lithe sunburnt look, the look of an outdoor man, and callused hands; he might have been an undersizedmountain Darkovan, or an Earthman wearing Darkovan clothes, though he wore the ubiquitous climbingjacket and calf-high boots. But he spoke Terran Standard as well as either of the Earthmen, asking Ellersabout the trip out, and when the second round of drinks came, he insisted on paying for them. But hekept looking at Kerwin sidewise, when he thought he wouldn’t be noticed.

Kerwin demanded at last: “All right, what is it? You acted as if it was me you recognized, before Ellerscalled you over—”

“Right. I didn’t know Ellers was in yet,” Ragan said, “but then I saw him with you, and saw you wearing— ” He gestured at Kerwin’s Terran outfit. “So I knew you couldn’t be who I thought you were. I
 
don’t
 
know you, do I?” he added, with a puzzled frown.

“I don’t think so,” Kerwin said, sizing the man up, and wondering if he could have been one of the kids from the Spaceman’s Orphanage. It was impossible to tell, after—how long? Ten or twelve years, Terran reckoning; he’d forgotten the conversion factors for the Darkovan year. Even if they’d been childhood friends, that amount of time would have wiped it out. And he didn’t remember anyone named Ragan, although that didn’t mean anything.

“But you’re not Terran, are you,” Ragan inquired.

The memory of a clerk’s sneer—
 
one of those
— rushed through Kerwin’s mind; but he shoved it aside.

Page 16

“My father was. I was born here, brought up in the Spaceman’s Orphanage. I left pretty young, though.”

“That must be it,” Ragan said. “I spent a few years there. I do liaison work for the Trade City when they have to hire Darkovans: guides, mountaineers, that kind of thing. Organize caravans into the mountains, into the other Trade cities, whatever.”

Kerwin was still trying to decide whether the man had a recognizably Darkovan accent. He finally askedhim. “Are you Darkovan?”

Ragan shrugged. The bitterness in his voice was really appalling. “Who knows? For that matter, whocares?”

He lifted his glass and drank. Kerwin followed suit, sensing that he would be drunk fairly soon; he neverwas much of a drinker and the Darkovan liquor, which of course as a child he had never tasted, wasstrong stuff. It didn’t seem to matter. Ragan was staring again and that didn’t seem to matter either.

Kerwin thought,
 
Maybe we’re a lot the same. My mother was probably Darkovan; if she’d been Terran, there’d have been records. She could have been anything. My father was in the Space Service; that’s the one thing I know for sure. But apart from that, who and what am I? And howdid he come to have a halfbreed son
 
?

“At least he cared enough to get Empire citizenship for you,” Ragan said bitterly, and Jeff stared, not

realizing that he had actually been saying all this aloud. “Mine didn’t even care that much!”

“But you’ve got red in your hair,” Jeff said and wondered why he had said it, but Ragan seemed not to

hear, staring into his glass, and Ellers interrupted, with an air of injury:

“Listen, you two, this is supposed to be a celebration! Drink up!”

Ragan leaned his chin in his hands, staring across the table at Kerwin. “So you came here, at least partly,to try and locate your parents—your people?”

“To find out something about them,” Kerwin amended.

“Had it ever occurred to you that you might be better off not knowing?”

It had. He’d been all the way through that and out the other side. “I don’t care if my mother was one ofthose girls,” he said, nodding toward the women who were coming and going, fetching drinks, stoppingto chaff with the men, exchanging jokes and innuendos. “I want to
 
know
 
about it.”

To be sure which world can claim me, Darkover or Terra. To be certain…

“But aren’t there records at the orphanage?”

“I haven’t had a chance to look,” Kerwin said. “That’s the first place to go, anyhow. I don’t know how

much they can tell me. But it’s a good place to start.”

“And if they can’t tell you anything? Nothing else?”

Kerwin fumbled, with fingers made clumsy by drink, at the copper chain that had been around his neckas long as he could remember. He said, “Only this. They told me, in the orphanage, that it was around my

Page 17

neck when I came there.”

They didn’t like it. The matron told me I was too big to wear lucky charms, and tried to get itaway from me. I screamed… why had I forgotten that?… and fought so hard that they finally letme keep it. Why in the hell would I do that? My grandparents didn’t like it, either, and I learned tokeep it out of sight.

“Oh, nuts,” interrupted Ellers rudely. “The long-lost talisman! So you’ll show it to them and they’ll recognize that you’re the long-lost son and heir to the Lord High Muckety-Muck in his castle, and you’ll live happily ever after!” He made an indescribable sound of derision. Kerwin felt angry color flooding his face. If Ellers really believed that rubbish…

“Can I have a look at it?” Ragan asked, holding out his hand.

Kerwin slipped the chain off his neck; but when Ragan would have taken it, he cradled it in his palm; ithad always made him nervous for anyone else to touch it. He had never wanted to ask them, in Psych,just why. They probably would have had a pat and ready answer, something slimy about hissubconscious mind.

The chain was of copper, a valuable metal on Darkover. But the blue stone itself had always seemedunremarkable to him; a cheap trinket, something a poor girl might treasure; not even carved, just a prettyblue crystal, a bit of glass.

But Ragan’s eyes narrowed as he looked at it, and he gave a low whistle. “By the wolf of Alar! Youknow what this is, Kerwin?”

Kerwin shrugged. “Some semiprecious stone from the Hellers, I suppose. I’m no geologist.”

“It’s a matrix jewel,” Ragan said, and at Kerwin’s blank stare, elaborated, “a psychokinetic crystal.”

“I’m lost,” Ellers said, and stretched out his hand to take the small gem. Quickly, protectively, Kerwin

closed his hand over it, and Ragan raised his eyebrows.

“Keyed?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kerwin said, “only I somehow don’t like people touching it.

Silly, I suppose.”

“Not at all,” Ragan said, and suddenly seemed to make up his mind.

“I have one,” he said. “Nothing like that size; a little one, the kind they sell in the markets for suitcase locks and children’s toys. One like yours—well, they don’t just lie around in the street, you know; it’s probably worth a small fortune, and if it was ever monitored on any of the main banks, it won’t be hard to tell who it belonged to. But even the little ones like mine— ” He took a small wrapped roll of leather out of an inside pocket and carefully unrolled the leather. A tiny blue crystal rolled out.

“They’re like that,” he said. “Maybe they have a low-level form of life, no one has ever figured out. Anyway, they’re definitely one-man jewels; seal a lock with one of them, and nothing will ever open it except your own
 
intention
 
to open it.”

“Are you saying they’re magic?” Ellers demanded angrily.