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it was Thyra who suggested you might be with Marjorie." He laughed. "But I hadn't expected to find you

in her bed!" I said stiffly, "I assure you-"

"Lew, in the name of all the damned obscene gods of the Dry-Towners, do you think it matters a damn to me?" He was laughing again. "Oh, I believe you, you're just scrupulous enough, and bound hand and foot with your own idiot superstitions! I think you're putting a considerable strain on human nature, myself-I wouldn't trust myself to lie down with a woman I loved and never touch her-but if you happen to enjoy self-torture, that's your own choice. As the Dry-Towner said to the cralmac . . ." And he launched into a long, good-humored and incredibly obscene tale which took my mind off my embarrassment as nothing else could have. Not a word of it was suitable for repeating in polite company, but it was exactly what the situation demanded.

When we reached the fireside room, he said, "You heard the helicopter land this afternoon?"

I was still chuckling at the adventures of the Dry-Towner, the spaceman and the three nonhumans; thesudden gravity of his voice shocked me back to normal.

"I saw it, yes. Has it to do with me?"

"A special guest," Kadarin said. "Beltran feels you should speak with him. You told us he is a catalyst

telepath with no reason to love the Comyn, and Beltran sent to persuade him-"

Seated on one of the stone benches near the fire, his dark hair awry, looking cold and ruffled and angry,was Danilo Syrtis. Beltran said, "Perhaps you can explain that we mean no harm, that he is not aprisoner, but an honored guest."

Danilo tried to sound defiant, but despite his best efforts I could hear that his voice was shaking. "Youcarried me off with armed men and my father wil! be ill with fright! Is this how you mountain menwelcome guests, taking them away in infernal Terran machines?" He looked no older than Rafe.

I called "Danilo-" and his mouth dropped open. He sprang up. "They told me you were here, but Ithought it was just another of their lies." The childish face hardened. "Was it by your orders they had mekidnapped? How long will the Comyn persecute me?"

I shook my head. "Not my orders, nor Comyn. Until this moment I had no idea you were here."

He turned on Beltran in childish triumph. His voice, still

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unbroken, sounded shrill. "I knew you were lying, when you told me Lew Alton ordered me brought

here-"

I swung toward Beltran and said in real anger, "I told you Danilo might be persuaded to join us! Did youtake that as license to kidnap him?" I held out both hands to the boy and said, "Dani, forgive me. It is true I told them of you and your laran; I suggested that one day they might seek you out and persuade you tojoin us in what we are doing." His hands felt cold. He had been badly frightened. "Don't be afraid. Iswear on my honor, no one will hurt you."

"I am not afraid of such rabble," he said scornfully, and I saw Beltran wince. Well, if he was going to behave like some Brynat Scarface or Cyrillon des Traflles, he must expect to be called uncomplimentary names! Danilo added, his voice shaking, "My father is old and feeble. He has already suffered my disgrace. Now to lose me again ... he will surely grieve himself to death."

I said to Beltran, "You fool, you utter fool! Send a message at once, send it through the Terran relays ifyou must, that Danilo is alive and well, and that someone must inform his family that he is here, anhonored guest! Do you want a friend and ally, or a mortal enemy?"

He had the grace to look ashamed. He said, "I gave no orders to hurt or frighten him or his father. Didanyone lay rough hands on either of you, lad?"

"I was certainly issued no polite invitation, Lord Aldaran. Do you disarm all your honored guests?"

I said, "Go and send that message, Beltran. Let me talk to him alone." Beltran went and I mended thefire, leaving Danilo to recover his composure. At last I asked, "Tell me the truth, Danilo, have you beenill-treated?"

"No, though they were not gentle. We were some days riding, then the sky-machine. I do not know its

name...."

The helicopter. I had seen it land. I knew I should have gone after Beltran. If I had been there when Danilo was brought from it-well, it was done. I said, "A helicopter is safer, in the peaks and crossdraftsof the Hellers, than any ordinary plane. Were you very frightened?"

"Only for a little, when we were forced down by weather. Mostly I feared for my father."

"Well, a message wUl be sent. Have you had anything to eat?"

"They offered me something when we first landed," he said. He did not say he had been too shaken and

frightened

to eat, but I surmised that. I called a servant and said, "Ask my uncle to excuse me from his table, and say that Lord Beltran will explain. Then send some food here for my guest and myself." I turned back to the boy. "Dani, am I your enemy?"

"Captain, I-" •   "I've left the Guards," I said. "Not captain, now."

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To my amazement he said, 'Too bad. You were the only officer everybody liked. No, you're not myenemy, Lew, and I always thought your father was my friend. It was Lord Dyan-you do know whathappened?"

"More or less," I said. "Whatever it may have been this time, I know damn well that by the time you drew your dagger he'd given you enough provocation for a dozen duels anywhere else. You don't have to tell me all the nasty little details. I know Dyan."

"Why did the Commander-"

"They were children together," I said. "In his eyes Dyan can do no wrong. I'm not defending him, but

didn't you ever do anything you thought was wrong, for a friend's sake?"

"Did you?" he asked. I was still trying to think how to answer when our supper was brought. I served Dani, but found I was not hungry and sat nibbling at some fruit while the boy satisfied his appetite. I wondered if they had fed him at all since his capture. No, boys that age were always hungry, that was all.

While he ate I worried what Marjorie would think when she woke and found herself alone. Was Rafereally all right, or should I go and make certain? Had Kermiac suffered any lasting ill-effects from Thyra'srashness? I didn't approve of what Beltran had done, but I knew why he had been tempted to do it. Weneeded someone like Danilo so badly that it ter-rifled me.

I poured Dani a glass of wine when he had finished. He merely tasted it for courtesy's sake, but at leastnow he was willing to go through the motions of courtesy again. I took a sip of mine and set it aside.

"Danilo, you know you have laran. You also have one of the rarest and most precious Comyn gifts, one we've thought extinct. If Comyn Council finds out, they'll be ready and willing to make all kinds of amends for the stupid and cruel thing Dyan did to you. They'll offer you anything you want, up to and including a seat in Comyn Council if you want that, marriage with someone like Linnell Aillard-you name it, you can probably have it You attended that Council

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meeting among the Terrans. Are you interested in power of that sort? If so, they'll be lining up two and

three deep to offer it to you. Is that what you want?"

"I don't know," he said, "I never thought about it. I expected, after I finished hi the cadets, to stay quietly

at home and look after my father while he lived."

"And then?"

"I hadn't thought about that either. I suppose I thought when that time came, I'd be grown up, and then

I'd know what I wanted."

I smiled wryly. Yes, at fifteen I too had been sure that by the time I was twenty or so my life would have

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arranged itself in simple patterns.

"That's not the way it happens when you have laran," I said. "Among other things, you must be trained.

An untrained telepath is a menace to himself and everyone around him."

He made a grimace of revulsion. 'Tve never wanted to be a matrix technician."

"Probably not," I said. "It takes a certain temperament." I couldn't see Danilo in a tower; I, on the other hand, had never wanted anything else. I still didn't. "Even so, you must learn to control what you are and what gifts you have. All too many untrained telepaths end up as madmen."

"Then whether I'm interested in Comyn Council or not, what choice do I have? Isn't this training only hi

the hands of the Comyn and the towers? And they can tram me to do whatever they want me to do."

"That's true hi the Domains," I said. "They do draw all telepaths to their service there. But you still have a

choice." I began to tell him about Beltran's plan, and a little about the work we had begun.

He listened without comment until I had finished. "Then," he said, "it seems I have a choice betweentaking bribes for the use of my laran from the Comyn-or from Aldaran."

"I wouldn't put it that way. We're asking you to come into this of your own free will. If we do achieve what we want, then the Comyn will no longer have the power to demand that all telepaths serve them or be left prey to madness. And there would be an end to the kind of power-hunger that left you at the mercy of a man like Dyan."

He thought that over, sipping the wine again and making a childish wry face. Then he said, "It seems as ifsomething like that's always going to be happening to people like me, like

us. Someone's always going to be bribing us to use our gifts for their good, not our own." He sounded

terribly young, terribly bitter.

"No, some of us may have a choice now. Once we are a legitimate part of the Terran Empire-"

"Then I suppose the Empire will find some way to use us," Danilo said. "The Comyn makes mistakes,

but don't they know more about us and our world than the Terrans ever could?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "Are you willing to see them stay in power, controlling all our lives, putting corrupt

men like Dyan in charge-"

"No, I'm not," he said, "nobody would want that. But if people like you and me-you said I could have a seat on the Council if I wanted it-if people like you and me were on the Council, the bad ones like Dyan wouldn't have everything their own way, would they? Your father's a good man but, like you said, Dyan can do no wrong in his eyes. But when you take a seat on the Council, you won't feel that way, will you?"

"What I want," I said with concealed violence, "is not to be forced to take a seat on the Council, or do

all the other damned things the Comyn wants me to do!"

"If good men like you can't be bothered," said Danilo, "then who's left, except the bad ones who

shouldn't!"

There was some truth in that, too. But I said vehemently,

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**I have other skills and I feel I can serve my people better in other ways. That's what I'm trying to do now, to benefit everyone on Darkover. I'm not trying to smash the Comyn, Dani, only to give everyone more of a choice. Don't you think it's an ambition worth achieving?"

He looked helpless. "I can't judge," he said. 'Tm not even used to thinking of myself as a telepath yet. Idon't know what I ought to do."

He looked up at me with that odd, trustful look which made me think somehow, of my brother Marius. If it were Marius standing here before me, gifted with laran, would I try to persuade him to face Sharra? A cold chill iced my spine and I shivered, even though the room was warm. I said, "Can you trust me,then?"

"I'd like to," he said. "You never lied to me or hurt me. But I don't think I'd trust any of the Aldarans."

"Is your mind still full of schoolroom bogeymen?" I asked.

**Do you believe they are all wicked renegades because they

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have an old political quarrel with Comyn? You have reason to distrust the Comyn too, Danilo."

"True," be said. "But can I trust a man who begins by kidnapping me and frightening my father to death? If he had come to me, explained what he wanted to do, and that you and he together thought my gift could be useful, then asked my father to give me leave to visit him . . ."

The hell of it was, Dani was entirely right. What had possessed Beltran to do such a thing? "If he hadconsulted me, that is exactly how I would have suggested he should do it."

"Yes, I know," Dani said. "You're you. But if Beltrao isn't the kind of man to do it that way, how can

you trust him?"

"He's my kinsman," I said helplessly. "What do you expect me to say? I expect his eagerness got the

better of him. He didn't hurt you, did he?"

Dani raged. "You're talking just the way you said your father did about Lord Dyan!"

It wasn't the same, I knew that, but I couldn't expect Danilo to see it Finally I said, "Can't you lookbeyond personalities in this, Dani? Beltran was wrong, but what we're trying to do is so enormous thatmaybe it blinds people to smaller aims and ends. Keep your eyes on what he's doing, and forgive him. Orare you waiting," and I spoke deliberately, with malice, to make him see how cynical it sounded, "for the Comyn to make a better offer?"