But all that land… knowledge was only a dim memory, though I supposed, as I lived here longer, it would come back to me. As I strode through the morning streets, I felt comfortable under morning light and shadowed moons, something in my brain soothed and fed by the familiar lights. I’ve been on several planets, with anywhere from one to six moons—with more than that, the tides make the place uninhabitable—and suns yellow, red and blazing blue-white; at least I knew this one would not burn my skin red or brown!
So Marius, in addition to a Terran education, had the Aldaran Gift. That could be a dangerous combination, and I wondered how the Council would feel when they knew. Would they accept him, or would they demand that I adopt one of Gabriel’s sons?
It was a fairly stiff walk from the quarter of the city where my father and his forefathers had kept their town house, to the gates of the Terran Zone. A high wind was blowing, and I felt stiff. I wasn’t used to this kind of walk, and for six years I had lived on a world, Terra or Vainwal, where urgent business could be settled by mechanical communicators—anywhere in the Empire I could have settled the formalities for the dissolution of a marriage by communicator and video-screens—and where, if personal appearance had really been necessary, I could have all kinds of mechanical transport at a moment’s notice. Darkover has never had much interest in roads—it takes either machine labor, man-hours or matrix work to build good roads, and our world has never wanted to pay the price of any of those three. I’d spent my share of time in a Tower, providing the kind of communication you can get through the relays, telepathically operated; and I’d done my share of mining, too, and chemically purifying minerals. I’d monitored, and trained monitors. But I knew how hard it was to find enough talent for the matrix work, and it was no longer required of my caste, who had laran, that they spend their lives behind Tower walls, working for the people they served.
Were we Comyn the rulers of our people, because of ourlaran …or were we their slaves? And which was which? A slave is a slave, even if, for hislaran work, the people he serves surround him in every luxury and bow to his every word. A protected class quickly becomes an exploited and exploiting class. Look at women.
The gates of the Terran HQ, stark and sombre, loomed before me, a black-leathered spaceman at their gates. I gave my name and the guard used his communicator; they admitted I was on legitimate business, and let me in. My father had gone to some trouble to arrange double citizenship for me, and the Terrans claimed that Darkover was a lost Terran colony anyhow, which meant it was part of their policy to grant citizens rights to anyone who went to the trouble of applying for them. I had never troubled to vote for a representative in the Imperial Senate or Parliament, but I had a shrewd suspicion that Lerrys always did. I don’t have much faith in parliamentary governments—they tend to pick, not the best man, but the one who appeals to the widest mass temperament, and, in general, majorities tend to be always wrong—as the long history of culture and the constant return of certain types of slavery and religious bigotry show us. I didn’t trust the Empire to make decisions for Darkover, and why in all of Zandru’s nine hells—or the four hundred known and inhabited worlds of the Empire—should the Darkovans have any voice in making decisions for such worlds as Vainwal? Even in small groups—such as Comyn Council—politicians are men who want to tell their fellows what to do; and thus criminal at heart. I seldom thought about it much, and preferred it that way. My father had tried, many times, to point out the flaws in that reasoning, but I had better things to do with my life than worry about politics.
Better things? Had I anything to do with my life at all? At the back of my brain it seemed there was a familiar mutter. I kept my thoughts resolutely away from it, knowing that if I focused on it, it would be the clamor of my father’s voice, the nag of the Sharra matrix at my brain— no, I wouldn’t think of it.
The marriage was a line in a computer, hardly more than that. My occupation? When I went offworld, drugged and only half alive after being seared in Sharra’s fires, my father had had to name his occupation and he had put both his and mine down as Matrix mechanic. What a joke that was! He could have called himself rancher—Armida produces about a twentieth of the horses traded in the Kilghard Hills—or, because of his post as commander of the Guards, soldier;or, for that matter, because of his Council seat, claimed equal rank with a Senator or Parliamentarian. But, knowing the mystique the Terrans attach to our matrix technology, he had called himself, Matrix Technician, and me, mechanic. What a joke that was! I couldn’t monitor a pebble from the forge-folk’s cave! Not with my matrix still overshadowed by Sharra—
There were technicians and Keepers on Darkover still. Perhaps I could be freed… but later, later. The business at hand was trouble enough. Lewis-Kennard Montray-Lanart, Lord Alton, resident of Cottman Four—which is what the Empire calls Darkover—occupation, matrix mechanic, residence, Armida in the Kilghard Hills, temporary residence— I gave them the name of the street and the square of the town house. Damned if I wanted Comyn Castle brought into this! Wife’s name: Diotima Ridenow-Montray. Wife’s middle name. I didn’t think she had any, I said. I was sure she did, and probably didn’t use it; half the Ridenow of Serrais named their daughters Cassilda, perhaps because there was some doubt about their status as genuine descendants of Hastur and Cassilda, who probably never existed anyhow. Wife’s residence. Well, she was certainly in the custody of her brother, so I gave the estate of Serrais, where the Ridenow ought to live, and I heartily wished they were all out there. Reason for dissolution of marriage?
Here I stopped, not sure what to say, and the clerk, who acted as if loves like this were disrupted a hundred times a day, and in the anthill population of the Empire they probably were, told me irritably that I must state a reason for dissolving the marriage. Well, I could hardly say that her brother threatened to murder me otherwise!
The clerk prompted: “Barrenness if you both wish for children; impotence; irreconcilable differences in life-styles; desertion…”
That would do; she had certainly deserted me.
But the clerk was yammering on.
“Allergy to the other’s planet or residence; failure to support the children of the marriage; inability to father viable offspring if both wish for children…”
“That will do,” I said, though I knew in principle that this, or barrenness, were seldom actually cited for divorces; usually they cited less offensive reasons by mutual consent, such as desertion or irreconcilable difference of life-styles. But Dio had asked for it, and I would state the real reason.
Slowly he put it into the computer in code; now it was on record that I was incapable of fathering viable offspring. Well, they must have it somewhere in the records of that Terran hospital on Vainwal— what had been born to Dio on that night of disaster. I smothered an agonized picture of Dio, smiling up at me as she talked about our son… no. It was over. She wanted to be free of me, I would not cling to a woman who had every reason to despise me.
While the clerk was finishing up the details, a communicator beeped somewhere, and he answered it, looked up.
“Mr. Montray, if you will stop at the Legate’s office on your way out—”
“The Legate?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. I had seen the Terran Legate once, a stuffy functionary named Ramsay, when he attended a conference where I had been Honor Guard; I was still one of my father’s officers, then. Perhaps he too wished to pay courtesy condolences after my father’s death, the sort of meaningless social formality not limited to Darkover orto Terra. The clerk said, “That’s finished, then,” and I saw our marriage, and our love, reduced to meaningless lines of print, stored somewhere in a computer. The thought filled me with revulsion.