She took off the cap and he saw that her barely shoulder length hair, gathered and tied behind her, was white-blond; her face was slim-boned and regular with a beauty that he had not expected.
"I'm Amanda Morgan," she said, smiling. "Who're you, and when did you get here?"
"Just now," he answered automatically. "A boy called Alaef Tormai from the Foralie Town Hall office brought me up on a skimmer. Oh, I'm Hal Mayne."
"Honored," she said. "You've got business with me, I take it?"
"Well, yes…"
"Never mind," she said. "We can talk about it in a moment. I've got to put Barney here into the stable. Why don't you go into the living room and make yourself comfortable? I'll be with you in twenty minutes."
"I - thank you," he said. "All right, I will."
He turned and went in, as she led the horse off by its reins toward the long, dark shape of the stable.
Through the door, the interior air of the house was still, and warmer than the first night-coolness outside. The lights in the ceiling came on automatically and he saw he had stepped into a large kitchen. He turned right from it down a short corridor that had a large painting on one wall, apparently of the woman he had just met - no, he corrected his thought on stopping to examine it more closely, the woman pictured was at least in her thirties, but so alike to the Amanda Morgan he had met outside that they could have been sisters, if not twins. He went on into another room furnished with large couches, overstuffed chairs and occasional tables, all of them articles of solid furniture, with nothing of float construction visible.
At his left as he entered was a wide fireplace, the mantlepiece above it filled with small, apparently homemade bits of handicraft, ranging in artistry from obviously childmade objects such as a long-skirted woman's figure made of dried grass stems tied and glued into shape, to the bust of a horse, its head and arched neck only, carved in a soft reddish stone. The lifelikeness of the horse was breathtaking. Hal was reminded of some early Eskimo carvings he had seen in the Denver museum on Earth, in which an already wave-formed rock had been barely touched by the carver's tool, to transform it into the figure of a seal, or that of a sleeping man. The same kind of creative magic had been at work here, even to the red graininess of the rock evoking the texture and skin-coloring of a roan horse.
In a multitude of small ways, he thought as he took one of the comfortable chairs, it was the kind of room he had not seen since he left his own home on Earth. Not just the noticeable lack of modern technologies created this feeling. There had been none at all to be seen in the farmhouses that had put him up, together with the other Command members, on Harmony. But there was something different, here. A deliberately archaic feel lived within the walls surrounding him - as if it had been a quality consciously sought for and incorporated by the builders and owners of this place. The same sort of feel had been evident to an extent in Foralie Town also, and might be typical of the Dorsai in general for all he knew; but here, it amounted almost to a fineness, like the warm sheen upon cherished woodwork, lovingly nurtured and cared for over the years.
Whatever it was, like Foralie Town itself, it touched and comforted him like a home long familiar to which he was just now returning. The emotion it raised in him relieved some of the depression he had been feeling ever since the garden on Mara. Sitting in the armchair, he let his thoughts drift; and they slid, almost in reflex, back into a maze of memories from his own early days, memories that for a change were happy ones, of the years before Bleys had appeared.
So caught up in these memories was he that he only woke from them with the entrance of Amanda into the room, her cap and jacket removed, carrying a tray with cups, glasses, a coffee pot and a decanter on it that she set down on a square, squat table between his chair and the one facing it.
"Coffee or whiskey?" she said, sitting down facing him on the other side of the table.
Hal thought of getting used to one more taste-variety of coffee.
"Whiskey," he said.
"It's Dorsai whiskey," she said.
"I've tasted it," he said. "Malachi - one of my tutors - let me taste some one Christmas when I was eleven."
He saw her raised eyebrows.
"His full name was Malachi Nasuno," he added.
"It's a Dorsai name," said Amanda, tipping some of the dark liquor into a short, heavily-walled glass, and handing it to him. Her eyes studied him with an intensity that tightened the little muscles in the nape of his neck. Her gaze reminded him of the way young Alaef Tormai had stared in the first moment of their meeting at the Town Hall. Then she bent the silver crown of her head and poured coffee for herself, breaking the moment of her glance.
"I had three tutors," said Hal, almost to himself. He tasted the whiskey, and its fierce burn brought back more memories. "They were my guardians, as well. I was an orphan and they raised me. That was on Earth."
"Earth - so that's how you know about horses. That - and being raised by a Dorsai, explains it," she said, looking up and meeting his eyes again. He noticed the color of hers, now. Under the indoor lighting they were a clear, penetrating bluish green, like deep sea waters. "I took you for one of us at first glance.''
"So have a number of other people since Omalu," said Hal. He saw her glance was questioning. "I landed there from Mara, just a few hours back."
"I see." She sat back in her chair with the coffee cup, and the color of her eyes seemed to darken as they met his now in the last of the twilight that was flooding the room through its wide windows. "What can I do for you, Hal Mayne?"
"I wanted to see Foralie," he said. "Alaef said none of the Graemes were home, but you were their closest neighbor; and I could talk to you about looking at the place."
"Graemehouse's locked up now; but I can let you in, of course," she answered. "But you won't want to go tonight. Aside from anything else, you'd see a lot more in daylight."
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow, by all means," she said. "I've got an errand to run, but I can leave you there on the way over and collect you on the way back."
"That's good of you." He swallowed the rest of the whiskey in his glass, breathed deeply a moment to get his voice back, and stood up. "Alaef ran me up here, but he had to be back in time for dinner. I don't want to impose on you but do you know anyone I can call for transportation back to Foralie Town?"
She was smiling at him.
"Why? Where do you think you're going?"
"Back to town, as I said," he answered a little stiffly. "I've got to arrange for a place to stay."
"Sit down," Amanda said. "Omalu has a hotel or two, but out here we don't run to such things. If you'd stayed in town, the Tormai or one of the other families there would have put you up. Since you're out here, you're my guest. Didn't your Malachi Nasuno teach you how we do things, here on the Dorsai?"
He looked at her. She was still smiling at him. He realized suddenly that, as they had talked, he had completely lost his earlier image of her as a barely-grown young woman. For the first time he began to consider the possibility that her chronological age might be even greater than his own.
Chapter Forty-two
He sat at a table in the large kitchen of Fal Morgan while Amanda fixed dinner. It was a square, high-ceilinged room panelled in some pale wood gone honey-colored with time, which reflected the house lights that had seemed to strengthen as the outside twilight faded. It had two entrances; the one to the hall by which he had gone to the living room and by which they had come back in, and one to a presently-unlighted dining room in which Hal could dimly see dark panelling, straight-backed chairs, and part of a long, dark table. In the kitchen the cooking surfaces, the food storage cupboards, and the phone screen hanging high on one wall were modern and technological. Everything else was home-built and simple. Amanda moved about with an accustomed dexterity and speed. His own hands were idle.