“Hell, no. What would I want with guns? And they’re contraband anyhow.”
“Then you’re not armed at all?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s not allowed to carry side arms on most Empire planets and I’ve lost the habit. Why?”
He scowled. “I managed to get one last year,” he said. “I paid four times what it was worth, and it has the contraband mark on it. I thought — wait, that’s your name they’re calling.”
It was. I went slowly toward the low white customs building, Marius trailing after me. He shook his head at the officer on duty, and went on through. My luggage had been laid on the conveyer belt and the clerk glanced at me without much interest.
“Lewis Alton-Kennard-Montray-Alton? Landed at Port Chicago on the Southern Cross? Matrix technician?”
I admitted all of it, and shoved the plastic chip which held my certification as a licensed matrix mechanic.
“We’ll have to check this on the main banks,” the Terran clerk said. “It will take an hour or two. We’ll get in touch with you.”
The clerk flicked his eyes over a printed form. “Do — you — solemnly — affirm — that — to — the — best — of -your — knowledge — and — belief — you — have — not — in -your — possession — any — power — or — propulsion — weapons -guns — disintegrators — or — blasters — atomic — isotopes — narcotic — drugs — intoxicants — or — incendiaries?”
I signed. He hefted my luggage under the clarifier; the screen stayed blank, as I’d known it would. The items named were all items of Terran manufacture; by solemn compact with the Hasturs, the Empire is committed not to, let them be brought into the Darkovan Zone, or anywhere outside the Trade Cities. Such items, contraband on our planet, were treated before they were brought here with a small speck of radioactive substance, harmless but unremovable. “Anything else to declare?”
“I have a pair of Earth-made binoculars, a Terran camera, and half a bottle of Vainwal firi (sp?),” I told him. “Let’s see them.”
He opened the cases, and I tensed. This was the moment I had been dreading.
I should have tried to bribe him. But that would have meant — if he happened to be honest — a fine and blacklisting. I couldn’t risk that.
He glanced at the camera and binoculars. Terran lenses are a luxury item and usually highly taxed. “Ten reis duty,” he said, and pushed the folds of clothing aside. “If the firi is less than ten ounces, there’s no tax. What is this?”
I thought I’d bite through my tongue when his hand gripped it. It felt like a fist squeezing my heart. I said through a contracted throat, “Let it alone!”
“What in the—” he dragged it out. It was like a nail raking along a nerve. He started to unwrap the cloth. “Contraband weapon, huh? You — hell, it’s a sword!”
I couldn’t breathe. The blue crystals in the hilt winked up at me, and his hand gripping it was too vast an agony to be borne.
“It’s a — an heirloom in my family.”
He looked at me queerly. “Well, I’m not hurting it any. Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a contraband blaster, or something.” He shoved the folds of silk around it again, and I remembered how to breathe. He picked up the half-empty bottle of the expensive Vainwal cordial and measured it with his eyes. “About seven ounces. Sign a statement that you’re bringing it in for personal consumption and not for resale, and it’s duty free.”
I signed. He snapped the lock on the case, and I moved, with faltering steps, away from the customs barrier.
One hurdle past. And I’d managed to live through it — this time.
I rejoined Marius and went to hail a skycar.
CHAPTER TWO
The Sky Harbor Hotel was tawdry and expensive, and I didn’t much like the place; but I wasn’t apt to run into other Comyn there, and that was the main thing. So they showed us up to two of the square cubicles which Terrans call rooms.
I’ve gotten used to them on Terra and Vainwal, and they didn’t bother me. But as I fastened the doors, I turned to Marius in sudden dismay;
“Zandru’s hells, I’d forgotten! Does this bother you?” I knew how doors, and walls, and locks, could affect a Darkovan. I’d known that terrible, suffocating claustrophobia all during my first years on Earth. More than anything else it sets Darkovan apart from Terran; Darkovan rooms had translucent walls, divided by thin panels or curtains or solid light barriers.
But Marius seemed quite at ease, sprawling idly on a piece of furniture so modernistic I couldn’t tell whether it was a bed or a chair. I shrugged; I’d learned to tolerate claustrophobia, probably he had too.
I bathed, shaved, and wadded up, carelessly, most of the Terran clothing I’d worn on the starship. The things were comfortable, but I couldn’t turn up in Comyn Council wearing them. I dressed in suede-leather breeches, low ankle-boots, and laced up the crimson jerkin deftly, making a little extra display of my one-handed skill because I was still too damned sensitive about it. The short cloak in the Alton colors concealed the hand that wasn’t there. I felt as if I’d changed my skin.
Marius was roaming restlessly about the room. He still didn’t feel familiar. I vaguely recognized his voice and manner, but there wasn’t that sense of closeness usual between telepaths in a Comyn family. I wondered if he sensed it, too. Maybe it was the drugs.
I stretched out, shut my eyes and tried to doze, but even the quiet bothered me; after eight days in space, the thrumming of the drives an omnipresent nuisance under the veils of drug. Finally I sat up and hauled my smaller piece of luggage toward me.
“Do me a favor, Marius?”
“Sure.”
“I’m still doped — can’t concentrate. Can you open a matrix lock?”
“If it’s a simple one.”
It was; any nontelepath could have attuned his mind to the simple psychokinetic pattern broadcast by the matrix crystal which held the lock shut. “It’s simple, but it’s keyed to me. Touch my mind and I’ll give it to you.”
The request was not an uncommon one, within a telepath family. But the boy stared at me in something like panic. I looked back, amazed, then relaxed and grinned. After all,
Marius hardly knew me. He’d been a small boy when I left, and I supposed, to him, I was the next thing to a complete stranger. “Oh, all right. Lock, and I’ll touch you.”
I made a light telepathic contact with the surface of his thoughts, visualizing the pattern of the matrix lock. His mind was so totally barriered that he might have been a stranger, even a nontelepath. It embarrassed me; I felt naked and intrusive.
After all, I wasn’t sure Marius was a telepath. Children don’t show that talent to any extent before adolescence, and he’d been a child when I went away. In all else he had inherited Terran traits, why should he have this one Darkovan talent?
He laid the case, opened, on the bed. I lifted out a small square box and handed it to him.
“Not much of a present,” I said, “but at least I remembered.”
He opened the box, hesitantly, and looked at the binoculars that lay, shiny and alien, inside. But he handled them with a strange embarrassment, then laid them back in the box without comment. I felt mildly annoyed. I hadn’t expected gratitude, especially, but he might have thanked me. He hadn’t asked about father, either.
“The Terrans can’t be beaten for lensed goods,” he said, after a minute.
“They can grind lenses. And build spaceships. As far as I can tell, it’s all they can do.”