"What it's like," I continued, "it's?it's intimate. You're completely open to the members of your circle. Your thoughts, your very feelings affect them, and you're wholly vulnerable to theirs. It's more than the closeness of blood kin. It's not exactly love. It's not sexual desire. It's like?like living with your skin off. Twice as tender to everything. It's not like anything else."
His eyes were rapt. I said harshly, "Dont romanticize it. It can be wonderful, yes. But it can be sheer hell. Or both at once. You learn to keep your distance, just to survive."
Through the haze of his feelings I could pick up just a fraction of his thoughts. I was trying to keep my awareness of him as low as possible. He was, damn it, too vulnerable. He was feeling forgotten, rejected, alone. I couldn't help picking it up. But a boy his age would think it prying.
"Lew, the Alton gift is the ability to force rapport. If I do have laran, could you open it up, make it function?"
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I looked at him in dismay. "You fool. Don't you know I could kill you that way?"
"Without laran, my life doesn't amount to much." He was as taut as a strung bow. Try as I might, I could not shut out flie terrible hunger in him to be part of the only world he knew, not to be so desperately deprived of his heritage.
It was my own hunger. I had felt it, it seemed, since my birth. Yet nine months before my birth, my father had made it impossible for me to belong wholly to his world and mine.
I faced the torture of knowing that, deeply as I loved my father, I hated him, too. Hated him for making me bastard, half-caste, alien, belonging nowhere. I clenched my fists, looking away from Regis. He had what I could never have. He belonged, full Comyn, by blood and law, legitimate?
And yet he was suffering, as much as I was. Would I give up laran to be legitimate, accepted, belonging?
"Lew, will you try at least?"
"Regis, if I killed you, I'd be guilty of murder." His face turned white. "Frightened? Good. It's an insane idea. Give it up, Regis. Only a catalyst telepath can ever do it safely and Tm not one. As far as I know, there are no catalyst telepaths alive now. Let well enough alone."
Regis shook his head. He said, forcing the words through a dry mouth, "Lew, when I was twelve years old you called me bredu. There is no one else, no one I can ask for this. I don't care if it kills me. I have heard"?he swallowed hard?"that bredin have an obligation, one to the other. Was it only an idle word, Lew?"
"It was no idle word, bredu" I muttered, wrung with his pain, "but we were children then. And this is no child's play, Regis, it's your life."
"Do you think I dont know that?" He was stammering. "It is my life. At least it can make the difference in what my life will be." His voice broke. "Bredu ..." he said again and was silent, and I knew it was because he could not go on without weeping.
The appeal left me defenseless to him. Try as I might to stay aloof, that helpless, choked "Bredu ..." had broken my last defense. I knew I was going to do what he wanted. "I cant do what was done to me," I told him. "That's a specific test for the Alton gift?forcing rapport?and only a full Alton can live through it. My father tried it, just once, with my full knowledge that it might very well kill me, and only for
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about thirty seconds. If the gift hadn't bred true, I'd have died. The fact that I didn't die was the only way he could think of to prove to Council that they could not refuse to accept me." My voice wavered. Even after almost ten years, I didn't like thinking about it '*Your blood, or your paternity, isn't in question. You dont need to take that kind of risk."
"You were willing to take it."
I had been. Time slid out of focus, and once again I stood before my father, his hands touching my temples, living again that memory of terror, that searing agony. I had been willing because I had shared my father's anguish, the terrible need in him to know I was bis true son?the knowledge that if he could not force Council to accept me as his son, life alone was worth nothing. I would rather have died, just then, than live to face the knowledge of failure.
Memory receded. I looked into Regis' eyes.
'Til do what I can. I can test you, as I was tested at Ar-flinn. But don't expect too much. I'm not a leronis, only a technician."
I drew a long breath. "Show me your matrix."
He fumbled with the strings at the neck, tipped the stone out in his palm, held it out to me. That told me as much as I needed to know. The lights in the small jewel were dim, inactive. If he had worn it for three years and his laran was active, he would have rough-keyed it even without knowing it The first test had failed, then.
As a final test, with excruciating care, I laid a fingertip against the stone; he did not flinch. I signaled to him to put it away, loosened the neck of the case of my own. I laid my matrix, still wrapped in the insulating silk, in the palm of my hand, then bared it carefully.
"Look into this. No, don't touch it," I warned, with a drawn breath. "Never touch a keyed matrix; you could throw me into shock. Just look into it."
Regis bent, focused with motionless intensity on the tiny ribbons of moving light inside the jewel. At last he looked away. Another bad sign. Even a latent telepath should have had enough energon patterns disrupted inside his brain to show some reaction: sickness, nausea, causeless euphoria. I asked cautiously, not wanting to suggest anything to him, "How do you feel?"
"I'm not sure," he said uneasily. "It hurt my eyes."
Then he had at least latent laran. Arousing it, though,
might be a difficult and painful business. Perhaps a catalyst telepath could have roused it. They had been bred for that work, in the days when Comyn did complex and life-shattering work in the higher-level matrices. I'd never known one. Perhaps the set of genes was extinct
Just the same, as a latent he deserved further testing. I knew he had the potential. I had known it when he was twelve years old.
"Did the leronis test you with Jtirion?" I asked.
"She gave me a little. A few drops."
"What happened?"
"It made me sick," Regis said, "dizzy. Flashing colors in front of my eyes. She said I was probably too young for much reaction, that in some people, laran developed later."
I thought that over. Kirian is used to lower the resistance against telepathic contact; it's used in treating empaths and other psi technicians who, without much natural telepathic gift, must work directly with other telepaths. It can sometimes ease fear or deliberate resistance to telepathic contact It can also be used, with great care, to treat threshold sickness?that curious psychic upheaval which often seizes on young telepaths at adolescence.
Well, Regis seemed young for his age. He might simply be developing the gift late. But it rarely came as late as this. Damn it Td been positive. Had some event at Nevarsin, some emotional shock, made him block awareness of it?
"I could try that again," I said tentatively. The kirtan might actually trigger latent telepathy; or perhaps, under its influence, I could reach his mind, without hurting him too much, and find out if he was deliberately blocking awareness of laran. It did happen, sometimes.
I didn't like using kirian. But a small dose couldnt do much worse than make him sick, or leave him with a bad hangover. And I had the distinct and not very pleasant feeling that if I cut off his hopes now, he might do something desperate. I didn't like the way he was looking at me, taut as i a bowstring, and shaking, not much, but from head to foot. $ His voice cracked a little as he said, TU try." All too clearly, what I heard was, Ftt try anything.
I went to my room for it, already berating myself for
agreeing to this lunatic experiment. It simply meant too
much to him. I weighed the possibility of giving him a seda-
*. tive dose, one that would knock him out or keep him safely
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drugged and drowsy till morning. But kirian is too unpredictable. The dose which puts one person to sleep like a baby at the breast may turn another into a frenzied berserker, raging and hallucinating. Anyway, I'd promised; I wouldn't deceive him now. I'd play it safe though, give him the same cautious minimal dose we used with strange psi technicians at Arilinn. This much kirian couldnt hurt him.
I measured bun a careful few drops in a wineglass. He swallowed it, grimacing at the taste, and sat down on one of the stone benches. After a minute he covered his eyes. I watched carefully. One of the first signs was the dilation of the pupils of the eyes. After a few minutes he began to tremble, leaning against the back of the seat as if he feared he might fall. His hands were icy cold. I took his wrist lightly in my fingers. Normally I hate touching people; telepaths do, except hi close intimacy. At the touch he looked up and whispered, "Why are you angry, Lew?**
Angry? Did he interpret my fear for him as anger? I said, "Not angry, only worried about you. Kirian isn't anything to play with. I'm going to try and touch you now. Dont fight me if you can help it."
I gently reached for contact with his mind. I wouldn't use the matrix for this; under kirian I might probe too far and damage him. I first sensed sickness and confusion?that was the drug, no more?then a deathly weariness and physical tension, probably from the long ride, and finally an overwhelming sense of desolation and loneliness, which made me want to turn away from his despair. Hesitantly, I risked a somewhat deeper contact.
And met a perfect, locked defense, a blank wall. After a moment, I probed sharply. The Alton gift was forced rapport, even with nontelepaths. He wanted this, and if I could give it to him, then he could probably endure being hurt. He moaned and moved his head as if I was hurting him. Probably I was. The emotions were still blurring everything. Yes, he had laran potential But he'd blocked it Completely.
I waited a moment and considered. It's not so uncommon; some telepaths live all their lives that way. There's no reason they shouldn't Telepathy, as I told him, is far from an un-mixed blessing. But occasionally it yielded to a slow, patient unraveling. I retreated to the outer layer of his consciousness again and asked, not in words, What is it you're afraid to know, Regis? Don't block it. Try to remember what it is you
couldn't bear to know. There was a time when you could do this knowingly. Try to remember....
It was the wrong thing. He had received my thought; I felt the response to it?a clamshell snapping rigidly shut, a sensitive plant closing its leaves. He wrenched his hands roughly from mine, covering his eyes again. He muttered, "My head hurts. I'm sick, I'm so sick...."
I had to withdraw. He had effectively shut me out. Possibly a skilled, highly-trained Keeper could have forced her way through the resistance without killing him. But I couldn't force it I might have battered down the barrier, forced him to face whatever it was he'd buried, but he might very well crack completely, and whether he could ever be put together again was a very doubtful point.
I wondered if he understood that he had done this to himself. Facing that kind of knowledge was a terribly painful process. At the time, building that barrier must have seemed the only way to save his sanity, even if it meant paying the agonizing price of cutting off his entire psi potential with it. My own Keeper had once explained it to me with the example of the creature who, helplessly caught in a trap, gnaws off the trapped foot, choosing maiming to death. Sometimes there were layers and layers of such barricades,
The barrier, or inhibition, might some day dissolve of itself, releasing his potential. Time and maturity could do a lot It might be that some day, in the deep intimacy of love, he would find himself free of it Or?I faced this too?it might be that this barrier was genuinely necessary to his life and sanity, in which case it would endure forever, or, if it were somehow broken down, there would not be enough left of him to go on living.
A catalyst telepath probably could have reached him. But in these days, due to inbreeding, indiscriminate marriages with nontelepaths and the disappearance of the old means of stimulating these gifts, the various Comyn psi powers no longer bred true. I was living proof that the Alton gift did sometimes appear in pure form. But as a general thing, no one could sort out the tangle of gifts. The Hastur gift, whatever that was?even at Aritinn they didn't tell me?is just as likely to appear in the Aillard or Elhalyn Domains. Catalyst telepathy was once an Ardais gift. Dyan certainly wasn't one! As far as I knew, there were none left alive.
It seemed a long time later that Regis stirred again, rub-
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bing his forehead; then he opened his eyes, still with that terrible eagerness. The drug was still in his system?it wouldn't wear off completely for hours?but he was beginning to have brief intervals free of it His unspoken question was perfectly clear. I had to shake my head, regretfully.
Tin sorry, Regis."
I hope I never again see such despair in a young face. If he had been twelve years old, I would have taken him in my arms and tried to comfort him. But he was not a child now, and neither was L His taut, desperate face kept me at arm's length.
"Regis, listen to me,*1 I said quietly. "For what it*s worth, the laran is there. You have the potential, which means, at the very least, you're carrying the gene, your children wfll have it" I hesitated, not wanting to hurt him further, by telling him straightforwardly that he had made the barrier himself. Why hurt him that way?
I said, "I did my best, bredu. But I couldn't reach it, the barriers were too strong. Bredu, dont look at me like that," I pleaded, "I can't bear it, to see you looking at me that way."
His voice was almost inaudible. "I know. You did your best"
Had I really? I was struck with doubt I felt sick with the force of his misery. I tried to take his hands again, forcing myself to meet his pain head-on, not flinch from it But he pulled away from me, and I let it go.
"Regis, listen to me. It doesn't matter. Perhaps in the days of the Keepers, it was a terrible tragedy for a Hastur to be without laran. But the world is changing. The Comyn is changing. YouTl find other strengths,**
I felt the futility of the words even as I spoke them. What must it be like, to live without laranl like being without sight hearing ... but, never having known it, be must not be allowed to suffer its loss.
"Regis, you have so much else to give. To your family, to the Domains, to our world. And your children will have it?** I took his hands again in mine, trying to comfort him, but he cracked.
"Zandru's hells, stop it," he said, and wrenched his hands roughly away again. He caught up his cloak, which lay on the stone seat, and ran out of the room.
I stood frozen in the shock of his violence, then, in horror, ran after him. Gods! Drugged, sick, desperate, he couldn't be
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allowed to run off that way! He needed to be watched, cared for, comforted?but I wasn't in time. When I reached the stairs, he had already disappeared into the labyrinthine corridors of that wing, and I lost him.
I called and hunted for hours before, reeling with fatigue since I, too, had been riding for days. I gave up finally and went back to my rooms. I couldn't spend the whole night storming all over Comyn Castle, shouting his name! I couldn't force my way into the Regent's suite and demand to know if he was there! There were limits to what Kennard Alton's bastard son could do. I suspected I'd already exceeded them. I could only hope desperately that the kirian would make him sleepy, or wear off with fatigue, and he would come back to rest or make his way to the Hastur apartments and sleep there.
I waited for hours and saw the sun rise, blood-red in the mists hanging over the Terran spaceport, before, cramped and cold, I fell asleep on the stone bench by the fireplace.
But Regis did not return.
Chapter THREE
Regis ran down the corridor, dazed and confused, the small points of color still flashing behind his eyes, racked with the
interior crawling nausea. One thought was tearing at him:
Failed. Fve failed. Even Lew, tower-trained and with all his skill, couldn't help me. There's nothing there. When he said what he did about potential, he was humoring me, comforting a child.
He reeled, feeling sick again, clung momentarily to the wall and ran on.
The Comyn castle was a labyrinth, and Regis had not been inside it in years. Before long, in his wild rush to get away from the scene of his humiliation, he was well and truly lost His senses, &irum-blurred, retained vague memories of stone cul-de-sacs, blind corners, archways, endless stairs up which he toiled and down which he blundered and sometimes fell, courtyards filled with rushing wind and blinding rain, hour after hour. To the end of his life he retained an impression of the Comyn Castle which he could summon at will to overlay his real memories of it: a vast stone maze, a trap through which he wandered alone for centuries, with no human form to be seen. Once, around a corner, he heard Lew calling his name. He flattened himself hi a niche and hid for a few thousand years until, long after, the sound was gone.
After an indeterminate time of wandering and stumbling and hallucinating, he became aware that it had been a long time since he had fallen down a flight of stairs; that the corridors were long, but not miles and miles long; and that they were no longer filled with uncanny crawling colors and silent sounds. When he came out at last on to a high balcony at the uppermost level, he knew where he was.
Dawn was breaking over the city below him. Once before, during the night, he had stood against a high parapet like
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this, thinking that his life was no good to anyone, not to the Hasturs, not to himself, that he should throw himself down and be done with it This time the thought was remote, nightmarish, like one of those terrible real dreams which wakes you shaking and crying out, but a few seconds later is gone hi dissolving fragments.
He drew a long, weary sigh. Now what?
He should go and make himself presentable for his grandfather, who would certainly send for him soon. He should get some food and sleep; kirian, he'd been told, expended so much physical and nervous energy that it was essential to compensate with extra food and rest He should go back and apologize to Lew Alton, who had only very reluctantly done what Regis himself had begged him to do.... But he was sick to death of hearing what he should do!