"Bradley,.Marion.Zimmer.-.Darkover.15.-.Heritage.Of.Hastur.1 (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradley Marion Zimmer)

THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR
91
move the spaceport to Caer Donn. It was built there, a good many years ago. When the Comyn offered us this more convenient spot, down here in the plains at Thendara, we were altogether pleased to abandon the operation at Caer Donn, except for trade and certain transport. The Thendara location has been to our mutual advantage. If we are forced to move back to Caer Donn we would be forced to reschedule all our traffic, rebuild our headquarters back in the mountains where the climate is more difficult for Terrans to tolerate and, above all, rely on inadequate roads and inhospitable countryside. I don't want to do that, and we will do anything within reason to avoid it."
Dyan said, "Mr. Ramsay, are you not in command of all the Terrans on Darkover?"
"You have been misinformed, Lord Dyan. I'm a legate, not a dictator. My authority is mostly over spaceport personnel stationed here, and only in matters which for one reason or another supersede that of their individual departments of administration. My major business is to keep order in the Trade City. Furthermore, I have authority from Administration Central to deal with Darkovan citizens through their duly constituted and appointed rulers. I have no authority over any individual Darkovan except for a few civilian employees who choose to hire themselves to us, nor over any individual Empire citizen who comes here to do business, beyond determining that his business is a lawful one for a Class D world. Beyond that, if his business disturbs the peace between Darkover and the Empire, I may intervene. But unless someone appeals to me, I have no authority outside the Trade City,"
It sounded intolerably complicated. How did the Empire manage to get its business done at all? My father had, as yet, said nothing; now he raised his head and said bluntly, "Well we're appealing to you. These Empire citizens selling blasters in the marketplace of Caer Donn are not doing lawful business for a Class D Closed World, and you know it as well as I do. It's up to you to do something about it, and do it now. That does come within your responsibility."
The Legate said, "If the offense were here in Thendara, Lord Alton, I would do so with the greatest pleasure. In Caer Donn I can do nothing unless Lord Kermiac of Aldaran should appeal to me."
My father looked and sounded angry. He was angry, with
92
Marion Zimmer Bradley
a disrupting anger which could have struck the Legate unconscious if he had not been trying hard to control it. "Always the same old story on Terra, what's your saying, pass the buck? You're like children playing that game with hot chestnuts, tossing them from one to another and trying not to get burned! I spent eight years on Terra and I never found even one man who would look me in the eye and say, This is my responsibility and I will accept it whatever the consequences.' "
Ramsay sounded harried. "Is it your contention that it is the Empire's business, or mine, to police your ethical systems?"
"I always thought," Callina said hi her clear, still voice, "that ethical conduct was the responsibility of every honest man."
Hastur said, "One of our fundamental laws, sir, however law is defined, is that the power to act confers the responsibility to do so. Is it otherwise with you?"
The Legate leaned his chin on his clasped hands. "I can admire that philosophy, my lord, but I must respectfully refuse to debate it with you. I am concerned at this moment with avoiding great inconvenience for both our societies. I will inquire into this matter and see what can legitimately be done without interfering hi your political decisions. And if I may make a respectful suggestion, Lord Hastur, I suggest that you take this matter up directly with Kermiac of Ald-aran. Perhaps you can persuade him of the rightness of your view, and he will take it upon himself to stop the traffic in weapons, in those areas where the final legal authority is his."
The suggestion shocked me. Deal, negotiate, with that renegade Domain, exiled from Comyn generations ago? But no one seemed inordinately shocked at the idea. Hastur said, "We shall indeed discuss this matter with Lord Aldaran, sir. And it may be that since you refuse to take personal responsibility for enforcing the Empire's agreement with all of Darkover, that I shall myself take the matter directly before the Supreme Tribunal of the Empire. If it is adjudged there that the agreement for Darkover does indeed require planet-wide enforcement of the Compact, Mr. Ramsay, have I then your assurance that you would enforce it?"
I wondered if the Legate was even conscious of the absolute contempt in Hastur's voice for a man who required orders from a supreme authority to enforce ethical conduct. I felt almost ashamed of my Terran blood. But if Ramsay heard the contempt, he revealed nothing.
THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR
93
"If I receive orders to that effect, Lord Hastur, you may be assured that I will enforce them absolutely. And permit me to say, Lord Hastur, that it would in no way displease me to receive such orders."
A few more words were exchanged, mostly formal courtesies. But the meeting was over, and I bad to gather my scattered thoughts and reassemble the honor guard, conduct the Council members formally out of the headquarters building and the spaceport and through the streets of Thendara. I could sense my father's thoughts, as I always could when we were in each other's presence.
He was thinking that no doubt h would be left to him to go to Aldaran. Kermiac would have to receive him, if only as my mother's kinsman. And I felt the utter weariness, like pain, in the thought. That journey into the Hellers was terrible, even in high summer; and summer was fast waning. Father was thinking that he could not shirk it. Hastur was too old. Dyan was no diplomat, he'd want to settle it by challenging Kermiac to a duel. But who else was there? The Ridenow lads were too young. . . .
It seemed to me, as I followed my father through the streets of Thendara, that in fact almost everyone in Comyn was either too old or too young. What was to become of the Domains?
It would have been easier if I could have been wholly convinced that the Terrans were all evil and must be resisted. Yet against my will I had found much that was wise in what Ramsay said. Firm laws, and never too much power concentrated in one pair of hands, seemed to me a strong barrier to the kind of corruption we now faced. And a certain basic law to fall back on when the men could not be trusted. Men, as I had found out when Dyan was placed at the head of the cadets, were all too often fallible, acting from expediency rather than the honor they talked so much about. Ramsay might hesitate to act without orders, but at least he acted on the responsibility of men and laws he could trust to be wiser than himself. And there was a check on his power too, for he knew that if he acted on his own responsibility against the will of wiser heads, he would be removed before he could do too much damage. But who would be a check on Dyan's power? Or my father's? They had the power to act, and therefore the right to do it.
And who could question their motives, or call a halt to their acts?
THE HERITAGE OF HASTUK
95
Chapter SEVEN
The day remained clear and cloudless. At sunset Regis stood on the high balcony which looked out over the city and the spaceport. The dying sunlight turned the city at his feet to a gleaming pattern of red walls and faceted windows, Danilo said, "It looks like the magical city in the fairy tale."
"There's nothing much magical about it," Regis said. "We learned that this morning on honor guard. Look, there's the ship that takes off every night about this time. It's too small to be an interstellar ship. I wonder where it's going?"
"Port Chicago, perhaps, or Caer Donn. It must be strange to have to send messages to other people by writing them, instead of by using linked minds as we do through the towers," Danilo said. "And it must feel very, very strange never to know what other people are thinking."
Of course, Regis thought. Dani was a telepath. Suddenly he realized that he'd been in contact with him again and again, and it had seemed so normal that neither had recognized it as telepathy. Today at the Council had been different, terribly different. He must have laran after allЧbut how and when, after Lew had failed?
And then the questions and the doubts came back. There had been so many telepaths there, spreading laran everywhere, even a nontelepath might have picked it up. It did not necessarily mean anything. He felt wrung, half desperately hoping that he was not cut off anymore and half fearing.
He went on looking at the city spread out below. This was the hour off-duty, when if a cadet had incurred no demerit or punishment detail, he might go where he chose. Morning and early afternoon were spent in training, swordplay and unarmed combat, the various military and command skills they would need later as Guards in the city and in the field. Later in the afternoon, each cadet was assigned to special duties. Danilo, who wrote the clearest hand among the cadets, had
94
been assigned to assist the supoly-officer. Regis had the relatively menial task of walking patrol in the city with a seasoned veteran or two, keeping order in the streets, preventing brawls, discouraging sneak-thieves and footpads. He found that he liked it, liked the very idea of keeping order in the city of the Comyn.
Life in the cadet corps was not intolerable, as he had feared. He did not mind the hard beds, the coarse food, the continual demands on his time. He had been even more strictly disciplined at Nevarsin, and life in the barracks was easy by contrast. What troubled him most was always being surrounded by others and yet still being lonely, isolated from the others by a gulf he could not bridge.
From their first day, he and Danilo had drifted together, at first by chance, because their beds were side by side and neither of them had another close friend in the barracks. The officers soon began to pair them off for details needing partners like barrack room cleaning, which the cadets took in turns; and because Regis and Danilo were about the same size and weight, for unarmed-combat training and practice. Within the first-year group they were good-naturedly, if derisively, known as "the cloistered brethren" because, like the Nevarsin brothers, they spoke casta by choice", rather than cahuenga.
At first they spent much of their free time together too. Presently Regis noticed that Danilo sought his company less, and wondered if he had done something to offend the other boy. Then by chance he heard a second-year cadet jeeringly congratulating Danilo about his cleverness in choosing a friend. Something in Danilo's face told him it was not the first time this taunt had been made. Regis had wanted to reveal himself and do something, defend Danilo, strike the older cadet, anything. On second thought he knew this would embarrass Danilo more and give a completely false impression. No taunt, he realized, could have hurt Danilo more. He was poor, indeed, but the Syrtis were an old and honorable family who had never needed to curry favor or patronage. From that day Regis began to make the overtures himselfЧ not an easy thing to do, as he was diffident and agonizingly afraid of a rebuff. He tried to make it clear, at least to Danilo, that it was he who sought out Dani's company, welcomed it and missed it when it was not offered. Today it was
96
Marion Zimmer Bradley
THE HERITAGE OF HASTUR
97
he who had suggested the balcony, high atop Comyn castle, where they could see the city and the spaceport.
The sun was sinking now, and the swift twilight began to race across the sky. Danilo said, "We'd better get back to barracks." Regis was reluctant to leave the silence here, the sense of being at peace, but he knew Danilo was right. On a sudden impulse to confide, he said, "Dani, I want to tell you something. When I've spent my three years in the GuardsЧI must, I promisedЧI'm planning to go offworld. Into space. Into the Empire."
Dani stared in surprise and wonder. "Why?"
Regis opened his mouth to pour out his reasons, and found himself suddenly at a loss for words. Why? He hardly knew. Except that it was a strange and different world, with the excitement of the unknown. A world that would not remind him at every turn that he had been born defrauded of his heritage, without laran. Yet, after today . . .
The thought was curiously disturbing. If in truth he had laran, then he had no more reasons. But he still didn't want to give up his dream. He couldn't say it in words, but evidently Danilo did not expect any. He said, "You're Hastur. Will they let you?"
"I have my grandfather's pledge that after three years, if I still want to go, he will not oppose it." He found himself thinking, with a stab of pain that if he had laran they certainly would never let him go. The old breathless excitement of the unknown gripped him again; he shivered as he decided not to let them know.
Danilo smiled shyly and said, "I almost envy you. If my father weren't so old, or if he had another son to look after him, I'd want to come with you. I wish we could go together."