The Forbidden Tower

Chapter Twelve

Callista woke and lay with her eyes closed, feeling the sun on her eyelids. In the night, through her sleep, she had felt the storm cease, the snow stop, and the clouds disappear. This morning the sun was out. She stretched her body, savoring the luxury of being wholly without pain. She still felt weak, drained, though it now seemed to her that she had slept for two or three whole days without intermission, after that dreadful ordeal. Afterward she had remained abed for a few days, recovering her strength, although she felt quite well. She knew that the first thing necessary was to recover her health, which, always before, had been excellent, and it would take time.

And when she was well, what then? But she caught herself. If she began to fret about that, she would have no peace.

She was alone in the room. That was luxury too. She had spent so many years alone that she had come to crave solitude as much as she had once dreaded it during the difficult years of her training. And while she was sick she had never been alone for an instant. She knew the reason — she would unhesitatingly have ordered the same treatment for anyone in her condition — and she had welcomed their care and unceasing love. Now, however, it was good to wake again and know herself once more left alone.

She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. Andrew’s bed was empty. Dimly she remembered, through her sleep, hearing him moving around, dressing, going out. With the storm over, there would be all manner of things to be attended to around the estate. Around the house too. Ellemir had spent so much time at her side during the days of her illness that she had neglected the running of the household.

Callista decided that she would go downstairs this morning.

Last night Andrew had been with Ellemir again. She had sensed it dimly, by the old discipline turning her mind away from it. He had come in softly, near midnight, moving quietly so as not to disturb her, and she had pretended sleep.

I am a fool and unkind, she told herself. I wanted this to happen, and I am honestly glad, yet I could not speak to him and say so. But that line of thought led nowhere, either. There was only one thing she could do, and she must summon up the strength to do it: to live every day as best she could, recovering her health, trusting Damon’s promise. Andrew still loved and wanted her, though, she thought with a detachment so clinical she did not even know it was bitter, she could not imagine why he should. Again, why dwell on the one thing they could not yet share? Resolutely she got out of bed and went to bathe.

She dressed herself in a blue woolen skirt and a white knitted tunic with a long collar which could be wound about her like a shawl. For the first time since she could remember she actually felt hungry. Downstairs, the maids had cleared away the morning meal. Her father’s chair had been rolled to the window and he was looking out into the heavily drifted courtyard, where a group of serving men, heavily bundled, were clearing away some of the snow. She went and brushed his forehead with a dutiful kiss.

“Are you well again, daughter?”

“Much better, I think,” she said, and he motioned her to sit beside him, scanning her face carefully, narrowing his eyes.

“You’re thinner. Zandru’s hells, girl, you look as if you’d been gnawed by Alar’s wolf! What ailed you, or shouldn’t I ask?”

She had no idea what, if anything, Andrew or Damon might have told him. “Nothing very much. A woman’s trouble.”

“Don’t give me that,” her father said bluntly, “you’re no sickling. Marriage doesn’t seem to agree with you, my girl.”

She recoiled, saw in his face that he had picked up the recoil. He backed off quickly. “Well, well, child, I have known it a long time, the Towers do not easily let go their hold on those they have taken. I remember well how Damon went for more than a year like a lost soul blundering in the outer hells.” Clumsily he patted her arm. “I won’t ask questions, chiya. But if that husband of yours is no good to you…”

Quickly she put out her hand to him. “No, no. It has nothing to do with Andrew, Father.”

He said, his frown skeptical, “When a bride of a few moons looks as you do, her husband is seldom blameless.”

Under his concentrated study she flushed, but her voice was firm. “On my word, Father, there has been no quarrel, and Andrew is no way to blame.” It was the truth, but not the whole truth. There was no way to tell the whole truth to anyone outside their closed circle, and she was not sure she knew it herself. He sensed that she was evading him, but he accepted the barrier between them. “Well, well, the world will go as it will, daughter, not as you or I would have it Have you breakfasted?”

“No, I waited to keep you company.”

She let him call servants and order them to bring her food, more than she wanted, but she knew he had been shocked by her thinness and pallor. Like an obedient child, she forced herself to eat a little more than she really wanted. His eyes dwelt on her face as she ate, and he said at last, more gently than was his custom, “There are times, child, when I feel that you daughters of Comyn who go into the Towers take risks no less than those of our sons who go into the Guard, and fight along our borders… and it’s just as inevitable, I suppose, that some of you should be wounded.”

How much did he know? How much did he understand? She knew he had said just about as much as he could say without breaking one of the strongest taboos in a telepathic family. She felt obscurely comforted, even through her embarrassment. It could not have been easy for him to go this far.

He passed her a jar of honey for her bread. She refused it, laughing. “Would you have me fat as a fowl for roasting?”

“As fat, maybe, as an embroidery needle,” he scoffed. Her eyes on his face, she saw that he too was thinner, drawn and worn, and his eyes seemed set deeper behind cheekbones and brow.

“Is there none here to keep you company, Father?”

“Oh, Ellemir is in and out, about the kitchens. Damon has gone to the village, to see to the families of the men who were frostbitten during the great storm, and Andrew is in the greenhouse, seeing what the frost has done there. Why not join him there, child? I am sure there is work enough for two.”

“And it is certain I am no help to Ellemir about the kitchens,” she said, laughing. “Later, perhaps. If the sun is out they will be doing a great wash, and I must see to the linen rooms.”

He laughed. “To be sure. Ellemir has always said that she would rather muck out barns than use a needle! But later maybe we can have some music again. I have been remembering how, when I was younger, I used to play a lute. Perhaps my fingers could get back their skill. I have so little to do, sitting here all the day…”

The women of the household, and some of the men, had dragged out the great tubs and were washing clothes in the back kitchens. Callista found her presence superfluous and slipped away to the small still-room where she had made her own work. Nothing was as she had left it. She remembered that Damon had been working here during her illness, and, surveying the disorder he had left, she set to work to put everything to rights. She realized too that she must replenish stocks of some common medicines and remedies, but while her hands were busy with some of the simplest herbal mixtures, separating them into doses to be brewed for tea, she realized that there was a more demanding task before her: she must make some kirian.

She had thought when she left the Tower that she would never do this again; Valdir was too young to need it and Domenic too old. Yet she realized soberly that whatever happened, no household of telepaths should be without this particular drug. It was by far the most difficult of all the drugs she knew how to make, having to be distilled in three separate operations, each to dispose of a different chemical fraction of the resin. She had set everything to rights in the still-room and was taking out her distilling equipment when Ferrika came in and started, seeing her there.

“Forgive me for disturbing you, vai domna.”

“No, come in, Ferrika. What can I do for you?”

“One of the maids has scalded her hand at the wash. I came to find some burn salve for her.”

“Here it is,” Callista said, reaching a jar from a shelf. “Can I do anything?”

“No, my lady, it is nothing serious,” the woman said, and went away. After a little while she returned, bringing back the jar.

“Is it a bad burn?”

Ferrika shook her head. “No, no, she carelessly put her hand into the wrong tub, that is all, but I think we should keep something for burns in the kitchen and washing rooms. If someone had been severely hurt it would have been bad to have to come up here for it.”

Callista nodded. “I think you are right. Put some into smaller jars, then, and keep it there,” she said. While Ferrika at the smaller table, began to do this, she frowned, opening drawer after drawer until Ferrika finally turned and asked, “My lady, can I help you to find something? If the Lord Damon, or I myself, have misplaced something for you…”

Callista frowned. She said, “Yes, there were kireseth flowers here…”

“Lord Damon used some of those, my lady, while you were ill.”

Callista nodded, remembering the crude tincture he had made. “I have allowed for that, but unless he wasted or spoiled a great deal, there was far more than he could have used, stored in a bag at the back of this cabinet.” She went on searching cabinets and drawers. “Have you used any of it, Ferrika?”

The woman shook her head. “I have not touched it.” She was smoothing salve into a jar with a small bone paddle. Watching her, Callista asked, “Do you know how to make kirian?”

“I know how it is done, my lady. When I trained in the Guild-house in Arilinn, each of us spent some time apprenticed to an apothecary to learn to make medicines and drugs. But I myself have never made it,” the woman said. “We had no use for it in the Guild-house, though we had to learn how to recognize it. You know that the… that some people sell the by-products of kirian distillation, illegally?”

“I had heard this, even in the Tower,” Callista said dryly. Kireseth was a plant whose leaves, flowers and stems contained various resins. In the Kilghard Hills, at some seasons, the pollen created a problem, having dangerous psychoactive qualities. Kirian, the telepathic drug which lowered the barriers of the mind, used the only safe fraction, and even that was used with great caution. The use of raw kireseth, or of the other resins, was forbidden by law in Thendara and Arilinn, and was regarded as criminal everywhere in the Domains. Even kirian was treated with great caution, and looked on with a kind of superstitious dread by outsiders.

As she counted and sorted filtering cloths, Callista thought, with a peculiar homesickness, of the faraway plains of Arilinn. It had been her home for so long. She supposed she would never see it again.

It could be her home again, Leonie had said… To dispel that thought, she asked, “How long did you live in Arilinn, Ferrika?”

“Three years, domna.”

“But you are one of our people from the estate, are you not? I remember that you and I and Dorian and Ellemir all played together when we were little girls, and had dancing lessons together.”

“Yes, my lady, but when Dorian went to be married, and you to the Tower, I decided I did not want to stay at home all my life, like a plant grown fast to the wall. My mother had been midwife here, you remember, and I had, I thought, talent for the work. There was a midwife on the estate at Syrtis who had been trained in the Arilinn Guild-house, where they train healers and midwives. And I saw that under her care, many lived whom my mother would have consigned to the mercy of Avarra — lived, and their babies thrived. Mother said these newfangled ways were folly, and probably impious as well, but I went to the Guild-house at Neskaya and took oath there. They sent me to Arilinn to be trained. And I asked leave of my oath-mother to come here and take employment, and she agreed.”

“I did not know there was anyone at Arilinn from my home villages.”

“Oh, I saw you now and again, my lady, riding with the other vai leroni,” Ferrika said. “And once the domna Lirielle came to the Guild-house to aid us. There was a woman there whose inward parts were being destroyed by some dreadful disease, and our Guild-mother said that nothing could save her except neutering.”

“I had thought that illegal,” Callista said with a shudder, and Ferrika answered, “Why, so it is, domna, except to save a life. More than illegal, it is very dangerous as it is done under a surgeon’s knife. Many never recover. But it can be done by matrix—” She broke off with a rueful smile, saying, “But who am I to say that to you, who were Lady of Arilinn and know all such arts?”

Callista said, shrinking, “I have never seen it.”

“I was privileged to watch the leronis,” said Ferrika, “and I felt it would be greatly helpful to the women of our world if this art was more widely known.”

With a shudder of revulsion, Callista said, “Neutering?”

“Not only that, domna, although, to save a life, that too. The woman lived. Though her womanhood was destroyed, the disease had also been burnt out and she was free of it. But there are so many other things which could be done. You did not see what Lord Damon did with the crippled men after the storm, but I saw how they recovered after — and I know how men recover when I have had to cut off their toes and fingers to save them from the black rot. And there are women for whom it is not safe to bear more children, and there is no safe way to make it impossible. I have long thought that partial neutering might be the answer, if it could be done without the risks of surgery. It is a pity, my lady, that the art of doing such things with a matrix is not known outside the Towers.”

Callista looked dismayed at the thought, and Ferrika knew she had gone too far. She replaced the cap on the jar of burn salve with strong fingers. “Have you found the kireseth that was missing, Lady Callista? You should ask Lord Damon if he put it somewhere else.” She put away the salve, glanced through the herbal teas Callista had divided into doses, and looked along the shelves. “We have no more blackfruit root when this is gone, my lady.”

Callista looked at the curled scraps of root in the bottom of the jar. “We must send to the markets at Neskaya when the roads are clear. It comes from the Dry Towns. But surely we do not use it often?”

“I have been giving it to your father, domna, to strengthen his heart. For a time I can give him red-rush, but for daily use this is better.”

“Send for it, then, you have the authority. But he has always been a strong, powerful man. Why do you think he needs stimulants for his heart, Ferrika?”

“It is often so with men who have been very active, domna, swordsmen, riders, athletes, mountain guides. If some injury keeps them long abed, their hearts weaken. It is as if their bodies developed a need for activity, and when it is too suddenly withdrawn, they fall ill, and sometimes they die. I do not know why it should be so, my lady, I only know that very often it is so.”

This was her fault too, Callista thought in sudden despair. It was in fighting with the catmen that he lost the use of his limbs. And, remembering how tender her father had been with her that morning, she was seized by grief. Suppose he should die, when she had just begun to know him! In the Tower she had been insulated from grief and joy alike. Now it seemed that the world outside was filled with so many sorrows she could not bear it. How could she ever have had the courage to leave?

Ferrika watched her with sympathy, but Callista was too inexperienced to realize it. She had been taught to rely so wholly upon herself that now she was unable to turn to anyone else for advice or for comfort. After a time, Ferrika, seeing that Callista was lost in her own thoughts, went quietly away, and Callista tried to resume her work, but what she had heard left her so shaken that her hands would not obey her. Finally she replaced her materials, cleaned her equipment and went out, closing the door.

The men and maids had finished the washing, and in the rare bright sun, were out in the courtyards, pegging up sheets and towels, linens and garments, from lines strung everywhere. They were laughing gaily and calling jokes back and forth, tramping about in the mud and melting snow. The courtyard was full of wet flapping linens, blowing in the gusty wind. They looked merry and busy, but Callista knew from experience that if she joined them it would put a damper on their high spirits. They were used to Ellemir, but to the women of the estate — and even more to the men — she was still a stranger, exotic, to be feared and revered, a Comyn lady who had been a leronis at Arilinn. Only Ferrika, who had known her as a child, was capable of treating her as another young woman like herself. She was lonely, she realized as she watched the young girls and women running back and forth with armfuls of wet wash for the lines and dry sheets for the cupboards, making jokes and teasing one another.

She was lonely, belonging nowhere, she felt, not in the Tower, not among them.

After a time she went off to the greenhouses. Heaters were always kept inside the greenhouses, but she could see that some of the plants near the window had been frostbitten, and in one of the buildings the weight of snow had broken several panes. Although it had been hastily boarded up, some fruit bushes had died. She saw Andrew at the far end, showing the gardeners how to cut away damaged vines, looking for live wood.

She rarely looked at Andrew, being so accustomed to being aware of him in other ways. Now she wondered if Ellemir thought him handsome or ill-looking. The thought annoyed her disproportionately. She knew Andrew thought her beautiful. Not being a vain woman, and, because of the taboo which had surrounded her all her adult life, unaccustomed to masculine attention, this always surprised her a little. But now, she felt that since Ellemir was so lovely, and she was so thin and pale, he must certainly think Ellemir more beautiful.

Andrew looked up, smiled and beckoned to her. She came to his side, politely nodding to the gardener. “Are these bushes all dead?”

He shook his head. “I think not. Killed to the root, maybe, but they’ll grow again this spring.” He added to the man, “Mind you mark where you’ve cut them back, so you don’t plant anything else there and disturb the roots.”

Callista looked at the cut bushes. “These leaves should be picked and sorted, and those which aren’t frost-damaged must be dried, or we’ll have no seasoning for our roasts till spring!”

Andrew relayed the order. “A good thing you were here! I may be a good gardener, but I’m no cook, even on my world.”

She laughed. “I am no cook at all, on any world. I know something of herbs, that is all.”

The gardener bent to take away the cut branches, and behind his back Andrew bent to kiss her quickly on the forehead. She had to steel herself not to move out of reach, as long habit and deep reflexes prompted. He was aware of the abortive movement and looked at her in pained surprise, then, remembering, sighed and smiled.

“I am glad to see you looking so well, my love.”

She said, sighing, feeling nothing in his kiss, “I feel like that bush there, killed down to the roots. Let’s hope I’ll grow again in spring too.”

“Should you be out? Damon said you should rest again today.”

“Well, Damon has a bad habit of being right, but I feel like a mushroom in a dark cellar,” Callista said, “it’s so long since I’ve seen the sunlight!” She halted in a patch of sun, savoring the warmth on her face, while Andrew moved along, checking the rows of vegetables and pot-herbs. “I think everything here is still in good order, but I’m not familiar with these. What do you think, Callista?”

She came and knelt beside the low bushes, checking their roots. “I told Father years ago that he should not plant the melons so close to the wall. It’s true that there’s more sunlight here, but there isn’t really enough insulation in a bad storm. This one will die before the fruit is ripe, and if this one survives” — she pointed — “the cold has killed the fruit. The rind may do for pickle, but it will not ripen and must be taken away before it rots.” She called the gardener back to give orders.

“We will have to ask for some more seed from one of the lower lying farms. Perhaps Syrtis has been protected from the storm. They have good fruit trees and we can ask them for some melons, and some slips from their vines. And these should be taken to the kitchens. Some can be cooked before they spoil, others salted and put by.”

As the men went to carry out the orders, Andrew slipped his hand between her arm and her body. She tensed, went rigid, then quick color flooded her face.

“I am sorry. It is only a… a reflex, a habit…”

Back to square one. All the physical reflexes, so slowly and carefully obliterated in the months since their marriage, were returned in full strength. Andrew felt helpless and defeated. He knew that this had been necessary to save her life, but seeing it actually in action again was another shock, and a severe one.

“Don’t look like that,” Callista begged. “It’s only for a little while!”

He sighed. “I know. Leonie warned me of this.” His face tightened, and Callista said edgily, “You really hate her, don’t you?”

“Not her. But I hate what she did to you. I can’t forgive that, and I never will.”

Callista felt a curious inward trembling, a shaking she could never quite control. She kept her voice even with an effort. “Be fair, Andrew. Leonie put no compulsion on me to be Keeper. I chose of my free will. She simply made it possible for me to follow that most difficult of paths. And it was also of my free will that I chose to endure the… the pain of leaving. For you,” she added, looking straight at Andrew.

Andrew sensed that they were perilously close to a quarrel. With one part of himself he craved it, a thunderclap which would clear the air. The thought came unbidden that with Ellemir that would be the way: a short, sharp quarrel, and a reconciliation which would leave them closer than ever.

But he could never do that with Callista. She had learned, with what suffering he could never guess, to keep her emotions deeply guarded, hidden behind an impermeable barrier. He breached that wall at his peril. He might now and then persuade her briefly to lower it or draw it aside, but it would always be there and he could never risk destroying it without destroying Callista too. If she seemed hard and invulnerable on the surface, he sensed that behind this she was more vulnerable than he could ever know.

“I won’t blame her, sweetheart, but I wish she could have been more explicit with us, with both of us.”

That was fair enough, Callista thought, remembering — like a bad dream, like a nightmare! — how she had railed at Leonie in the overworld. Still she felt compelled to say, “Leonie didn’t know.”

Andrew wanted to shout, well, why in hell didn’t she? That’s her business, isn’t it? But he dared not criticize Leonie to her either. His voice was shaking. “What are we to do? Just go on like this, with you unwilling even to touch my hand?”

“Not unwilling,” she said, forcing the words past a lump in hre throat. “I cannot. I thought Damon had explained it to you.”

“And the best Damon could do only made it worse!”

“Not worse,” she said, her eyes blazing again. “He saved my life! Be fair, Andrew!”

Andrew muttered, his eyes lowered, “I’m tired of being fair.”

“I feel that you hate me when you talk like that!”

“Never, Callie,” he said, sobered. “I just feel so damnably helpless. What are we to do?”

She said, lowering her eyes and looking away from him, “I cannot think it is so hard for you. Ellemir—” But she stopped there, and Andrew, overcome with all the old tenderness, reached out for the deeper contact, wanting to reassure her, and himself, that it was still there, that it could endure through the separation. It occurred to him that because of their deep-rooted cultural differences, even telepathy was no guarantee against misunderstanding. But the closeness was there.

They must start from that. Understanding could come later.

He said gently, “You look tired, Callie. You mustn’t overdo on your first day out of bed. Let me take you upstairs.” And when they were alone in their room, he asked gently, “Are you reproaching me for Ellemir, Callista? I thought it was what you wanted.”

“It was,” she said, stammering. “It was only… only… it should make it easier for you to wait. Do we have to talk about it, Andrew?”

He said soberly, “I think we do. That night—” And again she knew just what he meant. For all four of them, for a long time, “that night” would have only one meaning. “Damon said something to me that stuck. All four of us telepaths, he said, and not one of us with enough sense to sit down and make sure we understood each other. Ellemir and I managed to talk about it,” he said, adding with a faint smile, “even though she had to get me half drunk before I could manage to break down and talk honestly to her.”

She said, not looking at him, “It has made it easier for you. Hasn’t it?”

He said quietly, “In a way. But it’s not worth it if it’s made you ashamed to look at me, Callista.”

“Not ashamed.” She managed to raise her eyes. “Not ashamed, no, it is only… I was taught to turn my thoughts elsewhere, so that I would not be… vulnerable. If you want to talk about it” — Evanda and Avarra forbid she should be less honest with him than Ellemir — “I will try. But I am not… not used to such talk or such thoughts and I may not… may not find words easily. If you will… will bear with that… then I will try.”

He saw that she was biting her lip, struggling to force her words through the barrier of her inarticulateness, and felt a deep pity. He considered sparing her this, but he knew that a barrier of silence was the only barrier they might never be able to cross. At all costs — looking at her flushed cheeks and trembling mouth, he knew the cost would be heavy — they must manage to keep a line of communication open.

“Damon said you must never be allowed to feel yourself alone, or think yourself abandoned. I can only wonder, does this hurt you? Or make you feel… abandoned?”

She said, twisting her slender fingers in her lap. “Only if you had truly… truly abandoned me. Stopped caring. Stopped loving me.”

He thought that it was such an intimate thing, it could not help but bring him closer to Ellemir, make even more distance between Callista and himself.

His barriers were down, and Callista, following the thought, flared up in outrage. “Do you want me only because you thought I would give you more pleasure in our bed than my sister?”

He turned a dull red. Well, he had wanted directness; he had it. “God forbid! I never thought of it that way at all. It’s only… if you think I am going to be wanting you any less, I would rather forget the whole thing. Do you really think that because I sleep with Ellemir I have stopped wanting you?”

“No more than I have stopped wanting you, Andrew. But… but now we are equal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Now your need of me is like mine for you.” Her eyes were level and tearless, but he sensed that inside she was weeping. “A… a thing of the mind and heart, a grief like mine, but not a… a torment of the body. I wanted you to be content, because” — she wet her lips, struggling against inhibitions which had lasted for years — “that was so terrible to me, to feel your need, your hunger, your loneliness. And so I tried to… to share it and I… I nearly killed you.” The tears spilled over, but she did not cry, flicked the tears away angrily. “Do you understand? It is easier for me when I need not feel that in you, so I would do anything, risk anything to quiet it…”

The desolation in her face made him want to weep too. He ached to take her in his arms and comfort her, though he knew he could not risk anything but the lightest touch. Gently, almost respectfully, he lifted her slender hand to his lips and laid the lightest breath of a kiss on the fingertips. “You are so generous you put me to shame, Callista. But there is no woman in the world who can give me what I want from you. I am willing to… to share your suffering, my darling.”

This was such a strange thought that she stopped and looked at him in amazement. He meant that, she thought with a queer excitement. His world’s ways were different, she knew, but in their terms he was really trying to be unselfish. It was the first awareness she had ever had of his total alienness, and it came as a deep, wrenching shock. She had always seen only their similarities; now she was faced, shockingly, with their differences.

He was trying to say, she realized, that because he loved her, he was willing to suffer all that pain of deprivation… Perhaps he did not even know, that night, how much his need had tormented her, could still torment her.

She tightened her fingers on his hand, remembering in despair that for a little while she had known what it was to desire him, but now she could not even remember what it had been like. She spoke, trying to match his gentleness: “Andrew, my husband, my love, if you saw me bearing a heavy burden, would you weigh me down with your own burden as well? It will not lighten my suffering if I must endure yours too.”

Again the shock, strangeness, amazement, and Andrew realized, with sudden insight that in a telepathic culture, it meant something different, to share suffering.

She said, with a quick smile, “And don’t you realize that Damon and Ellemir are part of this too, and that they will also be miserable, if they have to share your misery?”

He was slowly making his way through that, like a labyrinth. It wasn’t easy. He had thought he had shed a great deal of his cultural prejudice. Now, like an onion, stripping off one layer seemed only to reveal a deeper layer, thick and impregnable.

He remembered waking in Ellemir’s bed to find Damon standing over him, had expected, almost craved Damon’s reproaches. Perhaps he wanted Damon to be angry because a man of his own world would have been angry, and he wanted to feel something familiar. Even guilt would have been welcome…

“But Ellemir. You simply expected this of her. No one consulted her, or asked if she was willing.”

“Has Ellemir complained?” Callista asked, smiling.

Hell, no, he thought. She seemed to enjoy it. And that bothered him too. If she and Damon were all that happily married, how could she seem to get so much pleasure — damn it, so much fun — out of going to bed with him? He felt angry and guilty, and it was all the worse because he knew Callista didn’t understand that either.

Callista said, “But of course, when Elli and I married and agreed to live under one roof, we took that for granted. Certainly you know that if either of us had married a man the other could not… could not accept, we would have made certain—”

Somehow that rang a warning bell in Andrew. He did not want to think about the obvious implications of that.

She went on. “Until a few hundred years ago, marriage as we know it now simply did not exist. And it was not considered right for a woman to have more than one or two children by the same man. Do the words genetic pool mean anything to you? There was a period in our history when some very valuable gifts, hereditary traits, were almost lost. It was thought best for children to have as many different genetic combinations as possible, to guard against the accidental loss of important genes. Bearing children to only one man can be a form of selfishness. And so we didn’t have marriage then, in the sense that we do now. We do not, as the Dry-Towners do, force our wives to harbor our concubines, but there are always other women to share. What do you Terrans do when your wives are pregnant, if a woman is too far advanced in pregnancy, too heavy, or weary, or ill? Would you demand that a woman violate her instincts for your comfort?”

If it had been Ellemir asking this, Andrew would have felt he had scored a point, but as Callista said it there was no challenge. “Cultural prejudices aren’t rational. Ours is against sleeping with other women. Yours, against sex in pregnancy, makes no sense to me, unless a woman is really ill.”

She shrugged. “Biologically, no pregnant animal desires sex; most will not endure it. If your women have been culturally conditioned to accept it as the price of retaining a husband’s sexual interest, I can only say I am sorry for them! Would you demand it of me after I had ceased to take pleasure in it?”

Andrew suddenly found that he was laughing. “My love, of all our worries, it seems that one is the easiest to put off until it is at hand! Do you have a saying… can we cross that bridge when we come to it?”

She laughed too. “We say we will ride that colt when he has grown to bear a saddle. But truly, Andrew, do you Terran men—”

He said, “God help me, love, I don’t know what most men do. I doubt if I could ask you to do anything you didn’t want to. I’d probably… probably take the rough with the smooth. I guess some men would go elsewhere, but make damn sure their wives didn’t find it out. There’s another old saying: what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.”

“But among a family of telepaths, such deceit is simply not possible,” Callista said, “and I would rather know my husband was content in the arms of someone who gave us this out of love, a sister or a friend, than adventuring with a stranger.” But she was calmer, and Andrew sensed that removing their talk from an immediate problem to a distant one had made it less troubling to her. He said, “I’d rather die than hurt you.”

As he had done earlier, she lifted his fingertips to her lips and kissed them, very lightly. She said with a smile, “Ah, my husband, dying would hurt me worse than anything else you could possibly do.”