The Sword of Aldones

CHAPTER NINE

Unsteadily, Callina knelt beside the crumpled form. I followed slowly, and bent over beside her.

“She isn’t dead?”

“Of course not.” Callina looked up. “But that was terrible, even for us. What do you think it was like for her? She’s in shock.”

The girl was lying on her side, one arm across her face.

Soft brown hair, falling forward, hid her features. I brushed it lightly back — then stopped, my hand still touching her cheek, in dazed bewilderment.

“It’s Linnell,” Callina choked. “Linnell!”

Lying on the cold floor was the girl on the spaceport; the girl I had seen in my first confused moments in Thendara.

For a moment, even knowing as I did what had happened, I thought my mind would give way. The transition had taken its toll of me, too. Every nerve in my body ached.

“What have we done?” Callina moaned. “What have we done?”

I held her tight. Of course, I thought; of course. Linnell was near; she was close to both of us; we had both been talking, and thinking of Linnell tonight. And yet…

“You know Cherillys’ two point law?” I tried to put it into simple words. “Everything, everywhere, except a matrix, exists in one exact duplicate. This chair, my cloak, the screwdriver on your table, the public fountain in Port Chicago — everything in the universe exists in one exact molecular duplicate. Nothing is unique except a matrix; but there are no three things alike in the universe.”

“Then this is — Linnell’s twin?”

“More than that. Only once in a million years or so would duplicates also be twins. This is her real twin. Same fingerprints. Same retinal eye patterns. Same betagraphs and blood type. She won’t be much like Linnell in personality, probably, because the duplicates of Linnell’s environment are scattered all over the galaxy. But in flesh and blood, they’re identical. Even her chromosomes are identical with Linnell’s.

I took up the girl’s wrist and turned it over. The curious matrix mark of the Comyn was duplicated there. “Birthmark,” I said, “but the effect is identical in her flesh. See?”

I stood up. Callina stared and stared. “Can she live in this environment, then?”

“Why not? If she’s Linnell’s duplicate, she breathes oxygen in the same ratio we do, and her internal organs are adjusted to about the same gravity.”

“Can you carry her? She’ll get another bad shock if she wakes up in this place!” Callina indicated the matrix equipment.

I grinned humorlessly.- “She’ll get one anyway.” But I managed to scoop her up, one-armed. She was frail and light, like Linnell. Callina held curtains aside for me, showed me where to lay her. I covered the girl, for it was cold, and Callina murmured, “I wonder where she comes from?”

“She was born on a world with gravity about the same as Darkover, which narrows it considerably. Vialles, Wolf, even Terra. Or, of course, some planet we never heard of.” Her speech had impressed me as Terran; but I hadn’t told Callina about that episode on the spaceport, and didn’t intend to. “Let’s leave her to sleep off the shock, and get some sleep Ourselves.”

Callina stood in the door with me, her hands locked on mine. She looked haggard and worn, but lovely to me after the shared danger, shared weariness. I bent and kissed her.

“Callina,” I whispered. It was half a question, but she freed her hand gently and I did not press her. She was right. We were both desperately exhausted. It would have been raving insanity. I put her gently away and went out without looking back. It was raining hard, but until the wet red morning rose sunlessly over Thendara I paced the courtyard, restless, and the drops on my face were not all rain.

Toward dawn I fought back to self-control, and went back to the Keeper’s Tower. I was afraid that without Callina at my side I would not find a way into the blue-ice room, or that Ashara had vanished into some inaccessible place. But she was there; and such was the illusion of the frosty light, or of my tired eyes, that she seemed younger, less guarded; like a strange, icy, inhuman Callina. My brain almost refused to think clearly, but I finally managed to formulate my plea.

“You can see — time. Tell me. The child Dyan calls mine—”

“It is yours,” Ashara said.

“Who—”

“I know. You’ve been celibate, except for Diotima Ridenow Comyn, since your Marjorie died.” She looked right through my astonished stare. “No, I didn’t read your mind, I thought the Ridenow girl might be suitable to train as I — as I trained Callina. She was not. I’m not concerned with your moralities or Diotima’s; it’s a matter of physical nerve alignments.” She went on, passionlessly, “Hastur would not accept the bare word of those who brought the child; so he brought her to my keeping for search. She is here in the Tower. You may see her. She is yours. Come with me.”

To my surprise — I don’t know why, but somehow I had felt that Ashara could not leave her strange blue-ice room-she led me through another of the bewildering blue doors and into a plain circular room. One of the furry nonhuman mutes — the servants of the Keeper’s Tower — scurried away on noiseless padded feet.

In the cool normal light Ashara’s flickering figure was colorless, almost invisible. I wondered; was it the sorceress herself, or merely a projection she wanted me to see? The room was simply furnished, and on a narrow white cot at the center, a little girl lay fast asleep. Pale reddish-gold hair lay scattered on the pillow.

I went slowly to the child, and looked down. She was very small; five or six, maybe younger. And as I looked down I knew they had told the truth. In ways impossible to explain, except to a telepath and an Alton, I knew; this was my own child, born of my own seed. The tiny triangular face bore not the slightest resemblance to my own; but my blood knew. Not my father’s. Not my brother’s. My own. My flesh.

“Who was her mother?” I asked softly.

“You’ll be happier all your life if I never tell you.”

“I can take it! Some light woman of Carthon or Daillon?”

“No.”

The child murmured, stirred and opened her eyes. I took one step toward her — then turned, in an agony of appeal, on Ashara. Those eyes, those eyes, gold-flecked amber…

“Marjorie,” I said hoarsely, painfully, “Marjorie died, she died…”

“She is not Marjorie Scott’s daughter.” Ashara’s voice was clear, cool, pitiless. “Her mother was Thyra Scott.”

“Thyra? I fought an insane impulse to laugh. “Thyra? That’s impossible! I never — I wouldn’t have touched that she-devil’s fingertips, much less—”

“Nevertheless, this is your child. And Thyra’s. The details are not clear to me. There is a time — I am not sure. They may have had you drugged, hypnotized. Perhaps I could find out. It would not be easy, even for me. That part of your mind is a closed and sealed room. It does not matter.”

I shut my teeth on a black, sickening rage. Thyra! That red hellion, so like and so unlike Marjorie, perfect foil for Kadarin! What had they done? How—

“It does not matter. It is your child.”

Resentfully, accepting the fact, I glowered at the little girl. She sat up, tense as a scared small animal, and it wrenched at me with sudden hurt. I had seen Marjorie look like that. Small, scared. Lost and lonesome.

I said, as gently as I could, “Don’t be afraid of me, chiya. I’m not a very pretty sight, but I don’t eat little girls.”

The little girl smiled. The small pointed face was suddenly charming; a tiny gnome’s grin marred by a dimple. There were twin gaps in the straight little teeth.

“They said you were my father.”

I turned, but Ashara was gone, leaving me alone with my unexpected daughter. I sat down uneasily on the edge of the cot. “So it would seem. How do they call you, chiya?”

“Marja,” she said shyly. “I mean Marguerhia—” she lisped the name, Marjorie’s name, in the odd old-world dialect still heard in the mountains sometimes. “Marguerhia Kadarin, but I just be Marja.” She knelt upright, looking me over. “Where is your other hand?”

I laughed uneasily. I wasn’t used to children. “It was hurt, and they had to take it off.”

Her amber eyes were enormous. She snuggled against my knee, and I put my aim around her, still trying to get it clear in my mind.

Thyra’s child. Thyra Scott had been Kadarin’s wife — if you could call it that. But everyone knew he was rumored to be half-brother to the Scotts, Zeb Scott’s child by one of the half-human mountain things. Back in the Hellers, half-brothers and sisters sometimes married; and it was not uncommon for such a marriage to adopt the child of one by someone else, thus avoiding the worst consequences of too much inbreeding. I scowled, trying to penetrate the gray murk which surrounded part of the Sharra affair in my mind. I had never probed that partial amnesia; I had felt, instinctively, that madness might lie there.

Perhaps I had been drugged with aphrosone. I knew how that worked. The one drugged lives a life outwardly normal, 15ut he himself knows nothing of what he does, losing continuity of thought between each breath. Memory is retained in symbolic dreams; a psychiatrist, hearing what was dreamed during the time spent under aphrosone, can unravel the symbols and tell the victim what really happened. I had never wanted to know. I didn’t now.

“Where were you brought up, Marja?”

“In a big house with a lot of other little girls and boys,” she said. “They’re orphans. I’m not. I’m something else. Matron says it’s a wicked word I must never, never say, but I’ll whisper it to you.”

“Don’t.” I winced slightly; I could guess.

And Lawton, in the Trade City, had told me; Kadarin never goes anywhere — except to the spaceman’s orphanage.

Marja put her head sleepily on my shoulder. I started to lay her down. Then I felt a curious stir and realized, abruptly, that the child had reached out and made contact with my mind!

The thought was staggering. Amazed, I stared at the tiny girl. Impossible! Children do not have telepathic power — even Alton children! Never!

Never? I couldn’t say that; obviously, Marja did have it.

I caught my arms around her; but I broke the contact gently, not knowing how much she could endure.

But one thing I did know. Whoever had the legal right of it, this little girl was mine! And no one and nothing was going to keep her from me. Marjorie was dead; but Marja lived, whoever her parents, with Marjorie’s face sketched in her features, the child Marjorie would have borne me if she had lived, and the rest was better forgotten. And if anyone — Hastur, Dyan, Kadarin himself — thought they could keep my daughter from me, they were welcome to try!

Dawn was paling outside the tower, and abruptly I was conscious of exhaustion. I had had quite a night. I laid Marja down in the cot; drew up the warm covers under her chin. She looked up at me wistfully, without a word.

On an impulse I bent and hugged her. “Sleep well, little daughter,” I said, and went very softly out of the room.