I saw Beltran shudder. He was mountain^bred too, and shared with all Darkovans the fear of forest fire. “Father has four Terran aircraft, two light planes and two helicopters, One helicopter is away in the lowlands, but would the other be suitable for experiment?”
I considered. “The explosive fuel should be removed first,” I said, “so if anything does go wrong it won’t burn. Otherwise a helicopter might be ideal, experimenting with the rotors to lift and power and control it. It’s a question of developing control and precision. You wouldn’t put Rafe, here, to riding your fastest racehorse.”
Rafe said shyly, “Lew, you said we need other telepaths. Lord Kermiac … didn’t he train matrix mechanics before any of us were born? Why isn’t he one of us?”
True. He had trained Desideria and trained her so well that she could use the Sharra matrix—
“And she used it alone,” said Kadarin, picking up my thoughts. “So why does it worry you that we are so few?”
“She didn’t use it alone,” I said. “She had fifty to a hundred believers focusing their raw emotion on the stone. More, she did not try to control it or focus it. She used it as a weapon, rather, she let it use her.” I felt a sudden cold shudder of fear, as if every hair on my body were prickling and standing erect. I cut off the thought. I was tower-trained. I had no will to wield it for power. I was sworn.
“As for Kermiac,” I said, “he is old, past controlling a matrix. I wouldn’t risk it, Rafe.”
Beltran grew angry. “Damn it, you might have the courtesy to ask him!”
That seemed fair enough, when I weighed the experience he must have had against his age and weakness. “Ask him, if you will. But don’t press him. Let him make his own choice freely.”
“He will not,” Marjorie said. She colored as we all turned on her. “I thought it was my place, as Keeper, to ask him. He called it to my mind that he would not even teach me. He said a circle was only as strong as the weakest person in it, and he would endanger all our lives.”
I felt both disappointed and relieved. Disappointed because I would have welcomed a chance to join him in that special bond that comes only among the members of a circle, to feel myself truly one of his kin. Relieved, because what he had told Marjorie was true, and we all knew it.
Thyra said rebelliously, “Does he understand how much we need him? Isn’t it worth some risk?”
I would have risked the hazards to us, not those to him. At Arilinn they recommended gradual relinquishing of the work after early middle age, as vitality lessened.
“Always Arilinn,” Thyra said impatiently, as if I had spoken aloud. “Do they train them there to be cowards?”
I turned on her, tensing myself against that sudden inner anger which Thyra could rouse in me so easily. Then, sternly controlling myself before Marjorie or the others could be caught up in the whirlpool emotion which swirled and raced between Thyra and me, I said, “One thing they do teach us, Thyra, is to be honest with ourselves and each other.” I held out my hands to her. If she had been taught at Arilinn she would have known already that anger was all too often a concealment for less permissible emotions. “Are you ready to be so honest with me?”
Reluctantly, she took my extended hand between her own. I fought to keep my barriers down, not to barricade myself against her. She was trembling, and I knew this was a new and distressing experience to her, that no man except Kadarin, who had been her lover for so long, had ever stirred her senses. I thought, for a moment, she would cry. It would have been better if she had, but she bit her lip and stared at me, defiant. She whispered, half-aloud, “Don’t—”
I broke the trembling rapport, knowing I could not force Thyra, as I would have had to do at Arilinn, to go into this all the way and confront what she refused to see. I couldn’t. Not before Marjorie.