If, that was, he wasn’t afraid of the risks. Fear seemed to have no part in that curious enigmatic personality. But ordinary prudence?
“You’re lost somewhere again Lew. What is it?” “If Kadarin wants to do these things he must know of a matrix capable of handling that kind of power. What and where?”
“I can only tell you that not on any of the monitor screens in the towers. It was used in the old days by the forge-folk to bring their metals from the ground. Then it was kept at Aldaran for centuries, until one of Kermiac’s wards, trained by him, used it to break the siege of Storn Castle.”
I whistled. The matrix had been outlawed as a weapon centuries ago. The Compact had not been made to keep us away from such simple toys as the guns and blasters of the Terrans, but against the terrifying weapons devised in our Ages of Chaos. I wasn’t happy about trying to key a group of inexperienced telepaths into a really large matrix, either. Some could be harnessed and used safely and easily. Others had darker histories, and the name of Sharra, Goddess of the forge-folk, was linked in old tales with more than one matrix. This one might, or might not, be possible to bring under control.
She said, looking incredulous, “Are you afraid?” “Damn right,” I said. “I thought most of the talismans of Sharra-worship had been destroyed before the time of Regis Fourth. I know some of them were destroyed.”
“This one was hidden by the forge-folk and given back for their worship after the siege of Storn.” Her lip curled. “I have no patience with that kind of superstition.”
“Just the same, a matrix is no toy for the ignorant.” I stretched my hand out, palm upward over the table, to show her the corn-sized white scar, the puckered seam running up my wrist “In my first year of training at Arilinn I lost control for a split second. Three of us had burns like this. I’m not joking when I speak of risks.”
For a moment her face contracted as she touched the puckered scar tissue with a delicate fingertip. Then she lifted her firm little chin and said, “All the same, what one human mind can build, another human mind can master. And a matrix is no use to anyone lying on an altar for ignorant folk to worship.” She pushed aside the cold remnants of the bread and said, “Let me show you the city.”
Our hands came irresistibly together again as we walked, side by side, through the streets. Caer Donn was a beautiful city. Even now, when it lies beneath tons of rubble and I can never go back, it stands in my memory as a city in a dream, a city that for a little while was a dream. A dream we shared.
The houses were laid out along wide, spacious streets and squares, each with plots of fruit trees and its own small glass-roofed greenhouse for vegetables and herbs seldom seen in the hills because of the short growing season and weakened sunlight. There were solar collectors on the roofs to collect and focus the dim winter sun on the indoor gardens.
“Do these work even in whiter?”
“Yes, by a Terran trick, prisms to concentrate and reflect more sunlight from the snow.”
I thought of the darkness at Armida during the snow-season. There was so much we could learn from the Terrans!
; Marjorie said, “Every time I see what the Terrans have made of Caer Donn I am proud to be Terran. I suppose Thendara is even more advanced.”
I shook my head. “You’d be disappointed. Part of it is all Terran, part of it all Darkovan. Caer Donn .. . Caer Donn is like you, Marjorie, the best of each world, blended into a single harmonious whole …”
This was what our world could be. Should be. This was Beltran’s dream. And I felt, with my hands locked tight in Mariorie’s, in a closeness deeper than a kiss, that I would risk anything to bring that dream alive and spread it over the face of Darkover. I said something about how I felt as we climbed together upward again. We had elected to take the longer way, reluctant to end this magical interlude. We must have known even then that nothing to match this morning would ever come again, when we shared a dream and saw it all bright and new-edged and too beautiful to be real.