I smiled wryly. Yes, at fifteen I too had been sure that by the time I was twenty or so my life would have arranged itself in simple patterns.
“That’s not the way it happens when you have laran,” I said. “Among other things, you must be trained. An untrained telepath is a menace to himself and everyone around him.”
He made a grimace of revulsion. “I’ve never wanted to be a matrix technician.”
“Probably not,” I said. “It takes a certain temperament.” I couldn’t see Danilo in a tower; I, on the other hand, had never wanted anything else. I still didn’t. “Even so, you must learn to control what you are and what gifts you have. All too many untrained telepaths end up as madmen.”
“Then whether I’m interested in Comyn Council or not, what choice do I have? Isn’t this training only in the hands of the Comyn and the towers? And they can train me to do whatever they want me to do.”
“That’s true in the Domains,” I said. “They do draw all telepaths to their service there. But you still have a choice.” I began to tell him about Beltran’s plan, and a little about the work we had begun.
He listened without comment until I had finished. “Then,” he said, “it seems I have a choice between taking bribes for the use of my laran from the Comyn—or from Aldaran.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way. We’re asking you to come into this of your own free will. If we do achieve what we want, then the Comyn will no longer have the power to demand that all telepaths serve them or be left prey to madness. And there would be an end to the kind of power-hunger that left you at the mercy of a man like Dyan.”
He thought that over, sipping the wine again and making a childish wry face. Then he said, “It seems as if something like that’s always going to be happening to people like me, like us. Someone’s always going to be bribing us to use our gifts for their good, not our own.” He sounded terribly young, terribly bitter.
“No, some of us may have a choice now. Once we are a legitimate part of the Terran Empire—”
“Then I suppose the Empire will find some way to use us,” Danilo said. “The Comyn makes mistakes, but don’t they know more about us and our world than the Terrans ever could?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Are you willing to see them stay in power, controlling all our lives, putting corrupt men like Dyan in charge—”
“No, I’m not,” he said, “nobody would want that. But if people like you and me—you said I could have a seat on the Council if I wanted it—if people like you and me were on the Council, the bad ones like Dyan wouldn’t have everything their own way, would they? Your father’s a good man but, like you said, Dyan can do no wrong in his eyes. But when you take a seat on the Council, you won’t feel that way, will you?”
“What I want,” I said with concealed violence, “is not to be forced to take a seat on the Council, or do all the other damned things the Comyn wants me to do!”
“If good men like you can’t be bothered,” said Danilo, “then who’s left, except the bad ones who shouldn’t!”
There was some truth in that, too. But I said vehemently,
“I have other skills and I feel I can serve my people better in other ways. That’s what I’m trying to do now, to benefit everyone on Darkover. I’m not trying to smash the Comyn, Dani, only to give everyone more of a choice. Don’t you think it’s an ambition worth achieving?”
He looked helpless. “I can’t judge,” he said. “I’m not even used to thinking of myself as a telepath yet. I don’t know what I ought to do.”
He looked up at me with that odd, trustful look which made me think somehow, of my brother Marius. If it were Marius standing here before me, gifted with laran, would I try to persuade him to face Sharra? A cold chill iced my spine and I shivered, even though the room was warm. I said, “Can you trust me, then?”