Beltran turned as red as a turkey-cock. He was not used to being crossed, and for this shabby nobody to read him a lesson in ethics was more than be could face. I thought for a moment that he would strike the boy. Probably he remembered that Danilo was the only catalyst telepath known to be adult and fully functioning, for he controlled himself, although I could see the signs of his inward wrath. He said, “Will you trust Lew Alton’s judgment?”
“I have no reason not to trust it, but…” And he turned to Regis. I knew he had reached the end of his own defiance.
I knew Regis was as frightened as Danilo, but just as resolute. He said, “I will trust no man’s judgment until I have heard what he has to say.”
Kadarin said shortly, “Will you two boys, who know nothing of matrix mechanics, presume to sit in judgment upon a trained Arilinn telepath about matters of his own competence?”
Regis gave me a pleading look. After a long pause, during which I could almost feel him searching for the right words, he said, “To judge his competence—no. To judge whether I can conscientiously support his … his means and motives— for that I can trust no man’s judgment but my own. I will listen to what he has to say.”
Beltran said, ‘Tell them, then, Lew, that we must do this if Darkover is to survive as an independent world, not a slave colony of the Empire!”
All their eyes were suddenly on me. This was the moment of truth, and a moment of great temptation. I opened my mouth to speak. Darkover’s future was a cause justifying all things, and we needed Dani.
But did I serve Darkover or my own private ends? Before the boy whose career was ruined by a misuse of power, I discovered I could not lie. I could not give Danilo the reassurance it would take to enlist his aid, then frantically try to find some way to make the lie true.
I said, “Beltran, your aims are good and I trust them. But we cannot do it with the matrix we have to work with. Not with Sharra, Beltran. It is impossible, completely impossible.”
Kadarin swung around. I had seen his rage only once before, turned on Beltran. Now it was turned on me, and it struck me like a blow. “What folly is this, Lew? You told me Sharra has all the power we could possibly need!”
I tried to barrier that assault and hold my own wrath firmly under control. The unleashed anger of an Alton can kill, and this man was my dear friend. I said, “Power, yes, all the power we could ever need, for this work or any. But it’s essentially uncontrollable. It’s been used as a weapon and now it’s unfit for anything but a weapon. It is—” I hesitated, trying to formulate my vague impressions. “It’s hungry for power and destruction.”
“Comyn superstition again!” Thyra flung at me. “A matrix is a machine. No more and no less.”
“Most matrices, perhaps,” I said, “though I am beginning to think that even at Arilinn we know far too little of them to use them as recklessly as we do. But this one is more.” I hesitated again, struggling for words for a knowledge, an experience which was basically beyond words. “It brings something into our world which is not of this world at all. It belongs to other dimensions, other places or spaces. It’s a gateway, and once it’s opened, it’s impossible to shut completely.” I looked from face to face. “Can’t you see what it’s doing to us?” I pleaded. “It’s rousing recklessness, a failure of caution, a lust for power—” I had felt it myself, the temptation to lie ruthlessly to Regis and Danilo, just to enlist their aid. “Thyra, you know what you did under its impulse, and your foster-father lies dead. I’ll never believe you would have done that, knowingly, on your own! It’s so much stronger than we are, it’s playing with us like toys!”
Kadarin said, “Desideria used it with none of this fuss.”
“But she used it as a weapon,” I said, “and in a righteous cause. She had no wish for personal power, so that it could not take her and corrupt her, as it has done with us; she gave it over to the forge-folk, to lie unused and harmless on their altars.”