Life in the cadet corps was not intolerable, as he had feared. He did not mind the hard beds, the coarse food, the continual demands on his time. He had been even more strictly disciplined at Nevarsin, and life in the barracks was easy by contrast. What troubled him most was always being surrounded by others and yet still being lonely, isolated from the others by a gulf he could not bridge.
From their first day, he and Danilo had drifted together, at first by chance, because their beds were side by side and neither of them had another close friend in the barracks. The officers soon began to pair them off for details needing partners like barrack room cleaning, which the cadets took in turns; and because Regis and Danilo were about the same size and weight, for unarmed-combat training and practice. Within the first-year group they were good-naturedly, if derisively, known as “the cloistered brethren” because, like the Nevarsin brothers, they spoke casta by choice, rather than cahuenga.
At first they spent much of their free time together too. Presently Regis noticed that Danilo sought his company less, and wondered if he had done something to offend the other boy. Then by chance he heard a second-year cadet jeeringly congratulating Danilo about his cleverness in choosing a friend. Something in Danilo’s face told him it was not the first time this taunt had been made. Regis had wanted to reveal himself and do something, defend Danilo, strike the older cadet, anything. On second thought he knew this would embarrass Danilo more and give a completely false impression. No taunt, he realized, could have hurt Danilo more. He was poor, indeed, but the Syrtis were an old and honorable family who had never needed to curry favor or patronage. From that day Regis began to make the overtures himself— not an easy thing to do, as he was diffident and agonizingly afraid of a rebuff. He tried to make it clear, at least to Danilo, that it was he who sought out Dani’s company, welcomed it and missed it when it was not offered. Today it was he who had suggested the balcony, high atop Comyn castle, where they could see the city and the spaceport.
The sun was sinking now, and the swift twilight began to race across the sky. Danilo said, “We’d better get back to barracks.” Regis was reluctant to leave the silence here, the sense of being at peace, but he knew Danilo was right. On a sudden impulse to confide, he said, “Dani, I want to tell you something. When I’ve spent my three years in the Guards—I must, I promised—I’m planning to go offworld. Into space. Into the Empire.”
Dani stared in surprise and wonder. “Why?”
Regis opened his mouth to pour out his reasons, and found himself suddenly at a loss for words. Why? He hardly knew. Except that it was a strange and different world, with the excitement of the unknown. A world that would not remind him at every turn that he had been born defrauded of his heritage, without laran. Yet, after today . . .
The thought was curiously disturbing. If in truth he had laran, then he had no more reasons. But he still didn’t want to give up his dream. He couldn’t say it in words, but evidently Danilo did not expect any. He said, “You’re Hastur. Will they let you?”
“I have my grandfather’s pledge that after three years, if I still want to go, he will not oppose it.” He found himself thinking, with a stab of pain that if he had laran they certainly would never let him go. The old breathless excitement of the unknown gripped him again; he shivered as he decided not to let them know.
Danilo smiled shyly and said, “I almost envy you. If my father weren’t so old, or if he had another son to look after him, I’d want to come with you. I wish we could go together.”
Regis smiled at him. He couldn’t find words to answer the warmth that gave him. But Danilo said regretfully, “He does need me, though. I can’t leave him while he’s alive. And anyway”—he laughed just a little,—”from everything I’ve heard, our world is better than theirs.”