“The risks—”
“Only the Comyn seem to know anything about those risks,” Beltran said. “I’m tired of letting the Comyn decide for everyone else what risks we may take. I want us to be accepted as equals by the Terrans. I want us to be part of Terran trade, not just the trickle which comes in and out by the spaceports under elaborate permits signed and countersigned by their alien culture specialists to make certain it won’t disturb our primitive culture! I want good roads and manufacturing and transportation and some control over the God-forgotten weather on this world! I want our students in the Empire universities, and theirs coming here! Other planets have these things! And above all I want star-travel. Not as a rich man’s toy, as with the Ridenow lads spending a season now and then on some faraway pleasure world and bringing back new toys and new debaucheries, but free trade, with Darkovan ships coming and going at our will, not the Empire’s!”
“Daydreams,” I said flatly. “There’s not enough metal on Darkover for a spaceship’s hulk, let alone fuel to power it!”
“We can trade for metal,” Beltran said. “Do you think matrices, manned by psi power, won’t power a spaceship? And wouldn’t that make most of the other power sources in the Galaxy obsolete overnight?”
I stood motionless for a moment, gripped by the force of his dream. Starships for Darkover . . . matrix-powered! By all the Gods, what a dream! And Darkovans comrades, competitors, not forgotten stepchildren of the Empire. . . .
“It can’t be possible,” I said, “or the matrix circles would have done it in the old days.”
“It was done,” Kadarin said. “The Comyn stopped it. It would have diluted their power on this world. We turned our back on a Galactic civilization because that crew of old women in Thendara decided they liked our world the way it was, with the Comyn up there with the Gods and everyone else running around bowing and scraping to them! They even disarmed us all. Their precious Compact sounds very civilized, but what it’s done, in effect, is to make it impossible to organize any kind of armed rebellion that could endanger the Comyn’s power!”
This went along, all too uncomfortably, with some of my own thoughts. Even Hastur spoke noble words about the Comyn devoting themselves to the service of Darkover, but what it came to was that he knew what was best for Darkover, and wanted no independent ideas challenging his power to enforce that “best.”
“It’s a noble dream. I said that before. But what have I to do with it?”
It was Marjorie who answered, squeezing my hand eagerly. “Cousin, you’re tower-trained. You know the skills and techniques, and how they can be used even by latent telepaths. So much of the old knowledge has been lost, outside the towers. We can only experiment, work in the dark. We don’t have the skills, the disciplines with which we could experiment further. Those of us who are telepaths have no chance to develop our natural gifts; those who are not have no way to learn the mechanics of matrix work. We need someone— someone like you, cousin!”
“I don’t know … I have only worked within the towers. I have been taught it is not safe …”
“Of course,” Kadarin said contemptuously. “Would they risk any trained man experimenting on his own and perhaps learning more than the little they allow? Kermiac was training matrix technicians here in the Hellers when you people in the Domains were still working in guarded circles, looked on as sorceresses and warlocks! But he is very old and he cannot guide us now.” He smiled, a brief, bleak smile. “We need someone who is young and skilled and above all fearless. I think you have the strength for it. Have you the will?”
I found myself recalling the fey sense of destiny which had gripped me as I rode here. Was this the destiny I had foreseen, to break the hold of a corrupt clan on Darkover, to overthrow their grip at our throats, set Darkover in its rightful place among the equals of the Empire?