It was almost too much to grasp. I was suddenly very tired. Marjorie, still stroking my hand gently in her small fingers, said without looking up, “Enough, Beltran, give him time. He’s weary from traveling and you’ve been jumping at him till he’s confused. If it’s right for him, he’ll decide.”
She was thinking of me. Everyone else was thinking of how well I could fit into their plans.
Beltran said with a rueful, friendly smile, “Cousin, my apologies! Marjorie is right, enough for now! After that long journey, you’re more in need of a quiet drink and a soft bed than a lecture on Darkovan history and politics! Well, the drink for now and the bed soon, I promise!” He called for wine and a sweet fruit-flavored cordial not unlike the shallan we drank in the valley. He raised his glass to me. “To our better acquaintance, cousin, and to a pleasant stay among us.”
I was glad to drink to that. Mariorie’s eyes met mine over the rim of her glass. I wanted to take her hand again. Why did she appeal to me so? She looked young and shy, with an endearing awkwardness, but in the classic sense, she was not beautiful. I saw Thyra sitting within the curve of Kadarin’s arm, drinking from his cup. Among valley folk that would have proclaimed them admitted lovers. I didn’t know what, if anything, it meant here. I wished I were free to hold Marjorie like that.
I turned my attention to what Beltran was saying, about Terran methods used in the rapid building of Caer Donn, of the way in which trained telepaths could be used for weather forecasting and control. “Every planet in the Empire would send people here to be trained by us, and pay well for the privilege.”
It was all true, but I was tired, and Beltran’s plans were so exciting I feared I would not sleep. Besides, my nerves were raw-edged with trying to keep my awareness of Marjorie under control. I felt I would rather be beaten into bleeding pulp than intrude, even marginally, on her sensitivities. But I kept wanting to reach out to her, test her awareness of me, see if she shared my feelings or if her kindness was the courtesy of a kinswoman to a wearied guest….
“Beltran,” I said at last, cutting off the flow of enthusiastic ideas, “there’s one serious flaw in your plans. There just aren’t enough telepaths. We haven’t enough trained men and women even to keep all nine of the towers operating. For such a galactic plan as you’re contemplating, we’d need dozens, hundreds.”
“But even a latent telepath can learn matrix mechanics,” he said. “And many who have inherited the gifts never develop them. I believed the tower-trained could awaken latent laran”
I frowned. “The Alton gift is to force rapport. I learned to use it in the towers to awaken latents if they weren’t too barricaded. I can’t always do it. That demands a catalyst telepath. Which I’m not.”
Thyra said sharply, “I told you so, Bob. That gene’s extinct.”
Something in her tone made me want to contradict her. “No, Thyra,” I said, “I know of one. He’s only a boy, and untrained, but definitely a catalyst telepath. He awakened laran in a latent, even after I failed.”
“Much good that does us,” Beltran said in disgust. “Comyn Council has probably bound him so tight, with favors and patronage, that he’ll never see beyond their will! They usually do, with telepaths. I’m surprised they haven’t already bribed and bound you that way.”
I thought, but did not say, that they had tried.
“No,” I said, “they have not. Dani has no reason at all to love the Comyn … and reason enough to hate.”
I smiled at Marjorie and began to tell them about Danilo and the cadets.
Chapter THIRTEEN
Regis lay in the guest chamber at Edelweiss, tired to exhaustion, but unable to sleep. He had come to Edelweiss through a late-afternoon fall of snow, still too stunned and sickened to talk, or to eat the supper Javanne had had prepared for him. His head throbbed and his eyes flickered with little dots of light which remained even when his eyes were shut, crawling, forming odd visual traceries behind the eyelids.