Valdir smiled. “I respect your choice. But I have a feeling we’ll meet again.” He followed Lorill Hastur out of the room.
Alone with Kennard, Larry found room for wonder. “How did he know so much about me?”
“The Hastur-Lord? He’s a telepath, of course. What else?” Kennard said, matter-of-factly, his face buried in a book of views taken in deep space. “What sort of camera do they use for this? I never have been able to understand how a camera works.”
And Larry, explaining the principle of sensitized film to Kennard, felt an amused, ironic surprise. Telepath, of course! And to Kennard this was the commonplace and something like a camera was exotic and strange. It was all in the point of view.
Far too soon, the declining sun told him it was time to go. He refused Kennard’s urgings to stay longer. He did not want his father to be frightened at his absence. Also, at the back of his mind, was a memory like a threat—if he was missing, might his father set the machinery of the Terran Empire into motion to locate him, bring down trouble on his friends? Kennard went a little way with him, and at the corner of the street paused, looking at him rather sadly.
“I don’t like to say goodbye, Larry,” he said. “I like you. I wish—”
Larry nodded, a little embarrassed, but sharing the emotion. “Maybe we’ll see each other again,” he said, and held out his hand. Kennard hesitated, long enough for Larry to feel first offended, then worried for fear he had committed some breach of Darkovan manners; then, deliberately, the Darkovan boy reached both hands and took Larry’s between them. Larry did not know for years how rare a gesture this was in the Darkovan caste to which the Altons belonged. Kennard said softly, “I won’t say good-bye. Just—good luck.”
He turned swiftly and walked away without looking back.
Larry turned his steps toward home, in the lowering mist. As he moved between the dark canyons of the streets, his feet steadying themselves automatically on the uneven stones, he felt a flat undefined sorrow, as if he were seeing all this with the poignancy of a farewell. It was as if life had opened a bright door, and then slammed it again, leaving the world duller by contrast.
Suddenly, his feeling of sadness thinned out and vanished. This was only a temporary thing. He wouldn’t be a kid forever. The time would come when he’d be free and on his own, free to explore all the worlds of his own choosing—and Darkover was only one of many. He had tasted a man’s freedom today—and some day it would be his for all time.
His head went up and he crossed the square toward the spaceport, steadily. He’d had his fun, and he could take whatever happened. It had been worth it.
He had the curious sense that he was re-living something that had happened before, as he entered their apartment in the Quarters building. His father was waiting for him, his face drawn, unreadable.
“Where have you been?”
“In the city. At the home of Kennard Alton.”
Montray’s face contracted with anger, but his voice was level and stern.
“You do remember that I forbade you to leave the Terran Zone? You’re not going to tell me that you forgot?”
“I didn’t forget.”
“In other words, you deliberately disobeyed.”
Larry said quietly, “Yes.”
Montray was evidently holding his anger in check with some effort. “Precisely why, when I did forbid it?”
Larry paused a moment before answering. Was he simply making excuses about having done what he wanted to do? Then he was sure, again, of the rightness of his position.
“Because, Dad, I’d made a promise and I didn’t feel it was right to break it, without a better reason than just that you’d forbidden it. This was something I had to do, and you were treating me like a kid. I tried to make sure that you wouldn’t be involved, or the Terran Empire, if anything had happened to me.”
His father said, at last, “And you felt you should make that decision for yourself. Very well, Larry, I admire your honesty. Just the same, I refuse to concede that you have a right to ignore my orders on principle. You know I don’t like punishing you. However, for the present you will consider yourself under house arrest—not to leave our quarters except to go to school, under any pretext.” He paused and a bleak smile touched his lips. “Will you obey me, or shall I inform the guards not to let you pass without reporting it?”