“Kennard has told me something of this, sir. You have long-lived feuds and when a troublemaker is punished, his family takes revenge, and doesn’t this lead to more and more trouble over the years? Your way doesn’t really settle anything. Really lawless people—like these bandits—ought to be dealt with by the law, shouldn’t they?”
“You’re entirely too clever,” Valdir said, with a bleak smile. “That’s the one flaw in the system. We use their own methods to revenge ourselves on them; they raid us, we raid them back, and we’re as bad as they are. Actually, Larry, it goes deeper than that. Darkover seems to be in one of those uncomfortable times to live in—a time of change. And having the Terrans here hasn’t helped. Again—without offense to you personally—having a highly technical civilization among us makes our people dissatisfied. We live the way men were meant to live—in close contact with real things, not huddled in cities and factories.” He looked around, past the burnt station, at the high mountains, and said, “Can’t you see it, Larry?”
“I can see it,” Larry admitted, but a brief stab of doubt struck at him. When he had said the same thing, his own father had accused him of being a romantic. The Darkovans seemed to want to go on living as if change did not exist, and whether they liked it or not, the space age was here—and they had chosen to let the Terran Empire come here for trade.
“Yes,” Valdir said, reading his thoughts. “I can see that too—change is coming, whether we like it or not. And I want it to come in an orderly fashion, without upheaval. Which means I’ve made myself awfully damned unpopular with a lot of people in my own caste. For instance, I organized this defense system of border stations and Rangers, so that every farm and estate wouldn’t have to stand alone against raids by bandits from across the Kadarin. And there are some people who find this a clear violation of our code of individual responsibility.” He stopped. “What’s the matter?”
Larry blurted out, “You’re reading my mind!”
“Does that bother you? I don’t pry, Larry. No telepath does. But when you’re throwing your thoughts at me so clearly—” he shrugged. “I’ve never known a Terran to be so open to rapport.”
“No,” Larry said, “it doesn’t bother me.” To his own surprise, that was true. He found that the idea didn’t bother him at all. “Maybe if more Terrans and Darkovans could read each other’s minds they’d understand one another better, and not be afraid of each other, any more than you and I are afraid of each other.”
Valdir smiled at him kindly and stood up. “Time to get on the road again,” he said; then breaking off, added very softly, “But don’t deceive yourself, Larry. We are afraid of you. You don’t know, yourself, how dangerous you can be.”
He walked away, quickly, while Larry stared after him, wondering if he had heard right.
The road into the valley was steep and winding, and for some time Larry had enough to do to keep his seat in the saddle. But soon, the road widened and became easier, and he realized that he had been smelling, again, the smoke from the burned station. Had the wind changed? He raised his head, slowing his horse to a walk. Almost at the same moment, Valdir, riding ahead, raised his arm in signal, and stopped, turning his head into the wind and sniffing, nostrils flared wide.
He said, tersely, “Fire.”
“Another station?” one of the Darkovans asked.
Valdir, moving his head from side to side—almost, Larry thought, as if be expected to hear the sound of flames—suddenly froze, statue-still. At the same moment Larry heard the sound of a bell: a deep-toned, full-throated bell tone, ringing through the valley. It tolled over and over, ringing out in a curious pattern of sound. While the little party of riders remained motionless, still listening intently, another bell farther away, fainter, but repeating the same slow rhythm, took up the ringing, and a few minutes later, still farther away, a third bell added a deep note to the choir.