The last thing Rohana heard, as they left the audience chamber, Jaelle skipping along at Kindra’s side, was the little girl asking eagerly, “Foster-mother, will you cut my hair?”
Part II
MAGDA LORNE,
Terran Agent
Twelve years elapse between the first part and the second.
Chapter SIX
If there was a noisier job anywhere in the Galaxy than building a spaceport, Magda Lome hoped she’d never have to listen to it.
And a long job. This one, it seemed, had been building most of Magda’s life. She had been born at Caer Donn, the Terran Empire’s first foothold on Darkover; had been eight years old when the HQ had been moved here to Thendara; and the spaceport had been under construction ever since.
Even the violence of the autumnal storm had only dulled, not silenced, the roar of the building machines, although the mountains behind the city had disappeared into a blur of white snow, and even the old town beyond the HQ was all but invisible. Magda went through the heavy storm doors into the unmarried women’s quarters and simultaneously slammed out storm and noise. Inside it was soundproofed. The lights here were yellow Earth-normal. At least this building was finished, she thought, and quiet. All during her brief marriage to Peter, they had lived in Married Personnel Quarters; unfinished and the soundproofing still not complete. And she wondered, sometimes, just how much the perpetual tension of the noise had contributed to the breakup of that marriage. She shrugged the thought off, opening the door of her room. It would never have worked, no matter what the conditions. I don’t think I was ever in love with Peter, and I’m perfectly sure he was never in love with me. We’d just been together too much, her thoughts ran on the familiar track, and not quite enough, not quite enough to get it out of our systems. When that wore off, we realized there wasn’t anything else to hold us together.
Recalling her marriage to Peter, her thoughts continued along an annoying, smooth and familiar groove. Where is he? He’s never been away so long before. I hope nothing’s happened to him.
She sternly admonished herself not to worry! Like herself, Peter Haldane was a graduate in Alien Anthropology from the Empire University; like herself he had been brought up since childhood on Cottman IV, which the natives called Darkover; and like herself when they returned to the planet that both was and was not their home world, they had gone directly into Empire Intelligence work. The Empire might call the work they did Intelligence and think of it as elaborate spying, but to Magda, and Peter, and the others like them-not many, here on Darkover-it was the best training for an alien anthropologist: to mingle with the people of their world, to get to know them in a way anthropologists not reared here never could. Peter was evidently on a lengthy assignment somewhere. But this time he had been gone so long!
And there were the dreams….
Magda knew she should report the dreams. In the course of her Alien Psychology credentials, she had been tested for psi potential; and had tested very high. Just the same, she was reluctant to make an official -report of her recurrent dreams-all of which, without exception, warned her that Peter Haldane was in trouble-as if to do so might give them some reality. Dreams are just dreams, that’s all. …
Nevertheless, when she finished shedding her heavy outer layer of clothing, she went to the communicator button.
“Personnel? Lome here. Is that you, Bethany? I don’t suppose Haldane has reported back, or sent word, has he, in the last twenty-eight?”
“Not a word, Magda,” the woman in the coordinator’s office replied. “I knew it; you’re still carrying around a yen for Peter, aren’t you? You’ve been on the button every twenty-eight, asking for news.”
“Yen be damned,” Magda said irritably. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve known Peter since I was five years old; we grew up together, and I worry.” And that, she thought, cutting the connection, is why I don’t report the dreams. I’m sick and tired of every bored woman here speculating, out loud, how long it will be before Peter and I get together again! Is it going to get so bad that one of us has to put in for a transfer and leave Darkover? Damn it, I grew up here, this is my home, too!