A tap on the door brought him alert. Mikhail stepped in, backlit so that he appeared to be enveloped in his own golden aura. Regis smiled and gestured for him to come in.
Mikhail surveyed the room with an expression bordering on awe. “So this is where Darkover’s destiny was plotted. And it’s yours now.”
“No,” Regis said, shaking his head, “it’s ours.I have no intention of sitting here alone, spinning out schemes like a spider in the center of a planet-spanning web. The reason I formed the Telepath Council in the first place was to ensure that many voices be heard. Together, we will plan our future.” With a light touch, he guided Mikhail into the chair behind the desk.
“Uncle Regis, I can’t sit here! This is your place now!”
“Someday, my lad, it will be yours. I want you to have the best training I can give you.”
“I’m not ready!”
“Not now, but you will be,” Regis said, reflecting that no honest man ever felt truly prepared for such a position. He himself certainly did not. Changing the subject, he pointed to a sheaf of papers covered with Danvan Hastur’s circular scrawl.
Mikhail could read and write the two primary Darkovan languages, castaand informal cahuenga,as well as Terran Standard. “I think I could make out this handwriting with a little practice. It’s Lord Hastur’s, isn’t it?”
“Unfortunately, yes. He also employed a secretary, sometimes two or three, most of them trained at the Nevarsin monastery, so their script is quite clear.” Regis himself wrote a barely legible scrawl, but Danilo, who had also studied at St. Valentine’s, still had the clearest writing of any of them.
“Much of this is of historical value,” Regis said, “but some will help us now. I’ll spend some time going through the documents, but I cannot do it alone.”
And I dare not trust anyone besides you and Danilo.
Mikhail looked up, eyes wide. “Where do you want me to begin? How should I sort all this?”
“Let’s start by making an inventory. Use general categories—personal, Hastur Domain, Comyn Council, like that. Set aside anything that strikes you as pertinent to the Federation membership. And . . .”
“Yes?”
“There may be a reference to a man named Rinaldo. He’d be in his early forties now. Please show me anything you find, even the slightest mention . . . and I trust your discretion. Mention this to no one.”
The light in Mikhail’s eyes gave Regis confidence in the younger man’s probity. Again, he blessed the impulse that led him to choose Mikhail over his brothers. They had turned into sturdy, reliable, unimaginative men, a credit to their family and caste. Mikhail . . . Mikhail was something more. Regis determined that, no matter what happened, Mikhail must not be pushed aside.
9
Afew days later, as Mikhail continued to sort and catalog Danvan’s papers, Regis received another coded message from Lew Alton. As before, this was delivered through Dan Lawton’s office. Unlike the previous message, however, this one began with Lew’s request that the Legate listen to its content.
Regis had thought it was not possible for Lew to look any more haggard. With his scarred face and eyes etched with sorrow, Lew had always appeared older than his years. Tightly bottled anger now flushed his features.
“Regis . . . and Dan, I am assuming you are listening to this together.” Lew’s normal voice was hoarse because of his damaged vocal cords. “First of all, Regis, I’m sorry about your grandfather. I wish I could have spoken at the rhu fead, but that is for another life. In all sincerity, I wish him peace.”
Regis, knowing the struggles Lew had endured with his own father’s death, bowed his head.
Lew went on, his voice more gravelly than before, “I have made no secret about my opposition to Darkover’s membership in the new Federation. As you can imagine, this has not been well received in some quarters. Darkover’s location on the galactic arm makes it a rich prize. I’ve heard speculation about turning the entire planet into a military base.”
As Lew drew in his breath, a vision came to Regis of forests razed, villages cemented over and rivers dammed, fields of permacrete covered by an armada of ships, blasting off again and again until the earth cried out like a wounded beast . . . the native peoples, from the shy arboreal trailmen to the ethereal chieriextinct . . . the Comyn preserved like zoo specimens . . .
That must never come to pass. Not so long as I have breath and strength to prevent it.
“I swear to you, Regis,” Lew was speaking again now, and it seemed to Regis that the other man echoed his own thoughts, “that I will be damned in Zandru’s coldest Hell before I let that happen. But three days ago . . . they came for me in the night, here in the Diplomatic Sector. Only two of them,” and here, Lew’s lips twisted in a feral grimace, and Regis remembered that even one- handed, Lew was a formidable opponent with Darkovan weapons. “My wife and daughter are shaken but unharmed,” Lew ended. “I don’t think they’ll try again, but I’ve sent Dio and Marja off-world for safety.”
Lawton, standing beside Regis, drew in his breath. His hands had curled into fists, and he was almost shaking with outrage.
“As Senator and as Alton,I will do whateverI can,” Lew said, putting a faint, suggestive emphasis on the words. “Darkover must stand firm. Any sign of weakness or division and the Expansionists will seize the opening. I won’t be able to stop them. Regis, we’re counting on you.”
So it had come at last, the fate Regis had struggled so long to avoid.
The screen flickered into blankness as the play-and-destroy program ran to completion. For a long moment, none of the three men said anything. Regis sensed Danilo’s unvoiced thought, I am with you, no matter where this takes us.
To be king, you mean.Desperation boiled up in Regis. There must be another way to keep Darkover free! We must not exchange one kind of tyranny for another.
“Dan, leave us for a moment,” Regis said. “I want to send a private reply.”
“Play-and-destruct?”
Grimly, Regis nodded. Dan set the console to encrypt the return message and then left. Danilo glanced at the closed door, but Regis had no doubt of the Legate’s integrity.
Regis leaned back in the console chair. The plasteen and metal gave slightly under his weight. He wished, not for the first time, that the interstellar void was not such a barrier to mental communication. Only the most extraordinary telepaths could contact one another over more than the shortest distances. He and Lew must used nuanced words to convey what would be so simple face-to face.
Lew’s message, although forthright enough on the surface, carried a deeper meaning, that slight emphasis on the word whatevercoupled with the deliberate mention of Lew’s Domain. Lew was the only adult known to possess the Alton Gift, the ability to force mental rapport, even with nontelepaths.
Regis paused, his fingertip hovering above the panel that would begin the recording. Lew, like every other Darkovan who had trained at a Tower, had taken an oath never to enter the mind of another except to help or heal and then only with consent.
Was Lew serious about using laranto sway the Federation politicians? To convince them that Darkover was not worth bothering with, that it would be better to let Darkover go its own way and remain a Closed World?
He knows I would never ask such a thing, Regis thought, but clearly, he feels the situation might require it.
Regis had sometimes wondered why the Alton Gift had been bred into the Comyn during the Ages of Chaos. The leroniof the Towers recognized it as dangerous but had not seen fit to eliminate it. Instead, it had been preserved through the centuries.