I hardly believed this; that, once again, slowly, stumbling like a novice, I was making contact with the matrix stone after six years, though I had, as yet, barely touched the surface. I dared a deeper touch—
Fire. Blazing through my hand. Pain… outrageous, burning agony—in a hand that was not there to burn. I heard myself cry out… or was it the sound of Marjorie screaming… before my locked eyes the fire-form rose high, locks tossing in the firestorm wind, like a woman, tall and chained, her body and limbs and hair all on fire—
Sharra!
I let the matrix stone drop as if it had burned through my good hand; felt the pain of having it away from my body, tried to scrabble for it with a hand that was no longer part of my arm... I felt it there, felt the burning pain through every finger, pain in the lines of the palm, in the nails burning… Sobbing with pain, I fumbled the matrix into its sheath around my neck and wrenched my mind away from the fire-image, feeling it slowly burn down and subside. Dio was staring at me in horror.
I said, my mouth stiff and fumbling on the words, “I’m— I’m sorry, bredhiya, I—I didn’t mean to frighten you—”
She caught me close to her, and I buried my head in her breast. She whispered, “Lew, it is I should beg forgiveness— I did not know that would happen—I would never have asked—Avarra’s mercy, what was that?”
I drew a deep breath, feeling the pain tearing at the hand that was not there. I could not speak the words aloud. The fire-form was still behind my eyes, blazing. I blinked, trying to make it go away, and said, “You know.”
She whispered, “But how…”
“Somehow, the damned thing is keyed into my own matrix. Whenever I try to use it, I see… only that.” I swallowed and said thickly, “I thought I was free. I thought I was—was healed, and free of that…”
“Why don’t you destroy it?”
My smile was only a painful grimace. “That would probably be the best answer. Because I am sure I would die with it… very quickly and not at all pleasantly. But I was too cowardly for that.”
“Oh, no, no, no—” She held me close, hugging me desperately. I swallowed, drew several deep breaths, knowing this was hurting her more than me; Ridenow, empath, Dio could not bear any suffering… there were times when I wondered whether what she felt for me had been love, or whether she had given me her body, her heart, her comfort, as one soothes a screaming baby because one cannot bear his crying and will do anything, anything to shut him up—
But it had helped me, to know my pain hurt Dio and I must somehow try and control it. “Get me a drink, will you?” When she brought it, calming herself a little by the need to collect her thoughts and look for something, I sipped, trying to quiet my mind. “I am sorry, I thought I was free of that.”
“I can’t bear it,” she said fiercely. “I can’t bear it, that you think you should apologize to me—” She was crying, too. She laid her hand over the baby and said, trying to make a joke of it, “Already he is troubled when he hears his mother and father yelling at each other!”
I picked up on it at once and made a joke of it too, saying with exaggerated humor, “Well, we must be very quiet and not wake up the baby!”
She came and curled up next to me on the couch, leaning against my breast. She said seriously, “Lew, on Darkover— there are matrix technicians who could free you—aren’t there?”
“Do you think my father hasn’t done his best? And he was First at Arilinn for almost ten years. If he can’t do it, it probably can’t be done.”
“No,” she said, “but you are better; it doesn’t happen now as often as it did in the first years—does it? Maybe, now, they could find a way—”
The communicator jangled and I went to answer it. I might have known it would be my father’s voice.
“Lew, are you all right? I felt uneasy—”
I wasn’t surprised. Every telepath on this planet, if there were any others, must have felt that shock. Even the distant voice of my father tried to reassure me. “It hasn’t happened for a long time, has it? Don’t get discouraged, Lew, give yourself time to heal…”
Time? The rest of my life, I thought, holding the voice-piece of the communicator under my chin with the stump of my left hand, the fingers of my remaining hand nervously smoothing the insulating silks over my matrix. Never again. I would never touch the matrix again, not when—this—was waiting for me. What I said to my father was surface noise, mouthed platitudes of reassurance, and he must have known it, but he did not press me; he probably knew I would have slammed down the communicator and refused to answer it again. All he said was, “In ten days there is a ship which will touch at Darkover. I have booked a double passage; and a reservation on the ship which leaves ten days after that, so that if something should prevent my taking ship on the first, I will be on the second, and your place is reserved too. I think you should come; has this, tonight, not proved it to you, that you must face it soon or late?”
I managed not to shout at him the furious refusal storming in my mind. The distance, and the mechanical communicator, blocked out thoughts; this was the best way to talk to my father, after all. I even managed to thank him for his attempt at kindness. But after I had refused him again and replaced the communicator set, Dio said, “He’s right, you know. You can’t live the rest of your life with this. It started on Darkover and it should end there. You can’t go through your life dragging that—that horrible link behind you. And I understand—you said something, once—that you cannot leave it…”
I shook my head. “No. It—it nags me. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
I had tried to abandon it, when we left the lake cabin on Terra where we had been living while my hand healed after the final failure and the amputation. I had gone halfway round the world and then… the fire-form behind my eyes, blurring out all sight and sense— I had had to return, to pack it among our luggage… to carry it with me, a monstrous incubus, a demon haunting me; like my father’s presence within my mind, something of which I would never be free.
“The question’s academic,” I said, “You can’t go, and I won’t leave you. That’s what my father wanted.”
“The baby might not be born for forty days, at least… you could go and return—”
“I don’t know about babies,” I said, “but I do know they come when they will and not when we expect them.” But why did the thought bring such anguish and fear? Surely it was only the aftermath of Sharra’s impact on my shattered nerves.
“What about the others? You were a whole matrix circle, linked to the Sharra matrix—weren’t you? Why didn’t they die?”
“Maybe they did,” I said. “Marjorie did. She was our— you’d have to say, our Keeper. And I took it from her when she—when she burned out.” I could talk about it, now, almost dispassionately, as if I were talking of something that had happened a long time ago to someone else. “The others were not linked quite so tight to Sharra. Rafe was only a child. Beltran of Aldaran—my cousin—he was outside the circle. I don’t think they would die when they lost contact with the matrix, or even when it went offworld. The link was made through me.” In a matrix circle, where there is a high-level matrix, it is the Keeper who links with the matrix, and then with the individual matrix stones of the telepaths in her circle. I was a high-level matrix mechanic; I had taught Marjorie to make that link, so that in a very real sense, I had been Keeper to the Keeper…
“And the others?” Dio persisted. I resented her dragging it out of me this way, but I supposed I would have to think of this sooner or later, or she would never believe I had really explored all avenues to be free. And I owed her this; Sharra had touched her too, now, although at a safe remove, and even touched our child.