“Dancing,” I said dryly, “is an integral part of all human cultures. It is a group activity passed down from the group movements of birds and anthropoids, and also a social channeling of mating behavior among all higher primates, including man. Among such quasi-human cultures as those of the chieri it becomes an ecstatic behavior pattern akin to drunkenness. Yes, they dance on Terra, on Megaera, Samarra, Alpha Ten, Vainwal, and in fact from one end of the Galaxy to the other. For further information, lectures on anthropology are given in the city; I’m not in the mood.” I turned to Kathie in what I hoped was proper cousinly fashion. “Suppose we do it instead.”
I added to Kathie as we danced, “Certainly you wouldn’t know that dancing is a major study with children here; Linnell and I both learned as soon as we could walk. I had only basic instruction—after that I went to training in the martial arts—but Linnell has been studying ever since.” I glanced affectionately back at Linnell, who was dancing with Regis Hastur. “I went to a dance or two on Vainwal. Are our dances so different?”
But as I talked I was studying the Terran woman carefully. Kathie had guts and brains, I realized. It took them to come here after the shock she had had, and play the part tacitly assigned to her. And Kathie had another rare quality; she seemed unaware that the arm circling her waist was unlike any other arm and hand. That’s not common; even Linnell had given it a quick, furtive stare. Well, Kathie worked in hospitals, she had probably seen worse things.
With seeming irrelevance, Kathie said, “And Linnell is your cousin, your kinswoman—?”
“My foster-sister; she was brought up in my father’s home. We’re not blood kin, except insofar as all Comyn have common ancestry.”
“She’s very—well, it’s as if she were really my twin sister; I feel as if I’d always known her, I loved her the moment I saw her. But I’m afraid of Callina. It’s not that she’s been unkind to me—no one could have been kinder—but she seems so remote, somehow, not quite human!”
“She’s a Keeper,” I said, “they are taught not to show emotions, that’s all.” But I wondered if that were all it was.
“Please—” Kathie touched my arm, “let’s not dance; on Vainwal I’m a good enough dancer, but here I feel like a stumbling elephant!”
‘“You probably weren’t taught as intensively.” To me that was the strangest thing about Terra; the casualness with which they regarded this one talent which distinguishes man from the four-footed kind. There is a saying on Darkover; only men laugh, only men dance, only men weep. Women who could not dance—how could they have true beauty?
I started to return Kathie to the corner where the young women waited; and as I turned, I saw Callina enter the ballroom. And for me, the music stopped.
I have seen the black night of interstellar space flecked with a hundred million stars. Callina looked like that, in a filmy web like a scrap torn out of that sky, her dark hair netted with pale constellations. I heard drawn breaths, gasps of shock everywhere.
“How beautiful she is,” breathed Kathie, “but what does the costume represent? I’ve never seen one like it—”
“I’ve no idea,” I said, but I lied. The tale was told in the Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda, the most ancient legend of the Comyn; Camilla, slain by the shadow-sword in the place of her bright sister, so that she passed away into the realms of darkness under the shadow of Avarra, Dark Lady of birth and death… I had no idea why a woman on the eve of her bridal, even in the case of so unappealing a marriage as this, should choose to come in such a dress. I wondered what would happen when Beltran of Aldaran caught the significance of that? A more direct insult would be hard to devise, unless she had come in the dress of the public hangman!
I excused myself quickly from Kathie and went in the direction of Callina. I agreed that this marriage was a sickening farce, but she had no right to embarrass her family like this. But Merryl reached her first, and I caught the tail end of his lecture.
“A pretty piece of spite—embarrass us all before our guests, when Beltran has made so generous a gesture—”
“He may keep his generosity as far as I am concerned,” Callina said. “Brother, I will not look or act a lie. This dress pleases me; it is perfectly suited to the way I have been treated all my life by Comyn!” Her laugh was musical and bitter. “Beltran would endure more insult than this, for laran-right in Comyn Council! Wait and see!”
“Do you think I am going to dance with you while you are wearing that—” his voice failed him; he was crimson with wrath. Callina said, “As for that, you may please yourself. I am willing to behave in a civilized manner. If you are not, it is your loss.” She turned to me and said, almost a command, “Lord Alton will dance with me.” She held out her arms, and I moved into them; but this boldness was unlike her, and put me ill at ease. Callina was a Keeper; always, in public, she had been timid, self-effacing, overwhelmingly shy and modest. This new Callina, drawing all eyes with a shocking costume, startled me. And what would Linnell think?
“I’m sorry about Linnell,” said Callina, “but the dress pleases my mood. And—it is becoming, is it not?”
It was, but the coquetry with which she glanced up at me, shocked and startled me; it was as if a painted statue had come to life and begun flirting with me. Well, she had asked me. “You’re too damned beautiful,” I said, hoarsely, then drew her into a recess and crushed my mouth down on hers, hard and savagely. “Callina, Callina, you’re not going through this crazy farce of a marriage, are you?”
For a moment she was passive, startled, then went rigid, bending back and pushing me frantically away. “No! Don’t!”
I let my arms drop and stood looking at her, slow fury heating my face. “That’s not the way you acted last night— nor just now! What is it that you want anyhow, Callina?”
She bent her head. She said bitterly, as if from a long way off, “Does it matter what I want? Who has ever asked me? I am only a pawn in the game, to be moved about as they choose!”
I took her hand in mine, and she did not pull it away. I said urgently, “Callina, you don’t have to do this! Beltran is disarmed, no longer a threat—”
“Would you have me forsworn?”
“Forsworn or dead rather than married to him,” I said, rage building in me. “You don’t know what he is!”
She said, “I have given my word. I—” she looked up at me and suddenly her face crumpled into weeping. “Can’t you spare me this?”
“Did you ever think that there are things you might have spared me?” I demanded. “So be it, Callina; I wish Beltran joy of his bride!” I turned my back on her, disregarding her stifled cry, and strode away.
I don’t know where I thought I was going. Anywhere, out of there. A telepath is never at ease in crowds, and I have trouble coping with them. I know that a path cleared for me through the dancers; then, quite unexpectedly, a voice said, “Lew!” and I stopped cold, staring down at Dio.
She was wearing a soft green gown, trimmed with white; her hair waved softly around her face, and she had done nothing to disguise the golden-brown freckles that covered her cheeks. She looked rosy and healthy, not the white, wasted, hysterical woman I had last seen in the hospital on Vainwal. She waited a minute, then said, as she had said the first time we came face to face, “Aren’t you going to ask me to dance, Dom Lewis?”
I blinked at her. I must have looked a great gawk, staring with my mouth open.
“I didn’t know you were in Thendara!”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she retorted. “Do you think I am an invalid? Where else would I be, at Council season? Yet you have not even paid me a courtesy call, nor sent flowers on the morning of Festival! Are you so angry because I failed you?”