My father, speaking of his first years on Terra and being plunged abruptly into their alien customs, had once used a phrase for the way I felt now: culture shock. "With all deference, Lord Hastur, times have changed too much for that to be a suitable way of making marriages. Why is there such a hurry?"
Hastur's face suddenly hardened. "Lew, do you really understand that if your father had broken his neck on those damnable stairs, instead of a few ribs and his collarbone, you would now be Lord Alton of Armida, with all that implies? My own son never lived to see his son. With our world in the shape it's in, none of us can afford to take chances with the heirship of a Domain. What is your specific objection to marriage? Are you a lover of men?" He used the very polite casta phrase and I, used to the much coarser one customary in the Guards, was not for a moment quite certain what he meant. Then I grinned without amusement. "That arrow went wide of the mark, my lord. Even as a boy I had small taste for such games. I may be young, but that young I am not."
"Then what can it possibly be?" He seemed honestly bewildered. "Is it Linnell you wish to marry? We had other marriage‑plans for her, but if both of you really wish‑"
I said in honest outrage, "Evanda protect us both! Lord Hastur, Linnell is my sisterl"
"Not blood‑kin," he said, "or not so close as to be a grave risk to your children. It might be a suitable match after all."
I took a spoonful of the food on my plate. It tasted revolting and I swallowed and set the plate down. "Sir, I love Linnell dearly. We were children together. If it were only to share my life, I could think of no happier person to spend it with. But," I fumbled to explain, a little embarrassed, "after you've slapped a girl for breaking your toys, taken her into bed with you when she had a nightmare or was crying with a toothache, pinned up her skirts so she could wade in a brook, or dressed her, or brushed her hair‑it's almost impossible to think of her as a‑a bedmate, Lord Hastur. Forgive this plain speaking."
He waved that away. "No, no. No formalities. I asked you to be honest with me. I can understand that. We married your father very young to a woman the Council thought suitable, and I have been told they lived together in complete harmony and total indifference for many years. But I don't
want to wait until you've fixed your desire on someone wholly unsuitable, either. Your father married at the last to please himself and‑forgive me, Lew‑you and Marius have been suffering for it all your lives. I am sure you would rather spare your own sons that."
"Can't you wait until I have sons? Don't you ever get tired of arranging other people's lives for them?"
His eyes blazed at me, "I got tired of it thirty years ago but someone has to do it! I'm old enough to sit and think over my past, instead of carrying the burden of the future, but it seems to be left to me! What are you doing to arrange your life in the proper way and save me the trouble?" He took another forkful of salad and chewed it wrathfully.
"How much do you know of the history of Comyn, Lew? In the far‑back days, we were given power and privilege because we served our .people, not because we ruled them. Then we began to believe we had these powers and privileges because of some innate superiority in ourselves, as if having laran made us so much better than other people that we could do exactly as we pleased. Our privileges are used now, not to compensate us for all the things we have given up to serve the people, but to perpetuate our own powers. You're complaining that your life isn't your own, Lew. Well, it isn't and it shouldn't be. You have certain privileges‑"
"Privileges!" I said bitterly. "Mostly duties I don't want and responsibilities I can't handle."
"Privileges," he repeated, "which you must earn by serving your people." He reached out and lightly touched the mark of Comyn, deeply blazed hi my flesh just above the wrist. His own arm bore its twin, whitened with age. He said, "One of the obligations which goes with that, a sacred obligation, is to make certain your gift does not die out, by fathering sons and daughters to inherit it from you, to serve the people of Darkover in their turn."
Against my will, I was moved by his words. I had felt this way during my journey to the outlands, that my position as heir to Comyn was a serious thing, a sacred thing, that I held an important link in an endless chain of Altons, stretching from prehistory to the future. For a moment I felt that the old man followed my thoughts, as he laid his fingertip again on the mark of Comyn on my wrist. He said, "I know what this cost you, Lew. You won that gift at risk of your life. You have begun well by serving at Arilinn. What little re‑
mains of our ancient science is preserved there against the day when it may be fully recovered or rediscovered. Do you think I don't know that you young people there are sacrificing your personal lives, giving up many things a young man, a young woman, holds dear? I never had that option, Lew, I was born with a bare minimum of laran. So I do what I can with secular powers, to lighten that burden for you others who bear the heavier ones. So far as I know, you have never misused your powers. Nor are you one of those frivolous young people who want to enjoy the privilege of rank and spend your life in amusements and folly. Why, then, do you shrink from doing this duty to your clan?"
I suddenly wished that I could unburden my fears and misgivings to him. I could not doubt the old man's personal integrity. Yet he was so completely entangled in his single‑minded plan for political aims on Darkover that I distrusted him, too. I would not let him manipulate me to serve those aims. I felt confused, half convinced, half more defiant than ever. He was waiting for my answer; I shrank from giving it. Tele‑paths get used to facing things head‑on‑you have to, in order to stay even reasonably sane‑but you don't learn to put things easily into words. You get used, in a place like Arilinn, to knowing that everyone in your circle can share all your feelings and emotions and desires. There is no reticence there, none of the small evasions and courtesies which outsiders use in speaking of intimate things. But Hastur could not read my thoughts, and I fumbled at putting it into words that would not embarrass either of us too much.
"Mostly I have never met a woman I wished to spend my life with . . . and, being a telepath, I am not willing to ... to gamble on someone else's choice." No. I wasn't being completely honest. I would have gambled on Linnea willingly, if I had not felt I was being manipulated, used as a helpless pawn. My anger flared again. "Hastur, if you wanted me to many simply for the sake of perpetuating my gift, of fathering a son for the Domain, you should have had me married off before I was full‑grown, before I was old enough to have any feelings about any woman, and would have wanted her just because she was a woman and available. Now it's different." I fell silent again.
How could I tell Hastur, who was old enough to be my grandfather, and not even a telepath, that when I took a woman, all her thoughts and feelings were open to me and
mine to her, that unless rapport was complete and sympathy almost total, it could quickly unman me? Few women could endure it. And how could I tell him about the paralyzing failures which a lack of sympathy could bring? Did he actually think I could manage to live with a woman whose only interest in me was that I might give her a laran son? I know some men in the Comyn manage it. I suppose that almost any two people with healthy bodies can give each other something in bed. But not tower‑trained telepaths, accustomed to that full sharing. ... I said, and I knew my voice was shaking uncontrollably, "Even a god cannot be constrained to love on command."