Her voice had sunk so low that she seemed to be speaking more to herself than him; and her gaze was on nothing.
"You sit and talk with them, after they come home," she went on, "and you realize you're talking to someone who's gone away from what was common to both of you and now has something that has nothing to do with you, that you've never known and maybe never will know …"
She looked at him. Her eyes were brilliant.
"And then you discover that the same thing that happened to them has happened to you. You were a girl they grew up with when they left; but that girl is gone, gone forever. With you, too, some things have come forward, other things have gone back or been lost forever. Now they sit talking to a woman they don't know, that now they maybe never will know. And so, everything changes."
"I see," he said. "And it changed that much far the second Amanda and for Kensie and Ian?"
"Yes," she said, soberly. "They came back, two strangers, and fell in love with a stranger they had once grown up with. With any other three people that would have been problem enough - but those twins were half and half of each other, and Amanda knew it."
"What happened?"
The third Amanda, Hal's Amanda, did not answer. She had drawn her knees up to her chin, and hugged them. Now she rested her chin upon her knees, staring down into the valley.
"What happened?" Hal asked again.
"Everybody had simply assumed that Kensie and Amanda would end up together," she said, at last, "including Ian. When Ian found he was in love with Amanda himself, it was unthinkable to him that he should interfere in any way with his twin brother. So he married Leah, who had wanted him for a long time. Married her simply and quickly."
"And took himself out of the picture."
"No, "Amanda shook her head. "Because he had made a mistake. After the two of them had come home, different, it wasn't Kensie, but Ian, that the
second Amanda had fallen in love with. Ian. Only with Ian being the kind of person he was, there was no chance that, having once married Leah, that situation could ever be changed."
"But you say …" began Hal puzzled, then checked himself. "But, if she had any love for Kensie at all, what was to keep her from ending up with him? Certainly that would have been better than the two of them - "
"The way they were." Amanda turned her head to look at Hal. "Kensie and Ian were too close not to know each other's feelings; and Kensie loved Amanda as completely as Amanda loved Ian. Knowing how she loved Ian, Kensie could not take the place he would have filled in her life if things had been otherwise. He went back to the wars as if… he was too much a Dorsai to deliberately put himself in the way of getting killed. But for all his brightness, he lived in the shadow of death for years after that; and it seemed as if death was perversely avoiding him."
She looked away from him, down to the valley again.
"The Exotics say," she went on, "that there are ontogenetic laws which explain why someone like Kensie could lead a charmed life under such conditions."
"Yes," said Hal. He had not realized how strangely he had said the word until he looked up and saw her gazing at him.
"You know something about ontogenetics?" she asked. "Something that applies to the second Amanda, and Ian and Kensie?"
"To Ian and Kensie, maybe," he said. The part of him that concerned itself with what he called The
Purpose - that half-seen thing he must do with his life - was working powerfully, now; and he heard his own words almost as if someone else was speaking them. "Ontogenetics merely says nothing happens by chance or accident. Everything is interrelated. Stop and think. When Donal Graeme was moving toward his goal of bringing all the inhabited worlds under one order, his enemy was William of Ceta, just as Dow deCastries was the special opponent of Cletus Grahame."
"Yes," Amanda frowned. "But what of it?"
"To defeat William, who had unlimited power and wealth, Donal needed to defeat all possible military opponents. To do that he needed a military force larger than had ever been seen on the inhabited worlds. Only one other man could train that force as Donal needed it trained - and the rule in the Graeme household was that no two of their men served in the same place at the same time; far the same reason that a father and mother of young children may travel by different spacecraft, so that in case a phase shift accident should take one of them, the other would still be there to take care of the children."
"But it was different with Ian and Kensie," Amanda said. "They were allowed to serve in the same farce, together."
"Until Kensie's death. Then the rule was broken once more by Eachan Khan Graeme, who you'll remember was the family head, Donal's father and Jan's older brother." The Purpose-oriented part of Hal's mind was in complete control of him, now. He went on, not noticing the sudden intensity with which she was regarding him. "He asked Donal to find work with him for Ian, as the only means of rousing Ian after his twin's death."
She was watching him closely.
"You know a good deal about the Graemes," she said.
Suddenly aware of her attention, he grew flustered.
"I… don't," he said. "I only know something about ontogenetics."
"What you're saying adds up to the fact that Donal had Kensie killed to free Ian far his own use."
"No, no…" he protested. "Only Donal's need far Ian, acting on the network of cause and effect - "
"No!" she said. "Do you think any such farces could combine to kill Kensie, and Ian wouldn't be aware of it? They were one person, those twins!"
"But you said yourself that Kensie had been searching far death, ever since he had lost Amanda," he protested. "Maybe Ian simply, at last, let him go. You remember Kensie was assassinated. Dorsai aren't easy to assassinate, unless they don't care any
"No!" the third Amanda said, again, almost violently. "That wasn't the way it was, at all. You don't know… did you know that Tonias Velt, the Blauvain chief of police, wrote Eachan Khan Graeme afterwards, telling him the whole story? Velt was there and saw it all. Do you know what he saw?"
"No," said Hal. The part of him concerned with The Purpose drew close to the front of his mind and spoke through his lips almost against his will, as if it, not he, controlled them. "But I want to know."
"I'll tell you, then," said Amanda, "I'll tell it all to you, just as I read it when I was young - just as Velt wrote it to Eachan Khan Graeme after Kensie's body had been shipped home here far burial …"
Brothers
Physically, he was big, very big. The professional soldiers of several generations from that small, harsh world called the Dorsai, are normally larger than men from other worlds; but the Graemes are large even among the Dorsai. At the same time, like his twin brother, Ian, Commander Kensie Graeme was so well-proportioned in spite of his size that it was only at moments like this, when I saw him standing next to a fellow Dorsai like his executive officer, Colonel Charley ap Morgan, that I could realize how big he actually was. He had the black, curly hair of the Graemes, the heavy-boned face and brilliant grey-green eyes of his family, also, that utter stillness at rest and that startling swiftness in motion that was characteristic of the several-generations Dorsai.
So, too, had Ian, back in Blauvain; for physically the twins were the image of each other. But otherwise, temperamentally, their difference was striking. Everybody loved Kensie. He was like some golden god of the sunshine. While Ian was dark and solitary as the black ice of a glacier in a land where it was always night.