The Saga of the Renunciates Read online

  But it's hard on those of us who really live here...

  She was trying to decide whether to have food sent to her room, or to go to the HQ cafeteria and eat in company, when the communicator summoned her again.

  "Lome here," she said, in no pleasant temper. "I'm off duty, you know."

  "I know-Montray here. Magda, you're an expert on the Darkovan languages, aren't you? Isn't there a special inflection for speaking to the nobility, and a feminine mode of address?"

  "Both. Do you want a capsule lecture, or a library reference? My father compiled the standard text, and I'm working on a revision."

  "Neither; I want you to translate," the coordinator said, "You're our only resident female expert; and I'm mortally afraid of offending the lady by some improper form of speech. I've heard about the various gender taboos, but I don't know half enough about them, and that's a fact."

  "The lady?" Magda's curiosity was piqued; noblewomen were rarely seen even on the streets of Thendara.

  "A lady of the Comyn."

  "Good God," Magda said. She had rarely set eyes on a single member of this royal and aloof caste; even the men of the Comyn, if they felt the need to speak with one of the representatives of the Empire-which didn't happen often-did not hesitate to summon them into Thendara instead. "One of the women of the Comyn has summoned you?"

  "Summoned, nothing! The lady's in my office right now," said Montray, and Magda blinked.

  She said, "I'll be there in three minutes." Her normal duties did not include working as a translator, but she could understand why Montray was unwilling to use the regular staff.

  This was completely unprecedented; a woman of the Comyn, in Montray's office...

  Magda put on her outdoor clothing. She had removed her butterfly-clasp; she started to coil up her long hair on top of her head. The Darkovans certainly knew that Terrans went, in Darkovan clothing, into the Old Town, just as the Terrans knew that a considerable number of the Darkovans who worked at construction jobs on the spaceport were paid to pass along information about the off-worlders to the Darkovan authorities. But neither side took official notice of it. It was important for Magda to look like any other Terran translator. But her bare neck prickled at the exposure.

  I ought to act as if I didn't even know about the proper degree of exposure for a Darkovan woman. But she felt bare and immodest; she took the braid down and let it hang loose down her back.

  The noise had shut down now to a nighttime roar; her feet, in thin shoes, slid on the slippery, sleeted sidewalks. She was glad to get into the Temporary HQ building, where Temporary Coordinator Russ Montray-Darkover wasn't important enough in the Empire; yet, to be assigned a proper Legate for liaison with the native residents-met her in the outer office.

  "It's good of you to do this for me, Magda. It won't hurt to let them know we have some people who can speak the language the way it really ought to be spoken." He was a plump, balding man in his forties, with a habitual worried look; even in his centrally heated office, with the thermostat turned up to the maximum, he always looked, and was, cold. "I took the lady into my inner office," he said, and held the door for her.

  He said, in his poor and stumbling cahuenga (the lingua franca of the Trade City), "Lady Ardais, I present to you my assistant, Magdalen Lome, who will speak with you more easily than I can do." He added to Magda, "Tell her we are honored at her visit, and ask what we can do for her. She must want something, or she'd have sent for us instead of coming here herself."

  Magda gave him a warning look; she guessed, from the flash of intelligence in the lady's eyes, that she understood Terran Standard-or that she was one of the occasional telepaths rumored to be found on Darkover. She began, "Domna, you lend us grace. How may we best serve you?"

  The woman looked up, meeting Magda's eyes; Magda, who had spent her life on Darkover and knew the nuances, thought, This woman is from the mountains; the women of the lowlands are more timid with strangers. As custom demanded for all of the Comyn, she had brought a bodyguard-a tall, uniformed man in the green and black of the City Guard-and a lady companion, but she paid no attention to either of them. She said quietly, "I am Rohana Ardais; my husband is Gabriel Dyan, Warden of Ardais. You speak our language well, my child; may I ask where you learned it?"

  "I spent my childhood at Caer Donn, Lady, where the citizens mingled more with the Terrans than is the custom here; all my playmates were Darkovan children."

  "Ah, that explains, why you speak with the accent of the Hellers," Rohana said. Magda, studying her with the eyes of a trained observer, saw a small, slightly built woman, not nearly as tall as Magda herself. It was hard to tell her age, for there were no telltale lines in her face, but she was not young; the heavy auburn hair, coiled low on her neck and confined with an expensive butterfly-clasp of copper set with green gems, was liberally streaked with gray. She was well and warmly clad in a heavy dress of thick green wool, woven and dyed and elaborately embroidered. She bore herself with great poise, but her hands, clasped in her lap, moved nervously on one another.

  "I have come here, against the will of my kinfolk, to ask a service of you Terrans. Perhaps it is foolish, a forlorn hope-" She hesitated, and Magda told her that it would be an honor to serve the Lady Ardais.

  Rohana said quietly, "It is my son; he has disappeared. We feared foul play. Then a workman who is employed here in your port on one of your great buildings-surely it is no secret that many of these are paid by us to tell us what we wish to know about your people-one of these workmen, who knows my son slightly, reported to us that he had seen my son here, at work. This was some months ago; but it seemed to us, at last, that any rumor was worth investigating...”

  Startled, Magda relayed Rohana's words to the coordinator. "It is true that we employ many Darkovans. But your son, Lady? Most of those we employ are put to work as common laborers, running machines, doing carpentry and building – "

  "Our son is young, and eager for adventure, like all men his age," Rohana said. "To him, no doubt, it would seem a great adventure, to mingle with men from another world. He would not hesitate to work as a layer of bricks or a pavement-maker, for the sake of that. And as I say, he was seen and recognized here." She handed Montray a small packet wrapped in silk; he unwrapped it, slowly, glancing at Magda as she translated Rohana's words.

  "I have brought a likeness of my son; perhaps you could ask those of your men who are responsible for the work crews of our people, when he was last employed here."

  Inside the silk was a copper locket; Montray opened the clasp to reveal a miniature painting. His eyebrows rose as he looked at it.

  "Take a look at this, Magda."

  He handed it to her, and she looked on an elaborately painted likeness of Peter Haldane.

  "I can see by your faces that you both recognize my son," Lady Rohana said. Magda's first thought was, This is impossible, insane! Then sanity came to her rescue. A chance resemblance, no more. A fantastic coincidence.

  Montray was on the communicator. "Get me a personnel solido and photos of Peter Haldane, Bethany. Magda".-he turned back to her-"you can explain."

  Magda tried. She could see faint beads of perspiration along the lady's hairline; whether from nervousness or from the heat of Montray's office-or both-she could not tell.

  "Chance resemblance? Impossible, my child. He was recognized by the color of his hair, and that color is borne by none but Comyn, or those of Comyn blood."

  "It is not rare among Terrans, my Lady," Magda said. (She had known this; Peter had made jokes of it. "On the Darkovan side they think I must be some nobleman's bastard!") "It carries among us no claim to nobility, but means only that one's parents had red hair, and a certain racial makeup." She broke off as Bethany came in, took the small solido and personnel printout that bore a color photo of Peter Haldane. She handed them to Lady Rohana without comment.

  Rohana studied them a moment, then looked up, her face gone white. "I cannot understand this. Are you very sure he is n
ot one of ours, in some disguise that has misled you?"

  "Very sure, my Lady; I have known Peter Haldane since childhood."

  "How can this be? One of your Terrans, so like to one of us..." Her voice wavered. "I can see that anyone might be deceived, if this man wore Darkovan dress. And your man is missing, too?" Not until hours afterward did Magda realize that she had not told Rohana this. "Strange. Well, I see I must search elsewhere for news of my son."

  When she had taken leave of Montray, formally, she turned to Magda, lightly touching her hand. She looked at her, a long and searching look; "Somehow I think I have not heard the end of this matter," she said. "I thank you for your courtesy. A day may come when I can help you, my girl; until then, I wish you well."

  Magda was almost too surprised to speak; she managed a formal word of thanks, but Rohana kindly waved her away, summoned her companion and the sweating Guardsman and departed.

  Left alone with Magda, Montray exploded, "Well, what do you think of that!"

  "I think the poor woman is worried to death about her son."

  "Almost as worried as you are about Haldane, huh?"

  "A lot more. Peter is a grown man, and entirely on his own. Why should I-"?

  "Damned if I know why you should, but you are," Montray said. "And I gather her son is a grown man, too. But on a damn feudal world like this where fighting duels is the most popular indoor sport, I gather there's real cause for concern if the man of the house doesn't come home."

  "Feudal is hardly the proper description – "

  "OK, OK, Magda, you're up on all the little nuances and fine points; I'm not, I don't want to be. All I want is away from this damn place; you can have my job any time I can get a transfer out-or you could, except that on a world like this a woman wouldn't be allowed to take it. I should think you'd want out, too. The point is: I understood most of what the lady was saying to you. It looks like you've made a useful contact. It's not easy for a woman to do anything much on this world, but if you have an in with someone on the top levels, in the Comyn – "

  Magda found she did hot want to explore this point just now. She reminded Montray, rather tartly, that she had come here in off-duty time; he told her to put in a voucher for the extra pay, and let her go.

  Yet, back in her own quarters, removing her heavy clothing, she thought about what he had said. Rohana had spoken formally at first, and when she had called Magda "my child" she had spoken in the inflection normally used to a servant or an inferior-or someone like a translator. But at the end she had called her "my girl," in the intimate mode she would have used to a young woman of her own caste. Was it only random kindness?

  Outside, the snow had turned to heavy sleet; Magda went to the window, drawing aside the curtains to look out through the doubled, soundproof glass into the silent raging of the storm.

  You're out there somewhere, Peter, she thought. What are you up to? If there's really any such thing as ESP, I ought to be able to reach you somehow. Damn it, Peter come home, I'm worried, damn you. She thought, How Peter would laugh at me. He's somewhere, following some obscure lead he's found. Magda knew she was a good Intelligence officer; knew Peter was considered a gifted one. A woman could not do too much in the Intelligence line on a planet like Darkover, where strong codes and taboos regulated female behavior; Magda knew that elsewhere, on a less strongly patriarchal planet, where men and women were equals, she could have had more scope for her talents. Yet Darkover is my home...

  One of the messier moments, during the tense weeks before the showdown that had ended their brief marriage, had been Peter's accusation that she was jealous, jealous because he was allowed to accomplish more than she was on a world like Darkover. And of course, it was true...

  Oh, Peter, come home. I'm worried. Feeling foolish, yet taking it seriously, Magda strained in concentration-as she had done at the New Rhine Rakakowski Institute on Terra, making her significantly better-than-chance scores on her ESP cards-to try to send a message, if such a thing were possible. Peter, Peter, we are all worrying. At least let us know you are safe.

  But there was no sense of contact, and at last, drained and weary, feeling it had been an idiotic endeavor, Magda gave up and went to bed.

  That night she dreamed of Peter Haldane, but he was laughing at her.

  Chapter Seven

  The season drew on, and the cold thickened. Magda, who had been born in the mountains, did not mind the cold; at least, not when she could wear suitable clothing for it. But most of the Terrans burrowed indoors like animals in their winter holes, venturing out only when they must; and the crews of the starships that touched down here confined their stay to the minimum, seldom venturing out even into the port and never going into the Old Town.

  Even Magda, careless of official disapproval, wore her Darkovan dress more and more around the HQ, suffering the inconvenience of long skirts and heavy petticoats for their warmth. One afternoon when she came in from a day spent in the Old Town, it was snowing so heavily that the idea of changing into the thin Terran synthetics seemed insane; she went directly to Personnel, and the station where her observations were recorded. Montray's pretty assistant, heavily sweatered, looked at her with envy. "I don't blame you for going native. I'm almost tempted to transfer to your section so I can dress for the climate! I don't know how you manage to get around in those things-but they do look warm!"

  Magda grinned at her. "Usual question."

  "Usual answer, I'm afraid," Bethany said soberly. "No word from Peter. This morning the boss took him off the active-duty list; he's officially reported PMOD-provisionally missing on duty. Pay suspended subject to official contact, and so forth."

  Magda flinched. The mechanism was in motion for having him declared Missing, presumed dead.

  Bethany said, trying to comfort her, "Nothing's final yet. Maybe he found a friendly place to stay and just settled in for the winter. He couldn't travel in this, even if he was all right."

  Magda's smile only stretched her mouth. "It's not nearly winter yet. The time when travel becomes impossible and all business shuts down for the spring-thaw is almost four months away. The passes aren't even closed into the Hellers."

  "You're joking!" Bethany looked into the raging storm and shivered. "But you should know, you've been out in it. Summers, I think you have a peach of a job-nothing to do but mix with the crowds in the city and listen to gossip. But in weather like this I'm surprised they didn't name this planet Winter."

  "They couldn't; there's already one called that. Read the records someday. Speaking of records, I'd better get mine set up."

  "Is that really all you do-listen to gossip?"

  "That, and a lot more. I take note of the fashions being worn by women, make linguistic notes on new expressions and changes in the local argot... languages change all the time, you know that."

  "Do they really?"

  "Do you use the slang expressions now that you did when you were seven years old? It doesn't matter if an agent uses some outdated expressions; people do pick up little tags of speech from their parents, and everybody tends to use expressions that were common in their own teens, when peer relationships were being established. The one thing no undercover agent on the Darkovan side can do is speak as if he'd learned the language from a book; so I work all the time keeping us all up to date. Montray gets away with it because he's meeting people as a Terran, and it's a compliment for him to go halfway by speaking their language at all; speaking it too well would be a subtle form of one-upmanship that would rouse all kinds of psychological resistances in the Darkovans he meets. They're supposed to be able to speak better than he does. But the agents who work on the Darkovan side can't make mistakes even in slang. And everybody has to keep up with common usage."

  Bethany looked puzzled. Magda elucidated: "Well, look. For instance; there's a word which means, literally, 'entertainer,' or 'singing woman.' It's in the standard texts. But if you called a ballad-singer, or one of the soprano soloists with one of the orche
stras in Thendara, by that word, her father or brother would call you out in a duel-call a man out; a woman using such a term would simply be regarded as very vulgar and ill bred."

  "An entertainer?" Bethany repeated the word in amazement. "Why? It sounds inoffensive enough."

  "Because for decades that particular word has been a polite euphemism-the kind of word you can use in front of a lady-for 'prostitute'. No respectable woman on Darkover would soil her mouth with the word grezalis-that's vernacular for 'whore'-and no man but a boor would use it in front of her. The respectable concert soprano is a 'lyric performer,' and don't forget it if you go to a concert in Thendara!"

  Bethany shivered. "I had no idea a translator's work was so complicated."

  "It's true; you have to take extra pains to avoid giving offense. One of my main jobs is to check through official speeches to make sure our translators and speechwriters avoid words with accidentally offensive connotations. For instance: you know how our standard official speeches-not just on Darkover-are full of expressions of friendship and brotherhood? Well, the commonest expression for 'friend and brother' in the casta language-that's the official language in Thendara-is red-flagged as an absolutely taboo term for official speeches here."

  "Why, for heaven's sake?"

  "Because the commonest expression meaning 'friend and brother,' if you don't get the inflection just right, can get you in an incredible amount of trouble. In the impersonal inflection it expresses the purest sentiments of fraternal charity and humanitarian concern, and is perfectly suitable for official and diplomatic use. Just the same it's red-flagged, because a lot of our officials simply cannot pronounce the language well enough, and even if they mean to use the impersonal inflection, they're likely to sound like the wrong one. And if you use that word-the same word-in the personal inflection, it means 'brother' in the sense of family intimacy and closeness, and is too familiar; while if you happen to use it in the intimate inflection, you're defining the person addressed as a homosexual-and your lover. Do you see now why it's an absolutely forbidden term in official language?"