Exile's Song (9 page)

As she stood, not really listening, Margaret realized that the name Thyra was not entirely unfamiliar to her. Her father had shouted it sometimes in drunken nightmares, but it had been so many years since she had heard one that she had almost forgotten. It always evoked the same image in her mind. She saw a screaming red-haired harridan with claws for hands . . . and the silver-haired man who would cry out “No, Thyra, no . . .” just as her father screamed these words in his restless sleep. She was torn between reluctance to know more, and a burning curiosity. It was a knife-edge in her mind.

Sometimes, in dreams, she found herself looking up, and gazed, as if through a veil, into the face of that same woman, or one like enough to her to be her sister, and felt the warmth of a breast, and tasted sweet milk. It was almost as if she knew the woman as a mother—though she could not connect the screaming, wild woman to any sort of mothering. Dio was all the mother she had, or had ever wanted, surely.

Those dreams had faded after she left Thetis, except for nightmares in hyperspace. Margaret remembered the psych on University who had told her she was repressing something, and had offered her deep therapy, but she had rejected it. She had the right to refuse, as one of her basic civil rights; she hadn’t wanted to remember anything. She still didn’t. Under Ida Davidson’s maternal hand she had almost forgotten the chaos of her early teens and the battles between her father and stepmother—mostly over her—which had finally driven her away from home. The Davidsons had given her a new home, and she had repaid them by submerging her own career in Ivor’s. She knew any third-year student could do what she did and do it as well. She had not known she was unhappy until the Davidsons had given her happiness, and she would never forget.

For a moment, Margaret wondered if somehow she had been coming to Darkover on some astral plane. Not that she believed in such things though it seemed more pleasant than space travel, for certain. The University had trained her to think rationally, to be logical and organized and to believe only in what she could hold and touch and feel with her flesh and blood hands.

The me of my dreams was a very small girl, or even a baby. But, damn, I do remember that fortress of a building, the Reade Orphanage. And Dio has always behaved as if she was my biological mother. I was an orphan, yes, but the Old Man is my father, isn’t he? Dio and I couldn’t have been closer if I’d been born to her. What a mess! This has got to stop—right this second! I won’t have it. Whatever happened twenty-some years ago
is
the past, and it has nothing to do with me!

Margaret and Dio had lost a certain amount of intimacy during the many years they had not seen one another, though they still wrote long letters and spoke via vidcom several times a year. The Old Man never wrote, but Dio always sent his love, and Margaret was glad of that. She was, she decided, more than a little disturbed, and even almost angry, that she had received no answer to her last communication, the one she had sent shortly before leaving University. Oh, well. It was probably somewhere in the system, and would arrive on Darkover after she and Ivor had left for the outlands. So much for the efficiency of Terran technology!

Something nagged at the back of her mind, something important and maddening and frightening. Margaret frowned, knowing it was something she did not really want to think about. It all came back to her in a rush of feelings of desolation and rage. She allowed herself to shudder, and tried to hold the memory away, then surrendered, just to get it done with.

It was her last night on Thetis, after the Old Man had finally agreed to her choice. It had begun well enough, with a good supper, toasts of Thetan wine, and her favorite dessert. Margaret had let herself start to relax, to believe everything would work out. Dio had retired early, which she often did. She said the sea air made her sleepy.

Then the Senator had gotten ugly drunk and tried to tell her something that she had not wanted to hear. What had he shouted? “If you have the Alton Gift, if you are an untrained telepath, you are a danger to yourself and everyone around you. You are my daughter, and you probably have it! Gift! The Alton
Curse
is more like . . .” She hadn’t understood what he meant, but the tone of his voice had made her blood run cold. And then something else had happened—and she realized this was what she did not want to recall. For just a second she had felt as if there was another person in her head, a woman, and a very nasty one. She had a soft voice, but it was very strong and authoritative.
You will not remember, and you will not destroy me!
It was this, and not the Old Man’s ravings that sent her running from the living room, into the security of her own quarters. She had locked the door behind her, as if something were chasing her, and spent the entire night packing and re-packing her belongings, as if her very life depended on it.

It was
only
a memory, Margaret told herself. The strange voice in her head was probably due more to unaccustomed wine and the tension of leaving for University than anything else. There, she was fine again. She was a Scholar of University, not an overwrought adolescent!

Margaret forced her attention back to Master Everard’s scholarly discussion of the fiol. It was clearly a relative of the Terran violin or viola, though the belly was deeper than any Terran violin, and the sound holes were formed like a many-pointed star. Professor Davidson plucked the strings and sighed.

“Would you fiddle it for me, Maggie? I’m afraid these old hands are beyond it.”

“Mine, too,” Master Everard said. “And I give you my word of honor it is possessed of nothing but a lovely tone.”

Margaret tucked the fiol beneath her chin and adjusted the tuning strings. It felt comfortable and familiar, though the neck was a bit longer than a Terran violin.

Other than that she did not hesitate, for the Music Department on University made sure their students could handle anything constructed for eight fingers and two opposable thumbs. She began to play a little Bach gavotte from her student days, followed by one of Corbenic’s variations. She had four thousand years of Terran music to draw from, but Corbenic remained one of her favorites.

Everard listened intently, his eyes sparkling. He smiled at her. “That was exquisite, my dear child. So crisp and clear, and yet there is deep feeling in it, at the same time. We must invite some of the other musicians in the street over for the evening. They would be delighted for the opportunity to hear you play that.”

Margaret blushed. She knew she was no better than a good second fiddler, that her playing was not really concert quality, but his praise eased her fears and tensions. “I would be glad to do that.”

Ivor made some mention of Mozart as a predecessor to Corbenic, and this demanded an exhaustive discussion, which strained her translating abilities to the utmost. She played the cadenza from the Fifth Violin Concerto, to demonstrate the influence of the earlier composer, and Everard nodded. The fiol did indeed have a lovely tone, despite, or maybe because of the oddly-shaped eff-holes.

By the time she had demonstrated the six fiols in the museum—three soprano and three alto—and the woods used to make them had been explained, with a discussion on technical acoustics that made her headache start up again, Margaret was ravenous and exhausted. Ivor was looking wan, his eyes glazed and his color dreadful. Still, he wanted to go on to the larger harps, and Margaret hated the look he gave her when she suggested they pause for the midday meal.

“Forgive me,” said Master Everard. “I am a poor host, indeed. Of course we must eat.”

“There is so much to see, to learn,” Ivor grumbled.

“It will still be here after lunch and a rest, Professor.” Margaret mustered her patience to persuade him.

“When you get to be our age, young woman, you will want to do as we do.” Master Everard laughed softly. “The young think they have all the time in the world.”

As they left the chamber, Margaret looked over her shoulder at the
ryll
standing in its niche in the wall. For an instant she saw slender hands, with an extra finger, play across the strings—ghost hands that both beckoned to her and repelled her at the same time. She was quite relieved to get out of the room and into the hall, banishing the vision and cursing her overactive imagination. It must have been a trick of the light. She told herself that, but she did not believe it.

T
he two old men were clearly enjoying sharing their mutual interest in music, but Margaret was finding translating for the professor while she tried to eat more than a little wearing. She was almost relieved when Master Everard was called away from the table as they consumed their midday meal of thick soup and heavy bread, then felt guilty about it. The headache that had started in the music room did not go away as she ate, but she dismissed it as the remnant of the drug hangover from traveling. It was the sort of headache she sometimes got when storms blew across the Sea of Wine on Thetis, something to do with barometric pressure and other weather phenomena. It almost certainly meant nothing on Darkover.

Alone with Ivor, she found herself troubled as well by his frail appearance. His color was gray beneath the remnants of his Relegan tan, and she wondered if she should cancel her planned shopping expedition and try to convince him to return to the Terran Sector for a visit to the Medics. He loathed doctors, and would almost certainly resist her efforts, so she decided not to suggest it—at least for the moment.

“Are you feeling all right, Ivor?” Margaret asked, in spite of her decision. She tried to mask her anxiety and to sound light and casual.

“I confess I feel pretty tired, my Magpie-Maggie.” This was the seventh or eighth time he had used his pet names for her, and she found it a little disquieting. “The older I get, the harder it is for my belly to settle into new foods, for one thing. These Cottman dishes are very tasty, but they sit in my belly like bricks. I really want something less heavy—clear soup and crackers—the kind that Ida makes.” He sighed rather gustily, enjoying the thought. “I was really looking forward to the amenities of University—electric lights, the quiet of the library, catching up on my reading, and getting my notes on Relegan into order. I keep having this fantasy that I won’t have a chance to do it, and some downy-cheeked kid with a diploma with damp ink on it will make a total mess of our work.”

And where am I in this fantasy, Ivor?
“I know,” Margaret replied, ignoring the little prick of irritation his words gave her. She immediately felt dreadful and guilty because she realized
she
was not missing University at all. The sounds and smells of Darkover tantalized her, surrounding her with siren promises of comforts which had nothing to do with controlled heating, voice-activated light levels, and the many other benefits of an advanced technology. True, the flickering lamps, candles, and other primitive light sources in Master Everard’s house seemed to her a bizarre affectation—why wasn’t Thendara City electrified, she wondered? The Terrans had been on the planet for decades now, and still were confined to their little enclave around the spaceport. It didn’t fit. It was another enigma that nagged at her aching head. She looked at the red sun streaming in through the high windows of the dining room, and at the small lamps that burned on the table, and found they did not hurt her eyes. In fact, now that she thought about it, the light from without seemed “right” as no light she had seen on any other planet had been.

“I think I got a bit of a chill during our walk here,” Ivor continued, breaking into her thoughts. “At least, I can’t seem to get quite warm.

“Ivor, no one can get really warm in these damn all-weather things the Service imagines are suitable clothing. Add to that the year we just spent running around nearly nude in a tropical climate—I’m chilled, too!” Actually, with the soup in her, Margaret was nearly comfortable, but she wanted to reassure herself that there was nothing wrong. “It’s hard to adjust to such a radical climate change.”

He chuckled. “I am just an old man, with an old man’s complaints, child. It was fun, wasn’t it, wearing flowers and feathers and beads instead of uniforms. But you know how the Service feels about getting too native— the idiots. I know I looked quite foolish in my feathered finery—Ida had a good laugh over the holopics—but the freedom of it was wonderful. You know, this uniform isn’t very comfortable, Magpie. I think it is too small across the back or something.”

This time the use of her nickname chilled her right down to the marrow. He was not himself, if he was being so openly affectionate. Margaret knew Ivor, his moods and crotchets, and this was just not like him. She gave him a hard look, but he seemed ordinary enough—a small, elderly man, wrinkled and tired-looking, and perhaps a little off his feed, but he appeared to be the person she knew well, whose every maddening habit and season was familiar to her. There was no reason to be alarmed. She was jumping at shadows, imagining ghosts in harps, and mistaking fatigue for illness.