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Her face held the triumph of a gleeful child. Jeff bent down to kiss her and saw the strangeness in themirror, Elorie evidently lifted up and resting on nothing. He smiled. It was not a difficult matrix operation;he could probably have done it himself. But it had proved to her…

“That I’m not blind and deaf to it,” she said, picking up his thought, and her voice sounded tight, though she was still smiling the childish smile. “Go, darling, I’m not sure how long I can hold it, and you shouldn’t waste any time.”

He left her there in the Terran hotel room, passing silently and unseen down the corridors. In the lobbypeople passed him, unseeing. He had a curious, lunatic sense of power. No wonder the Comyn were allbut invincible—

But at what cost? Girls like Elorie, giving up their lives…

The Spacemen’s Orphanage looked just as it had looked a few scant months ago. A few of the boyswere doing something to the grounds, kneeling around a patch of flowers, supervised by an older boywith a badge on his arm. Silent as a ghost, Kerwin hesitated before walking up the white steps. Whatshould he do first? Go unseen into the office, check files and records? Quickly he dismissed that notion;he might be invisible, but if he started handling books or punching buttons, the people in the office would

see
 
something
 
even if it was only books and papers moving of their own accord; and sooner or later

they’d start investigating.

And sooner or later someone would bump into him.

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He stopped and considered. In the third-floor dormitory where he had slept with five other boys, he hadcarved his initials, at the age of nine, into a window-frame. The frame might have been repaired orreplaced; but if it hadn’t, and he could find the carving, it would prove something, to his own satisfaction;at least he wouldn’t have to carry around the sneaking suspicion that he never
 
had
 
been there, that hehad imagined the whole thing, that all his memories were hallucinations.

And after all, the dormitory was an old one and many of the boys had done the same thing. The Darkovan nurses and the children’s counselors had left them a good deal of freedom in some areas. Inhis day the dormitory had been battered, orderly and clean enough, but bearing the imprint of manychildish pranks and experiments with tools.

He went up through the halls, passing an open classroom door, trying to tread lightly, but two or threeheads turned as he passed.
 
So they heard someone walking in the halls, so what
 
? Nevertheless, herose on tiptoe and tried to make as little noise as possible.

A Darkovan woman, hair coiled low on her neck and fastened with a leather butterfly-clasp, her longtartan skirt and shawl faintly scented with incense, went along the hall, singing softly to herself. She wentinto one of the rooms and came out with a sleepy toddler cradled in her arms. Kerwin frozeautomatically, even though he knew himself invisible, and the woman seemed unconscious of him, stillhumming her mountain song.

“
 
Laszlo, Laszlo, dors di ma main
…”

Kerwin had heard the song of his own childhood, a silly rhyme about a little boy whose foster-motherstuffed him with cakes and sweets until he cried for bread and milk; he remembered, once, being told thatthe song went back to the historical period called the time of the Hundred Kingdoms, and the Hastur Wars that had ended them, and that the verses were a political satire about over-benevolentgovernments.

Kerwin drew aside as the woman passed him, feeling the rustle of her garments; but as they passed eachother, she frowned curiously, and broke off her song; had she heard his breathing, smelled someunfamiliar scent from his clothing?

“
 
Laszlo, Laszlo
 
…” she began to croon her little song again, but the child in her arms twisted, turning his face over the woman’s shoulder, looking straight at Kerwin. He said something in baby-talk, thrusting one chubby fist at Kerwin, and the nurse frowned, turning.

“What man? There’s nobody there,
 
chiy’llu
 
,” she scolded softly, and Kerwin turned and tiptoed down

the hallway, his heart suddenly pounding. Could a child’s eyes penetrate Elorie’s illusion?

He paused at the top of the stairs, trying to get his bearings. Finally he turned toward what he thoughtwas the right room.

It was quiet and sunlit, eight small, neatly-made cots in little cubicles around the edges of the room, andin the open play space between, a group of toy figures, men and buildings and spaceships, was arrangedon a small table. Carefully stepping around the toys, he saw that a tall white skyscraper had been built atthe center of the toy group, and sighed; the children had built the Terran HQ that loomed so large in theirthoughts.

He was wasting time. He moved to the windows and moved his fingers along the molding at eye-level. No, there were no carvings… suddenly he realized what he was doing. Yes, he had carved his initials at

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eye-level, but the eye-level of a nine-year-old boy, not his present two meters and more!

He stooped and felt again at mid-level. Yes, there were carvings in the soft wood; rough crosses, hearts,tick-tack-toe crosses. And then, at the left, in the squarish letters of Terran Standard alphabet, he sawthe childish work of his first pocketknife.

J. A. K. JR

Not until he saw the initials did he realize that he was shaking. His fists were clenched so hard that hisnails hurt his palms. He did not realize, until now, that he had ever doubted finding them; but now, as hetouched the childish, rude gouges in the wood, he knew that he had doubted his own sanity and that thedoubt had gone deep.

“They lied, they lied,” he said aloud.

“Who lied?” asked a quiet voice. “And why?”

Kerwin turned quickly toward the door. A short, sturdy, grey-haired man was standing there, lookingstraight at him. So Elorie’s illusion had worn off; he had been seen, and heard—and found.

Now what?

Chapter Fifteen: Through the Barrier

«^»

The man’s eyes, intelligent and kindly, rested on Kerwin without anger. “We never allow visitors in thedormitories,” he said. “If you wanted to see a particular child, you should have asked to see him in theplayroom.” His eyes narrowed suddenly. “But I know your face,” he said. “Your name is Jeff, isn’t it? Kerradine, Kermit—”

“Kerwin,” he said, and the man nodded.

“Yes, of course; we called you
 
Tallo
 
. What are you doing here, young Kerwin?”

Abruptly, Kerwin decided to tell the truth. “Looking for my initials, carved here,” he said.

“Now why would you want to do that? Sentiment? Old times sake?”

“Not a bit of it. A few months ago I came here,” Kerwin said, “and they told me in the office that there were no records of my ever having been here, no records of my parentage—that I was lying when I claimed to remember being brought up here. I don’t blame the matron—she evidently was since my time —but when the computer showed no records of my fingerprints—well, I started doubting my own sanity.” He pointed to the carved initials. “I’m sane, anyhow. I cut those initials here when I was a kid.”

“Now why would that happen?” the man demanded. “Oh, I forgot—I don’t suppose you remember my

name; I’m Jon Harley. I used to teach mathematics to the older boys. Still do, as far as that goes.”

Jeff clasped the hand the man held out to him. “I remember you, sir. You stopped a fight I got into once,and bandaged up my chin afterward, didn’t you?”

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Harley chuckled. “I remember that, all right. You were a young rowdy, right enough. I remember whenyour father brought you to us. You were about five, I think.”

Had his father lived so long? I ought to remember him, then, thought Kerwin, but try as he might therewas only the elusive blank space in his memory, fragmentary memories of dreams.

“Did you know my father, sir?”

The man said, regretfully, “I saw him only that once, you know, when he brought you here. But, forgoodness sake, young Kerwin, come downstairs and have a drink or something. Computers do get outof order, sometimes, I suppose; perhaps we should check the written files and school records.”

Kerwin realized that he should have waited, demanded, tried to see someone who would actually
remember
 
him. Like Mr. Harley. “Is there anyone else still here who could remember me?”

Harley thought it over. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s been a long time, and there’s a considerableturnover. Some of the maids, perhaps, but I think I’m the only teacher who would remember you. Mostof the nurses and teachers are young; we try to keep them young, children need young people aboutthem. I go on and on, old fellow that I am, because it’s hard to get good teachers to come out from Terra, and they want someone who speaks the language without accent.” He said, with a deprecatingshrug, “Come down to my office, young Jeff. Tell me what you’re doing these days. I remember youwere sent to Terra. Tell me how you happened to come back to Darkover. ”

In the old man’s austere office, filled with the open-window noises of children playing outside, Jeffaccepted a drink he didn’t want, fighting unspoken questions to which, he supposed, old Harley wouldn’thave the answer.

“You say you remember my father bringing me here. My mother—was she with him?”

Harley shook his head. “He said nothing about having a wife,” he said, almost prissily.

But, Kerwin thought, he had acknowledged his son, and that wasn’t easy under Terran Empire laws.

“What was my father like?”

“As I say, I saw him only once, and it wasn’t easy to tell what he looked like. His nose had been broken, and he’d been in some kind of fight; there was a lot of rioting in Thendara about then; some political upheaval. I never knew the details. He was wearing Darkovan clothing; but he had his Terran identifications. We asked you questions about your mother, but you couldn’t talk.”

“
At five years old
?”

“You didn’t talk for another year or so,” Harley said, frankly. “To be truthful, we thought you were mentally deficient. That’s one reason I remember you so well; because we all spent a lot of time trying to teach you to talk; we had a speech therapist come from Thendara HQ to work with you. You didn’t speak a word, either in Terran
 
or
 
Darkovan.”

Kerwin listened in amazement as the old man talked on.

“Kerwin—your father—finished up all the formalities for having you admitted here that night,” he said.

“Then he went away and we never saw him again. We were fairly curious, because you didn’t look at all

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like him, and of course you had red hair; and that same week we had taken in another little red-headed

fellow, a year or so younger than you.”

Kerwin said, with sudden curiosity, “Was his name—Auster?”

Harley frowned. “I don’t know; he was in the younger division and I never saw much of him, though Iknow he had a Darkovan name. He was only here for a year or so, and that’s very odd too. He waskidnapped and all his records stolen at the same time… well, I’m talking too much. I’m an old man andit’s nothing to do with you. Why do you ask?”

“Because,” Kerwin said slowly, “I think perhaps I know him.”

“His records aren’t here; as I said, they were stolen, but there’s the record of the kidnapping,” Harley

said. “Shall I look it up?”

“No, don’t bother.” Auster was nothing to do with him now; whatever the curious story, and both Kennard and Harley had called it odd, he would never know. It was unlikely that he would have been listed here as
Auster Ridenow
 
, in any case. Perhaps Auster too was born of two of the Comyn traitors, who had fled with the renegade Cleindori and her Terran lover. Did it matter? He had been brought up among the Comyn and he had inherited all their powers and he had gone to Arilinn at the appointed time. And he, Kerwin, brought up on Terra, had gone to Arilinn and he had betrayed them…

But he wouldn’t think of that now. He thanked Harley, refused another drink, submitted to being shownaround the new playground and dormitory buildings, and finally took his leave, filled with new questionsto replace the old ones.