The Saga of the Renunciates (97 page)

Almost since she had known her, Magda had wondered about Cholayna’s secret of relaxation. Cholayna never seemed actually to be doing anything, whether you went into her office in the HQ, or whether you sought her out in the special offices of the Alpha Intelligence Academy. Yet judging by results, one would suppose she spent all her time in frenetic activity.

Today was no exception: Cholayna was lying back in a comfortable chair, her narrow feet higher than her head, her eyes closed. But as Magda and Vanessa came into the office, she opened them and smiled.

“I thought this would be your next stop,” she said. “What do you want with the satellite maps, Magda?”

This was why I told Jaelle that I might have to tell Cholayna what was going on. She always knows.

Vanessa, however, allowed Magda no chance to answer.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me, if it’s Classified,” she said, “but is Lexie’s assignment, studying folk dances, a cover for some kind of official Intelligence maneuver?”

Cholayna looked mildly startled. “No, it’s just a bit of xenoanthropology. I had to okay it because any time a Terran goes into the field—which in effect means anywhere more than ten kilometers outside the Old Town—Intelligence is supposed to clear it, make sure they won’t step officially on anyone’s toes. I could see that after the shock she’d had, she wouldn’t be much good as a pilot without a fairly extended rest. So I okayed it. There isn’t, after all, a great deal of formal Intelligence work here—why do you think I
picked
this place? I spend ninety-nine percent of my time preparing undercover ops for work in linguistics and xenoanthropology. Which Magda set up before I ever got here.” She smiled at Magda, who returned the smile. Vanessa looked suspicious, but Magda was enough of a telepath to know when she was being told the truth.

“So it’s not a cover for that expedition Peter Haldane says she wanted to lead into the Hellers?”

“Oh, that.” Cholayna chuckled. “Lexie admitted she’d been fairly spaced when she came back, didn’t know what she was doing for the first few days. In fact, she wanted me to make sure what she said to him didn’t go into her permanent record. She knows Peter and I are old friends. Then she said she needed a good rest, and would like to get out into the mountains. Don’t think I don’t know when I’m being worked for a free vacation on company time, but Lexie’s competent, and she’s entitled to the same perquisites as the rest of us. So I told her to find herself a qualified guide from the Bridge Society, and cleared it for her with Xeno-An.”

Magda opened her mouth, but again Vanessa spoke first.

“You see, Lorne? You see? I told you so—”

Cholayna put her feet down on the floor. “
What
is going on?”

“Cholayna—what would you say if I told you that the guide Lexie engaged was Rafaella n’ha Doria?”

“Knowing what Rafaella charges,” Cholayna said, “I would say that Lexie made a very poor bargain. I know at least half a dozen women who would take her on such a trip for half—no, a quarter of Raffs standard charge—”

But then she stopped. It was frightening: Magda actually felt the information penetrate through the outer layers of Cholayna’s lazy good nature. For the first time since her training-school days she saw the sharp intelligence behind that facade.

“In the name of a million fire-eating demons, what are those two up to?” Cholayna sat back a little, eyes narrowing.

“I think,” said Vanessa, “that Lexie has found a way of getting the expedition she wanted, without going through the formalities. At the very least—it makes a fool of you and your department, Cholayna.”

Cholayna’s face tightened, and the bushy silver eyebrows bristled above her dark eyes. “I should have known. I trained Lexie and I ought to know when she’s being devious! So, that’s why you wanted the maps. But what do you suppose they’re looking for?”

Magda handed her the letter. Cholayna glanced at it, very briefly, then tossed it back across the desk.

“Hmm. Looks like an exceptionally private sort of letter. But knowing you, you wouldn’t show it to me without a good reason. Why don’t you just tell me
that
, instead?”

Magda detailed the contents of the letter.

Cholayna frowned. “Chasing fairy tales doesn’t sound much more like Lexie, actually, than studying folk-dancing.”

“Oh, it’s more than that. Lexie saw them—or thinks she did—and under the same type of circumstances that
I
saw them.” Drawing a long breath, Magda explained what she had seen in Lexie’s mind when she had probed it: robed women, voices, the calling of crows. Cholayna listened, tapping her long fingers restlessly against the glass surface of her desk.

Magda finished: “I always believed that, if they existed, they existed only in the overworld. But Camilla said that Kindra knew women who had been there. Marisela knows something about them, too, but she won’t tell.”

“And you’re going after them?” Cholayna sat up briskly. “All right. I’ll arrange clearance for all the maps you need. Get Supply, Vanessa, it won’t take me more than—” She consulted a chronometer. “Half an hour to be ready to ride.”

Magda stared. “Cholayna, you can’t—”

“
Can’t
isn’t a word you use to me,” Cholayna reminded her, but she was smiling. “Think, Magda! If Alexis Anders’s theory is correct, and some other planetary influence has set up a radar-impervious, satellite-blinding station here, it’s not only my business to know about it, we could all be fired, or worse, and Peter and I could be court-martialed if we didn’t know about it. What do you think I’m here for? And if you’re right, and it’s some secret of the Sisterhood—do you think I want some spoiled brat from Map and Ex, someone so arrogant about this planet that she wouldn’t even join Bridge, meddling with it? Quite apart from the diplomatic difficulties—if any non-Darkovans are going to be meddling in the Sisterhood’s business, better you and me than Lexie, hmm?” This was all so true that there was nothing Magda could say. Still, she remonstrated.

“You knew when you came here that you couldn’t work in the field, Cholayna. Riding with us, you wouldn’t even be safe, everyone would know you were not native.”

Almost alone among planets settled by man, Darkover, one of the “lost colonies,” had been settled by a commune from the British Isles and was almost exclusively caucasoid.

Cholayna replied, “Out in the wilderness, what does it matter? They’ll think, if we meet anyone who thinks anything at all, that I’m deformed, burnt or tattooed by Dry-Town slavers, perhaps; or—as some of the women in the Guild-house thought at first—that I have a terrible skin disease. Or that I’m nonhuman.” Cholayna shrugged. “Talk to Supply, Vanessa. I should check Magda’s supply list first, there’s no sense in duplicating. Do you have enough sunburn cream and extra sunglasses?”

Once, Magda had barely escaped being caught in a stampede of the wild chervines, antlered analogues of deer, used as pack or dairy animals, who roamed the Kilghard Hills. She felt something like this now. She wondered what Camilla and Jaelle would say.

Cholayna excused herself, and went swiftly to her quarters; came back with a surprisingly small pack of personal possessions.

“Everything else, except boots, I can get from Supply. They’ll be waiting for me at the gate. Let’s go. Maps ready, Vanessa? I spoke to my subordinate; she’s ready for indefinite takeover. I told her it was Cosmic Top Secret, and not to mention it to Haldane until I had been gone a tenday. She probably thinks she can wriggle her way in enough to become indispensable while I’m gone, and I’m sure she thinks I care one millicredit. Let’s go.” She slung the pack over her arm.

“Wait,” said Vanessa. “I’m going, too.”

“Don’t be foolish, Vanessa. You can’t—”

“It’s you who’s being foolish,” Vanessa said, “but you haven’t any monopoly on it. First: I have been climbing since I was sixteen years old. I led an all-woman climbing team in the first ascent of Montenegro Summit, on Alpha. That was one of the factors in sending me here; I know all about severe climates. And you’ve got to admit that when it comes to climate, Darkover is something really unusual—
especially
in the outer Hellers. Second: I am also a member of Bridge, and what Lexie is trying to do makes a mockery of everything Bridge has done on Darkover, so it’s as much my business as hers, or yours. And third—“ She held up a hand as Cholayna tried to interrupt her.”If you want to be perfectly technical about it, Personnel has a right to pass on anybody’s psychological and physical fitness to go into the field. Just try to leave without me. I’ll make sure—no, the Legate will make sure, neither of you get out of the HQ gates.”

“This is a fingernail’s breadth from blackmail,” Cholayna murmured.

“Damn right.” Vanessa stared, facing her down. After a moment, Cholayna burst out laughing.

“Shall we all be mad together, then? Ten minutes, Vanessa. We’ll meet you at Supply.”

Cholayna kept the parka hood of her down jacket, with its priceless ruff of offworld fur, drawn close about her face as they crossed the city. The assigned meeting place was a tavern they knew; at this hour it was half-filled, a few Guardsmen enjoying a noonday pot of beer or a dish of boiled noodles. A smaller circle of Guardsmen were standing at the front, playing darts, but after a moment Magda saw Camilla’s tall, lean figure at the center of the group, knife in hand.

“Come on,” one of them shouted, “prove it, put your money where your bragging mouth is!”

“I hate to take your money,” Camilla said in her gentle voice, and let the knife fly. It landed directly in the center of the dart, slicing feathers from the haft, which split, driving into the board to wedge so tight against the dart’s metal pin that a hair could not have been threaded between them. There were gasps of amazement. Laughing gaily, Camilla picked up a dozen coins lying on the bar and shoved them into a jacket pocket before she went to retrieve her knife. She saw Magda at the door, and went to meet her.

“Showing off again,
bredhiya
?” Magda asked.

“They never will believe a woman can throw a knife faster and straighter than they. When I was a mercenary, I used to earn all my drinking money that way,” Camilla said, “and this time, I needed some money. I cleaned myself out buying travel supplies this morning. Good thing I brought two extra horses.” As simply as that, she accepted Cholayna’s and Vanessa’s presence, and led them to a back booth where Jaelle waited.

“I ordered soup and bread for all of us. We might as well have at least one hot meal before we get on the trail.” She barely glanced at Cholayna as she added, “It doesn’t meet your criteria for edibility, Cholayna, I know you try not to eat anything that ever moved of its own accord, but you’ll have to get used to that on the road, anyhow.”

It was as if she had known all along that Cholayna and Vanessa would be coming with them. Perhaps she had. Magda knew that she would never ask, and that Camilla would never tell her.

It was still early afternoon when they left the city behind, and before sunset they had crossed Dammerung Pass. It was neither especially high nor steep, but as they began to descend, Camilla, who had set a stiff pace, looked appraisingly at the two Terran women.

“You’re in fair shape, Vanessa. Cholayna, you’re reasonably soft, but no worse than these two—living soft at Armida all these years, having children—nothing worse for your wind! You’ll harden up fast enough on the trail.”

They took the road north, traveling at the fastest pace the pack animals could sustain. In the last lingering red light, Cholayna threw back her hood; she looked happy, and later said to Magda as they rode side by side, “I’d forgotten what this was like! After seven years behind a desk in Administration, and fifteen years teaching before that, I thought I’d never get out in the field again. I hadn’t really realized what it would mean, coming to Darkover. I stayed because I thought I was doing good work, especially with the Bridge Society. But it’s good to be back in the field. It’s been so damned long.”

She must have been one hell of a Field Operative, if they gave her a post in Training School
, Magda thought, and not for the first time, wondered just how old Cholayna was; but it would not have occurred to her to ask.

The sun set, and the swift-falling night which gave Darkover its name dropped across the Venza Mountains. There was no rain; Camilla, taking advantage of the rare good weather, pushed the pace as hard as she could. It was nearly midnight when she signaled a halt. They set up camp quickly by lantern light, and Cholayna kindled a small fire to heat water for hot drinks, though they ate only bread and cold meat from their packs.

“We can get fresh food in the villages for a few days, and save the trail food,” Camilla said, chewing a handful of dried fruit. “After that we’ll be in the hills; and villages where we can get provisions may be three or four days’ ride apart.”

“How do we know which way we are going, or shouldn’t I ask?” Vanessa’s voice was quiet in the darkness beyond the fire; it was Jaelle who answered.

“Margali told you about the letter? Rafaella said she would wait three days at the place where we slaughtered the chervines. She knew I would remember that. It was ten years ago; we were young girls, traveling with Kindra. We ran out of food and water and killed the animals rather than leave them to starve. The fresh meat let us get along without water. But it was a near thing. I haven’t been that hungry since, and I hope I never am again.”

She cast a quick look at the dark sky. “We’d better turn in. This weather may hold another day, but when it breaks, it’s likely to break for good. North of Dammerung Pass, we’ll be in the foothills. I’d rather not spend a tenday holed up in a snow cave! And, if we want to catch up with Rafaella, they’re traveling lighter than we are.”

Jaelle had done this work for years; there had been many times when her life, or the lives of a dozen other people, had depended on her judgment about the weather.

Without discussion, Vanessa went to help Camilla with the horses, while Cholayna started pulling out the sleeping bags.