Thendara House (12 page)

I’d rather not do either, Jaelle thought. She hated talking on tape, but she had not learned to relate to the men she found here in the Headquarters. The thought of talking to a strange Terran Agent, to any Terran man without at least the tacit protection of Peter’s presence, frightened her. Yet the words of the Amazon Oath tormented her.
I shall appeal to no man as of right, for protection
… what, she thought distractedly, has
happened
to me, since I have come to live here as Piedro’s freemate?

Cholayna was still expectantly looking at her and Jaelle realized that she had not answered. She stammered, “I’d - I’d like to think about it a little, before I make up my mind.”

What I really want, she thought, is to talk mostly to the women. I feel safe and comfortable with Cholayna, even with Bethany. I feel secure relating to Darkovan men, even those who detest everything the Free Amazons stand for, because I know how to disarm their suspicions, to work among them as one of themselves. She did not think she could learn to do that with Terran men, and she didn’t really want to try.

And then she felt ashamed of herself. She was a grown woman, a Renunciate, she should not expect to hide behind Cholayna or even behind Piedro. She said almost aggressively, “I’ll talk to the Agent,” and stared at the floor, uncomfortably conscious that Cholayna was looking at her with sympathy.

I’m a big girl now, I don’t need to be protected or mothered
… she told herself, wishing she could feel the truth of that.

The light on Cholayna’s desk blinked again, and she said to it, irritably stabbing with one polished nail at the button, “What now?”

“Mr. Montray to see you,” answered the voice, and Cholayna raised her eyebrow.

“The mountain cannot fly to the birds, therefore each of the birds must fly to the mountain,” she said wryly. “That is an old proverb on my planet, Jaelle. I’m afraid I’ll have to let him in. You can go, if you’d rather.”

Jaelle shook her head. “I shall have to meet him sometime,” she said, bracing herself for the graying, disapproving Montray. The man who entered, however, was a stranger, at least twenty years younger than the Legate Jaelle remembered.

“You were expecting my father?” he asked at Cholayna’s look of surprise. “I’m Wade Montray, and Father sent me up to look the girl over and see what use we could make of her - ” He broke off, looked around at Jaelle and grinned apologetically.

“I did not know you were still here; I don’t mean to be rude. I believe I saw you at the Council, but we weren’t formally introduced.”

Now she remembered; he, at least, spoke the language flawlessly and had interrupted some of his father’s more tactless and unsuitable comments. “Yes, I remember seeing you, Mr. Montray - “

“Wade,” he said, “but I know that isn’t easy to say in your language. I’m usually called Monty, miss - ” again he broke off. “I am sorry; I don’t know the polite address for a Renunciate - “

“I am Jaelle n’ha Melora. If you do not feel ready to use my name, you may say
mestra
. But if we are to work together and I am to call you Monty, I should be Jaelle.”

He nodded, repeating the name carefully. “May I take her down to the Old Man’s office, Cholayna? Or do you still need her up here? If you do, I’ll try and smooth it over a little.” He hesitated and said, “Look, he really doesn’t mean any harm. It’s just - well, he’s been running everything, Intelligence, and Communications, Linguistics, all that stuff out of his office, and all of a sudden he doesn’t know where his authority leaves off and yours begins, so he’s feeling a little raw around the edges.”

Cholayna nodded. She looked a little grim. “I can see that it would be hard for him. Technically of course I am not responsible to any planetary Coordinator, but only to Head Center. I’ll try not to - to step on his feet, unless he gets in the way too much - I mean, in the way of Empire Intelligence. Jaelle, please feel free to call on me for help any time. And ask Peter to come in and see me sometime tomorrow, will you?” Cholayna turned her attention back to the lights blinking on her console, and Jaelle turned to the door with young Montray.
Monty
, she reminded herself, to distinguish him from his father.

“Your command of the language is excellent,” she said, as they went down the hall. “How -

He grinned at her disarmingly.

“How do I speak the language so well when Father still needs an interpreter? I came here before I was ten years old, and I’ve always been good at languages. The old man kept expecting, every year, that he’d be shipped out next year to a place he liked better, and so he never bothered with the language. I was shipped offworld for a proper Empire education when I was fourteen, but I liked it here and couldn’t wait to come back. Sorry, I didn’t mean to bore you with my personal problems. We can take this elevator.”

The sickening drop was less frightening now; her legs were almost steady under her as they stepped out. In Montray’s office, the plump, balding official was seated near a window looking out over the spaceport.

“I asked you to come down here, Mrs. Haldane,” he said, in
casta
so poor and stumbling that Jaelle decided it would not be the least use to correct him about her name, “because I have a special assignment for you. My colleague here, Alessandro Li.” A tall man, standing beside his desk, turned and bowed to Jaelle.

“He has been sent here as a Special Representative of the Senate at Head Center, with diplomatic status, to investigate whether Cottman Four shall retain its Closed World status or be reclassified, and to make recommendations about a Legation here. Sandro, this is the first Native Darkovan woman in Intelligence; she is married to Peter Haldane - “

“I know Haldane’s background in Intelligence,” the man interrupted. “Alien anthropology specialist; excellent field operative.” His
casta
was better than Montray’s, though not perfect. He turned and bowed slightly to Jaelle. “It is a pleasure to meet you,
domna
.”

Jaelle forbore, for a moment, to correct him. Alessandro Li was a tall man, hatchet-jawed, with steel-gray eyes under protruding eyebrows, the whole face shadowed by bushy dark hair and made - to Jaelle’s eyes - ridiculous by a foppishly trimmed moustache.

“Do you think you can fit him to travel incognito in the Hellers and the Kilghard Hills,
mestra
?” Montray asked.

The first thought that came to her mind was an absurd,
not with that moustache
, but she bit it back; after all, the man was new to her world and even from traveling between mountains and Domains she knew that the small things, dress and culture patterns and body language, varied so enormously that their significance could not be taken for granted. She saw, however, a gleam of amusement in Monty’s eye and knew that his first thought had been the same as hers. So she studied Alessandro Li for a moment without speaking. At last she said, “He could pass in the Hellers, up around MacAran country; some of them are dark and - and bony, like that. He would have to wear his hair longer, and either shave clean or wear a fuller beard. And he would have to be properly dressed, of course. And there is no way that he could pass until he has more training in the language.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” said the elder Montray with unexpected humility. “Languages aren’t my strong point; that’s why I miss Magda; she was my best interpreter. Wasted, of course, as an interpreter; she was the best undercover agent we had. But you think he could, eventually, pass?”

Alessandro Li was trying to meet her eyes; Jaelle colored and dropped her own. There was no way he could know - yet - that this was rude in their society, but Monty spoke up.

“To start with, Sandro,” he said, “you don’t try to make eye contact with a strange woman, not here in the Domains, unless you think she’s a prostitute trying to pick you up. If Jaelle’s husband were here, he could call challenge on you for looking at her like that. Call it your first lesson in cross-cultural courtesy here on Darkover.”

“Oh, right,” the man said promptly, and dropped his eyes. “No offense meant, miss - excuse me -
mestra
, is that right?”

“None taken,” she said just as promptly, “but this is the kind of thing I mean. Piedro could help him more than I, of course. And it wouldn’t be easy. It would be simpler to prepare - ” she gestured toward Monty, who laughed and said, “I’d like to work in the field, of course. But as for sending Sandro out in the field - well, it seems to me that it would make more sense to let the actual fieldwork be done by our trained operatives, the ones who can go out and never be spotted as Terran because in everything that counts they
are
Darkovan; Haldane, Lorne - Cargill, Kadarin, even myself. Then we could report to Sandro and he could make his final decision from that.”

Russell Montray leaned his chin on his hands and thought about that for a moment. Finally he said, “There’s only one problem with that. Haldane, Lorne, Kadarin - the ones who can really pass in the field - they
are
Darkovan, for all intents and purposes. Yes, they’ve taken a Service oath, and I’m not questioning their loyalty, but it’s natural that they’d think in terms of what’s best for Darkover, not necessarily what’s best for
us
. No offense meant, Jaelle - ” he mispronounced her name, but at least he wasn’t calling her
Mrs. Haldane
and she could tell that he meant to be friendly - “but Haldane married Darkovan - and now Magda has pledged to spend half a year in that Free Amazon women’s commune or whatever it is. And we don’t want the decisions made by someone who’s gone native on us; the investigation must be supervised by an objective observer, not prejudiced in favor of the Darkovan view of everything. Do you understand?”

Jaelle stared out the huge window that overlooked the spaceport. One of the Big Ships was there, a ground crew crawling over it, servicing the spaceborne monster which had come here, not because it cared to come to Cottman Four, Darkover, but simply because Darkover was a convenient way station on the way to somewhere else. The quick retort on her tongue, that Sandro Li would be equally prejudiced in favor of the Empire’s view, would not mean anything to Russell Montray.

From this height, the service crew around the ship looked tiny as so many scorpion-ants. No wonder this was why the elder Montray thought of the Darkovan view as something distant, irrelevant. He did not know Darkovans personally, he did not wish to know them, they were something other than human, forever set apart. What was it Bethany had said? The filthiest insult, in Empire language, was to call someone half-human.

“I am going to assign you to Sandra Li, to work with him, to be personally responsible for him,” he said. “It’s your job to work with him on languages, to get him ready for fieldwork, and I’ll hold you responsible if anything happens to him.”

He had used the words,
personally responsible
, which would have made it a matter of honor and pride to defend him to the death. For a moment Jaelle’s hand, automatically, sought for a knife that was not hanging at her belt; the gesture, arrested, made her feel foolish. She said in a low voice, “On my honor by my oath, I will hold myself responsible for him.”

But Monty had seen the gesture. He said, “We’re not asking you to be his bodyguard, Jaelle. You weren’t hired as a knife fighter. What my father means is - you’re to accompany him if he goes off base, make certain he doesn’t get into any avoidable trouble, avoid any incidents; train him to get along in the Trade City without getting himself into trouble. Understand?”

She nodded. “First of all,” she said, “you must have a Darkovan name. Alessandro is near enough to a name used in the Kilghard Hills, but no one would call a man
Sandro’
, it is too much like that of
Zandru
. Zandru is Lord of Choices, good or evil, and of the Nine Hells.”

“Equivalent of the devil,” Monty put in, and Alessandro Li raised his bushy eyebrows. “What would a child named Alessandro be called, then?”

“Probably - Aleki,” Jaelle hazarded, and he pronounced it after her, stumbling. “Ah - lee - kye, is that right?”

She nodded. “And he should - ” she hesitated, but these
Terranan
would not know the difference, and why should she hesitate? “Monty, get him to a barber; a Darkovan-trained one. And get rid of that moustache, first thing. Piedro can help to find him proper clothes.”