A World Divided (4 page)

“They think we’re barbarians,” Larry said slowly, “and here in the Terran Zone, we think
they
are.”

“That’s right. And there doesn’t seem to be any answer.”

Larry put down his fork. He burst out, suddenly, “Dad, when am I going to get a chance to see something of Darkover?” All his frustration exploded in him. “All this time, and I saw more through a gate on the spaceport than I’ve seen since!”

His father leaned back and looked at him, curiously. “Do you want to see it so much?”

Larry made it an understatement. “I do.”

His father sighed. “It’s not easy,” he said. “The Darkovans don’t especially like having Terrans here. We’re more or less expected to keep to our own Trade Cities.”

“But why?”

“It’s hard to explain,” said Wade Montray, shaking his head. “Mostly they’re afraid of our influence on them. Of course they’re not all like that, but enough of them are.”

Larry’s face fell, and his father added, slowly, “I can try to get permission, sometime, to take you on a trip to one of the other Trade Cities; you’d see the country in between. As for the Old Town near the spaceport—well, it’s rather a rough section, because all the spacemen in from the ships spend their furloughs there. They’re used to Earthmen, of course, but there isn’t much to see.” He sighed again. “I know how you feel, Larry. I suppose I can take you to see the market, if that will get rid of this itch you have to see something outside the Terran Zone.”

“When? Now?”

His father laughed. “Get a warm coat, then. It gets cold here, nights.”

The sun hung, a huge low red ball on the rim of the world, as they crossed the Terran Zone, threaded the maze of the official buildings and came out at the edge of the levels which led downward to the spaceports. They did not go down toward the ships, but instead walked along the highest level. They passed the gate where—once before—Larry had stood to look out at the city; only this time they went on past that gate and toward another one, at the far edge of the port.

This gate was larger, and guarded by black-clad men armed with holstered weapons. Both of the guards nodded in recognition at Larry’s father as they went through into the open square.

“Don’t forget the curfew, Mr. Montray. All Zone personnel not on duty are supposed to be inside the gates by midnight, our time.”

Montray nodded. As they crossed the square side by side, he asked, “How are you getting along on the new sleep cycle, Larry?”

“It doesn’t bother me.” Darkover had a twenty-eight hour period of rotation, and Larry knew that some people found it difficult to adjust to longer days and nights, but he hadn’t had any trouble.

The open square between the spaceport and the Darkovan city of Thendara was wide, open to the sky, and darkly spacious in the last red light of the sun. At one side it was lighted with the arclights from the spaceport; at the other side, it was already dimly lit with paler lights in a medium pinkish color. At the far end there was a row of shops, and Darkovans and Earthmen were moving about in front of them. The wares displayed were of a bewildering variety: furs, pottery dishes, ornate polished knives with bright sheaths, all kinds of fruits, and what looked like sweets and candies. But as Larry paused to inspect them, his father said in a low voice, “This is just the tourist section—the overflow from the spaceport. I thought you’d rather see the old market. You can come here any time.”

They turned into a sidestreet floored with uneven cobblestones, too narrow for any sort of vehicle. His father walked swiftly, as if he knew where he was going, and Larry thought, not without resentment,
He’s been here before. He knows just where to go. Yet he never realized that I’d want to see all this, too.

The houses on either side were low, constructed of stone for the most part, and seemed very old. They all had a great many windows with thick, translucent, colored or frosted glass set in patterns into the panes, so that nothing could be seen from outside. Between the houses were low stalls made of reeds or wood, and a variety of outbuildings. Larry wondered what the houses were like inside. As he passed one of them, there was a strong smell of roasting meat, and behind one of the houses he heard the voices of children playing. A man rode slowly down the street, mounted on a small brownish horse; Larry realized that he controlled the horse without bit or bridle, with only a halter and the reins.

The narrow street widened and came out into a much larger open space, filled with the low reed stalls, canvas tents with many-colored awnings, or small stone kiosks. It was dimly lighted with the flaring enclosed lights. Around the perimeter of the market, horses and carts were tied, and Larry looked at them curiously.

“Horses?”

Montray nodded. “They don’t manufacture any surface transport of any sort. We’ve tried to get them interested in a market for autocars or helicopters, but they say they don’t like building roads and nobody is in a hurry anyway. It’s a barbarian world, Larry. I told you that. Between ourselves,” he lowered his voice, “I think many of the Darkovan people would like some of our kind of machinery and manufacturing. But the people who run things want to keep their world just the way it is. They like it better this way.”

Larry was looking around in fascination. He said, “I’d hate to see this market turned into a big mechanized shopping center, though. The ones on Earth are ugly.”

His father smiled. “You wouldn’t like it if you had to live with it,” he said. “You’re like all youngsters, you romanticize old-fashioned things. Believe me, the Darkovan authorities aren’t romantic. It’s just easier for them to go on running things their own way, if they keep the people doing things the way they always have. But it won’t last long.” He sounded quietly certain. “Once the Terran Empire comes in to show people what a star-travel civilization
can
be like, people will want progress.”

A tall, hard-faced man in a long, wrapped cloak gave them a sharp, angry glance from harsh blue eyes, then lowered thick eyelashes and walked past them. Larry looked up at his father.

“Dad, that man heard what you said, and he didn’t like it.”

“Nonsense,” his father said. “I wasn’t speaking that loud, and very few of them can speak Terran languages. It’s all part of the same thing. They trade with us, yet they want nothing to do with our culture.” He stopped beside a row of stalls. “Can you see anything you’d like here?”

There was a row of blue-and-white glazed bowls in small and larger sizes, a similar row of green-and-brown ones. At the next stall there were knives and daggers of various sorts, and Larry found himself thinking of the Darkovan boy who had worn a knife in his belt. He picked up one and fingered it idly; at his father’s frown, he laughed a little and put it back. What would he do with it? Earthmen didn’t wear swords!

An old woman behind a low counter was bending over a huge pottery bowl of steaming, bubbling fat, twisting strips of dough and dropping them into the oil. Below the bowl, the charcoal fire glowed like the red sun, throwing out a welcome heat to where the boy stood. The strips of dough twisted like small goldfish as they turned crisp and brown; as she fished them out, Larry felt suddenly hungry. He had not spoken Darkovan since that first day, but as he opened his mouth, he found that the learning-tapes had done their work well, for he knew just what he wanted to say, and how.

“What is the price of your cakes, please?”

“Two sekals for each, young sir,” she said, and Larry, fishing in his pocket for his spending money, asked for half a dozen. His father put down a scroll at the next stall, and came toward him.

“Those are very good,” he said, “I’ve tasted them. Something like doughnuts.”

The old woman was laying out the cakes on a clean coarse cloth, letting the sweet-smelling oil drain from them, dusting them with some pale stuff. She wrapped them in a sheet of brownish fiber and handed the package to Larry.

“Your accent is strange, young sir. Are you from the Cahuenga ranges?” As she raised her lined old face, Larry saw with a shock that the woman’s eyes were whitish and unfocused; she was blind.
But she had thought his speech genuinely Darkovan!
He made a noncommittal reply, paying her for the cakes and biting hungrily into one. They were hot, sweet and crisp, powdered lightly with what tasted like crushed rock candy.

They moved down the twilit lane of booths. Now and again they encountered uniformed men from the spaceport, or occasional civilians, but most of the men, women and children in the market were Darkovans, and they regarded the Terrans, father and son, with faintly hostile curiosity.

Larry thought,
Everyone stares at us. I wish I could dress like a Darkovan and mix in with them somehow so they wouldn’t take any notice of me. Then I could know what they were really like.
Gloomily he munched the doughnut cake, stopping to look over a display of short knives.

The Darkovan behind the stall said to Larry’s father, “Your son is not yet of an age to bear weapons. Or do you Terrans not allow your young men to be men?” His smile was sly, faintly patronizing, and Larry’s father frowned and looked irritated.

“Are you ready to go, Larry?”

“Any time you say, Dad.” Larry felt faintly deflated and let down. What, after all, had he been expecting? They turned back, making their way along the row of stalls.

“What did that fellow mean, Dad?”

“On Darkover you’d be legally of age—old enough to wear a sword. And expected to use them to defend yourself, if necessary,” Wade Montray said briefly.

Abruptly and with a rush, the red sun sank and went out. Immediately, like sweeping wings, darkness closed over the sky and thin swirling coils of mist began to blow along the alleys of the market. Larry shivered in his warm coat, and his father pulled up his collar. The lights of the market danced and flickered, surrounded by foggy shapes of color.

“That’s why they call the planet Darkover,” Larry’s father said. Already he was half invisible in the mist. “Stay close to me or you’ll get lost in the fog. It will thin out and turn to rain in a few minutes, though.”

Through the thick mist, in the flickering lights, a form took shape, coming slowly toward them. At first it looked like a tall man, cloaked and hooded against the cold; then, with a strange prickling along his spine, Larry realized that the hunched, high-shouldered form beneath the cloak was not human. A pair of green eyes, luminescent as the eyes of a cat by lamplight, knifed in their direction. The non-human came slowly on. Larry stood motionless, half-hypnotized, held by those piercing eyes, almost unable to move.

“Get back!” Roughly, his father jerked him against the wall; Larry stumbled, sprawled, fell, one hand flung out to get his balance. The hand brushed the edge of the alien’s cloak—

A stinging, violent pain rocked him back, thrust him, with a harsh blow, against the stone wall. It was like the shock of a naked electric wire. Speechless with pain, Larry picked himself up. The nonhuman, unhurried, was gliding slowly away. Wade Montray’s face was dead white in the flickering light.

“Larry! Son, are you hurt?”

Larry rubbed his hand; it was numb and it prickled. “I guess not. What was that thing, anyhow?”

“A
Kyrri
. They have protective electric fields, like some kinds of fish on earth.” His father looked somber. “I haven’t seen one in a human town for years.”

Larry, still numbed, gazed after the dwindling form with respect and strange awe. “One thing’s for sure, I won’t get in their way again,” he said fervently.

The mist was thinning and a fine spray of icy rain was beginning to fall. Not speaking, Wade Montray hurried toward the spaceport; walking fast to keep up—and not minding, because it was freezing cold and the rapid pace kept him warm—Larry wondered why his father was so silent. Had he simply been afraid? It seemed more than that.

Montray did not speak again until they were within their own rooms in Quarters A, the warmth and bright yellow light closing around them like a familiar garment. Larry, laying his coat aside, heard his father sigh.

“Well, does that satisfy your curiosity a little, Larry?”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Montray dropped into a chair. “That means no. Well, I suppose you can visit the tourist section and the market by yourself, if you want to. Though you’d better not do too much wandering around alone.”

His father dialed himself a hot drink from the dispenser, came back sipping it. Then he said, slowly, “I don’t want to tie strings on you, Larry. I’ll be honest with you; I wish you hadn’t been cursed with that infernal curiosity of yours. I’d like it better if you were like the other kids here—content to stay an Earthman. It would take a load off my mind. But I’m not going to forbid you to explore if you want to. You’re old enough, certainly, to know what you want. If you’d been brought up here, you’d be considered a grown man—old enough to wear a sword and fight your own duels.”

“How did you know that, Dad?”

His father did not look at him. Facing the wall, he said, “I spent a few years here before you were born. I never should have come back. I knew that. Now I can see—”

He broke off sharply, and without another word, he went off into his own bedroom. Larry did not see him again that night.

If Larry’s father had hoped that this glimpse of Darkover would dim Larry’s hunger for the world outside the Terran Zone, he was mistaken. The faint, far-off glance at strangeness had whetted Larry’s curiosity without satisfying it.

But after all, he didn’t forbid me to leave the Terran Zone.
Larry told himself that, defiantly, every time he crossed the gates of the spaceport and went out into the city. He knew his father disapproved, but they never spoke of it.

On foot, alone, he explored the strange city; at first staying close to the walls of the spaceport, within sight of the tall landmark-beacon of the Quarters Building. Terrans were a familiar sight, and the Darkovans of the sector paid little attention to the tall, red-haired young Terran. Some of the shopkeepers, when they found that he could speak their language, were inclined to be friendly.