The T'swa ambassador looked up at the white-jacketed serving man. "I will have bacon, crisp, with four large poached eggs," he said, "and muffins with butter and norbal. The bacon and muffins should be in quantities appropriate to four eggs."
He poured cream in his joma then, followed by three heaping spoons of sugar, while Lord Beniker ordered. Beniker, when he'd finished ordering, put a hand on the serving man's sleeve. "And Kirt," he added, "the ambassador and I will need privacy; we have confidential business to discuss. We'll call if we need anything."
"Yes, my lord." The man left for the kitchen of Beniker's large and comfortable apartment.
"So," said Tar-Kliss, "what have you arranged? Assuming that Garlan and Wellem cannot defuse the situation."
"Well, it isn't the sort of thing I care for, but . . . First of all, we've had an interesting piece of serendipity, and you know what serendipity indicates about the dynamics of the situation. Lormagen is a professional newsperson, and his discoveries were of a delicate nature. And of course he is very newly arrived back on Iryala. So it may well be that he hasn't shared his information and analysis with others than ourselves. The likeliest for him to have talked with is his wife. Nonetheless, Garlan considered it unwise to call Lormagen and suggest he bring her along; he's already suspicious, and that could easily cause him to do something unfortunate.
"And then she, Lormagen's wife, called Melsa! It seems she'd gotten Melsa's name from a librarian several days ago, as an expert on the T'swa, and the young lady wanted references she could read. It provided a marvelous opportunity for Melsa to establish a personal relationship and then invite her, which she did."
Beniker paused to sip his joma, which he drank black and unsweetened.
"Now, I have dispatched a team of four agents in my intelligence branch, men I can trust not to be impetuous or become needlessly physical. They'll be standing by near Garlan's, and if Garlan isn't satisfied with Lormagen's progress, he'll let them know. Then he'll have the Lormagens drugged and my men will pick them up with a light floater. They'll take them to the office of a psychiatrist in Loreen, who'll psychocondition them. He's been alerted, although of course he doesn't know yet who his subjects might be. It will take only a few hours, and when he's done, Lormagen won't remember ever having been suspicious, and he'll see nothing untoward in the information that right now has him so upset. He'll even have the idea that he spent the night asleep at Garlan's.
"I'd prefer, naturally, that none of that becomes necessary."
"Quite probably it won't," said Tar-Kliss. "I have great confidence in Wellem. But there remains the young woman journalist who was with him on Tyss. Presumably she knows at least some of what he knows. And there remains the possibility that he related his suspicions to someone else."
"Of course. I'm prepared to have the young woman abducted, if necessary. And regarding a hypothetical further person: in the process of conditioning, I'll have that looked into. If there actually is such a person, the odds are decent that we can have him picked up the following day or evening, certainly before he sees Lormagen and realizes something's amiss with him. We'll condition him and have him back at his job the next day, none the wiser."
"It would be preferable to have Wellem and Garlan work on them first," Tar-Kliss said. "Psychoconditioning is not, after all, beneficial to the mind, as witness the billions who've experienced the Sacrament."
Beniker nodded. "Agreed. But it may not be feasible for Garlan and Wellem to work on them."
As a commercial floatercraft it was small, seating thirty-two. But the season was late, and today it carried only eleven passengers besides Varlik and Mauen.
Varlik's dreams had been bad again; he'd wakened troubled and introverted, and was not a good traveling companion. He had not, of course, mentioned his worries to Mauen. She assumed that his mood simply reflected preoccupation with his mystery.
So they spoke little, watching the landscape over which they passed, an undulating countryside of farms and small towns. There were rectangular fields and pastured hills, with woods on steeper slopes, along the larger streams, and around some of the lakes. The lakes were marvelous—blue with reflected sky—for the day, if cold, had dawned clear and bright.
After a bit the land became rougher, though its hills were not high. Lakes were increasingly numerous; woods spread, became forest that held most of the ground, trees bare except where enclaves of evergreens stood, notably on lakeshores.
The panorama dispelled Varlik's grimness and left him merely grave.
The resort town of Loreen stood beside the large and vivid lake which had given it its name. Or perhaps they'd been named independently for the same lady; the details lay lost in antiquity. The floater settled on the airfield at town's edge, where a chauffeur met them at the small terminal. He introduced himself as Bren.
Bren's good-mannered cheerfulness further lightened Varlik's mood. He picked up both their bags before Varlik could put hand to them, then, commenting on the welcome sunshine, led them outside to a limousine that was luxurious without ostentation, and held the doors for them. Neither Varlik nor Mauen had ridden in a vehicle like it before.
The travelway he took them on was three lanes wide, smooth and green, its grass mown short for hay. They followed it through forest broken only infrequently by small farms, past lakes whose blue they might glimpse through trees or across an occasional meadowed glade. There were numerous fine homes here, Varlik knew, but they were not visible from the road, or seldom and barely. Here and there lanes disappeared into the forest, unidentified by signs. Most, Varlik assumed, were for removing the logs of trees afflicted or well past their prime. Other lanes neatly mowed, almost certainly led—privately, unobtrusively—to the leisure homes of titled and untitled rich.
It was, to Varlik, very beautiful, though he had no least desire to live here. His glance moved to Mauen; she seemed entranced.
Before long they turned off on one of the manicured lanes. It wound through forest and down a gentle hill to a crescent of lake shore, to grounds half groves, half sunny lawn, where a home stood—a literal mansion. It probably was not Lord Durslan's ancestral home, not out here, but it was a mansion nonetheless, with two wings that seemed much too large to be accounted for by family use and servants' apartments.
He got just a glimpse of an island close offshore, with a little stone causeway leading to it like a footbridge. There was a building on the island—a building too large, it seemed, to be merely for ornament or parties. Its architecture was something Varlik had not seen before. It was out of sight before he could sort out the curves of its graceful roof, the carved posts of its veranda, the sculpted trees and shrubs that framed and partly screened it. Then the hovercar pulled up before the house.
Bren let them out, and as he did, the large front door opened, a woman stepping onto the entry porch. By her bearing, Varlik decided, she was either Lady Durslan or Lord Durslan's sister. She met them smiling.
"Mauen!" she said, taking the young woman's hand, "I'm so pleased to meet you! I told Garlan—Lord Durslan, that is—that you were lovely, but you're lovelier still in person." She turned then to Varlik, and the hand she gave him was strong. "And you are Varlik, of course. I'm delighted to be your hostess." She examined his face. "Your picture has graced the cover of several newszines. Did you know that?"
Varlik's last misgiving expired in the light of her charm, while her uninhibited and seemingly genuine pleasure left him somehow surprisingly unembarrassed.
"My name is Melsa," she told him as she led them into the house, "and I hope you will call me that. I'm sure we all have a great deal to talk about. Right now Lord Durslan will want to meet you both. He's in his study, preparing a market analysis that he looks forward to laying aside."
A man waited just inside. He didn't fit Varlik's concept of a butler, but he took their jackets and disappeared with them into a side hall. "That's Elgen," said Lady Durslan, "a man who wears several hats here, all of them extremely well."
Varlik and Mauen walked behind her down a main hall, pausing at a well-appointed office. "This is where Rennore works, Lord Durslan's sister. She talked with you yesterday, Mauen, but she's left with her husband on holiday. Bren delivered them to the airport when he went in to get you."
A few doors farther brought them to a small, intimate parlor. Lady Durslan seated them, then went to tell her husband of their arrival. Mauen beamed at Varlik, then, remembering his earlier concern—his mission—tuned down her smile, keeping only a little of it. "I was right, wasn't I," she murmured. "She's a beautiful lady."
He smiled at her. "Not as beautiful as another one I know." They reached to each other, touching hands for a moment, and he wished they could have an hour of privacy then. I haven't been as horny for years as I've been these past two days, he told himself, and thought then, unbidden, of plants that produce large seed crops when dying—an impulse to reproduce before death. The thought irritated him: There'd been no threat here, nothing but the warmest welcome. Still, the notion of danger had resurfaced and would not go away by command. And interestingly, with it his ardor died.
Then he heard someone in the hall just outside, and got to his feet as Lord and Lady Durslan came in. Lord Durslan strode toward him, hand outstretched—a small-boned, slender man of less than middle height who nonetheless failed to seem small or delicate.
"Mr. Lormagen! A pleasure to meet you! And Mrs. Lormagen!" He half bowed, smiling. It struck Mauen then that these people actually were nobility, and for a moment she felt ill at ease. Not knowing quite what to do, she moved her hand to the chair arm as if to stand. Durslan raised one hand. "Please don't get up," he said to her. "We seldom stand on formality here."
He seated Lady Durslan opposite the Lormagens, and Varlik sat back down. Lord Durslan moved to a small desk with console at one side of the room. "I can turn the video screen on and off from here," he explained, "and access my own files if need be.
"I understand from Lord Beniker that you have something important to tell me, Varlik, and a video cube he'd like me to see, to do with the T'swa. I must tell you that he left me quite in mystery. But I'm always interested in anything new or unusual about the T'swa; they're a marvelous people, as you obviously know quite well."
"Yes sir, I do, and they are. The most traumatic experience I've ever had, the worst by far, was the death of the Red Scorpion Regiment. I've had nightmares ever since. But that's not what I'm here about. I do have a cube with me—partly about the T'swa, but also about other things."
"Do you mind if I record this," Durslan asked, "so I'll have copies of my own?"
"Not at all, sir; I hope you will."
Then Varlik played his cube for Durslan, commenting as appropriate. When he was done, all four of them sat soberly.
"Thank you," Durslan said. "I can see that this would trouble you." He got to his feet. "And I believe I can shed some light on it, but I'll need a little time to seek out data and prepare. I'll have cook fix an early lunch while we show you around. That will give me a chance to sort the data in my subconscious, so to speak, or my superconscious, if you prefer."
He gave instructions to the kitchen via intercom, took his guests to get their jackets, then led them through a patio door onto the grounds between building and lakeshore. The place was an utter surprise to both Varlik and Mauen. Not only was there a bathing beach and boathouse, but there was a stack of boat dock sections piled by the boathouse, and what appeared to be two conservatories. There was also playground equipment—a tall spiral tubular slide, swings, horizontal and parallel bars. . . . Varlik stopped for a moment, looking.
"There are young people here much of the time," Lord Durslan commented. "About forty of them currently. It's quite a lively place at times."
From there Varlik could see the islet again, a hundred feet offshore, with its causeway and intriguing building, and again Durslan, following his gaze, commented. "A T'sel ghao," he said, "a place where students can counsel with a T'sel master, initiates can begin advanced procedures, and adepts can pursue advanced studies under supervision, in preparation for their elevation to master. There is, of course, a master in residence here. Would you like to talk with him after lunch?"
"Oh, yes!" said Mauen.
Lord Durslan looked calmly at Varlik. "And you, Varlik?"
"Why, yes."
"Good. I'll let him know that you'll be out. He stays quite busy, actually, with several projects, and I like to warn him of impending visitors. Not that he minds, you understand; he enjoys people. We have a lot of them here much of the time, but they're gone just now, for the coming harvest festival."
As they'd talked, they'd strolled. "Would you like to visit our conservatory?" Durslan asked.
They did, spending half an hour in its fragrant, glass-enclosed galleries. The groundskeeper had just finished watering, and the air was as damp as the Orlanthan jungle, though much less hot. Some of the plants were from off world, and one tall chamber had several extraplanetary birds flying about among small trees and draped vines. The conservatory served several purposes; it was a place to walk among flowers in any season and to grow plants of many kinds. It was a source of flowers for the house, and in season, one wing produced flowering plants for transplanting around the grounds. Mauen was agog. She loved the public conservatories at Landfall, and it had never occurred to her that a household might have such a large one to itself.
They looked into the other glasshouse too—the natatorium, with its 100-foot pool and its passageway to the manor.
Like everything else, lunch was an experience. The food was light and the selection modest, but for Varlik and Mauen the quality was beyond any earlier experience. When that was done, Lady Durslan excused herself, and Lord Durslan took his guests to the ghao.
Both Varlik and Mauen were surprised and disappointed to find the master not a black man but white—a sinewy, middle-aged Iryalan in white duck shorts and a tee shirt, his brown hair cut army short, his blue eyes calm and direct, his smile friendly.
"Wellem," said Lord Durslan, "I'd like you to meet two friends of mine—Varlik and Mauen Lormagen. You know of Varlik, of course. Varlik, Mauen, this is our resident T'sel master, Wellem Bosler. He is one in a line of Iryalan masters originating from Master Dao of the Dys Hualuun monastery on Tyss."
Durslan stepped back. "I'll leave you to get acquainted. Varlik has brought a very interesting and seemingly drastic situation to my attention, and I need to spend some time at the computer, make a few calls—that sort of thing."
Durslan withdrew then. The T'sel master motioned to a settee, little more than a cushioned bench with back. "Have a seat," he said, and himself took a matching chair opposite.
"You'd expected a T'swi," he told Varlik in Tyspi. "I hope you aren't too disappointed." Then he turned to Mauen and repeated it in Standard. "I spoke Tyspi to let your husband know there's been continuity since Master Dao trained the first Iryalan children at Dys Hualuun more than four centuries ago. One of them was my grandmother, fifteen generations removed."
He paused, smiling, regarding the two. "So you see, this family's interest in Tyss and the T'swa is of very long standing."
Neither guest had adjusted yet to the unexpected situation. And neither thought to wonder what he meant by "this family," which could mean his, or Durslan's, or that he was kin to Durslan. Mauen had wanted to see and talk with a T'swi of whatever kind, though she'd have preferred a warrior like those Varlik had lived and fought beside. Varlik, as Wellem Bosler had perceived, had been anticipating a T'sel master from Tyss. To Varlik, somehow, Tar-Kliss didn't count; he was an ambassador.
"Have you ever been on Tyss?" Mauen asked; it was all she could come up with.
"Oh, yes. All adepts on Iryala, when they are ready for their master's recognition, go to Tyss for their. . . ." He used a T'swa term, then saw that Varlik no more understood it than Mauen did. "It means something like 'dialog while operating in the reality of bodies.' It's more or less equivalent to the oral examination a graduate student has to pass before a committee of professors."
"And you did that?" Varlik said. "Who taught you?"
"My master was Melsa's great uncle, Tamos Ostrak."
Varlik was beginning to put things together now. "And the children who are away on vacation—they're studying the T'sel, hoping to become masters."
Wellem Bosler laughed, a pleasant laugh. "Yes and no . . . Only eight of our present students have Wisdom and Knowledge as their chosen area and will become T'sel masters. Of the eight, three are currently initiates and three are adepts. They serve as lectors and do much of the instruction and supervision of others. Most of our forty-two students are at Games, that being the area most satisfyingly playable in the Confederation. The games of business, government, money. . . ." It was apparent from the way he ended that his list was not all-inclusive.
"But talking alone won't enlighten you appreciably on the subject. A touch of experience will be much more informative, and make the words more meaningful." He got up, went to a bookshelf, and took down a folio-sized volume. "A book of photographs from Tyss, annotated," he said, handing it to Mauen. "They're quite beautiful. Mauen, with your permission, and his, of course"—he glanced at Varlik—"I'll take your husband to another room for a bit; the experience works best in seclusion. Meanwhile, you can enjoy yourself with this."
Mauen nodded cheerfully. "If I can have a turn later," she said. Varlik's response was uncertainty, tinged with that low-intensity fear called worry.
"Varlik?" said Bosler.
Varlik nodded. "All right," he replied.
"Good."
They left her there with the book already open.
The T'sel master led Varlik down a hall to the opposite end of the ghao, where he opened a door, holding it for his guest. Varlik didn't notice the door's thickness or its insulated core. When Bosler closed it, the bottom scraped dense carpet; there'd been no carpet, no floor covering at all, in the waiting room or the corridor. The walls inside were figured wood, unpainted and unstained, hung with simple paintings that were aesthetic but most unstandard. That the walls were also effectively sound insulated was not visually apparent.
A person could howl in there without being heard outside; even the windows were double-paned, of material responding poorly to sound vibrations.
All Varlik knew was that the place felt very relaxing. As he looked around, taking in the pictures, his tension drained away. They reminded him a bit of the art he'd admired in the cantina in Oldu Tez-Boag.
There were two chairs, one a recliner. The other, by a small desk, was a kneeling chair, like those used at desks. Wellem Bosler waved Varlik to the recliner, then perched erect and straight on the other.
Their eyes met, and Varlik found nothing in the other man's to challenge, to flinch from, to avoid in any way. Bosler's gaze was comfortable—direct and comfortable. Varlik wondered whether a T'sel master, when he looked at someone, saw anything that others didn't—wondered and failed to notice how non-Standard the notion was.
Then Bosler spoke. "A T'sel master's functions include helping others to command their own lives more easily, and that's always a good place to start. So let me ask you a question: If there was one thing you could change in your life, what would it be?"
"Umm. I don't know. I guess—" He looked at the enigma of the Kettle insurrection, but when he opened his mouth again to answer, what came out was: "I've never been very able to laugh easily and feel really light about things. All my life I've known occasional people who seemed really cheerful and happy, as if they really enjoyed life. It's always seemed to me they had something important that I didn't; that I was missing something valuable."
Beneath his words were thoughts of those others. Mike Brusin was one. Brusin seemed to notice so much, enjoy others so much.
"All right," said Bosler. "What feeling goes with that inability?"
"Oh . . . seriousness, I guess. It's a feeling of seriousness."
"Fine. Give me an example, an incident, of something feeling serious to you as a child."
"Well . . . Once, when I was in the third level at school, we were assigned to make a little book. They passed out these little books of blank pages, and we were supposed to fill them up—draw a picture of an animal on the left-hand page and write about the species on the right. Only I did it the opposite, and didn't realize I had it backward till it was too late to do anything about it. When I did realize it, it really upset me."
"All right. Was there any emotion connected with that?"
Varlik looked back, feeling for it. "Yes. Fear. I was afraid."
"Okay. What were you afraid of?"
"I was afraid . . . I don't know. I was afraid the teacher would be angry. Or scornful. Maybe think I was stupid or something."
"Okay. So imagine, just imagine now, something that might have been done to you for getting the pages reversed. Something severe."
"Well, I could have been given a low grade—a failing grade." He blushed slightly. "Although I was only marked down one grade for it."
"Fine. All right, give me another thing that might have been done to you for getting the pages reversed. Some punishment."
"Uh, well—I could have been made to stay after school in the disciplinary office and do the whole book over."
"All right. Give me another."
"Huh! Those are about the only ones I can think of."
"Okay. Imagine a punishment. Make one up."
"Um . . . Well, the disciplinary officer could have caned me in his office, on the buttocks. That's done sometimes, you know, for flagrant misbehavior."
"Right. Remember now, we're imagining. It doesn't necessarily have to be something Standard, something actually done to children at school. Give me another thing you can imagine being done to you."
"Okay, I'll try. I could have been . . . I . . ." Varlik shook his head, looking apologetically at the master. "I can't think of anything else."
"All right. Imagine that this was on a world where they didn't know about Standard Management or Standard Technology, and people had to make up things as they went along. Imagine what might have been done to you for getting the pages reversed. Some severe punishment."
"Well, they could have . . . they could have . . . they could have taken my recess privileges away for the rest of the dek!" He said the last with distinct pride for having come up with it.
"Good! All right, another one."
Lag. "They could have . . . caned me in front of the class!"
"Very good! Another one."
"Uh . . . They could have caned me in front of the whole school, on a world like that!"
"All right! Another."
"They could have . . . They could have hung me, like they do on some resource worlds. They punish people by hanging them up by the neck so they can't breathe. After a few minutes they die."
"Excellent! You're doing great! Give me another."
"They could have tied me to a stake," he answered promptly, "and piled flammables around me—dry wood—and set fire to it."
"Barbaric! Another."
"They could have thrown me in the tiger yard at the zoo, after not feeding the tigers for five days!"
"Fantastic! Another."
Varlik was grinning now. "Thrown me into a pit of scorpions!"
"Horrible! Another."
"Put me in a kettle of water and brought it slowly to a boil!"
"Ghastly! Another."
Varlik's grin was ear to ear. "Cut xes on the ends of my toes and peeled my skin off them and right up my feet and on up my legs and body and off over my head!" Varlik laughed at that one.
"Good grief! Gruesome!" Bosler paused. "How do you feel about having reversed the pages on that third-level assignment?"
Varlik laughed again. "Not very serious, I'll tell you that." Actually, serious seemed a remote condition to him just then.
"Good." Wellem Bosler smiled broadly at Varlik. "All right, close your eyes. Now, with your eyes closed—turn around and look at yourself!"
Varlik's hair stood on end. He didn't know what was happening; all he saw with his eyes was the inside of his lids, unfocused, dark purplish, overlaid with vague afterimages. But something was happening, something within that he couldn't describe even for himself. Externally, it felt as if his skin had drawn tight, the goosebumps pointed and electric.
"Fine." Bosler's voice sounded casual and far away, though easily heard and understood, as if it spoke directly into his mind. "Now, erase your on-site personal history."
The words were like a trigger. The electric feeling discharged in waves, Varlik's body twitching and jerking like a faint version of that unrememberable but always present time as a little boy when technicians had carried out the Sacrament on him, the conditioning ritual, with their strap-equipped table, their drugs and electrodes and chant. But this time, that and much else were being erased from mind and psyche. He cried out once, hoarsely, not so much in pain as in surprise and release. It was something like a series of electric shocks, though not severe, and somewhat like an immense, too intense, whole-body orgasm. The phenomenon continued for a long half minute as he twisted and jerked, then gradually it tapered off. When it was over, he opened his eyes.
"That," said Varlik, "was the most incredible thing that ever happened to me—whatever it was."
The T'sel master was smiling at him. "Congratulations!" Bosler said. "You handled it admirably." He got up, opened a small refrigerator in a corner, took out a tumbler and a jar of fruit juice, and poured some for Varlik. As Varlik drank, the T'sel master took paper and a pen from the desk. "I'm going to draw you a little diagram, and when you're done we'll continue."
When they entered the waiting room, Varlik was looking bemused but happy, his mind aswirl with strange unsorted experiences and concepts.
"Hello, Mauen," said Bosler. "I'm returning your husband, not too much the worse for wear." She had looked up, interested. "Varlik," he continued, "why don't you lie down on the couch for a bit. Let yourself sleep, and give old equations a chance to balance."
"A nap?" Varlik grinned. "Great idea."
"And Mauen, if you'll come with me . . ."
When she was settled on the recliner, Wellem Bosler addressed her. What, he wanted to know, was the principal barrier to satisfaction in her life. What would she most like changed?
"Lack of talent," she told him without hesitation. "I'd love to be a real artist, but I don't have much talent at all."
"All right. Tell me something bad that might happen if you had a great amount of talent. . . ."