“You’ll be happier all your life if I never tell you.”

“I can take it! Some light woman of Carthon or Daillon?”

“No.”

The child murmured, stirred and opened her eyes. I took one step toward her — then turned, in an agony of appeal, on Ashara. Those eyes, those eyes, gold-flecked amber…

“Marjorie,” I said hoarsely, painfully, “Marjorie died, she died…”

“She is not Marjorie Scott’s daughter.” Ashara’s voice was clear, cool, pitiless. “Her mother was Thyra Scott.”

“Thyra? I fought an insane impulse to laugh. “Thyra? That’s impossible! I never — I wouldn’t have touched that she-devil’s fingertips, much less—”

“Nevertheless, this is your child. And Thyra’s. The details are not clear to me. There is a time — I am not sure. They may have had you drugged, hypnotized. Perhaps I could find out. It would not be easy, even for me. That part of your mind is a closed and sealed room. It does not matter.”

I shut my teeth on a black, sickening rage. Thyra! That red hellion, so like and so unlike Marjorie, perfect foil for Kadarin! What had they done? How—

“It does not matter. It is your child.”

Resentfully, accepting the fact, I glowered at the little girl. She sat up, tense as a scared small animal, and it wrenched at me with sudden hurt. I had seen Marjorie look like that. Small, scared. Lost and lonesome.

I said, as gently as I could, “Don’t be afraid of me, chiya. I’m not a very pretty sight, but I don’t eat little girls.”

The little girl smiled. The small pointed face was suddenly charming; a tiny gnome’s grin marred by a dimple. There were twin gaps in the straight little teeth.

“They said you were my father.”

I turned, but Ashara was gone, leaving me alone with my unexpected daughter. I sat down uneasily on the edge of the cot. “So it would seem. How do they call you, chiya?”

“Marja,” she said shyly. “I mean Marguerhia—” she lisped the name, Marjorie’s name, in the odd old-world dialect still heard in the mountains sometimes. “Marguerhia Kadarin, but I just be Marja.” She knelt upright, looking me over. “Where is your other hand?”

I laughed uneasily. I wasn’t used to children. “It was hurt, and they had to take it off.”

Her amber eyes were enormous. She snuggled against my knee, and I put my aim around her, still trying to get it clear in my mind.

Thyra’s child. Thyra Scott had been Kadarin’s wife — if you could call it that. But everyone knew he was rumored to be half-brother to the Scotts, Zeb Scott’s child by one of the half-human mountain things. Back in the Hellers, half-brothers and sisters sometimes married; and it was not uncommon for such a marriage to adopt the child of one by someone else, thus avoiding the worst consequences of too much inbreeding. I scowled, trying to penetrate the gray murk which surrounded part of the Sharra affair in my mind. I had never probed that partial amnesia; I had felt, instinctively, that madness might lie there.

Perhaps I had been drugged with aphrosone. I knew how that worked. The one drugged lives a life outwardly normal, 15ut he himself knows nothing of what he does, losing continuity of thought between each breath. Memory is retained in symbolic dreams; a psychiatrist, hearing what was dreamed during the time spent under aphrosone, can unravel the symbols and tell the victim what really happened. I had never wanted to know. I didn’t now.

“Where were you brought up, Marja?”

“In a big house with a lot of other little girls and boys,” she said. “They’re orphans. I’m not. I’m something else. Matron says it’s a wicked word I must never, never say, but I’ll whisper it to you.”

“Don’t.” I winced slightly; I could guess.

And Lawton, in the Trade City, had told me; Kadarin never goes anywhere — except to the spaceman’s orphanage.

Marja put her head sleepily on my shoulder. I started to lay her down. Then I felt a curious stir and realized, abruptly, that the child had reached out and made contact with my mind!

The thought was staggering. Amazed, I stared at the tiny girl. Impossible! Children do not have telepathic power — even Alton children! Never!

Never? I couldn’t say that; obviously, Marja did have it.

I caught my arms around her; but I broke the contact gently, not knowing how much she could endure.

But one thing I did know. Whoever had the legal right of it, this little girl was mine! And no one and nothing was going to keep her from me. Marjorie was dead; but Marja lived, whoever her parents, with Marjorie’s face sketched in her features, the child Marjorie would have borne me if she had lived, and the rest was better forgotten. And if anyone — Hastur, Dyan, Kadarin himself — thought they could keep my daughter from me, they were welcome to try!

Dawn was paling outside the tower, and abruptly I was conscious of exhaustion. I had had quite a night. I laid Marja down in the cot; drew up the warm covers under her chin. She looked up at me wistfully, without a word.

On an impulse I bent and hugged her. “Sleep well, little daughter,” I said, and went very softly out of the room.

CHAPTER TEN

The next day, Beltran of Aldaran, with his mountain escort, came to the Comyn Castle.

I had not wanted to be present at the ceremonies which welcomed him; but Hastur insisted and I finally agreed. I’d have to meet Beltran sometime. It had better be among strangers where we could both be impersonal.

He greeted me with some constraint; we had once been friends, but the past lay between us, with its grim shadow of blood. I was grateful for the set phrases of custom; I could mouth them without examining them for a hostility I dared not show.

Beltran presented me, ceremoniously, to some of his escort. A few of them remembered me from years ago; but I looked away as I met a dark familiar face.

“You remember Rafael Scott,” Beltran of Aldaran said.

I did.

There is no such word as endless, or the ceremonies would still be going on. However, at last Beltran and his people were handed over to servants, to be shown to rooms, fed, and permitted to recuperate for the further formalities of the evening. As we dispersed, Rafe Scott followed me from the hall, and I turned to him brusquely.

“Listen, you,” I said, “you’re here under Beltran’s safe-conduct, and I can’t lay a hand on you. But I warn you—”

“What the hell’s the matter?” he demanded. “Didn’t Marius explain? Where is Marius, anyhow?”

I looked at him, bitterly. This time I would not be taken in by the confiding manner that had gulled me before, when I was sick from space and too trusting to doubt him.

He laid rough hands on me. “Where’s Marius, damn you?” It got to him, through the touch. He let me go and fell back. “Dead! Oh, no — no!” He covered his face with his hands, and this time I could not doubt his sincerity. That momentary shock of rapport had at least convinced us that we were telling the truth to each other.

His voice was not steady when he spoke. “He was my friend, Lew. The best friend I had. May I die in Sharra’s fire if I had a hand in it.”

“Can you blame me for doubting you? You were the only one who knew I had the Sharra matrix, and they killed him to get it.”

He said evenly, “Believe what you like, but I haven’t seen Kadarin twice in the last year.” His face was wrung with grief. “Didn’t Marius ever get a chance to explain it to you? Damn it, if I wanted to hurt him, would I have loaned him my pistol? He gave it to the Ridenow boy — Lerrys — because he was afraid to take it into the Terran Zone. Like I said, it has the contraband mark on it. I have a permit but he didn’t. When you thought I was Marius, I pretended — I thought, if I could only get a chance to keep the two of you apart, until you understood what was going to happen—”