The Saga of the Renunciates (96 page)

At first light, Camilla went off to see about horses, pack animals and saddles.

Magda, who could do nothing until regular work hours in the HQ, went into the dining room, where cold sliced bread and hot porridge were laid out for breakfast. As she ate, she tried to think what she should do first.

As an agent in the field, she had had access to the most sophisticated fly-over photographs, and to the elegant equipment which could, from a photo taken at eighty thousand meters, generate a map sophisticated enough to distinguish a resin-tree from a spice bush.

There were few Darkovan maps. Few traders came and went in the Hellers, and when they did, they followed trails their grandfathers had known. Beyond Nevarsin, little was known: a frozen plateau, wilderness. The maps from photograph work would help. But not, Magda thought, enough.

Jaelle came down, already dressed for the road, in riding breeches and boots. Magda had never before seen her wearing the long Amazon knife, like a short sword, of a mercenary or soldier. She slid into the seat beside Magda.

“I’ll go and see about trail food,” she said. “And you should have a riding cape. You’ll need it when we get into the mountains; no jacket is ever really warm enough. Do you suppose we can get some Terran sleeping bags? They’re better than what we can find in the market.”

“I’ll arrange it.” Extra warm socks, she thought, special gloves, sunburn cream, sunglasses… A little group of women, readying themselves for work in the market, came in and dipped up bowls of porridge. Sherna raised her eyebrows at Jaelle.

“Dressed for riding? You’re away, then?”

“As soon as we can get away. Taking a caravan north.”

“If you see Ferrika at Armida, give her my greetings.” Sherna finished her porridge and went into the kitchen for the loaves for the bake-stall. She turned back to ask Magda, “Are you going with Jaelle, Oath-sister?”

Magda nodded, feeling raw-edged; she knew it was all meant kindly, but one of the few things she still found difficult about Guild-house living was the way everyone intruded on your private life.

She had never seen Jaelle at the work for which her freemate had been trained. She was astonished at the swift efficiency with which Jaelle plotted packloads, ran down lists of items.

“Maps, sleeping bags, perhaps some packaged high-energy Terran rations, they’d be better when we get into the mountains. Camp stoves and concentrated fuel tablets. I’ll leave everything from the Terran Zone to you.”

“I may have to tell Cholayna—”

Jaelle sighed. “If you have to, you have to. She’s met Rafaella, hasn’t she?”

“Rafaella is listed with Mapping and Exploring, and in Intelligence, as the best of the available—” Magda stopped, swallowed down “
native
” and finished, “Darkovan guides. Not the best of the
woman
guides, just the best of the guides. She’s worked before this with mapping expeditions. Naturally Cholayna knows her. She probably recommends her to all of the bigger expeditions.”

Jaelle nodded. “Rafi told me once that she likes working with Terrans. They get the best equipment and they never try to argue about the bills. They either agree to pay, or tell you it’s too much and go somewhere else. They don’t bargain just for the fun of bargaining. Also, they tip better.”

There were, Magda thought, not a few Darkovans like that: working for the Terrans, secretly despising them. Since her first year in the Guild-house, she had had the same curious relationship, compounded almost in equal parts of affection and dislike, with Rafaella.

She said, “Sherna told me the other day that she dislikes trading with Terrans for that very reason—they take all the fun out of being in business. They won’t bargain, just yes or no, take it or leave it.”

“I know what she means,” Jaelle said, “the Terrans have no sense of humor. Neither does Rafaella. That’s why she gets along so well with them.”

“Why should anyone carry their sense of humor into the marketplace?”

“It’s a game, love. It all comes out about the same— maybe a few
sekals
difference, but everybody gains face and everybody thinks they get the best of the bargain.”

“I can’t see the fun in that sort of thing. I like to know what I’m being asked, and say yes or no to it, not play games for hours every time I want to buy a basket or a pair of boots!”

Jaelle touched her freemate’s wrist affectionately. “I know. You’re a lot like Rafi, you know? I suspect that’s why you two don’t get along very well.” She pushed away her porridge bowl. “Don’t forget sunglasses. We’ll be traveling on ice once we’re halfway through the Kilghard Hills, even at this season. ”

As she made her way through the city, Magda reflected that Jaelle and Camilla seemed to be taking it for granted that they were going on; that there was no question of catching up with Lexie and Rafaella to bring them back from this unsanctioned expedition, but to join it.

It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told her what I had found out about the Sisterhood. That was what started it
. She too had wanted to know what was behind the mystery. The difference was that she would never have thought of going off on her own to find it.

I’m not adventurous. Maybe that’s why I shouldn’t have come between Jaelle and Rafaella. Jaelle has never been quite content to settle down in one place.

She gave her ident numbers to the Spaceforce man at the gate, and caught herself sounding almost furtive.
What’s the matter with me, I have
clearance
here, I’m an accredited agent, and for all anybody knows I’m going about my regular duties! Actually, it
is
my business to stop Lexie going off into unmapped, unexplored parts of Darkover without authorization
!

In the hostel of the Bridge Society, she had begun keeping a few Standard uniforms: the access codes wired into the collars allowed her to come and go in the Headquarters building without constant identity and security rechecks. She greeted the young Darkovan nurses getting ready for the day shift there, went quickly to the locker she kept, and changed into uniform—the dark tunic and tights with the red piping which cleared her for any area except Medic and Psych. Monitors clicked ACCEPT as she went swiftly along the corridors to the major Mapping room. She found a free terminal and requested a satellite picture taken during overflight past Nevarsin. She could read the picture well enough to purse her lips and whistle silently at the terrain.

And Lexie believes there is some sort of city out there which has managed to screen itself from satellite or radar imaging? The woman’s insane.

If the mysterious city of the Sisterhood existed—and Magda had an open mind about that—it must be in some inaccessible part of the overworld. Yet ever since she had known Jaelle, she had heard tales of Kindra n’ha Mhari, Jaelle’s foster mother, who had guided Lady Rohana into the Dry-Towns. She had been a legendary explorer and mercenary. If she said she had known women who had actually been inside this legendary city, who was Magda to say it didn’t exist?

She touched controls which would generate, from the satellite photograph, a somewhat more detailed computer-diagrammed map, one which, would not require her own expertise with Terran formulations to decipher. She studied it on the screen for a time, requesting slight clarifications here and there until it resembled the Darkovan maps she had seen in Rafaella’s collection, then asked for a hard copy. The laser-directed burst-printer moved silently, and in under half a minute the map slid out. She took it and studied it again for a long time, seeking errors, comparing it with other pictures on the screen; making absolutely certain that it was the very best that she could get.

In her early years with Intelligence, Magda had traveled with Peter Haldane over much of the Seven Domains, and into the foothills of the Hellers. She had made some of of the early maps herself, though Peter had been better at that; her own gift was with languages. As she looked at some of the roads (on any planet but Darkover, they would have been classified as cattle trails), memories began resurfacing from that half-forgotten time… How young she had been then, how boundlessly energetic. Had she and Jaelle actually crossed the Pass of Scaravel, almost four thousand meters high?
Yes
, she thought grimly,
Jaelle has the scars to prove it
. And once, she and Peter had gone in disguise to the City of Snows, Nevarsin of the
cristoforos
… After a moment, she sighed and turned again to the terminal, requesting yet another review of available maps northward from Nevarsin.

She studied the few narrow tracks that led into the wilderness. The plateau was over two thousand meters high; the passes might be expected to be short on oxygen; certainly there would be banshees—those blind, flightless carnivores that moved with a terrible tropism toward anything that breathed, and that could disembowel a horse with a single stroke of those dreadful claws. In the unexplored areas marked in cross-hatching on the maps, there would be unknown dangers. Some of the passes were far higher than Scaravel; most of what was shown was covered in the pale blue cross-hatching that meant.
Unexplored
—
no hard data
. If what they were looking for really existed, it would be somewhere there.

Needles in haystacks, anybody?

There must be more to the legends than that. If women Kindra knew had come and gone, it must be possible, not easy but possible, to track down information, to buy it, bribe those who knew—

But that would all have to be done on the Darkovan side. She had pretty well exhausted Terran sources at this point. She got SUPPLY on the terminal, requisitioned sleeping bags, solid fuel for camp stoves, sunglasses and sunburn cream—none of these items was at all unusual; any agent of Mapping and Exploring, Survey or Intelligence who was going into the field requisitioned the same things. Even if they hadn’t been credited to Magda’s personal account instead of being requested without charge as
work related expenses
, they would hardly have blipped a CAUTION flag at Auditing. Still, as a personal expense, she would never, ever have to explain why she had wanted them.

She wondered if Lexie, too, had covered her tracks in this way. Alexis Anders, like herself, had been trained in the Intelligence Training College on Alpha; but Lexie was younger than she was, and had considerably less experience in this sort of thing.

After a minute, Magda opened up the terminal again and entered the access code for Personnel.

As she had expected, she was challenged twice; but her clearance levels were such that she was able to determine that Anders, Alexis, M&E Special Duty Pilot, had put in for vacation time and had requisitioned certain mountaineering equipment.
Very interesting
, Magda thought as she cleared the screen.

She would have to make the trip down to Supply to pick up the things she had requested, even though payment had already been automatically deducted from Magda’s credit at HQ. Indeed, it had nearly cleared her account: detached-duty pay was not very good. Only the bonuses Cholayna had arranged for her recent work with the Bridge Society had enabled her to pay for them at all.

Well, it’ll be worth it. That’s what matters.

She specified the kind of packaging she wanted, queried the prices of some other items—Jaelle could probably get them cheaper in the Old Town—and prepared to return to the Bridge hostel to change into what, when she was in the Terran Zone, she still automatically thought of
as field disguise
. As she shut down the terminal, she looked round to see Vanessa ryn Erin standing in the doorway of the room.

“I thought it was you. What did you want with Lexie’s records, Magda? Curiosity isn’t a valid reason for snooping in Personnel Files, you know. I’d thought better of you.”

“If you talk about snooping, what were you doing snooping on what
I
was doing?”

“Personnel is my job, Magda. Not yours. Come on—explain.” Vanessa paused, gazing coolly at Magda. “I’m dead serious. I can have you psy-probed for less cause than this.”

Magda, who detested lying, had meant to tell her the truth; but now she realized that, to protect herself, not to mention Jaelle and Camilla, it would be better to think up a good lie, one that would satisfy Vanessa’s conspiratorial imagination; and, like many people who are almost compulsively truthful, Magda couldn’t think of one. It made her angry. She thought,
I can’t just stand here blinking my eyes like a little girl caught with my hands in the cookie jar
. And of course, she did exactly that.

At last she said, “I wanted to know what Lexie was doing. I saw her at the Bridge Society meeting, but after an ordeal like that, I was curious to know if she was really well again.” Then it occurred to her what she should have said in the first place. “She seems to have gone off with Jaelle’s partner: we needed to know which way they’d gone. Jaelle missed a message from Rafaella, and—”

“As you discovered, she has put in for vacation time,” said Vanessa. “When I spoke to Cholayna, though, I got the impression she’d given Lexie an assignment, which was how she got the equipment on a cost-free basis. She hired a Renunciate guide, and she’s going into the Kilghard Hills to study women’s folk dancing.”

“So that’s—” Magda stopped herself. She said flatly, “I don’t believe it. ”

“Why not? It’s nice, easy work, a good way to get what amounts to a paid vacation. We’ve all done that kind of thing.”

For the next half year, Magda regretted that she had not simply allowed Vanessa to believe that. It was such a simple explanation, and would have saved an enormous amount of trouble—if Vanessa had actually believed it.

Instead, she drew a long breath of disbelief and indignation.

“What kind of hare-brained imbecile do you think me, Vanessa? There are Renunciate guides, yes, who would accept a commission to take a Terran woman alone into the hills to study folk dancing, or ballad styles, or the
rryl
, or the basket-weaving of the forge folk. But Rafaella? It was Rafaella who led the Mapping expedition to Scaravel! It’s Rafi they ask for when they want someone to coordinate ninety men, five hundred pack chervines and half a dozen half-trained mountain guides! Come
on
, Vanessa! Do you honestly think Rafaella n’ha Doria would accept a commission to take one Terran woman on a little Sunday excursion to scribble down the differences between a
secain
and an Anhazak ring-dance? Possibly, just possibly, if they were lovers and wanted an excuse to get away together. I can’t think of any other reason. Knowing Rafaella, I don’t believe it for a minute—though I don’t know anything about Lexie’s love-life, come to think of it; but I’d bet you a week’s pay she’s completely heterosexual. Or didn’t you see the look on her face when I introduced Jaelle to her as my freemate?”

Vanessa shrugged. “I hadn’t thought much about it. I just thought she wanted to get into the hills. After all, Magda, Lexie
did
train as an Intelligence agent. I thought, after the crash, this could have been the only assignment she could get. She knew she’d need a Renunciate guide, and I suppose she simply asked for the best one on the list.”

“And Rafaella accepted, just like that? Nonsense.”

Vanessa burst out, angry, defensive, “I didn’t stop to think about it at all until I got a buzz that someone was snooping in her file! After what she’s been through, Lexie’s certainly entitled to put in for vacation! It’s not a crime to hire a guide who’s over-qualified, is it? As long as she can pay Rafaella’s fees! Maybe Rafaella just wanted some easy money, or to get the better of a foolish offworlder who’s willing to pay four times the—” Vanessa stopped dead, and said, thoughtfully, “Or maybe Cholayna assigned her to study folk dances as a cover, and she’s going into the field to do something much more important and serious—”

“Now,” said Magda, “you’re just beginning to catch up with me.”

“But—would Cholayna do that without consulting Personnel, to certify that Lexie was fit—stable enough, for that kind of thing? That’s the point, Magda. That’s
my
job! With a breakdown and amnesia so recently—I’d demand a consult from Medic and Psych before she went out again. And so would Cholayna! Although Cholayna does tend to—make up her own mind, about people—” She stopped, and Magda, knowing what she was reluctant to say, said it for her.

“You were remembering that I was supposed to have been fired, or allowed to resign—weren’t you, Vanessa? Of course. And there are plenty of times when I wish she hadn’t fought for me. And damn it,
this is one of them
! The fact is, Vanessa—I think Lexie’s pulled a fast one, and she may just have pulled it on Cholayna, too.”

Suddenly it occurred to her that she was sharing with Vanessa a secret that was not hers to share, one that belonged to Jaelle and Camilla. If her purpose was to keep Rafaella out of trouble, or keep Lexie from getting into a part of Darkover where Terrans were not entitled to go, what she had just said was inexcusable.

But Vanessa’s anger was not, as Magda had thought, directed at her. It frightened Magda that she could so clearly see what Vanessa was thinking: Vanessa was a Terran, head-blind, she was not even supposed to be
able
to read Vanessa’s mind; yet there it was, clear as could be:
Lexie has a right not to join Bridge Society if she doesn’t want to, but she has no right to try to manipulate all of us because she thinks we’re fools who have gone native
—
or something like that! Doesn’t she understand that Magda and Cholayna are my sisters, and that if she puts something over on them, she’s tangling with me as well
?

But aloud, Vanessa said only, “Let’s go up and ask Cholayna.”