Authors: Marion Z. Bradley
Damon looked at him confusedly for a moment He said at last, slowly, "Yes, come
in, come in, stranger; be welcome." He turned to Ellemir and said, "It is only
one of the Terrans from Thendara. I have heard of them, they are harmless. It is
the wish of Hastur that we show them hospitality when needful, though this one
is far astray indeed. Call the housefolk, breda; he is probably in need of food
and fire."
Ellemir collected herself and said, "Come in; be welcome to Armida and the
hospitality of the Alton Domain, stranger. We will help you as we may-" She
broke off, for the stranger was staring at her with wide, frightened eyes. He
said shakily, "Callista! Callista! You are real!"
She stared at him, as confused as he. She stammered, "No. No, I am not Callista,
I am Ellemir. But what can you-what can you possibly know of Callista?"
I may as well tell you at once that I don't believe a word of it," the girl who
called herself Ellemir said.
It's still hard to accept that she isn't Callista. They are so damned alike!,
thought Andrew Carr. He sat back on the heavy wooden bench before the fire,
drinking in the growing warmth. It was good to be inside a real house again,
even though the storm was over. He could smell food cooking somewhere, and that
was wonderful too. It could have been entirely wonderful, except for the girl,
who looked so much like Callista and so strangely wasn't; she was standing in
front of him, looking down with bleak hostility and repeating, "I don't believe
it."
The slender red-haired man, kneeling on the hearth to feed the growing fire (he
looked tired, too, and cold, and Carr wondered if he were ill), said without
raising his head, "That is unfair, Ellemir. You know what I am. I can tell when
I am being lied to, and he's not lying. He recognized you. Therefore he must
have seen either you, or Callista. And where would one of the Terranan have seen
Callista? Unless, as he says, his story is true."
Ellemir's face was stubborn. She said, "How do we know that it is not his people
who have imprisoned Callista? He comes to us with a wild story that Callista has
somehow reached him, guided him when he was lost in the mountains, and saved him
from the storm. Are you trying to make me believe that Callista could reach this
out-worlder, this stranger, when you could not find her in the overworld, and
when she could not come through to me, her twin sister? I'm sorry, Damon, I
simply cannot believe it."
Carr looked straight at the girl. He said, "If you're going to call me a liar,
do it to me, not over my head. This story of mine, as you call it, is no
pleasure to be telling. Do you think I like to sound like a madman? At first I
thought the girl was a ghost, as I told you; or that I was dead already and
seeing whatever it is that comes after. But when she saved me from falling with
the plane, and then when she guided me to a safe place to wait out the storm, I
believed that she was real. I had to believe it. I don't blame you for doubting
me. I doubted myself, long enough. But it's true. And I suppose you are
Callista's kinsfolk; heaven knows you look enough like her for a twin."
Too bad, he found himself thinking, that this one hasn't a little of Callista's
sweet disposition. Well, at least the man seemed to believe his story.
Damon stood up, leaving the fire to fend for itself now that it was burning
well, and turned to Carr. He said, "I apologize for my cousin's lack of
courtesy, stranger. She has endured some difficult days since her sister was
taken away, in the night and unseen. It is not easy for her to accept what you
say, that Callista could reach your mind when she could not reach her own twin;
the bond of the twin-born is believed to be the strongest bond known. I cannot
explain it either, but I am old enough to know that there are too many things in
this life for any man, or any woman either, to understand them all. Perhaps you
can tell us more."
"I don't know what I can tell you," Carr said. "I don't understand it either."
"Perhaps you know something you don't realize you know," Damon said. "But for
now, stop badgering him, Ellemir. Whoever and whatever he is, or whatever the
many truths of all this may be, he is a guest, and weary and cold, and until he
has had his fill of warmth and food, and sleep if he needs it, it is a failure
in hospitality to question him. You do the Alton Domain no honor, kinswoman."
Carr followed all this sketchily; there were words that he only partially
understood, though in Thendara he had been taught to speak the lingua franca of
the Trade City, and he could make himself understood well enough. Nevertheless,
he realized that Damon was upbraiding the girl who looked like Callista; and she
flushed to the roots of her coppery hair. She said (speaking slowly, so that he
would be sure to understand), "Stranger, I meant no offense. I am sure that any
misunderstandings will become clear in time. For now, accept the hospitality of
our house and Domain. Here is fire; food will be brought to you as soon as it is
cooked. Have you any other need I have neglected to supply?"
"I'd like to get out of this wet coat," Carr said. It was beginning to steam and
drip in the growing warmth of the fire. Damon came to help him unwrap it, and
laid it aside. He said, "None of your clothing is fit for the storms of our
mountains, and those shoes, now, are fit only for the trashpile. They were never
built for traveling in the mountains."
Carr said, with a wry grimace, "I wasn't exactly planning on this trip. As for
this coat, it belongs to a dead man, but I was damned glad to have it."
Damon said, "I was not in tending to insult your manner of dress, stranger. The
fact remains that you are unsuitably clothed, even indoors, and dangerously
ill-clad for any return journey. My own clothes would hardly fit you"-Damon
looked up with a laugh at the tall Earth-man, a head taller than he was and
probably half again his weight and girth-"but if you have no objection to
wearing the clothes of a servant or one of the stewards, I think I can find
something which will keep you warm."
"That's very kind of you," Andrew Carr said. "I've been wearing these since the
crash, and a change wouldn't feel bad at all. I could use a wash, too."
"I don't doubt it. Very few, even of those who live in the mountains, survive
being caught out in our mountain storms," Damon said.
"I wouldn't have lived through it, if it hadn't been for Callista," he answered.
Damon nodded. "I believe it. The very fact that you, a stranger to our world,
survived one of our storms, says much for the truth of what you have told us.
Come with me, and I'll find you fresh clothes and a bath."
Andrew followed Damon through the broad corridors and spacious rooms and up a
long flight of shallow stairs. He conducted him at last into a suite of rooms
with wide windows, covered with heavy woven draperies against the cold. Opening
from one of the rooms was a large bathroom with a huge stone tub, sunk deep in
the floor. Steam was rising from a fountain in the middle of the room.
"Have a hot bath, and wrap up in a blanket or something," Damon said. "I'll go
wake up a few more of the servants, and find some clothes to fit you. Shall I
send someone to help you bathe, or can you manage by yourself? Ellemir keeps few
servants, but I am sure I can find someone to wait on you."
Andrew assured Damon that he was accustomed to bathing himself without
assistance, and the young man withdrew. Andrew took a long, luxurious bath,
soaking to the neck in the scalding hot water (And I thought this place was
primitive, good God!), meanwhile wondering a little about the heating system.
The ancient Romans and Cretans on Earth managed to have the most elaborate baths
in history, so why shouldn't these people? Downstairs they'd been lighting wood
fires, but why not? Fireplaces were considered the height of luxury even in some
societies that didn't need them. Maybe they used natural hot springs. Anyhow,
the hot water felt good, and he lingered, soaking out the stiffness of days
spent sleeping on stone floors, clambering around in the mountains. Finally,
feeling incredibly refreshed, he climbed out of the deep tub, dried himself, and
wrapped himself in a blanket.
Soon afterward Damon returned. He looked as if he, too, had taken advantage of
the time to bathe and put on fresh clothes; he looked younger and less exhausted
and spent. He brought an armful of clothing, saying almost in apology, "These
are poor enough garments to offer a guest; it is the hall-steward's holiday
suit."
"At least they're dry and clean," Andrew said, "so thank him for me, whoever he
is."
"Come down to the hall when you're ready," Damon said. "There will be food
cooked by then."
Left alone, Andrew got himself into the "hall-steward's holiday suit." It
consisted of a shirt and knee-length under-drawers of coarse linen; over which
went suedelike breeches, flared somewhat from knee to ankle; a long-sleeved
finely embroidered shirt with wide sleeves gathered in at the wrist; and a
leather jerkin. There were knitted stockings that tied at the knee, and over
them low felt boots lined with fur. In this outfit, which was more comfortable
than he had thought when he looked at it, he felt warm for the first time in
days. He was hungry, too, and when he opened his door to go downstairs, it was
only necessary to follow the good smell of food that was rising. He did wonder,
a little tardily, if this would take him, not to the hall, but to the kitchens;
but the stairway ended in a corridor from which he could see the door to the
Great Hall, where he had been welcomed.
Damon and Ellemir were seated at a small table, and a third chair, empty, was
drawn up before it. Damon raised his head in welcome and said, "Forgive us for
not waiting for you. But I was awake all night, and very hungry. Come and join
us."
Andrew took the third chair. Ellemir looked him over with mild surprise as he
sat down, and said, "In those clothes you look quite like one of us. Damon has
been telling me a little about your people from Terra. But I had thought that
men from another world would be very different from us, more like the nonhumans
in the mountains. Are you human in every way?"
Andrew laughed. "Well, I seem human enough to myself," he said. "It would seem
more rational for me to ask, are you people human too? Most of the worlds of the
Empire are inhabited by people who seem to be more or less human, at least as
far as the casual observer can tell. Most people believe that all the planets
were colonized by a common human stock, a few million years ago. There's been
plenty of adaptation to environment, but on planets like Terra, the human
organism seems to stay fairly stable. I'm not a biologist, so I can't answer for
things like chromosomes and such, but I was told before I came here that the
dominant race on Cottman Four was basically human, though there were a couple of
sapient peoples that weren't." With a shock, he remembered what Callista had
said: that she was in the hands of nonhumans. Surely she would want her kinsfolk
to know. But should he spoil their breakfast? Time enough to tell them later.
Damon held a dish toward him, and he served himself with what looked-and later,
tasted-like an omelet. It had herbs and unfamiliar vegetables in it, but it was
good. There were fruits-the nearest analogy to what he was accustomed to were
apples and plums-and a drink he had tasted in the Trade City, with the taste of
bitter chocolate.
He noticed, while he ate, that Ellemir was watching him surreptitiously. He
wondered if by their standards his table manners were atrociously bad, or
whether it was more complicated than that.
Ellemir was still unsettling to him. She was so very like Callista, and yet in
some subtle way so unlike. He could look at every feature of her face, and not
see a hair's difference from Callista: the broad high forehead, with the hair
growing in small delicate tendrils at the hairline, too short to be tucked into
the neat braids at the back; the high cheekbones and small straight nose with a
dusting of amber freckles; the short upper lip and small determined mouth; and
the small, round dimpled chin. Callista had been the first woman he had seen on
this planet who had not been abundantly and warmly clad, except for the women
working in the central-heated spaceport offices, and those were women of the
Empire.
Yes, that was the subtle difference. Callista, every time he had seen her, had
been in definite undress, in her flimsy blue nightgown. He had seen almost all
of her that there was to see. If any other woman had shown herself to him in
that kind of attire-well, all his life Carr had been the kind of man who took
his fun where he found it, without getting particularly involved. And yet when
he woke and found Callista apparently sleeping at his side, and still
half-sleeping had reached for her, he had been distressed and had shared her own
embarrassment. Quite simply, he didn't really want her on those terms at all.
No, that wasn't quite right. Of course he wanted her. It seemed the most natural
thing that he should want her, and she had accepted it that way. But what he
wanted was something more. He wanted to know her, to understand her. He wanted
her to know and understand him, and care about him. At the very thought that she
might have reason to fear some crude or thoughtless approach from him, Andrew
had gone hot and cold all over, as if by his own clumsy reactions he might have
spoiled something very sweet and precious, very perfect. Even now, when he
remembered the brave little joke she had made ("Ah, this is sad! The very first
time, the very first, that I lie down with any man, and I am not able to enjoy
it!"), he felt a lump in his throat, an immense and completely unfamiliar
tenderness.
For this girl, this Ellemir, he felt nothing of that sort at all. If he had
waked up and found her asleep in his bed, he would have treated her like any
other pretty girl he found there, unless she had some strenuous objection-in
which case she probably wouldn't have been there at all. But it would have meant
no more than that to him, and when it was over, she would have meant no more to
him than any of the various other women he had known and enjoyed for a little
while. How could twins have such a subtle difference? Was it simply that
intangible known as personality? But he hardly knew anything at all of
Ellemir's.