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along a forested hill, he saw, lying before him, the real ranges. Cool purple,
deep violet, pale grayed blue, they lay there fold on fold and height behind
height, each successive fold rising higher and farther away, until they
vanished in cloudy distances that might have been thunderheads or further
ranges.
Good God, he exploded, we re not going over the top of those, are we?
Not quite, Colryn, riding at his side, reassured him. Only to the peak of the
second range, there. He pointed. The fire tower is on the crest of that
range. He told Barron its name in Darkovan. But if you look far enough, you
can see all the way back into the mountains, as far as the range they call the
Wall Around the World. Nobody lives beyond there, except the trailmen.
Barron remembered vague stories of various groups of Darkovan
nonhumans. The next time they paused to eat cold food from their saddlebags
and rest the horses, he looked for Lerrys, who was still the friendliest of the
three, and asked him about them. Are they only beyond the far ranges? Or
are there nonhumans in these mountains too?
Oh, yes. You ve been on Darkover how long, five of our years, and you still
haven t seen any of our nonhumans?
One or two kyrii in the Terran Trade Zone from a distance, Barron told
him, and the little furred people at Armida I don t know what you call them.
Are there others? And are they all well, if they re nonhumans, I can t ask,
are they human, but do they meet Empire standards for so-called intelligent
beings time-binding culture, viable language capable of transfer to other
I.B. s?
Oh, they re all I.B. s by Terran Empire standards, Lerrys assured him. The
reason the Empire doesn t deal with them is fairly simple. Humans here don t
have much interest in the Empire per se, but they are interested in other
humans as individuals. The nonhuman races I m no expert on them, but I
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suspect they have never tried to get in touch with the Empire for the same
reason they don t have much contact with humans on Darkover. Their goals
and wishes and so forth are so completely different that there s no point of
contact; they don t want any and they don t have any.
You mean even Darkovans have no contact with nonhumans?
I wouldn t say no contact. There s some small amount of trade with the
trailmen they re what you might call half-human or subhuman, and they live
in the trees in the forests. They trade with the mountain people for drugs,
small tools, metal and the like. They re harmless enough unless you frighten
them. The catmen they re a race something like the cralmacs, the furred
servants at Armida. Cralmacs aren t very intelligent; feline rather than
simian, but they do have culture of a sort, and some of them are telepathic.
Their level is about that of a moron, or a chimpanzee who suddenly acquired
a tribal culture. A genius among the cralmacs might learn a dozen words of a
human language but I never heard of one learning to read; I suspect the
Empire people gave them pretty wide benefit of the doubt in classifying them
as I.B. s.
We tend to do that. We don t want later squawks that we treated a potential
intelligent race as higher animals.
I know. Cralmacs are listed as real or potential I.B. s and let alone. The
catmen, I suspect, are a hell of a lot more intelligent; I know they use metal
tools. Fortunately I ve never been close to them; they hate men and they ll
attack when they feel safe in doing it. I ve heard that they have a very
elaborate feudal culture with the most incredible tangle of codes governing
face-saving behavior. The Dry-towners believe that some of the elements of
their own culture came from cultural interchange with the catmen millennia
ago, but an I.B. xenthropologist could tell you more about that.
Just how many races of I.B. s are there on Darkover anyway? Barron asked.
God only knows, and I m not being funny. Certainly no Terran knows. Maybe
a few of the Comyn know, but they re not telling. Or the chieri; they re
another of the nearly human races, but they re as far above humans, most
people think, as the cralmacs are below em. It s for sure no Terran knows,
though; and I ve had more opportunity than most.
Barron hardly heard the last sentence for a minute, in his interest in the
nonhumans, then suddenly it penetrated. You re a Terran?
At your service. My name is Larry Montray; they call me Lerrys because it s
easier for a Darkovan to pronounce, that s all.
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Barron felt suddenly angry and irked. And you let me make a fool of myself
trying to speak Darkovan to you?
I offered to interpret, Larry said. At the time I was under a pledge to
Valdir, never to mention that I was a Terran not to anyone.
And you re his ward? His foster son? How d that happen?
It s a long story, Larry said. Some other time, maybe. In brief, his son,
Kennard, is being schooled on Terra with my family, and I m living here with
his people. He scrambled to his feet. Look, Gwynn s looking for us; I think
we ought to get on. We want to reach the fire tower before nightfall
tomorrow, if we can the rangers there are due to be relieved and it s still a
long way into those hills.
It gave Barron plenty to think about, as they rode on, but his thoughts kept
coming back, with an insistence he could not understand it was as if some
secret watcher, far back in his mind, kept dwelling on that point almost with
frenzy.
A Terran could pass as a Darkovan. A Terran could pass as a Darkovan. A
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