Traitor's Sun Read Free

and the Chamber to an impasse. Pressure had been brought, persuasion had been used, but to no avail. Except for endless conferences, meetings, and some lengthy speeches on the floor, no actual business had been conducted for nearly six weeks now, and it did not appear that any would be in the near future. The leaders of the Expansionists were becoming more and more desperate, and the only good that had come out of the mess was that no more new taxes had been passed in the interim. But no benefit could ultimately come from a paralyzed parliament. A government unable to act could inadvertently do more harm than good.
    Herm tried to shake away the dour mood that enveloped his mind, and found himself remembering one of the last conversations he had had with Lew Alton, just before Lew had resigned his office and returned to Darkover. Lucky man. He wasn’t balancing his bottom on a stingy stool, trying to make sense out of a hysteria that had grown and grown over the past decade. What had he said? Ah, yes. “There may come a time when the Federation loses its collective mind, Hermes, and when that happens, if it does, I cannot really advise you what to do. But when that day arrives, you will know it in your bones. And then you must decide whether to stay and fight, or run from the fracas. Believe me, it will be evident to your intelligence. Trust your instincts then, young man.”
    Good advice, and still sound. But things were different now than when Lew had still been Darkover’s Senator. Then Herm had not been married—what a singularly foolish thing to have done, to wed a widow from Renney with a small son, Amaury. But he had been hopelessly in love! Now they had their own child, his daughter Terése, a delightful girl of nearly ten. They were the light of his life, and he knew that without the anchor of Kate and the children he would have been even more miserable than he was. He realized he had not thought the matter through thoroughly when he met her, fell totally in love, and married her a month afterward. Certainly he had not considered the problems of a half-Darkovan child reaching an age where threshold sickness and the onset of laran were real concerns. And he had never told Katherine about the peculiar inbred paranormal talents of his people, although he had always intended to . . . someday. The moment just had never seemed right. And what, after all, would he say? “Oh, by the way, Kate, I’ve been meaning to tell you that I can read the minds of other people.”
    Herm shuddered at the imagined scene that would certainly follow. No, he had not told her the truth, not clever Herm. He had just gone on, wheeling and dealing, keeping Darkover safe from Federation predators, and put the matter off until another day. A wave of regret and guilt swept through him, and his stomach felt full of angry insects.
    After his mother’s death, he had became a private child and had grown into a secretive adult, a habit which had stood him in good stead during his years in the Federation. The very walls had ears and eyes, even those in this miserable excuse for a kitchen—the so called FP Station. Well, two counters, a tiny sink, a cool box and heating compartment were nothing like a vast stone chamber with a beehive-shaped oven in one corner, one or two large fireplaces, and a long table where the servants could sit and eat and gossip. The old cook at Aldaran Castle—she was probably dead now—had had a way of fixing water fowl with vegetables that was wonderful, and his mouth watered at the thought of it. He had not tasted fresh meat since he and Katherine had gone to Renney nine years before. Vat-grown protein had no flavor, even if it did nourish his body.
    He forced the delightful vision of a plump fowl running with fat and pinkish juices out of his mind and tried to focus on his abrupt arousal. What had brought him out of his desperately needed rest? He had no sense of a dream, so it must have been something else. Herm