From—The Järnhann Saga, Kumalo translation
Nikko Kumalo’s interview of Anders Henrikssen, Raadgiver, hadn’t taken long—little more than two hours. She had interviewed him before, more than once. This return was only to explore questions that had come up about the Psi Alliance in her interviews with others since then. When the interview was over, the Dane had taken them to see Ingrid, his granddaughter, a calm, mature-seeming, beautiful child of three years, her hair almost cotton white. Remembering them, the child put aside her doll and advanced with her hand extended, as if she were royalty and they were to kiss it. Which in fact Matthew did, inspiring giggles.
They’d met the mother before, too, and had thought her retiring and aloof. Signe Andersdatter was a handsome young woman, with long black hair that made her fair skin seem milk white by contrast, and her ice-blue eyes more striking. She’d be beautiful, Matthew decided, if it weren’t for her coldness, and hauteur which, if not obtrusive, was nonetheless plain to see.
It seemed to Matthew that he could see passion there, too, a repressed passion generated by some resentment, some injustice. And it embarrassed him to notice, because Raadgiver was a telepath who would know his thoughts. He suspected that the daughter did too, for she colored slightly, and taking Ingrid by the hand, left the room with a thin goodbye.
Then Matthew suggested that he and Nikko should leave, if she had no further questions for their host. She didn’t, and Raadgiver accompanied them from his apartment, down a stone staircase and into the flagstoned courtyard. Weeds grew between the flags, grasshoppers chewed on the weeds, and chickens preyed on the grasshoppers. Two red hens flapped out of the humans’ way.
“Your daughter is a lovely woman,” Nikko said, “and your granddaughter is charming.”
Raadgiver smiled wryly. “I love them both. I only wish Signe had had a mother to bring her up, and Ingrid a father in the home.” It seemed the older man needed to confide in someone, and Nikko was a professional listener. “I made no effort to remarry when my wife died bearing Signe,” he went on. “I realized later that I should have. In fact the old duke—the king’s father—urged me to. But it seemed to me then that it would complicate my life. Astrid had been just right for me, and I believed that I wouldn’t be happy with anyone else.
“I was selfish.”
They crossed the drawbridge, the moat beneath it late-summer thick with algae clouds and shingled with pond lilies. Frogs chirked and croaked.
“And Ingrid’s father is away a lot?” Matthew asked.
“Ingrid’s father is Nils Järnhann. Her blondness comes from him.”
Raadgiver’s answer shut up both Kumalos. The Dane continued; his unasked for comments had led to their embarrassment, and he would not leave them thus.
“Signe resented from childhood that I was a servant of the duke. She considered that with my intelligence, and even more with my psi, I should be ruler. But the Psi Alliance shuns authority, for good reasons. In a world like ours, or at least in our part of it, we must conceal, camouflage our abilities. And to rule in a violent world, let alone to gain a throne, takes talents quite different from mine. Later, when she recognized these things, it made it worse for her instead of better.
“When Nils showed up, she scorned him. She still scorns him, because the Svear are barbarians. She considers us far superior—refined, civilized, knowledgeable about history . . . And when we realized that his talents were greater than ours, that added to her resentment. Especially she resented his tranquility; when she insulted him, he took no offense.
“Yet I could read the desire he lit in her. She’d had nothing to do with men, and never intended to. She will never marry; if there’s one thing I am sure of in this world, it’s that.
“How they came to mate, I do not know. She screened it from me. But he did not violate her; that would be totally foreign to his nature. And if he had, it would show through her screen. I seriously doubt he even initiated the mating, which took place not long before he left. She’d have spurned him.”
The Dane shrugged. Nikko remembered Nils’s sexual magnetism.
“I was afraid she wouldn’t love the child, but happily I was wrong. She resents deeply, though, that the father is a barbarian. Regardless of his accomplishments and objectivity.”
They came to the pinnace. Matthew took the control pad from a pocket and keyed in the instruction. The shield flicked out of existence.
“Well,” said Raadgiver, “you have listened with patience and understanding to the plaints of a man no longer young. They are small matters, compared to those of our peasants here. It is good to be gifted; I have lived comfortably, without hardship or the harshness of labor. I neither freeze nor greatly sweat, and do not know real hunger, only appetite. I have had the advantages of a long and rich tradition of scholarship, and communion with the richest culture on the planet, the Psi Alliance, dispersed though it may be. Yet our lives are not completely free of pain, though it might fairly be said that our pain is self-inflicted. We are simply humans with certain advantages.”
He nodded as if agreeing with himself.
“Well.” He put out his hand, and the Kumalos shook it. “If you wish to interview me again, I will gladly make myself available.”
Then he turned and walked back toward the castle. Nikko and Matthew boarded the Alpha, and Matthew regenerated the shield. Nikko saw the green light flashing on the control panel, and acknowledged the signal orally.
“What have you got for us, Allie?’ she asked.
“A message from Teodoro Baver,” the pinnace replied.
They listened to it at once, amazed and dismayed. In a prison in China! In the palace compound, guarded by soldiers and some sort of sentient predator, no doubt an ET left over from the pre-plague days. With telepaths around; one at least.
“How the hell do we get him out of there?” Matthew asked.
The question was rhetorical, but Nikko answered. “I suppose we stock up on provisions and water, fly to China, locate the palace, and park over it at four or five kilometers—high enough to be sure no one notices, and far out of ordinary telepathic range.”
Matthew nodded, taking it from there. “And see if we can identify the building he’s in, from his description. Then set the viewer on the entrance at high gain, and watch. Hopefully they’ll bring him out, maybe for exercise.” He patted the rifle rack. “Maybe there’ll be a chance to free him then.”
Anything like that might well endanger Baver, of course. They agreed that it would certainly be dangerous to radio him that they were waiting. Better for him to be ignorant than for his captors to know.