Everything I ever knew is gone, useless, meaningless or worse. My friends are strangers, my wife the most alien of all. My world is gone, renounced. I can never go back; they think me dead.

He thought, I hope I catch pneumonia and die, then, aware of the childishness of that, realized he was in very real danger. Drearily, not from any sense of self-preservation, but the remnant of vague duty, he turned and went inside. The house looked alien, strange, not a place where any Terran could manage to live. Had it ever seemed welcoming, home? He looked with profound alienation around the empty hall, glad it was empty. Dom Esteban must be taking his midday rest. The maids were gossiping in soft voices. He sank down wearily on a bench, let his head rest in his arms, and stayed there, not asleep, but in retreat, hoping that if he stayed very quiet it would all go away somehow and not be real.

A long time later someone put a drink in his hands. He swallowed it gratefully, found another, and another, blurring his senses. He heard himself babbling, pouring it all out to a suddenly sympathetic ear. There were more drinks. He knew, and welcomed it, when he passed out.

There was a voice in his mind, worming its way past his barriers, deep into his unconscious, past his resistance.

No one wants you here. No one needs you here. Why not go away now, while you can, before something dreadful happens. Go away now, back where you came from, back to your own world. You’ll be happier there. Go now. Go away now. No one will know or care.

Andrew knew there was some flaw in his reasoning. Damon had given him some good reason why he should not go, then he remembered that he was angry with Damon.

The voice persisted, gentle, cajoling:

You think Damon is your friend. Don’t trust Damon. He will use you, when he needs help, and then turn on you. There was something familiar about the voice, but it wasn’t a voice at all. It was somehow inside his mind! He tried in panic to shut it out, but it was so soothing.

Go away now. Go away now. No one needs you here. You will be happy when you go back to your own people. You will never be happy here.

With fumbling steps, Andrew went out into the side hall. He found his riding cloak, fastened it around his shoulders. Someone was helping him, buckling it around him. Damon, was it? Damon knew he couldn’t stay. He couldn’t trust Damon. He would be happy with his own people. He would get back to Thendara, back to the Trade City and the Terran Empire where his mind was his own…

Go now. No one wants you here.

Even thickly drunk and blurred as he was, the violence of the storm struck him hard enough to take his breath away. He was about to turn back, but the voice pounded inside his head.

Go now. Go away. No one wants you here. You’ve failed. You’re only hurting Callista. Go away, go to your own people.

His boots floundered in the snow, but he kept on, lifting and dropping them with dogged determination. Callista doesn’t need you. He was drunker than he realized. He could hardly walk. He could hardly breathe, or did the flurrying snow take his breath away, snatch it, refuse to give it back?

Go away. Go back to your own people. No one needs you here.

He came a little to himself, with a final desperate attempt of self-preservation. He was alone in the storm, and the lights of Armida had vanished in the darkness. He turned desperately, stumbling, falling to his knees, realizing he was drunk, or mad. He stumbled to his feet, felt his mind blurring, fell full length in the snow. He must get up, go on, go back, get to shelter — but he was so tired.

I will just rest here for a minute … just a minute…

Darkness covered his mind and he lost consciousness.

Damon worked for a long time in the narrow, stone-floored still-room, finally giving up in disgust. There was no way that he could make kirian as it was made in Arilinn. He had neither the skill nor, he suspected from a relatively thorough investigation of the equipment here, the proper materials. He regarded the crude tincture which he had managed to produce without enthusiasm. He didn’t think he would care to experiment with it himself, and he was sure Callista would not. There was, however, a considerable amount of the raw material, and he might be able to do better another day. Perhaps he should have begun with an ether extraction. He would ask Callista. As he washed his hands and carefully disposed of the residues, he thought suddenly of Andrew. Where had he gone? But when he went upstairs again, to find Callista still sleeping, Ellemir answered his concerned question with surprise.

“Andrew? No, I thought him still with you. Shall I come—”

“No, stay with Callista.” He thought Andrew must have gone down to talk to the men, or out to the stables through the underground tunnels. But Dom Esteban, alone at his frugal supper with Eduin and Caradoc, frowned when questioned.

“Andrew? I saw him drinking in the lower hall with Dezi. From the way they were pouring it down, I suppose he has passed out somewhere.” The old man’s gray eyebrows bristled with scorn. “Nice behavior, with his wife ill, to go off and get himself sodden drunk! How is Callista?”

Damon said, “I don’t know,” and thought suddenly that the old Dom knew. What else could it be, with Callista ill in bed and Andrew going off to get drunk? But one of the strongest sexual taboos on Darkover was that which separated the generations. Even if Dom Esteban had been Damon’s own father instead of Ellemir’s, custom would have forbidden him to discuss this.

Damon searched the house, in all the likely places, then, in growing panic, all the unlikely ones. Finally he summoned the servants, to hear that no one had seen Andrew since midafternoon, when he and Dezi had been drinking in the lower hall.

He sent for Dezi, suddenly afraid lest Andrew, drunk and not yet accustomed to Darkovan weather, should have gone out into the blizzard, underestimating its power. When the youngster came into the room, he asked, “Where is Andrew?”

Dezi shrugged. “Who knows? I’m not his guardian or his foster-brother!”

But at the unconcealable flash of triumph, a momentary glint before Dezi’s eyes evaded his, suddenly Damon knew. “All right,” he said grimly. “Where is he, Dezi? You were the last to see him.”

The boy gave a sullen shrug. “Back to where he came from, I suppose, and good riddance!”

“In this?” Damon stared in consternation at the storm raging beyond the windows. Then he swung on Dezi with a violence that made the boy flinch and shrink away from him.

“You had something to do with this!” he said, low and furious. “I’ll deal with you later. Now there is no time to lose!”

He ran, shouting for the servants.

Andrew woke, slowly, to burning pain in his feet and hands. He was rolled in blankets and bandages. Ferrika was bending over him with something hot. Holding his head, she got him to swallow it. Damon’s eyes swam out of the fog, and groggily Andrew realized that Damon was really worried about him. He cared. It was not true, what Andrew had thought.

Damon said gently, “We found you just in time, I think. Another hour and we could never have saved your feet and hands; two hours and you would have been dead. What do you remember?”

Andrew struggled to remember. “Not much. I was drunk,” he said. “I’m sorry, Damon, I must have gone mad for a little. I kept thinking, Go away, Callista doesn’t want you. It was like a voice inside my head, so I tried to do just that, go away… I’m sorry to have caused all this trouble, Damon.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Damon said grimly, and his rage was like a palpable red glow around him. Andrew, sensitized, saw him as an electrical net of energies, not at all like the daily Damon he knew. He glowed, he trembled with fury. “You didn’t cause the trouble. A very dirty trick was played on you, and it nearly killed you.” Then he was Damon again, a slender stooping man, laying a gentle hand on Andrew’s shoulder.