A World Divided by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley [Bradley, Marion Zimmer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Literary, Science Fiction, American, Usernet, C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 0739473581
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2002-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

The World Outside

The days slipped by in Arilinn and Kerwin soon began to feel as if he had been there all his life. And yet, in a curious way, he was like a man lost in an enchanted dream, as if all his old dreams and desires had come to life and he had stepped into them and closed a wall behind him. It was as if the Terran Zone and the Trade City had never existed. Never, in any world, had he felt so much at home. Never had he belonged anywhere as he belonged here. It made him almost uneasy to be so happy; he wasn’t used to it.

Under Rannirl’s guidance, he studied matrix mechanics. He didn’t get too far with the theory; he felt that maybe Tani had the right idea when she called it magic. Spacemen didn’t understand the mathematics of an interstellar drive, either, but it worked. He was quicker in learning the simper psychokinetic feats with the small matrix crystals; and Neyrissa, the monitor, taught him to go into his own body, searching out the patterns of his blood flowing in his veins, to regulate, quicken or slow his heartbeats, raise or lower his blood pressure, watch over the flows of what she called the channels, and what Kerwin suspected would have been called, by Terran medics, the autonomic nervous system. It was considerably more sophisticated than any biofeedback technique he had ever known in the Terran Zone.

He made less progress in the rapport circle. He had learned to take his turn—with Corus or Neyrissa at his side—in the relays, the communication network of telepaths between the Towers, which sent messages and news of what was happening, between Neskaya and Arilinn and Hali and faraway Dalereuth; messages that still meant little to Jeff, about a forest fire in the Kilghard Hills, an outbreak of bandit raids far away on the fringes of the Hellers, an outbreak of a contagious fever in Dalereuth, the birth of triplets near the Lake Country; citizens, too, came to the Stranger’s Room of the Tower and asked that messages be sent through the relays, matters of business or news of births and deaths and the arrangement of marriages.

But in the working of the circle he was less successful. He knew they were all anxiously watching his progress, now that they had accepted him; it seemed sometimes that they watched over him like hawks. Taniquel insisted they were pushing him too fast, while Auster glowered and accused Kennard and Elorie of coddling him. But as yet he could endure only a few minutes at a time in the matrix circle. It wasn’t, evidently, a process that could be hurried; but he gained a few seconds a day, holding out longer each time under the stresses of contact before he collapsed.

The headaches continued, and if anything they got worse, but for some reason it didn’t discourage any of them. Neyrissa taught him to control them, a little, by regulating the inner pressure of the blood vessels around the eye sockets and inside the skull.

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