Read Online A World Divided by Marion Zimmer Bradley - Free Book Online

Dad. Afterward, I’ll take any punishment he wants to hand out to me. But I’m not going to break my word to Kennard and his father. I’ll explain to them why I may not be able to come again, but I won’t insult their hospitality by just disappearing and not even letting them know why I never came back.
    Kennard saved me from a mauling—maybe from being killed. I promised him something he wants—some books—and I owe him that much.
    He was uneasy about disobeying. But he still felt, deep down, that he was right.
    If I’d been born on Darkover, he told himself, I’d be considered a man; old enough to do a man’s work, old enough to make my own decisions—and take the consequences. There comes a time in your life when you have to decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong, and stop accepting what older people say. Dad may be right as far as he knows, but he doesn’t know the whole story, and I do. And I’ve got to do what I think is right.
    He wondered why he felt so bad about it. It hurt, suddenly, to realize that he’d made a decision he could never go back on. He might be punished like a child, when he got back; but suddenly he understood that he’d never feel like one again. It wasn’t just the act of disobeying his father—any kid could do that. It was that he had decided, once and for all, that he no longer was willing to let his father decide right and wrong for him. If he obeyed his father, after this, it would be because he had thought it over and decided, on a grown-up basis, that he wanted to obey him.
    And it hurt. He felt a funny pain about it, but it never occurred to him to change his mind. He’d decided what he was going to do. Now he had to decide how he was going to do it.
    His father had mentioned that if he, Larry, got into trouble, it might drag the whole Terran Zone into it. That was something to consider. That was fair enough. Larry wanted to be sure there was no danger of that.
    Then he thought: I could be taken for a Darkovan, except for my clothes. I have been mistaken for a Darkovan by my accent. If I’m not dressed as a Terran, then I won’t be into any trouble.
    And, he added to himself rather grimly, if anything does happen to me, the Terrans won’t be dragged into it. It will be my own responsibility.
    Quickly, he got out of his own clothes and put on the Darkovan ones Kennard had lent him. He glanced briefly at himself in the mirror. Part of himself recognized, a little ironic awareness, that he was enjoying the masquerade. It was exciting, an adventure. The other half of his awareness was a little grim. By deliberately taking off everything that could identify himself as Terran, he was deliberately giving up his right to the protection of the Empire. Now he was on his own. He’d walk down into the city with no more protection than his two hands and his knowledge of the language could give him.
    As if I were really Darkovan born, and entirely on my own!
    He had halfway anticipated being stopped at the gate, but he passed through the archway without challenge, and went out into the city.
    It was the hour when workmen were returning home, and the streets were crowded. He walked through them without attracting a glance, a strange breathless excitement growing under his ribs, and bursting in him. With every step, he seemed somehow to leave the person he had been, further behind. It was as if his present dress was not a masquerade, but rather as if he had simply discovered a deeper layer of himself, and was living with it. The pale cold sun hung high in the sky, casting purple shadows across the narrow streets and alleys; he found his way through the outlying reaches of the city with the instinct of a cat. He was almost sorry when he finally reached the distant quarter where the house of the Altons lay.
    The nonhuman he had seen before opened the door for him, but Kennard was standing in the hallway, and Larry wondered briefly if the Darkovan boy had been waiting for