Somewhere in that hour, Regis turned up, white as a bleached skeleton. He tried to say something to David, couldn't manage it, his face working; and finally, wordlessly, he threw his arms around David and embraced him, pressing his cheek against the Terran's.
With the touch, David's world cleared suddenly into bright colors and reality again, like fog suddenly clearing away. He knew suddenly that he was awake and that this was all real, not a wild, confusing nightmare. He came up to reality with Regis' hands clasped hard over his own, and said, coming back to himself:
"It's all right, Regis; they're both going to live and nothing more will happen now that everyone's warned. But—Good God! Where is Keral; what's happened to him?"
He had a sudden, stark déjà-vu of Keral's face; stark with horror, standing over the man he had killed.
No chieri has ever killed any living thing. He doesn't even eat meat!
David went back to his own room, knowing without knowing how that he would find Keral there, and he did. The chieri was curled up, hiding his face, only a wordless ball of misery and rejection, and his breathing was so slack and silent that for a heart-stopping instant David thought the shock had killed him. The pale, alien face held no recognition, even when David spoke to him. David turned him gently over. He was struck again, poignantly, at the almost feminine beauty of the chieri; his own dream came back to him with its curious overtones, and David felt an instant of startled shock and shame. Then, in sudden anger at himself, he drove the thought out of his mind.
Keral needs you and you can't judge him in human terms or in terms of your own private sexual hangups!
Keral was icy cold, almost as rigid as death. David knelt beside him on the bed and gathered him close, holding him with blind instinct, speaking his name in a soft, repeated murmur.
"Keral, Keral. It's me, it's David. Come back. I'm here. It's all right; it's going to be all right. Keral, Keral, don't die." The words were only a meaningless croon, but they were a way of focusing his whole mind, his whole personality on a deeper call, a deeper search:
Keral. Where have you gone? Come back, come back and be with me. I call you back, with all of myself, searching through the nowhere into which you have gone, seeking you out in the silences of fear . . . .
He felt it first, the black and formless horror in which Keral had gone down and almost drowned:
Death. I brought death on a living thing. He had the child between his hands; he was killing him. How can anyone kill a child? How can anyone bring death? My own hands and they brought death . . . I am dying in his death, drowning in that darkness . . . .
"God help me," said David, half aloud, "how can I reach him?" He filled his mind with the picture of life slowly coming back into the baby's blued, choking face, the surge of gratitude and love that had flowed into him from Regis' touch. Slowly, like the faltering beat of a heart under the reviving touch of a pacemaker, he felt Keral's awareness beginning to come back to life, coming up slowly through the darkness. He kept on holding Keral and murmuring to him (like a child; like a woman!) until at last the chieri's gray and luminous eyes blinked open, and he looked into David's face with a reviving, desolate grief.
"I did not want to kill him, even such an evil one. But I did not realize how weak he was and how strong my own arms when I was angry." He was trembling. "I'm so cold. So cold."
"That's shock," said David very gently. "You'll be better soon. There was nothing else you could have done, Keral."
"The child—"
"He's fine," David said, and marveled again. Keral's race, by Keral's own statement, was dying. Keral had never seen a child of his own people. How could the alien become so deeply involved with a child of another kind? Such a deep sense of identity—
He realized that Keral was slowly warming, the rigid, deathlike shock in the alien's body dissolving, and became, belatedly and with some bashfulness, aware that he was still lying close to Keral, holding the other in his arms like a lover. He let him go, rather quickly, and drew away, the practical trained self taking over as he rose. He said, "Are you still cold? Let me get you something hot to drink. And wrap up in the blankets." He had an excruciating sense that he had missed something, that the clue to Keral had just somehow eluded him, the clue to the whole mystery; but he had no way to solve it.
Keral sat up. "I want to find out—"
"Stay where you are," David commanded. "Doctor's orders. I'll go and find out how Melora and the baby are when I get something for you." He didn't trust sedatives with the alien physiology of the chieri, but certainly a hot drink wouldn't hurt him: coffee which was always on tap somewhere in the HQ or the bitter-chocolate tasting stuff which seemed the Darkovan equivalent.
It had been a damned exhausting night. He wasn't at all surprised, as he glanced through the window, to find that it was sunrise.
Nor was he especially surprised, later that morning, to find that Conner knew all about what had happened. He was, David reflected, getting used to being a telepath, and it had its uses.
He was also, although slowly, formulating the questions he knew he must put to Keral. Scientific inquiry about the chieri seemed to be getting them nowhere. He was going to trust his own intuitions and follow them wherever they led.
Regis Hastur emerged into the reddening morning, wrapped in fog, and stared at the sky almost without comprehension. Melora was out of danger and, thanks to Keral's quick action, the child had never been in any real danger. Both were sleeping now, and Regis had left them in good hands. But he was deathly weary and terrified again with the long struggle.
Perhaps more than any living person he could see all the ramifications of this. Had it been done by some Darkovan of the rabid anti-Terran party to discredit the Terrans—a Hastur child murdered under their very noses? Was it part of the plot to destroy all telepaths which he had sensed earlier? How would he face Melora's parents, after the struggle he had had to get them to permit this unheard-of thing—a Darkovan noblewoman to bear her child under the auspices of the Empire!
If it was one of our people who plotted this, we aren't worth saving! he thought with the bleakness of despair, and drew his perceptions inward so that he need not sense the Terran guards who followed his steps, trying not to intrude on the strange man they guarded.
He knew, with the perceptions of the trained telepath, that there were strangers in his own house, and stood in the half-lit hallway, trying to sort out if there was any menace. He felt upstairs, where the two older children slept with their nurses in the guarded nursery. They were peaceful and undisturbed. He had sent the youngest surviving child to Castle Hastur, under guard, with his mother. The sense of a stranger present persisted—
Linnea! I had forgotten, on this dreadful night—have you come so soon?
He did not look up as he felt her running down the stairs to him; looked up just to clasp her in his arms. He held her, hungrily, with an almost anguished need, feeling her slight body melting into his as if the barriers between flesh could physically fade out and he could somehow absorb her into himself. (Far away in the HQ building, at that moment, David released Keral with a sudden abashed awareness. Far out in the Trade City, Missy stirred uneasily in her sodden sleep and whimpered.) Then he put her down, and drew away, sighed and smiled.
"It's selfish of me, preciosa, and I should send you away again. But I'm glad you've come."
"My great-grandame was glad to see me too, although she pretended to be shocked that I had left my post at Arilinn and wondered aloud what sort of girls they were training these days," Linnea said, laughing. "I am glad Melora and the child are safe. I will visit Melora if the Terrans will allow it and not think me a clever assassin."
"The worst of it is that I must listen to them all saying that they told me so," Regis said. "Although I am ashamed to think of that when they have both been in danger of death."
"You're too tired to think sensibly," Linnea said. "Let me call someone to bring you food. And then—Regis, I hate to pile
more fear and responsibility on your shoulders, but I must tell you what I have seen."
Private Notebook of Andrea Closson; kept in code:
The level of forest fire has served its purpose and no further effort need be made in that direction, as crop cover has been reduced below the critical level in at least three widespread areas. The normal lightning set fires during this season should be sufficient, considering the demoralization of fire fighters in the mountains.
With the beginning of the spring rains in sectors IV and VII, erosion should begin in the Hellers and spread into the foothills. Reduction in the water table due to excessive runoff in the burned areas should soon become critical. With the expected start of the dry season near Carthon there should be dust storms, reducing crops to a critical level.
Some food supply relief can be expected from the well-watered towns in the lowlands, but this will not be enough. Demands made on the Terran Empire may spark some political decisions favorable to the desired agreement. (N.B.; the Empire has submitted a request for enlargement of the spaceport facilities which was turned down in Council last year. The question is to be raised again in five months. This will be a watershed decision.)
Expected agricultural disasters will begin this summer although they will not be crucial, and true famine will not exist, except among isolated, forest-dwelling, nonhuman cultures, until three years from now. Nevertheless, some small amount of panic can be expected.
Agents should be dispatched to begin work among the nonhumans, stirring up panic and rebellion. If an attack on human towns can be engineered, this would be worth a great deal toward the ultimate solution, as war between human and nonhuman at this time, although not conclusive, might drain resources which would otherwise be turned to salvage work in agricultural areas.
Efforts should be redoubled to eliminate interference from any of the Hasturs. The telepath relay towers are probably impregnable, but the relatively low level of sophistication in interplanetary politics should keep anyone from awareness and coordination until too late. Fortunately, the highly individualized social order on this world precludes coordinated effort.
If my calculations are correct, the point of no return could be reached within a matter of months. After that time, efforts need no longer be kept secret, as the process will be irreversible and Darkover, for bare survival, will be forced to negotiate with technological experts in planetary repair. It is possible that this point has already been reached, since the apparent level of Darkovan technology would not make it possible to reclaim the world for the old style of life without expert help. For this help they would be forced to make political concessions which would achieve the desired objective of planetary opening equally well. It is possible I may have underestimated the Hasturs, but at this moment they seem to be preoccupied with minimal government facilities. In effect, there is no central government. This world is wide open.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"THIS PLANET is wide open," Regis repeated slowly, his eyes fixed on Linnea. "I should have guessed before. I've read enough Empire history—did I never tell you, when I was a boy, I wanted to go offworld, into space?—to know what worldwrecking is. I don't know why I thought Darkover would be immune."
Danilo Syrtis said, "I never trusted those Empire bastards." His tense, young face was implacable. "Some of the mountain men had the right idea. Rise up and throw every one of the accursed Terrans right off our world, tear down the spaceport and sow the ground there with salt."
"You're a fool, bredú," Regis said gently. "It's not the Empire. They have played honestly with us and they have honored their commitments. If they wanted to open this world by force they could and would have done so three hundred years ago."
"But who, then, Regis? If not the Terrans?" Linnea asked.
"All I can say to that is that it's a big galaxy and there are I forget how many inhabited worlds," Regis answered. "Talk about hunting for a nut in a forest! Even on one world, looking for one specific person—the facts of the matter are, Linnea, we don't have the kind of centralized organization—" he spoke in lingua franca, as the old Darkovan language had no such concepts or words—"to deal with this sort of thing. It's war; and we've done away with war long since. Fights, yes. Feuds, yes. Raids, yes. I fought my first raid-battle before my beard sprouted, when Kennard Alton led us against Kadarin and his crew. But we do our fighting and our hating by ones and twos and tens. It just isn't reasonable to hate large groups of people who have never harmed us personally, just because they're there. It's why we never really fought the idea of the Empire, although I don't think most people really wanted a spaceport on Darkover. It's a big world and there's always room enough for every kind of idea; that was what we thought. We've learned a lot from the Terrans, and they've given us a great deal. And in return we've made our own impression on the Empire. But while that kind of thinking is the only sane kind in the long run, we're looking at the short run now. And it's conditioned us against thinking in terms of war. We're a peaceful people, by and large, and we're wide open to this kind of sabotage."
"Do you mean there's no way to stop it, then?" Linnea asked; and Danilo, clenching his fists, said, "We can fight if we have to."
"I don't mean that," Regis said, "but we aren't set up to handle it now. We have one hope, and that's dying out."
"And that is?"
"The old telepath technology of Darkover," Regis said. "But we're inbred, our fertility is going downhill, and we're being killed at an appalling rate, as witness the attack tonight. There aren't enough of us alive on Darkover for the kind of coordinated effort we'd need to stop this. Oh, we've had warnings enough. For the last hundred years, the Terrans have been trying to work with us, to develop our old sciences, learn how to work with the matrices, encourage the training of more matrix technicians and telepaths. If we had several hundred functioning telepaths, with Towers and relay circles in full function, we could survey the planet, find out just what's being done, and reverse it. As it is, we have to rely on alien technologies, and our whole way of life is opposed to them."
He closed his eyes and considered. The first few weeks of Project Telepath had come up with only a few isolated telepaths, untrained; and the study had so far been unprofitable. True, David had saved Melora's life; they had some new and fascinating knowledge of the legendary chieri, but this was a drop in the bucket. A dozen or so telepaths discovered on other worlds were on their way to Darkover, but how many of them would turn out to be psychotics like Rondo, or, like Missy, unable to endure questioning?
Danilo asked, "How many telepaths are alive on Darkover?"
Regis said wearily, "Aldones! Do you think I am a god's self, that I know such things?" Then he was suddenly electrified:
But I can know!
Fool I am; I have studied everyone's powers but our own.
He said, with a controlled quiet that belied his own sudden excitement:
"Let's think about this. How many working Towers are there in function, Linnea?"
"Nine," she said, "widely scattered. At Arilinn there are eight of us; in the other towers, anywhere from seven to twelve or fourteen."
Regis said, "In the Trade City we have forty licensed matrix mechanics. I happen to know that there are other telepaths born into the various old families—throwbacks, and some of them not even trained, who have some of the old laran powers. No one has ever bothered to count them or to demand that they use their powers. But if we all worked together—"
"It's fantastic," Linnea said, "and probably impossible. You know what a Tower circle has to go through before we can work in concert, as a group, and accomplish anything. Every time a new member joins us, it takes weeks for us to tolerate his presence easily enough so that we can work with him touching our minds. Seven or eight seems to be the tolerable maximum."
Regis said, half aloud, "Three of us, linked in depth, destroyed the Sharra matrix. What could five hundred of us do?"
Linnea flinched. "All of the old matrix screens
above ninth level were destroyed years ago. They were adjudicated to be illegal weapons, and too dangerous for human beings to handle, Regis." Her eyes went slowly to his bleached-white hair. "An hour with one of them did—that—to you."
He nodded, slowly. "Yes. It's too dangerous, in human terms. But if the alternative is the destruction of a planet?"
"The question is academic in any case," Linnea said, "since the matrices no longer exist and no one alive knows how to build them. And a good thing, too."
"Still, it's the only hope we have," Regis said, "the one thing Darkover has which the Empire cannot duplicate from outside. For this, the Empire might help us without demanding political concessions which would destroy Darkover as we know it. It's going to be a race; a race against time. But I'm going to do it." His face was bleak. "I didn't ask to be placed at the head of the Council," he said. "I never wanted anything of the sort. But I have that power and for better or worse I've got to use it."
"I don't understand," Linnea said. "Why should the Empire want telepaths? From what I hear, they just barely believe we exist!"
"Look," said Regis violently, "use your head, Linnea. A matrix, with a sufficiently trained telepath, can produce energy—right? What little mining we have on Darkover is done with a matrix circle to locate and teleport the minerals to the surface—right? We make do with small use of metals because we do not want factories and manufacturing industry, but for the small amount we use, we have technology sufficient to our needs, or did, until recently."
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