"Yes, but the human expenditure—"
"Can be compensated. A matrix, operated by a trained telepath, can substitute for conventional aircraft. And so we have use of aircraft only in emergency; we do not use it wastefully. And there is communication: we on Darkover have no need of long range mechanical communications equipment."
"Right—" The main function of the relays on Darkover, especially now, was the long distance transmission of messages.
"The Empire has long since realized what telepaths would be good for," Regis said: "in space, for communication. For the controlling of mechanical equipment when ordinary machinery fails, through levitation or energon-control; any child with a matrix can see into the structure of matter enough to reverse oxidation or metal fatigue, for instance. The bottleneck is the small supply of telepaths—and the general unwillingness of Darkovans to collaborate with the Empire. None of us has been available for study. We don't know ourselves how we use these old sciences. The few efforts made to study these things have lost out to human failures. But there must be a way, and now is the time to try it."
"What are you going to do?" Linnea shrank from trying to read his thoughts directly.
"I am going to demand that the relays send out a call to every telepath on Darkover," Regis said, "with all the authority of Hastur, with all that means."
Linnea met his eyes briefly and shrank from the contact. Regis seemed, at that moment, almost superhuman, and she thought of the old legends of the Son of Hastur, who was more than human—and Regis had once wielded the Sword of Aldones, forged for the hand of a god. Which was another way of saying that he had somehow managed to tame and use forces of the human mind which were incomprehensible to the ordinary person.
She seized on a minor aspect of this;
"Can we shut down the relay towers and pull them all in here? Can we afford to do away with what little technology we do have? We'd be barbarians, Regis."
"Yes," Danilo said unexpectedly, "Darkover takes the telepaths, the work of the relays, entirely too much for granted. Shut down the towers for a few months or years and let our world see what it would be like without the telepath powers. Within a month they'll rise up and stop letting us be killed off one by one. There was a time when a man who laid a rude hand on a Keeper would have been tortured to death. Now they can slaughter women and children without anyone even caring."
"Are you saying that we could stop what they're doing to our world just by telepath powers?" Linnea asked.
"No, I don't think so," Regis replied. "There is too much physical damage to the planet, I suspect. But we can find out who is doing it, and stop them. And we can, perhaps, trade on even terms with the Empire, for the help we need now. In any case, it's time to stop playing and take the telepath project seriously. Otherwise we are going to go the way of the chieri; and there are plenty of people in the Empire who wouldn't regret us at all. That would leave Darkover wide open for the kind of exploitation they want. We're standing in the door," Regis repeated, "and we've got to stay there."
It was a commonplace room, dull and dark and evil-smelling, and Missy lay huddled and quiet for long periods at a time, hardly knowing what was going on either within or without her. Time had ceased to have meaning, although she had long slowed her perceptions to see the world at least partly as those others did; the ones she must perforce live with.
So many changes, so many strangenesses. And the strange touch now. For the first time, someone who had returned the seeking touch, the thing she had never understood in herself. Always before, men had been merely a means of survival. She had known herself alien, freak, unable to find anyone who was able to meet her, join with her. Her body she had given freely to whoever wanted it. After the first few times (even now she flinched from remembering that old horror, the discovery that what meant much to her was beast-nothingness to them) it had meant nothing. But now:
Conner. Emotions long deadened, reaching and touching her (she could feel what had gone within him, the strange fears and loneliness that had shaped him) in a way she hardly understood. She knew little of her own emotions. She had never dared to be introspective, but she sensed that if she looked within herself she would see and feel some such whirling horror as had shaped Conner's madness. And now, far from him, she still felt the helpless loneliness of his need (how could she hold herself from running, flying back—).
Missy, I need you. Missy, come back, without you I am maddened and lost again . . . .
And the blind outpouring of her name, the name which meant nothing to her (she had borne it only a few years) but the ache of Conner's far-off crying for her. He had touched her innerness, and she could not forget, she knew she could never forget. But she could get out of range . . . .
She could have stayed with Conner indefinitely, she knew, in what happiness was possible to the strange thing she was. (Ah, but could she have borne to see him grow old, die?)
But the touch of that other—
Keral had reached right inside her, as if he had physically put out his hand and thrust it through her and inside her body and twisted something. He hated her. He feared her. And yet there had been something between them, though he wasn't even a man. What was Keral and what had he done to her? And the other, David, had been indifferent to her, to Missy, (for the first time the spell had failed) when she knew that no man alive could normally resist.
From that instant of grabbing rapport Missy had felt a weird flowing, twisting, changing in her; deep in her body, deep in the forever unplumbed and unplumbable depths of her mind. She had known, then, that no planet could hold them both, and she had no taste for killing. She had killed twice: once to protect her life and once to protect her secret; but she loathed what it had done to her and would not kill again except in extremity.
Better to run again.
"Let me go," Conner said. "Look, I'm a spaceman; I know my way around the quarter. Darkover is a port like any other; if you've seen one, you've seen them all. I can hear the gossip of the quarter, and anything that's going on, I'd find out about."
He looked so lost and miserable that David felt wrenched with pity, in spite of his tendency to feel that he could, personally, survive Missy's absence from their midst. It was Rondo who said roughly, "Face it, Conner; good riddance to bad rubbish. The girl's a whore, and psychotic at that."
David said, "Conner, it's true. And there's something else; if it hadn't been for Desideria, she might very well have killed Keral. She's dangerous."
Jason Allison contributed: "We'll be alerted if she tries to leave the planet; there's a stop order at the spaceport. But I'm afraid that without her own cooperation we have no authority—"
"I'll keep her from hurting anyone else," Conner said miserably, "but I must find her, I must!"
It was Desideria who came, unexpectedly, to Conner's aid. "I think Conner is right," she said. "A psychotic whore with full laran, psychokinesis and poltergeist factor running around loose on Darkover and hating the whole human race isn't anything I can contemplate without at least a dozen shudders. Go ahead, Dave—and if I can help you, call on me."
The dim light in the room had faded to a dying glow and the dark sun was a drooping red coal in the sky when Missy rose and smoothed her long hair, made herself beautiful with gestures so automatic that she hardly needed to glance in the poor and cracked mirror in the room. She drew her light robe around her and went out into the muddy street, picking her way carefully in her light shoes.
The "Red" sector of the spaceport city was the same on all planets; cheap bars and amusement centers, restaurants and pleasure houses, gambling halls and wineshops, of all kinds and status levels. Missy had known them under a couple of dozen suns. Darkover was a little colder than most, a little more brilliantly lit. She moved from bar to bar, slowly, calculating and assessing each place the moment she stepped inside. Usually she could sum up the clientele, their average salary and the tone of the place within four or five minutes, and in most of them she kept her
loose hooded cloak flung over her hair and behaved with modest detachment, so that few noticed her at all; and those who did saw only a small, slight girl, perhaps a spaceman's or port official's young daughter, possibly waiting for someone and quite unaware of her unrespectable surroundings. Even in the others she kept her appeal muted and gently rebuffed all advances until she spotted her desired prey.
He looked prosperous. His uniform told Missy at once that he was the second officer of an Empire-sponsored passenger ship—in short, he had authority and position, as well as wealth.
The officer raised his eyes from his drink to see a young girl, exquisitely pretty, with masses of loose, copper-toned hair falling like a cloud around her slender face, eyeing him with deep and luminous gray eyes. The impact of the eyes was such that afterward he felt confused and could never explain why he moved toward her, like a man under a spell. He was no novice with women—no ship's officer would be, certainly not one who wore on his stripes the seven small jewels indicating service on seven planets—but words almost deserted him; he could only say, like a confused youngster, "Aren't you cold? In that light dress, on a planet like this?"
Missy's smile was gently enigmatic. "I'm never cold," she said, "but I'm sure we could find somewhere warmer than this."
He wondered, afterward, why an approach so obvious had seemed, in the enchantment of glamour that seemed to fall around her, new and strangely fascinating. He had stayed under the spell all during the next hour, of which he remembered very little; he was still under the spell when he followed her through the dimmed and darkening streets to the mean little room. She had asked nothing of him. Long experience had taught her that afterward men were even more eager, more generous. She did not know why; she put it down to the curious glamour she could throw over herself at such times. She had no real doubt that afterward she could persuade him to smuggle her aboard his ship. Not less than ten times before this, a ship's officer or captain had risked his career to do so and then thanked her for the privilege. It was balm and reassurance to feel, within herself, the pressure of his driving need and hunger—after her failure with David (was that Keral's doing?) she had needed that assurance desperately, to ward off the terrible sensation of change, of not knowing herself.
His hands, his touch, his mouth on hers had become desperate, insistent. She lay back, allowing him to undress her. Her eyes were enormous, brilliant, and the ship's officer moved like a man in a dream, fumbling, excited fingers stripping away the light silken garments—
And then his rough hands struck her, knocking Missy half across the room, and his harsh, suddenly enraged voice, sick with disillusion and fury:
"Damned, filthy, stinking pervert! Lousy bastard of an ombrédin—I heard Darkover was full of you goddam lice but I never saw one—"
Cold claws of icy terror closed around Missy's heart. In the cracked, blurred mirror she had barely seen her own face, but now with a merciless clarity it gave back the naked body, the unbelievable and insane alterations there. She stared from the naked, raging man, advancing on her with fists upraised, and still unbelieving, cowered away.
This couldn't be happening! This was impossible! And in a fit of mad illogic: somehow Keral did this to me . . . as she stared down, her enormous eyes dilated to blackness, at her own body, as if she were trapped in an insane amusement park mirror which gave back not her own familiar body, but a pale, undeveloped and yet unmistakable reflection of the furious man's own conformations; her breasts still there but shrunken, and below them, unmistakable, small but there, the pink protrusion of a male genital . . . .
Missy screamed, less from the pain of the blow than from panic, horror. She screamed again as the man's fists found her face; fumblingly, she put up her slender hands to shield her face. She did not even understand the mad abuse he was pouring on her. She was beyond hearing, making only the faintest movement to ward off the savage and brutal blows. She felt blood break from her lip, felt a rib crunching under his kick.
And then Missy went mad.
She had always known, in a general way, that she was stronger than any woman. It was part of her physical freakishness; she had never had the faintest fear of physical abuse, and had defended herself with skill and strength from unwanted advances on various occasions in her long and rough life. Here she had been taken off guard; but the smell of her own blood, and general panic, turned her berserk. She came up off the floor like a spitting, enraged tiger. A blow from unbelievably strong arms knocked the man across the room. She reached for him, with that inner force which had sent the furniture in David's room spinning, and he howled and clutched his groin, bawling like a wounded bull. A bench rose and flung itself across the room, striking him in the head with a blow that would have felled an ordinary man. But he was no ordinary man, and the sight of flying furniture only sent him further into the berserker fury. Outside in the street, clouds of whirling dust gathered and spun and spat. Rocks hurled themselves against the doors. Missy warded off kicks and blows, but when the officer seized the flying bench in mid-air and struck her on the head ,with it, she collapsed and lay still.
Then there was a hammering at the door and a stern shout, and four men in the black leather of Spaceforce kicked in the lock and took in the scene—the naked man, the unconscious and bleeding thing that looked at first glance like a naked girl—and hauled them both off, with prompt efficiency, to the spaceport prison and hospital.
And there they made discoveries which threw them into the same bewildered panic as the ship's officer.
The face on the visionscreen was bewildered after being passed along from official to official.
"You're Doctor Jason Allison? You're in charge of a special project in Medic, with some outworlders?"
"I'm Allison, yes."
"Well, we have something down here. Are you missing one of your people? We don't know what it is and we can't handle it; will you please come down here and take her or him or it away before it sets the whole goddam spaceport on fire or something?"
Jason said to himself, "Oh, oh," and wished he had a panic button to push.
He knew without asking that they'd found Missy.
My kinfolk . . . .
Keral. Is it well with you among the aliens, Beloved?
It is not well although one among them is dear to me as born blood-kin. And I have learned much, much of our own people and this world. But I am alone and desolate; I cannot long endure the life within walls. And what shall I do if the Change comes upon me, or the madness of which you warned me? There is so much strangeness that I am always in fear. Already once I have wounded and once I have killed, both times without intention. And there is a strange one here who has put me in fear. I do not want to die. I do not want to die . . . .
CHAPTER NINE
JASON HAD brought along a sedative capable of calming down a couple of rogue elephants, but Missy, lying numb and shocked, her face a bleached blob above the blankets wrapped confiningly around her, made not the slightest protest. She neither spoke to him nor opened her eyes as he had her carefully loaded on a stretcher and carried to a waiting ambulance. During the short ride back to the HQ, he sat quietly at her side, not touching her, his face grim as he considered what the spaceport police had told him. He had seen with his own eyes the wreckage of the cell, including the charred patch where blankets had been set ablaze.
"I've seen an almighty damned strange batch of telepaths and psi talents on Darkover," he said to himself, grimly, "but an uncontrolled poltergeist is a new one on me and damned if I know how to handle it. Regis is going to have to help me out on this one. It's his field of competence, after all. I'm a medic, not a warlock."
The change in Missy, even on superficial inspection, appalled him. Although the curious and compelling beauty was still there, the fair skin seemed to have roughened, with a blotched look. Her eyes were lusterless—shock, of course, could account for that—but the most curious change was an intangible. Jason had been far from indifferent to the flaunting,
exotic sexuality which Missy seemed to project from every pore—and now that had vanished, without a trace.
Well, shock and a brutal beating could account for that, too. She had evidently been very thoroughly mauled and maltreated; and evidently the doctors in the spaceport jail had been afraid to touch her. Not that he blamed them.
Fortunately, Missy had never shown any hostility to him. When he had examined her before, she had cooperated, even been—to a certain limited degree—friendly. It was David and Keral to whom she had reacted with hostility.
He had hoped to bring her into the Medic infirmary unnoticed, but—perhaps this was something he'd just have to get used to, working with telepaths—they were all there, waiting for him. He motioned to the men guiding the stretcher to wait, beckoned to David—at least David was a medical colleague—and said, in a low voice:
"You others will have to wait. She's been very badly hurt; she may have concussion, or internal injuries. David, come with me; and the rest of you, wait here." His eyes moved quickly over their faces; Regis, strained and frightened—why? Conner, gray with anguish and despair, moved him to brief pity, and he laid his hand on the man's shoulder. "I know how you feel," he said, "I'll let you in to see her the minute I can, believe me. She'll need someone who cares about her, after being roughed up like that."
Conner let himself be moved back, but David, tuned to sensitivity, could feel the man's helpless anger and protest:
There's no one else to care about her . . . she needs me, to them she's just a case . . . as I was in the hospital after the accident in space . . . .
and his thoughts trailing off into incoherent rage, despair and desire, so entangled that Conner himself did not know which was which. David wondered, how can he care so much for her? and closed the door, glad to shut away the dark and far too expressive face.
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