“Don’t leave me, Ferrill,” I whispered as he turned from the bed.
“My dear aunt, not even a surprise attack by the Mil could stir me from my post,” he said with complete sincerity. He brought a chair to the bedside and settled himself comfortably.
“My curiosity is boundless and you won’t get rid of me until I hear everything I want to know about your fascinating recent past. Really, Sara, I consider it immensely rude of you not to have relieved my tedium these past days with this exciting disclosure. A planet, full, I hope, of other enticing females? My, my! Jokan will have fun. I do hope he returns with another extraplanetary aunt. They’re much more alluring than the homegrown variety.”
His absurd raillery was more effective than any tenderly delivered conciliations. The drink diffused its heartening warmth and it was ridiculous to think events would not turn my way with Ferrill putting them into their proper perspective.
The door exploded inward and I cried out, trembling all over even after I saw it was only Jessl.
“Who’s been knocking caves down?” Jessl demanded, glaring fiercely at me.
“Easy,” snapped Ferrill, holding up a warning hand, his eyes flashing authoritatively. “If you’ve come storming in here, you know as much as you should.”
“The Councilmen are in panic. I thought we were to leave Monsorlit alone. And I thought news of that new planet was to be strictly confidential. What on earth possessed you . . .”
“Hold your tongue, Jessl,” Ferrill ordered with such force in his tone that Jessl eyed the ex-Warlord in respectful silence, “Sit down.” Jessl complied.
“Now,” Ferrill continued more calmly. “Sara has had good cause to be frightened of Monsorlit. Harlan, in his infinite wisdom, chose to ignore it and none of us had the facts to understand her concern. During the Alert, Monsorlit threatened her that she must return to the Clinic,” Jessl started to interrupt, staring at me suspiciously. Ferrill held up an imperious hand, his eyes flashing, his pose of bored bystander forgotten. “Don’t interrupt me! That’s better.
“Even if she weren’t Harlan’s lady, that establishment has little to recommend it to the healthy-minded. Consequently Sara found herself placed in an untenable position at the meeting. I had no chance to warn her what it was all about because I only found out by accident Lesatin had scheduled the hearing today. I was under the impression Harlan was to preside. You are, I believe, aware of the terrible strain Sara has been under,” and Ferrill’s face was stern. “I sympathize with her completely. I doubt I could have maintained such control were I in a similar position, struggling to survive on her planet.”
“Then what Lesatin was saying . . .” Jessl stared at me anew, “you are from another planet?”
I nodded.
“Then what . . . they say about Monsorlit doing restorations,” Jessl began in a hoarse voice, his attention riveted to my face.
“ . . . is nonsense,” Ferrill said in an airy voice not echoed by the tense expression on his face. “Her planet is so close to the Tanes that she hadn’t so much as a mark on her. She was, understandably so, in deep shock. Monsorlit’s team discovered her and assumed she was a Tane civilian casualty. She was processed along with others through the Clinic and ended, so fortuitously as far as Lothar is concerned, as Harlan’s attendant.”
Ferrill’s easy explanation gradually reassured Jessl who began to untense and ceased looking as if he wished he were anywhere but in the same room with me.
“But, if she were never a mental defective, then her testimony about Monsorlit’s complicity is valid,” Jessl said.
Ferrill shook his head in exasperation. “It is useless and wasteful to implicate Monsorlit. No one, except Stannall or Gleto, really wants to indict him. He’s done too much among the little people of our world. And just as much for the rich who might want a new face. He is too well established in people’s sympathies. His entire hospital staff worships the ground he touches. No real evidence can be found against him. Except Sara’s testimony. And because she cannot establish when she came out of shock, Monsorlit has cleverly convinced the session that her recollection of a conversation in her recovery period is probably faulty.”
“But I can establish the moment I recovered,” I contradicted. “It was the day you visited Harlan with Gorlot and four other men. We were all walking in the gardens and you said ‘Harlan, to see you this way.’ Gorlot told you you had to keep your mind clear for the evening’s work and you told him he could control your decisions but not your heart.”
“You were sane then and didn’t speak out?” cried Ferrill stunned.
“That was the day everything cleared up. Before it had all been so confused. But I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing so I just kept quiet.”
“Continue to do so,” Ferrill suggested with authority.
“But,” and I had another horrible thought, “if the Councilmen now know I’m from another planet, won’t they wonder about restoration?”
Ferrill shrugged this suggestion off.
“Why should they? Monsorlit has testified you weren’t and he should know.”
“Loyalty? Statesmanship—better to say I wasn’t, even though I was, from top to toe, a restoree?” I said.
“I feel certain,” said Ferrill firmly, “that the incident is closed. Council has something of great moment to concern itself with . . . preparations to attack the homeworld of the Mil itself.”
Jessl rose slowly, nodding his agreement with Ferrill’s pronouncement.
“My apologies, Lady Sara, but I was deeply concerned,” he said. He bowed respectfully to Ferrill and left.
Ferrill waited till he heard the outer door close. Then he got to his feet, smiling broadly.
“Yes, my dear Aunt Sara, Council is going to be very busy. They’ll leave you alone and Monsorlit alone.”
“You’re sure Monsorlit will leave me alone? That I won’t have to go back to that ghastly Clinic of his to prove anything more to him?”
“Yes, Sara, I’m sure. You don’t have to fear Monsorlit anymore,” and Ferrill grinned with his secret knowledge. “Don’t you realize why?”
“No.”
“The only reason he wanted you back was he thought he had failed in a complete recovery. Now that he knows you have all your old memories, now that he has proved to himself that capture by the Mil does not, in itself, produce insanity unless the victim has been taught to expect it, he doesn’t need you anymore. Your case is closed as far as he’s concerned. So,” and he shrugged his thin shoulders, “you have nothing to fear from Monsorlit.”
I stared at Ferrill as the logic of his argument dispelled the last vestiges of my apprehension. He was quite right. Monsorlit had proved his point. I didn’t have to worry about returning to the Clinic. Or about my restoration.
Ferrill had pulled the draperies back from the window. The Young Moon, the faster nearer satellite, was rising in the early afternoon sky, a ghostly globe on the green horizon.
“Ironic, isn’t it, Sara?” he commented into the companionable silence that had fallen. “We’ve finally dispersed the last shadow of our fears of the invincibility of the Mil. We can stand free of any subconscious taint of sacrilege after two thousand years at war with ourselves and our old gods. Our weapons can paralyze their strong armadas. Our science is conquering superstition and releasing the last captives from the thrall of the Mil just when no Lotharian will ever have to fear being captured. Our envoy speeds to bring us a new ally.”
He looked out over the city. I threw off the blanket and joined him.
“One of my planet’s great statesmen said, at a very crucial time in our history, that the only thing we need to fear is fear itself.”
Ferrill looked around, pointing a finger at me.
“ ‘The only thing we need to fear is fear itself.’ I like the sense of that. It is very sensible, you realize from your own recent experience with fear.” Then he laughed, mockingly. “Of course, it doesn’t make allowances for cowards like myself.”
“Ferrill,” I said angrily, “don’t give me that nonsense about being a bad Warlord and you’re glad Maxil’s got it now because . . .”
“But I am glad,” Ferrill objected strenuously. “Something I can’t seem to convince you, Maxil, Harlan, everyone . . . except Jokan who understands completely . . . and he broke off. He snorted, annoyed he had risen to my baiting.
He laughed and, taking my hand, led me from the balcony.
“It’s going to be an exciting era for both our planets, Sara, and I’m going to be a part of it . . . even a bystander can enjoy that much. But right now,” and his eyes danced as he waggled his finger at me, “I’m afraid,” he chuckled, “I’m afraid I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”
I burst out laughing, dispelling the last shadows of my weeks of fearful doubts and uncertainties.
“Have you ever known me when I wasn’t?”
Books by Anne McCaffrey
Decision at Doona
Dinosaur Planet
Dinosaur Planet Survivors
Get Off the Unicorn
The Lady
Pegasus in Flight
Restorree
The Ship Who Sang
To Ride Pegasus
Nimisha’s Ship
Pegasus in Space
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WAS SHE
OR
WASN’T SHE?
“But I don’t look the way I used to.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You obviously aren’t a restoree,” Harlan said sharply. Sara felt tension return to his body. “There isn’t a mark on you.”
“That’s just it . . . there isn’t. I’ve lost three scars. I had a long gash on my arm where I . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she saw his face. The mixture of horror, distaste, disbelief, anger—and, strangely, hatred— stunned her.
Now she knew something was really
wrong . . . but she didn’t know how bad things
had become!
“Restoree is SF at its best . . . “
—KLIATT
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