"On Darkover you'd damn well better be impressed when the Hasturs sit up
and take notice."
"I understand they're telepaths or something--"
"Telepaths, psychokinetics, parapsychs, just about anything else. For
all practical purposes they're the Gods of Darkover. And one of the
Hasturs--a rather young and unimportant one, I'll admit, the old man's
grandson--came to the Legate's office, in person, mind you. He offered,
if the Terran Medical would help Darkover lick the trailmen's fever, to
coach selected Terran men in matrix mechanics."
"Good Lord," Jay said. It was a concession beyond Terra's wildest
dreams; for a hundred years they had tried to beg, buy or steal some
knowledge of the mysterious science of matrix mechanics--that curious
discipline which could turn matter into raw energy, and vice versa,
without any intermediate stages and without fission by-products. Matrix
mechanics had made the Darkovans virtually immune to the lure of Terra's
advanced technologies.
Jay said, "Personally I think Darkovan science is over-rated. But I can
see the propaganda angle--"
"Not to mention the humanitarian angle of healing--"
* * * * *
Jay Allison gave one of his cold shrugs. "The real angle seems to be
this; _can_ we cure the 48-year fever?"
"Not yet. But we have a lead. During the last epidemic, a Terran
scientist discovered a blood fraction containing antibodies against the
fever--in the trailmen. Isolated to a serum, it might reduce the
virulent 48-year epidemic form to the mild form again. Unfortunately, he
died himself in the epidemic, without finishing his work, and his
notebooks were overlooked until this year. We have 18,000 men, and their
families, on Darkover now, Jay. Frankly, if we lose too many of them,
we're going to have to pull out of Darkover--the big brass on Terra will
write off the loss of a garrison of professional traders, but not of a
whole Trade City colony. That's not even mentioning the prestige we'll
lose if our much-vaunted Terran medical sciences can't save Darkover
from an epidemic. We've got exactly five months. We can't synthesize a
serum in that time. We've got to appeal to the trailmen. And that's why
I called you up here. You know more about the trailmen than any living
Terran. You ought to. You spent eight years in a Nest."
* * * * *
(In Forth's darkened office I sat up straighter, with a flash of
returning memory. Jay Allison, I judged, was several years older than I,
but we had one thing in common; this cold fish of a man shared with
myself that experience of marvelous years spent in an alien world!)
Jay Allison scowled, displeased. "That was years ago. I was hardly more
than a baby. My father crashed on a Mapping expedition over the
Hellers--God only knows what possessed him to try and take a light plane
over those crosswinds. I survived the crash by the merest chance, and
lived with the trailmen--so I'm told--until I was thirteen or fourteen.
I don't remember much about it. Children aren't particularly observant."
Forth leaned over the desk, staring. "You speak their language, don't
you?"
"I used to. I might remember it under hypnosis, I suppose. Why? Do you
want me to translate something?"
"Not exactly. We were thinking of sending you on an expedition to the
trailmen themselves."
(In the darkened office, watching Jay's startled face, I thought; God,
what an adventure! I wonder--I wonder if they want me to go with him?)
Forth was explaining: "It would be a difficult trek. You know what the
Hellers are like. Still, you used to climb mountains, as a hobby, before
you went into Medical--"
"I outgrew the childishness of hobbies many years ago, sir," Jay said
stiffly.
"We'd get you the best guides we could, Terran and Darkovan. But they
couldn't do the one thing you can do. You _know_ the trailmen, Jay. You
might be able to persuade them to do the one thing they've never done
before."
"What's that?" Jay Allison sounded suspicious.
"Come out of the mountains. Send us volunteers--blood donors--we might,
if we had enough blood to work on, be able to isolate the right
fraction, and synthesize it, in time to prevent the epidemic from really
taking hold. Jay, it's a tough mission and it's dangerous as all hell,
but somebody's got to do it, and I'm afraid you're the only qualified
man."
"I like my first suggestion better. Bomb the trailmen--and the
Hellers--right off the planet." Jay's face was set in lines of loathing,
which he controlled after a minute, and said, "I--I didn't mean that.
Theoretically I can see the necessity, only--" he stopped and swallowed.
"Please say what you were going to say."
"I wonder if I am as well qualified as you think? No--don't interrupt--I
find the natives of Darkover distasteful, even the humans. As for the
trailmen--"
(I was getting mad and impatient. I whispered to Forth in the darkness,
"Shut the damn film off! You couldn't send _that_ guy on an errand like
_that_! I'd rather--"
(Forth snapped, "Shut up and listen!"
(I shut up and the film continued to repeat.)
* * * * *
Jay Allison was not acting. He was pained and disgusted. Forth wouldn't
let him finish his explanation of why he had refused even to teach in
the Medical college established for Darkovans by the Terran empire. He
interrupted, and he sounded irritated.
"We know all that. It evidently never occurred to you, Jay, that it's an
inconvenience to us--that all this vital knowledge should lie, purely by
accident, in the hands of the one man who's too damned stubborn to use
it?"
Jay didn't move an eyelash, where I would have squirmed, "I have always
been aware of that, Doctor."
Forth drew a long breath. "I'll concede you're not suitable at the
moment, Jay. But what do you know of applied psychodynamics?"
"Very little, I'm sorry to say." Allison didn't sound sorry, though. He
sounded bored to death with the whole conversation.
"May I be blunt--and personal?"
"Please do. I'm not at all sensitive."
"Basically, then, Doctor Allison, a person as contained and repressed as
yourself usually has a clearly defined subsidiary personality. In
neurotic individuals this complex of personality traits sometimes splits
off, and we get a syndrome known as multiple, or alternate personality."
"I've scanned a few of the classic cases. Wasn't there a woman with four
separate personalities?"
"Exactly. However, you aren't neurotic, and ordinarily there would not
be the slightest chance of your repressed alternate taking over your
personality."
"Thank you," Jay murmured ironically, "I'd be losing sleep over that."
"Nevertheless I presume you _do_ have such a subsidiary personality,
although he would normally never manifest. This subsidiary--let's call
him Jay_{2}--would embody all the characteristics which you repress. He
would be gregarious, where you are retiring and studious; adventurous
where you are cautious; talkative while you are taciturn; he would
perhaps enjoy action for its own sake, while you exercise faithfully in
the gymnasium only for your health's sake; and he might even remember
the trailmen with pleasure rather than dislike."
"In short--a blend of all the undesirable characteristics?"
"One could put it that way. Certainly he would be a blend of all the
characteristics which you, Jay_{1}, _consider_ undesirable. But--if
released by hypnotism and suggestion, he might be suitable for the job
in hand."
"But how do you know I actually have such an--alternate?"
"I don't. But it's a good guess. Most repressed--" Forth coughed and
amended, "most _disciplined_ personalities possess such a suppressed
secondary personality. Don't you occasionally--rather rarely--find
yourself doing things which are entirely out of character for you?"
I could almost feel Allison taking it in, as he confessed, "Well--yes.
For instance--the other day--although I dress conservatively at all
times--" he glanced at his uniform coat, "I found myself buying--" he
stopped again and his face went an unlovely terra-cotta color as he
finally mumbled, "a flowered red sports shirt."
Sitting in the dark I felt vaguely sorry for the poor gawk, disturbed
by, ashamed of the only human impulses he ever had. On the screen
Allison frowned fiercely, "A crazy impulse."
"You could say that, or say it was an action of the suppressed Jay_{2}.
How about it, Allison? You may be the only Terran on Darkover, maybe the
only human, who could get into a trailman's Nest without being
murdered."
"Sir--as a citizen of the Empire, I don't have any choice, do I?"
"Jay, look," Forth said, and I felt him trying to reach through the
barricade and touch, really touch that cold contained young man, "we
couldn't _order_ any man to do anything like this. Aside from the
ordinary dangers, it could destroy your personal balance, maybe
permanently. I'm asking you to volunteer something above and beyond the
call of duty. Man to man--what do you say?"
I would have been moved by his words. Even at secondhand I was moved by
them. Jay Allison looked at the floor, and I saw him twist his long
well-kept surgeon's hands and crack the knuckles with an odd gesture.
Finally he said, "I haven't any choice either way, Doctor. I'll take the
chance. I'll go to the trailmen."
* * * * *
The screen went dark again and Forth flicked the light on. He said,
"Well?"
I gave it back, in his own intonation, "Well?" and was exasperated to
find that I was twisting my own knuckles in the nervous gesture of
Allison's painful decision. I jerked them apart and got up.
"I suppose it didn't work, with that cold fish, and you decided to come
to me instead? Sure, _I'll_ go to the trailmen for you. Not with that
Allison--I wouldn't go anywhere with that guy--but I speak the
trailmen's language, and without hypnosis either."