"But the man Jay might have been, given a different temperamental bias.
I'd say--the man Jay Allison started out to be. The man he _refused_ to
be. Within his subconscious, he built up barriers against a whole series
of memories, and the subliminal threshold--"
"Doc, I don't understand the psycho talk."
Forth stared. "And you do remember the trailmen's language. I thought
so. Allison's personality is suppressed in you, as yours was in him."
"One thing, Doc. I don't know a thing about blood fractions or
epidemics. My half of the personality didn't study medicine." I took up
the mirror again and broodingly studied the face there. The high thin
cheeks, high forehead shaded by coarse dark hair which Jay Allison had
slicked down now heavily rumpled. I still didn't think I looked anything
like the doctor. Our voices were nothing alike either; his had been
pitched rather high, falsetto. My own, as nearly as I could judge, was a
full octave deeper, and more resonant. Yet they issued from the same
vocal chords, unless Forth was having a reasonless, macabre joke.
"Did I honest-to-God study medicine? It's the last thing I'd think
about. It's an honest trade, I guess, but I've never been that
intellectual."
"You--or rather, Jay Allison is a specialist in Darkovan parasitology,
as well as a very competent surgeon." Forth was sitting with his chin in
his hands, watching me intently. He scowled and said, "If anything, the
physical change is more startling than the other. I wouldn't have
recognized you."
"That tallies with me. I don't recognize myself." I added, "--and the
queer thing is, I didn't even _like_ Jay Allison, to put it mildly. If
he--I can't say _he_, can I?"
"I don't know why not. You're no more Jay Allison than I am. For one
thing, you're younger. Ten years younger. I doubt if any of his
friends--if he had any--would recognize you. You--it's ridiculous to go
on calling you Jay_{2}. What should I call you?"
"Why should I care? Call me Jason."
"Suits you," Forth said enigmatically. "Look, then, Jason. I'd like to
give you a few days to readjust to your new personality, but we are
really pressed for time. Can you fly to Carthon tonight? I've
hand-picked a good crew for you, and sent them on ahead. You'll meet
them there. You'll find them competent."
* * * * *
I stared at him. Suddenly the room oppressed me and I found it hard to
breathe. I said in wonder, "You were pretty sure of yourself, weren't
you?"
Forth just looked at me, for what seemed a long time. Then he said, in a
very quiet voice, "No. I wasn't sure at all. But if you didn't turn up,
and I couldn't talk Jay into it, I'd have had to try it myself."
* * * * *
Jason Allison, Junior, was listed on the directory of the Terran HQ as
"Suite 1214, Medical Residence Corridor." I found the rooms without any
trouble, though an elderly doctor stared at me rather curiously as I
barged along the quiet hallway. The suite--bedroom, minuscule
sitting-room, compact bath--depressed me; clean, closed-in and neutral
as the man who owned them, I rummaged them restlessly, trying to find
some scrap of familiarity to indicate that I had lived here for the past
eleven years.
Jay Allison was thirty-four years old. I had given my age, without
hesitation, as 22. There were no obvious blanks in my memory; from the
moment Jay Allison had spoken of the trailmen, my past had rushed back
and stood, complete to yesterday's supper (only had I eaten that supper
twelve years ago)? I remembered my father, a lined silent man who had
liked to fly solitary, taking photograph after photograph from his plane
for the meticulous work of Mapping and Exploration. He'd liked to have
me fly with him and I'd flown over virtually every inch of the planet.
No one else had ever dared fly over the Hellers, except the big
commercial spacecraft that kept to a safe altitude. I vaguely remembered
the crash and the strange hands pulling me out of the wreckage and the
weeks I'd spent, broken-bodied and delirious, gently tended by one of
the red-eyed, twittering women of the trailmen. In all I had spent eight
years in the Nest, which was not a nest at all but a vast sprawling city
built in the branches of enormous trees. With the small and delicate
humanoids who had been my playfellows, I had gathered the nuts and buds
and trapped the small arboreal animals they used for food, taken my
share at weaving clothing from the fibres of parasite plants cultivated
on the stems, and in all those eight years I had set foot on the ground
less than a dozen times, even though I had travelled for miles through
the tree-roads high above the forest floor.
Then the Old-One's painful decision that I was too alien for them, and
the difficult and dangerous journey my trailmen foster-parents and
foster-brothers had undertaken, to help me out of the Hellers and
arrange for me to be taken to the Trade City. After two years of
physically painful and mentally rebellious readjustment to daytime
living, the owl-eyed trailmen saw best, and lived largely, by moonlight,
I had found a niche for myself, and settled down. But all of the later
years (after Jay Allison had taken over, I supposed, from a basic
pattern of memory common to both of us) had vanished into the limbo of
the subconscious.
A bookrack was crammed with large microcards; I slipped one into the
viewer, with a queer sense of spying, and found myself listening
apprehensively to hear that measured step and Jay Allison's falsetto
voice demanding what the hell I was doing, meddling with his
possessions. Eye to the viewer, I read briefly at random, something
about the management of compound fracture, then realized I had
understood exactly three words in a paragraph. I put my fist against my
forehead and heard the words echoing there emptily; "laceration ...
primary efflusion ... serum and lymph ... granulation tissue...." I
presumed that the words meant something and that I once had known what.
But if I had a medical education, I didn't recall a syllable of it. I
didn't know a fracture from a fraction.
In a sudden frenzy of impatience I stripped off the white coat and put
on the first shirt I came to, a crimson thing that hung in the line of
white coats like an exotic bird in snow country. I went back to
rummaging the drawers and bureaus. Carelessly shoved in a pigeonhole I
found another microcard that looked familiar; and when I slipped it
mechanically into the viewer it turned out to be a book on
mountaineering which, oddly enough, I remembered buying as a youngster.
It dispelled my last, lingering doubts. Evidently I had bought it before
the personalities had forked so sharply apart and separated, Jason from
Jay. I was beginning to believe. Not to accept. Just to believe it had
happened. The book looked well-thumbed, and had been handled so much I
had to baby it into the slot of the viewer.
Under a folded pile of clean underwear I found a flat half-empty bottle
of whiskey. I remembered Forth's words that he'd never seen Jay Allison
drink, and suddenly I thought, "The fool!" I fixed myself a drink and
sat down, idly scanning over the mountaineering book.
* * * * *
Not till I'd entered medical school, I suspected, did the two halves of
me fork so strongly apart ... so strongly that there had been days and
weeks and, I suspected, years where Jay Allison had kept me prisoner. I
tried to juggle dates in my mind, looked at a calendar, and got such a
mental jolt that I put it face-down to think about when I was a little
drunker.
I wondered if my detailed memories of my teens and early twenties were
the same memories Jay Allison looked back on. I didn't think so. People
forget and remember selectively. Week by week, then, and year by year,
the dominant personality of Jay had crowded me out; so that the young
rowdy, more than half Darkovan, loving the mountains, half-homesick for
a non-human world, had been drowned in the chilly, austere young medical
student who lost himself in his work. But I, Jason--I had always been
the watcher behind, the person Jay Allison dared not be? Why was he past
thirty--and I just 22?
A ringing shattered the silence; I had to hunt for the intercom on the
bedroom wall. I said, "Who is it?" and an unfamiliar voice demanded,
"Dr. Allison?"
I said automatically, "Nobody here by that name," and started to put
back the mouthpiece. Then I stopped and gulped and asked, "Is that you,
Dr. Forth?"
It was, and I breathed again. I didn't even want to think about what I'd
say if somebody else had demanded to know why in the devil I was
answering Dr. Allison's private telephone. When Forth had finished, I
went to the mirror, and stared, trying to see behind my face the sharp
features of that stranger, _Doctor_ Jason Allison. I delayed, even while
I was wondering what few things I should pack for a trip into the
mountains and the habit of hunting parties was making mental lists about
heat-socks and windbreakers. The face that looked at me was a young
face, unlined and faintly freckled, the same face as always except that
I'd lost my suntan; Jay Allison had kept me indoors too long. Suddenly I
struck the mirror lightly with my fist.
"The hell with you, Dr. Allison," I said, and went to see if he had kept
any clothes fit to pack.
* * * * *
Dr. Forth was waiting for me in the small skyport on the roof, and so
was a small 'copter, one of the fairly old ones assigned to Medical
Service when they were too beat-up for services with higher priority.
Forth took one startled stare at my crimson shirt, but all he said was,
"Hello, Jason. Here's something we've got to decide right away; do we
tell the crew who you really are?"
I shook my head emphatically. "I'm not Jay Allison; I don't want his
name or his reputation. Unless there are men on the crew who know
Allison by sight--"
"Some of them do, but I don't think they'd recognize you."
"Tell them I'm his twin brother," I said humorlessly.
"That wouldn't be necessary. There's not enough resemblance." Forth
raised his head and beckoned to a man who was doing something near the
'copter. He said under his breath, "You'll see what I mean," as the man
approached.
He wore the uniform of Spaceforce--black leather with a little rainbow
of stars on his sleeve meaning he'd seen service on a dozen different
planets, a different colored star for each one. He wasn't a young man,
but on the wrong side of fifty, seamed and burly and huge, with a split
lip and weathered face. I liked his looks. We shook hands and Forth
said, "This is our man, Kendricks. He's called Jason, and he's an expert
on the trailmen. Jason, this is Buck Kendricks."
"Glad to know you, Jason." I thought Kendricks looked at me half a
second more than necessary. "The 'copter's ready. Climb in, Doc--you're
going as far as Carthon, aren't you?"
We put on zippered windbreaks and the 'copter soared noiselessly into
the pale crimson sky. I sat beside Forth, looking down through pale
lilac clouds at the pattern of Darkover spread below me.
"Kendricks was giving me a funny eye, Doc. What's biting him?"
"He has known Jay Allison for eight years," Forth said quietly, "and he
hasn't recognized you yet."
But we let it ride at that, to my great relief, and didn't talk any more
about me at all. As we flew under silent whirring blades, turning our
backs on the settled country which lay near the Trade City, we talked
about Darkover itself. Forth told me about the trailmen's fever and
managed to give me some idea about what the blood fraction was, and why
it was necessary to persuade fifty or sixty of the humanoids to return
with me, to donate blood from which the antibody could be, first
isolated, then synthesised.
It would be a totally unheard-of thing, if I could accomplish it. Most
of the trailmen never touched ground in their entire lives, except when
crossing the passes above the snow line. Not a dozen of them, including
my foster-parents who had so painfully brought me out across Dammerung,
had ever crossed the ring of encircling mountains that walled them away
from the rest of the planet. Humans sometimes penetrated the lower
forests in search of the trailmen. It was one-way traffic. The trailmen
never came in search of _them_.
* * * * *
We talked, too, about some of those humans who had crossed the mountains
into trailmen country--those mountains profanely dubbed the Hellers by
the first Terrans who had tried to fly over them in anything lower or
slower than a spaceship. (The Darkovan name for the Hellers was even
more explicit, and even in translation, unrepeatable.)
"What about this crew you picked? They're not Terrans?"
Forth shook his head. "It would be murder to send anyone recognizably
Terran into the Hellers. You know how the trailmen feel about outsiders
getting into their country." I knew. Forth continued, "Just the same,
there will be two Terrans with you."
"They don't know Jay Allison?" I didn't want to be burdened with
anyone--not anyone--who would know me, or expect me to behave like my
forgotten other self.
"Kendricks knows you," Forth said, "but I'm going to be perfectly
truthful. I never knew Jay Allison well, except in line of work. I know
a lot of things--from the past couple of days--which came out during
the hypnotic sessions, which he'd never have dreamed of telling me, or
anyone else, consciously. And that comes under the heading of a
professional confidence--even from you. And for that reason, I'm sending
Kendricks along--and you're going to have to take the chance he'll
recognize you. Isn't that Carthon down there?"
* * * * *
Carthon lay nestled under the outlying foothills of the Hellers, ancient
and sprawling and squatty, and burned brown with the dust of five
thousand years. Children ran out to stare at the 'copter as we landed
near the city; few planes ever flew low enough to be seen, this near the
Hellers.
Forth had sent his crew ahead and parked them in an abandoned huge place
at the edge of the city which might once have been a warehouse or a
ruined palace. Inside there were a couple of trucks, stripped down to
framework and flatbed like all machinery shipped through space from
Terra. There were pack animals, dark shapes in the gloom. Crates were
stacked up in an orderly untidiness, and at the far end a fire was
burning and five or six men in Darkovan clothing--loose sleeved shirts,
tight wrapped breeches, low boots--were squatting around it, talking.
They got up as Forth and Kendricks and I walked toward them, and Forth
greeted them clumsily, in bad accented Darkovan, then switched to Terran
Standard, letting one of the men translate for him.
Forth introduced me simply as "Jason," after the Darkovan custom, and I
looked the men over, one by one. Back when I'd climbed for fun, I'd
liked to pick my own men; but whoever had picked this crew must have
known his business.
Three were mountain Darkovans, lean swart men enough alike to be
brothers; I learned after a while that they actually were brothers,
Hjalmar, Garin and Vardo. All three were well over six feet, and Hjalmar
stood head and shoulders over his brothers, whom I never learned to tell
apart. The fourth man, a redhead, was dressed rather better than the
others and introduced as Lerrys Ridenow--the double name indicating high
Darkovan aristocracy. He looked muscular and agile enough, but his hands
were suspiciously well-kept for a mountain man, and I wondered how much
experience he'd had.
The fifth man shook hands with me, speaking to Kendricks and Forth as if
they were old friends. "Don't I know you from someplace, Jason?"
He looked Darkovan, and wore Darkovan clothes, but Forth had forewarned
me, and attack seemed the best defense. "Aren't you Terran?"
"My father was," he said, and I understood; a situation not exactly
uncommon, but ticklish on a planet like Darkover. I said carelessly, "I
may have seen you around the HQ. I can't place you, though."
"My name's Rafe Scott. I thought I knew most of the professional guides
on Darkover, but I admit I don't get into the Hellers much," he
confessed. "Which route are we going to take?"
I found myself drawn into the middle of the group of men, accepting one
of the small sweetish Darkovan cigarettes, looking over the plan
somebody had scribbled down on the top of a packing case. I borrowed a
pencil from Rafe and bent over the case, sketching out a rough map of
the terrain I remembered so well from boyhood. I might be bewildered
about blood fractions, but when it came to climbing I knew what I was
doing. Rafe and Lerrys and the Darkovan brothers crowded behind me to
look over the sketch, and Lerrys put a long fingernail on the route I'd
indicated.
"Your elevation's pretty bad here," he said diffidently, "and on the
'Narr campaign the trailmen attacked us here, and it was bad fighting
along those ledges."
I looked at him with new respect; dainty hands or not, he evidently knew
the country. Kendricks patted the blaster on his hip and said grimly,
"But this isn't the 'Narr campaign. I'd like to see any trailmen attack
us while I have this."
"But you're not going to have it," said a voice behind us, a crisp
authoritative voice. "Take off that gun, man!"
Kendricks and I whirled together, to see the speaker; a tall young
Darkovan, still standing in the shadows. The newcomer spoke to me
directly:
"I'm told you are Terran, but that you understand the trailmen. Surely
you don't intend to carry fission or fusion weapons against them?"
And I suddenly realized that we were in Darkovan territory now, and that
we must reckon with the Darkovan horror of guns or of any weapon which
reaches beyond the arm's-length of the man who wields it. A simple
heat-gun, to the Darkovan ethical code, is as reprehensible as a
super-cobalt planetbuster.
Kendricks protested, "We can't travel unarmed through trailmen country!
We're apt to meet hostile bands of the creatures--and they're nasty with
those long knives they carry!"
The stranger said calmly, "I've no objection to you, or anyone else,
carrying a knife for self-defense."
"A _knife_?" Kendricks drew breath to roar. "Listen, you bug-eyed
son-of-a--who do you think you are, anyway?"