"I left it at Carthon," I said truthfully. Then I laid down the law:
"Listen, Buck. If we kill a single trailman, except in hand-to-hand
fight in self-defense, we might as well pack up and go home. We're on a
peaceful mission, and we're begging a favor. Even if we're attacked--we
kill only as a last resort, and in hand-to-hand combat!"
"Damned primitive frontier planet--"
"Would you rather die of the trailmen's disease?"
He said savagely, "We're apt to catch it anyway--here. You're immune,
you don't care, you're safe! The rest of us are on a suicide
mission--and damn it, when I die I want to take a few of those monkeys
with me!"
* * * * *
I bent my head, bit my lip and said nothing. Buck couldn't be blamed for
the way he felt. After a moment I pointed to the notch in the ridge
again. "It's not so far. Once we get through Dammerung, it's easy going
into the trailmen's city. Beyond there, it's all civilized."
"Maybe _you_ call it civilization," Kendricks said, and turned away.
"Come on, let's finish drying our feet."
And at that moment they hit us.
* * * * *
Kendricks' yell was the only warning I had before I was fighting away
something scrabbling up my back. I whirled and ripped the creature away,
and saw dimly that the clearing was filled to the rim with an explosion
of furry white bodies. I cupped my hands and yelled, in the only
trailman dialect I knew, "Hold off! We come in peace!"
One of them yelled something unintelligible and plunged at me--another
tribe! I saw a white-furred, chinless face, contorted in rage, a small
ugly knife--a female! I ripped out my own knife, fending away a savage
slash. Something tore white-hot across the knuckles of my hand; the
fingers went limp and my knife fell, and the trailman woman snatched it
up and made off with her prize, swinging lithely upward into the
treetops.
I searched quickly, gripped with my good hand at the bleeding knuckles,
and found Regis Hastur struggling at the edge of a ledge with a pair of
the creatures. The crazy thought ran through my mind that if they killed
him all Darkover would rise and exterminate the trailmen and it would
all be my fault. Then Regis tore one hand free, and made a curious
motion with his fingers.
It looked like an immense green spark a foot long, or like a fireball.
It exploded in one creature's white face and she gave a wild howl of
terror and anguish, scrabbled blindly at her eyes, and with a despairing
shriek, ran for the shelter of the trees. The pack of trailmen gave a
long formless wail, and then they were gathering, flying, retreating
into the shadows. Rafe yelled something obscene and then a bolt of
bluish flame lanced toward the retreating pack. One of the humanoids
fell without a cry, pitching senseless over the ledge.
I ran toward Rafe, struggling with him for the shocker he had drawn from
its hiding-place inside his shirt. "You blind damned fool!" I cursed
him, "you may have ruined everything--"
"They'd have killed him without it," he retorted wrathfully. He had
evidently failed to see how efficiently Regis defended himself. Rafe
motioned toward the fleeing pack and sneered, "Why don't you go with
your friends?"
With a grip I thought I had forgotten, I got my hand around Rafe's
knuckles and squeezed. His hand went limp and I snatched the shocker and
pitched it over the ledge.
"One word and I'll pitch you after it," I warned. "Who's hurt?"
Garin was blinking senselessly, half-dazed by a blow; Regis' forehead
had been gashed and dripped blood, and Hjalmar's thigh sliced in a clean
cut. My own knuckles were laid bare and the hand was getting numb. It
was a little while before anybody noticed Kyla, crouched over speechless
with pain. She reeled and turned deathly white when we touched her; we
stretched her out where she was, and got her shirt off, and Kendricks
crowded up beside us to examine the wound.
"A clean cut," he said, but I didn't hear. Something had turned over
inside me, like a hand stirring up my brain, and....
* * * * *
Jay Allison looked around with a gasp of sudden vertigo. He was not in
Forth's office, but standing precariously near the edge of a cliff. He
shut his eyes briefly, wondering if he were having one of his worst
nightmares, and opened them on a familiar face.
Buck Kendricks was bone-white, his mouth widening as he said hoarsely,
"Jay! Doctor Allison--for God's sake--"
A doctor's training creates reactions that are almost reflexes; Jay
Allison recovered some degree of sanity as he became aware that someone
was stretched out in front of him, half-naked, and bleeding profusely.
He motioned away the crowding strangers and said in his bad Darkovan,
"Let her alone, this is my work." He didn't know enough words to curse
them away, so he switched to Terran, speaking to Kendricks:
"Buck, get these people away, give the patient some air. Where's my
surgical case?" He bent and probed briefly, realizing only now that the
injured was a woman, and young.
The wound was only a superficial laceration; whatever sharp instrument
had inflicted it, had turned on the costal bone without penetrating lung
tissue. It could have been sutured, but Kendricks handed him only a
badly-filled first-aid kit; so Dr. Allison covered it tightly with a
plastic clip-shield which would seal it from further bleeding, and let
it alone. By the time he had finished, the strange girl had begun to
stir. She said haltingly, "Jason--?"
"Dr. Allison," he corrected tersely, surprised in a minor way--the major
surprise had blurred lesser ones--that she knew his name. Kendricks
spoke swiftly to the girl, in one of the Darkovan languages Jay didn't
understand, and then drew Jay aside, out of earshot. He said in a shaken
voice, "Jay, I didn't know--I wouldn't have believed--you're _Doctor
Allison_? Good Lord--Jason!"
And then he moved fast. "What's the matter? Oh, hell, Jay, don't faint
on me!"
* * * * *
Jay was aware that he didn't come out of it too bravely, but anyone who
blamed him (he thought resentfully) should try it on for size; going to
sleep in a comfortably closed-in office and waking up on a cliff at the
outer edges of nowhere. His hand hurt; he saw that it was bleeding and
flexed it experimentally, trying to determine that no tendons had been
injured. He rapped, "How did this happen?"
"Sir, keep your voice down--or speak Darkovan!"
Jay blinked again. Kendricks was still the only familiar thing in a
strangely vertiginous universe. The Spaceforce man said huskily. "Before
heaven, Jay, I hadn't any idea--and I've known you how long? Eight, nine
years?"
Jay said, "That idiot Forth!" and swore, the colorless profanity of an
indoor man.
Somebody shouted, "Jason!" in an imperative voice, and Kendricks said
shakily, "Jay, if they see you--you literally are not the same man!"
"Obviously not." Jay looked at the tent, one pole still unpitched.
"Anyone in there?"
"Not yet." Kendricks almost shoved him inside. "I'll tell them--I'll
tell them something." He took a radiant from his pocket, set it down and
stared at Allison in the flickering light, and said something profane.
"You'll--you'll be all right here?"
Jay nodded. It was all he could manage. He was keeping a tight hold on
his nerve; if it went, he'd start to rave like a madman. A little time
passed, there were strange noises outside, and then there was a polite
cough and a man walked into the tent.
He was obviously a Darkovan aristocrat and looked vaguely familiar,
though Jay had no conscious memory of seeing him before. Tall and
slender, he possessed that perfect and exquisite masculine beauty
sometimes seen among Darkovans, and he spoke to Jay familiarly but with
surprising courtesy:
"I have told them you are not to be disturbed for a moment, that your
hand is worse than we believed. A surgeon's hands are delicate things,
Doctor Allison, and I hope that yours are not badly injured. Will you
let me look?"
Jay Allison drew back his hand automatically, then, conscious of the
churlishness of the gesture, let the stranger take it in his and look at
the fingers. The man said, "It does not seem serious. I was sure it was
something more than that." He raised grave eyes. "You don't even
remember my name, do you, Dr. Allison?"
"You know who I am?"
"Dr. Forth didn't tell me. But we Hasturs are partly telepathic,
Jason--forgive me--Doctor Allison. I have known from the first that you
were possessed by a god or daemon."
"Superstitious rubbish," Jay snapped. "Typical of a Darkovan!"
"It is a convenient manner of speaking, no more," said the young Hastur,
overlooking the rudeness. "I suppose I could learn your terminology, if
I considered it worth the effort. I have had psi training, and I can
tell the difference when half of a man's soul has driven out the other
half. Perhaps I can restore you to yourself--"
"If you think I'd have some Darkovan freak meddling with my mind--" Jay
began hotly, then stopped. Under Regis' grave eyes, he felt a surge of
unfamiliar humility. This crew of men needed their leader, and obviously
he, Jay Allison, wasn't the leader they needed. He covered his eyes with
one hand.
Regis bent and put a hand on his shoulder, compassionately, but Jay
twitched it off, and his voice, when he found it, was bitter and
defensive and cold.
"All right. The work's the thing. I can't do it, Jason can. You're a
parapsych. If you can switch me off--go right ahead!"
* * * * *
I stared at Regis, passing a hand across my forehead. "What happened?" I
demanded, and in even swifter apprehension, "Where's Kyla? She was
hurt--"
"Kyla's all right," Regis said, but I got up quickly to make sure. Kyla
was outside, lying quite comfortably on a roll of blankets. She was
propped on her elbow drinking something hot, and there was a good smell
of hot food in the air. I stared at Regis and demanded, "I didn't conk
out, did I, from a little scratch like this?" I looked carelessly at my
gashed hand.
"Wait--" Regis held me back, "don't go out just yet. Do you remember
what happened, Doctor Allison?"
I stared in growing horror, my worst fear confirmed. Regis said quietly,
"You--changed. Probably from the shock of seeing--" he stopped in
mid-sentence, and I said, "The last thing I remember is seeing that Kyla
was bleeding, when we got her clothes off. But--good Gods, a little
blood wouldn't scare _me_, and Jay Allison's a surgeon, would it bring
him roaring up like that?"
"I couldn't say." Regis looked as if he knew more than he was telling.
"I don't believe that Dr. Allison--he's not much like you--was very
concerned with Kyla. Are you?"
"Damn right I am. I want to make sure she's all right--" I stopped
abruptly. "Regis--did they all see it?"
"Only Kendricks and I," Regis said, "and we will not speak of it."
I said, "Thanks," and felt his reassuring hand-clasp. Damn it, demigod
or prince, I _liked_ Regis.
I went out and accepted some food from the kettle and sat down between
Kyla and Kendricks to eat. I was shaken, weak with reaction.
Furthermore, I realized that we couldn't stay here. It was too
vulnerable to attack. So, in our present condition, were we. If we could
push on hard enough to get near Dammerung pass tonight, then tomorrow we
could cross it early, before the sun warmed the snow and we had
snowslides and slush to deal with. Beyond Dammerung, I knew the
tribesmen and could speak their language.
I mentioned this, and Kendricks looked doubtfully at Kyla. "Can she
climb?"
"Can she stay here?" I countered. But I went and sat beside her anyhow.
"How badly are you hurt? Do you think you can travel?"
She said fiercely, "Of course I can climb! I tell you, I'm no weak girl,
I'm a free Amazon!" She flung off the blanket somebody had tucked around
her legs. Her lips looked a little pinched, but the long stride was
steady as she walked to the fire and demanded more soup.
We struck the camp in minutes. The trailmen band of raiding females had
snatched up almost everything portable, and there was no sense in
striking and caching the tent; they'd return and hunt it out. If we came
back with a trailmen escort, we wouldn't need it anyway. I ordered them
to leave everything but the lightest gear, and examined each remaining
rucksack. Rations for the night we would spend in the pass, our few
remaining blankets, ropes, sunglasses. Everything else I ruthlessly
ordered left behind.
It was harder going now. For one thing, the sun was lowering, and the
evening wind was icy. Nearly everyone of us had some hurt, slight in
itself, which hindered us in climbing. Kyla was white and rigid, but did
not spare herself; Kendricks was suffering severely from mountain
sickness at this altitude, and I gave him all the help I could, but with
my stiffening slashed hand I wasn't having too easy a time myself.
There was one expanse that was sheer rock-climbing, flattened like bugs
against a wall, scrabbling for hand-holds and footholds. I felt it a
point of pride to lead, and I led; but by the time we had climbed the
thirty-foot wall, and scrambled along a ledge to where we could pick up
the trail again, I was ready to give over. Crowding together on the
ledge, I changed places with the veteran Lerrys, who was better than
most professional climbers.