I stretched my mouth in what was supposed to be a grin and didn't quite
make it. "For the trailmen, this is a superhighway. And no one else ever
comes this way."
Now we climbed slowly over snow; once or twice we had to flounder
through drifts, and once a brief bitter snowstorm blotted out sight for
twenty minutes, while we hugged each other on the ledge, clinging wildly
against wind and icy sleet.
* * * * *
We bivouacked that night in a crevasse blown almost clean of snow, well
above the tree-line, where only scrubby unkillable thornbushes
clustered. We tore down some of them and piled them up as a windbreak,
and bedded beneath it; but we all thought with aching regret of the
comfort of the camp gear we'd abandoned. The going had gotten good and
rough.
That night remains in my mind as one of the most miserable in memory.
Except for the slight ringing in my ears, the height alone did not
bother me, but the others did not fare so well. Most of the men had
blinding headaches, Kyla's slashed side must have given her considerable
pain, and Kendricks had succumbed to mountain-sickness in its most
agonizing form: severe cramps and vomiting. I was desperately uneasy
about all of them, but there was nothing I could do; the only cure for
mountain-sickness is oxygen or a lower altitude, neither of which was
practical.
In the windbreak we doubled up, sharing blankets and body warmth: I took
a last look around the close space before crawling in beside Kendricks,
and saw the girl bedding down slightly apart from the others. I started
to say something, but Kendricks spoke, first. Voicing my thoughts.
"Better crawl in with us, girl." He added, coldly but not unkindly, "you
needn't worry about any funny stuff."
Kyla gave me just the flicker of a grin, and I realized she was
including me on the Darkovan side of a joke against this big man who was
so unaware of Darkovan etiquette. But her voice was cool and curt as she
said, "I'm not worrying," and loosened her heavy coat slightly before
creeping into the nest of blankets between us.
It was painfully cramped, and chilly in spite of the self-heating
blankets; we crowded close together and Kyla's head rested on my
shoulder. I felt her snuggle closely to me, half asleep, hunting for a
warm place; and I found myself very much aware of her closeness,
curiously grateful to her. An ordinary woman would have protested, if
only as a matter of form, sharing blankets with two strange men. I
realized that if Kyla had refused to crawl in with us, she would have
called attention to her sex much _more_ than she did by matter-of-factly
behaving as if she were, in fact, male.
She shivered convulsively, and I whispered, "Side hurting? Are you
cold?"
"A little. It's been a long time since I've been at these altitudes,
too. What it really is--I can't get those women out of my head."
Kendricks coughed, moving uncomfortably. "I don't understand--those
creatures who attacked us--all women--?"
I explained briefly. "Among the people of the Sky, as everywhere, more
females are born than males. But the trailmen's lives are so balanced
that they have no room for extra females within the Nests--the cities.
So when a girl child of the Sky People reaches womanhood, the other
women drive her out of the city with kicks and blows, and she has to
wander in the forest until some male comes after her and claims her and
brings her back as his own. Then she can never be driven forth again,
although if she bears no children she can be forced to be a servant to
his other wives."
Kendricks made a little sound of disgust.
"You think it cruel," Kyla said with sudden passion, "but in the forest
they can live and find their own food; they will not starve or die. Many
of them prefer the forest life to living in the Nests, and they will
fight away any male who comes near them. We who call ourselves human
often make less provision for our spare women."
She was silent, sighing as if with pain. Kendricks made no reply except
a non-committal grunt. I held myself back by main force from touching
Kyla, remembering what she was, and finally said, "We'd better quit
talking. The others want to sleep, if we don't."
* * * * *
After a time I heard Kendricks snoring, and Kyla's quiet even breaths. I
wondered drowsily how Jay would have felt about this situation--he who
hated Darkover and avoided contact with every other human being, crowded
between a Darkovan free-Amazon and half a dozen assorted roughnecks. I
turned the thought off, fearing it might somehow re-arouse him in his
brain.
But I had to think of something, anything to turn aside this
consciousness of the woman's head against my chest, her warm breath
coming and going against my bare neck. Only by the severest possible act
of will did I keep myself from slipping my hand over her breasts, warm
and palpable through the thin sweater, I wondered why Forth had called
me undisciplined. I couldn't risk my leadership by making advances to
our contracted guide--woman, Amazon or whatever!
Somehow the girl seemed to be the pivot point of all my thoughts. She
was not part of the Terran HQ, she was not part of any world Jay Allison
might have known. She belonged wholly to Jason, to my world. Between
sleep and waking, I lost myself in a dream of skimming flight-wise along
the tree roads, chasing the distant form of a girl driven from the Nest
that day with blows and curses. Somewhere in the leaves I would find her
... and we would return to the city, her head garlanded with the red
leaves of a chosen-one, and the same women who had stoned her forth
would crowd about and welcome her when she returned. The fleeing woman
looked over her shoulder with Kyla's eyes; and then the woman's form
muted and Dr. Forth was standing between us in the tree-road, with the
caduceus emblem on his coat stretched like a red staff between us.
Kendricks in his Spaceforce uniform was threatening us with a blaster,
and Regis Hastur was suddenly wearing Space Service uniform too and
saying, "Jay Allison, Jay Allison," as the tree-road splintered and
cracked beneath our feet and we were tumbling down the waterfall and
down and down and down....
"Wake up!" Kyla whispered, and dug an elbow into my side. I opened my
eyes on crowded blackness, grasping at the vanishing nightmare. "What's
the matter?"
"You were moaning. Touch of altitude sickness?"
I grunted, realized my arm was around her shoulder, and pulled it
quickly away. After awhile I slept again, fitfully.
* * * * *
Before light we crawled wearily out of the bivouac, cramped and stiff
and not rested, but ready to get out of this and go on. The snow was
hard, in the dim light, and the trail not difficult here. After all the
trouble on the lower slopes, I think even the amateurs had lost their
desire for adventurous climbing; we were all just as well pleased that
the actual crossing of Dammerung should be an anticlimax and uneventful.
The sun was just rising when we reached the pass, and we stood for a
moment, gathered close together, in the narrow defile between the great
summits to either side.
Hjalmar gave the peaks a wistful look.
"Wish we could climb them."
Regis grinned at him companionably. "Sometime--and you have the word of
a Hastur, you'll be along on that expedition." The big fellows' eyes
glowed. Regis turned to me, and said warmly, "What about it, Jason? A
bargain? Shall we all climb it together, next year?"
I started to grin back and then some bleak black devil surged up in me,
raging. When this was over, I'd suddenly realized, I wouldn't be there.
I wouldn't be anywhere. I was a surrogate, a substitute, a splinter of
Jay Allison, and when it was over, Forth and his tactics would put me
back into what they considered my rightful place--which was nowhere. I'd
never climb a mountain except now, when we were racing against time and
necessity. I set my mouth in an unaccustomed narrow line and said,
"We'll talk about that when we get back--if we ever do. Now I suggest we
get going. Some of us would like to get down to lower altitudes."
The trail down from Dammerung inside the ridge, unlike the outside
trail, was clear and well-marked, and we wound down the slope, walking
in easy single file. As the mist thinned and we left the snow-line
behind, we saw what looked like a great green carpet, interspersed with
shining colors which were mere flickers below us. I pointed them out.
"The treetops of the North Forest--and the colors you see are in the
streets of the Trailcity."
An hour's walking brought us to the edge of the forest. We travelled
swiftly now, forgetting our weariness, eager to reach the city before
nightfall. It was quiet in the forest, almost ominously still. Over our
head somewhere, in the thick branches which in places shut out the
sunlight completely, I knew that the tree-roads ran crisscross, and now
and again I heard some rustle, a fragment of sound, a voice, a snatch of
song.
"It's so dark down here," Rafe muttered, "anyone living in this forest
would _have_ to live in the treetops, or go totally blind!"
Kendricks whispered to me, "Are we being followed? Are they going to
jump us?"
"I don't think so. What you hear are just the inhabitants of the
city--going about their daily business up there."
"Queer business it must be," Regis said curiously, and as we walked
along the mossy, needly forest floor, I told him something of the
trailmen's lives. I had lost my fear. If anyone came at us now, I could
speak their language, I could identify myself, tell my business, name my
foster-parents. Some of my confidence evidently spread to the others.
But as we came into more and more familiar territory, I stopped abruptly
and struck my hand against my forehead.
"I knew we had forgotten something!" I said roughly, "I've been away
from here too long, that's all. Kyla."
"What about Kyla?"
The girl explained it herself, in her expressionless monotone. "I am an
unattached female. Such women are not permitted in the Nests."
"That's easy, then," Lerrys said. "She must belong to one of us." He
didn't add a syllable. No one could have expected it; Darkovan
aristocrats don't bring their women on trips like this, and their women
are not like Kyla.
The three brothers broke into a spate of volunteering, and Rafe made an
obscene suggestion. Kyla scowled obstinately, her mouth tight with what
could have been embarrassment or rage. "If you believe I need your
protection--!"
"Kyla," I said tersely, "is under _my_ protection. She will be
introduced as my woman--and treated as such."
Rafe twisted his mouth in an un-funny smile. "I see the leader keeps all
the best for himself?"
My face must have done something I didn't know about, for Rafe backed
slowly away. I forced myself to speak slowly: "Kyla is a guide, and
indispensable. If anything happens to me, she is the only one who can
lead you back. Therefore her safety is my personal affair. Understand?"
* * * * *
As we went along the trail, the vague green light disappeared. "We're
right below the Trailcity," I whispered, and pointed upward. All around
us the Hundred Trees rose, branchless pillars so immense that four men,
hands joined, could not have encircled one with their arms. They
stretched upward for some three hundred feet, before stretching out
their interweaving branches; above that, nothing was visible but
blackness.
Yet the grove was not dark, but lighted with the startlingly brilliant
phosphorescence of the fungi growing on the trunks, and trimmed into
bizarre ornamental shapes. In cages of transparent fibre, glowing
insects as large as a hand hummed softly and continuously.
As I watched, a trailman--quite naked except for an ornate hat and a
narrow binding around the loins--descended the trunk. He went from cage
to cage, feeding the glow-worms with bits of shining fungus from a
basket on his arm.
I called to him in his own language, and he dropped the basket, with an
exclamation, his spidery thin body braced to flee or to raise an alarm.
"But I belong to the Nest," I called to him, and gave him the names of
my foster-parents. He came toward me, gripping my forearm with warm long
fingers in a gesture of greeting.
"Jason? Yes, I hear them speak of you," he said in his gentle twittering
voice, "you are at home. But those others--?" He gestured nervously at
the strange faces.
"My friends," I assured him, "and we come to beg the Old One for an
audience. For tonight I seek shelter with my parents, if they will
receive us."
He raised his head and called softly, and a slim child bounded down the
trunk and took the basket. The trailman said, "I am Carrho. Perhaps it
would be better if I guided you to your foster-parents, so you will not
be challenged."
I breathed more freely. I did not personally recognize Carrho, but he
looked pleasantly familiar. Guided by him, we climbed one by one up the
dark stairway inside the trunk, and emerged into the bright square,
shaded by the topmost leaves into a delicate green twilight. I felt
weary and successful.
Kendricks stepped gingerly on the swaying, jiggling floor of the square.
It gave slightly at every step, and Kendricks swore morosely in a
language that fortunately only Rafe and I understood. Curious trailmen
flocked to the street and twittered welcome and surprise.
* * * * *
Rafe and Kendricks betrayed considerable contempt when I greeted my
foster-parents affectionately. They were already old, and I was saddened
to see it; their fur graying, their prehensile toes and fingers crooked
with a rheumatic complaint of some sort, their reddish eyes bleared and
rheumy. They welcomed me, and made arrangements for the others in my
party to be housed in an abandoned house nearby ... they had insisted
that I, of course, must return to their roof, and Kyla, of course, had
to stay with me.
"Couldn't we camp on the ground instead?" Kendricks asked, eying the
flimsy shelter with distaste.
"It would offend our hosts," I said firmly. I saw nothing wrong with it.
Roofed with woven bark, carpeted with moss which was planted on the
floor, the place was abandoned, somewhat a bit musty, but weathertight
and seemed comfortable to me.
The first thing to be done was to despatch a messenger to the Old One,
begging the favor of an audience with him. That done, (by one of my
foster-brothers), we settled down to a meal of buds, honey, insects and
birds eggs! It tasted good to me, with the familiarity of food eaten in
childhood, but among the others, only Kyla ate with appetite and Regis
Hastur with interested curiosity.
* * * * *
After the demands of hospitality had been satisfied, my foster-parents
asked the names of my party, and I introduced them one by one. When I
named Regis Hastur, it reduced them to brief silence, and then to an
outcry; gently but firmly, they insisted that their home was unworthy to
shelter the son of a Hastur, and that he must be fittingly entertained
at the Royal Nest of the Old One.
There was no gracious way for Regis to protest, and when the messenger
returned, he prepared to accompany him. But before leaving, he drew me
aside:
"I don't much like leaving the rest of you--"
"You'll be safe enough."
"It's not that I'm worried about, Dr. Allison."
"Call me Jason," I corrected angrily. Regis said, with a little
tightening of his mouth, "That's it. You'll have to be Dr. Allison
tomorrow when you tell the Old One about your mission. But you have to
be the Jason he knows, too."
"So--?"
"I wish I needn't leave here. I wish you were--going to stay with the
men who know you only as Jason, instead of being alone--or only with
Kyla."
There was something odd in his face, and I wondered at it. Could he--a
Hastur--be jealous of Kyla? Jealous of _me_? It had never occurred to me
that he might be somehow attracted to Kyla. I tried to pass it off
lightly:
"Kyla might divert me."
Regis said without emphasis, "Yet she brought Dr. Allison back once
before." Then, surprisingly, he laughed. "Or maybe you're right. Maybe
Kyla will--scare away Dr. Allison if he shows up."
* * * * *
The coals of the dying fire laid strange tints of color on Kyla's face
and shoulders and the wispy waves of her dark hair. Now that we were
alone, I felt constrained.
"Can't you sleep, Jason?"
I shook my head. "Better sleep while you can." I felt that this night
of all nights I dared not close my eyes or when I woke I would have
vanished into the Jay Allison I hated. For a moment I saw the room with
his eyes; to him it would not seem cosy and clean, but--habituated to
white sterile tile, Terran rooms and corridors--dirty and unsanitary as
any beast's den.
Kyla said broodingly, "You're a strange man, Jason. What sort of man are
you--in Terra's world?"
I laughed, but there was no mirth in it. Suddenly I had to tell her the
whole truth:
"Kyla, the man you know as me doesn't exist. I was created for this one
specific task. Once it's finished, so am I."
She started, her eyes widening. "I've heard tales of--of the Terrans and
their sciences--that they make men who aren't real, men of metal--not
bone and flesh--"
Before the dawning of that naive horror I quickly held out my bandaged
hand, took her fingers in mine and ran them over it. "Is this metal? No,
no, Kyla. But the man you know as Jason--I won't be him, I'll be someone
different--" How could I explain a subsidiary personality to Kyla, when
I didn't understand it myself?
She kept my fingers in hers softly and said, "I saw--someone
else--looking from your eyes at me once. A ghost."