* * * * *
My self-possession deserted me. I felt as if I stood, small and reeling,
under a great empty echoing chamber which was Jay Allison's mind, and
that the roof was about to fall in on me. Kyla's image flickered in and
out of focus, first infinitely gentle and appealing, then--as if seen at
the wrong end of a telescope--far away and sharply incised and as remote
and undesirable as any bug underneath a lens.
Her hands closed on my shoulders. I put out a groping hand to push her
away.
"Jason," she implored, "don't--go away from me like that! Talk to me,
tell me!"
But her words reached me through emptiness.... I knew important things
might hang on tomorrow's meeting, Jason alone could come through that
meeting, where the Terrans for some reason put him through this hell and
damnation and torture ... oh, yes ... the trailmen's fever.
Jay Allison pushed the girl's hand away and scowled savagely, trying to
collect his thoughts and concentrate them on what he must say and do, to
convince the trailmen of their duty toward the rest of the planet. As if
they--not even human--could have a sense of duty!
With an unaccustomed surge of emotion, he wished he were with the
others. Kendricks, now. Jay knew, precisely, why Forth had sent the big,
reliable spaceman at his back. And that handsome, arrogant
Darkovan--where was he? Jay looked at the girl in puzzlement; he didn't
want to reveal that he wasn't quite sure of what he was saying or doing,
or that he had little memory of what Jason had been up to.
He started to ask, "Where did the Hastur kid go?" before a vagrant
logical thought told him that such an important guest would have been
lodged with the Old One. Then a wave of despair hit him; Jay realized he
did not even speak the trailmen's language, that it had slipped from his
thoughts completely.
[Illustration: She felt a touch of panic. He was leaving her again.]
"You--" he fished desperately for the girl's name, "Kyla. You don't
speak the trailmen's language, do you?"
"A few words. No more. Why?" She had withdrawn into a corner of the tiny
room--still not far from him--and he wondered remotely what his damned
alter ego had been up to. With Jason, there was no telling. Jay raised
his eyes with a melancholy smile.
"Sit down, child. You needn't be frightened."
"I'm--I'm trying to understand--" the girl touched him again, evidently
trying to conquer her terror. "It isn't easy--when you turn into someone
else under my eyes--" Jay saw that she was shaking in real fright.
He said wearily, "I'm not going to--to turn into a bat and fly away. I'm
just a poor devil of a doctor who's gotten himself into one unholy
mess." There was no reason, he was thinking, to take out his own misery
and despair by shouting at this poor kid. God knew what she'd been
through with his irresponsible other self--Forth had admitted that that
damned "Jason" personality was a blend of all the undesirable traits
he'd fought to smother all his life. By an effort of will he kept
himself from pulling away from her hand on his shoulder.
"Jason, don't--slip away like that! _Think!_ Try to keep hold on
_yourself_!"
Jay propped his head in his hands, trying to make sense of that.
Certainly in the dim light she could not be too conscious of subtle
changes of expression. She evidently thought she was talking to Jason.
She didn't seem to be overly intelligent.
"Think about tomorrow, Jason. What are you going to say to him? Think
about your parents--"
Jay Allison wondered what they would think when they found a stranger
here. He felt like a stranger. Yet he must have come, tonight, into this
house and spoken--he rummaged desperately in his mind for some fragments
of the trailmen's language. He had spoken it as a child. He must recall
enough to speak to the woman who had been a kind foster-mother to her
alien son. He tried to form his lips to the unfamiliar shapes of words...
Jay covered his face with his hands again. Jason was the part of himself
that remembered the trailmen. _That_ was what he had to remember--Jason
was not a hostile stranger, not an alien intruder in his body. Jason was
a lost part of himself and at the moment a damn necessary part. If there
were only some way to get back the Jason memories, skills, without
losing _himself_ ... he said to the girl, "Let me think. Let me--" to
his surprise and horror his voice broke into an alien tongue, "Let me
alone, will you?"
Maybe, Jay thought, I could stay myself if I could remember the rest.
Dr. Forth said: Jason would remember the trailmen with kindness, not
dislike.
Jay searched his memory and found nothing but familiar frustration;
years spent in an alien land, apart from a human heritage, stranded and
abandoned. _My father left me. He crashed the plane and I never saw him
again and I hate him for leaving me ..._
But his father had not abandoned him. He had crashed the plane trying to
save them both. It was no one's fault--
_Except my father's. For trying to fly over the Hellers into a country
where no man belongs ..._
He hadn't belonged. And yet the trailmen, whom he considered little
better than roaming beasts, had taken the alien child into their city,
their homes, their hearts. They had loved him. And he ...
* * * * *
"And I loved them," I found myself saying half aloud, then realized that
Kyla was gripping my arm, looking up imploringly into my face. I shook
my head rather groggily. "What's the matter?"
"You frightened me," she said in a shaky little voice, and I suddenly
knew what had happened. I tensed with savage rage against Jay Allison.
He couldn't even give me the splinter of life I'd won for myself, but
had to come sneaking out of my mind, how he must hate me! Not half as
much as I hated him, damn him! Along with everything else, he'd scared
Kyla half to death!
She was kneeling very close to me, and I realized that there was one way
to fight that cold austere fish of a Jay Allison, send him shrieking
down into hell again. He was a man who hated everything except the cold
world he'd made his life. Kyla's face was lifted, soft and intent and
pleading, and suddenly I reached out and pulled her to me and kissed
her, hard.
"Could a ghost do this?" I demanded, "or this?"
She whispered, "No--oh, no," and her arms went up to lock around my
neck. As I pulled her down on the sweet-smelling moss that carpeted the
chamber, I felt the dark ghost of my other self thin out, vanish and
disappear.
Regis had been right. It had been the only way ...
* * * * *
The Old One was not old at all; the title was purely ceremonial. This
one was young--not much older than I--but he had poise and dignity and
the same strange indefinable quality I had recognized in Regis Hastur.
It was something, I supposed, that the Terran Empire had lost in
spreading from star to star. A feeling of knowing one's own place, a
dignity that didn't demand recognition because it had never lacked for
it.
Like all trailmen he had the chinless face and lobeless ears, the
heavy-haired body which looked slightly less than human. He spoke very
low--the trailmen have very acute hearing--and I had to strain my ears
to listen, and remember to keep my own voice down.
He stretched his hand to me, and I lowered my head over it and murmured,
"I take submission, Old One."
"Never mind that," he said in his gentle twittering voice, "sit down, my
son. You are welcome here, but I feel you have abused our trust in you.
We dismissed you to your own kind because we felt you would be happier
so. Did we show you anything but kindness, that after so many years you
return with armed men?"
The reproof in his red eyes was hardly an auspicious beginning. I said
helplessly, "Old One, the men with me are not armed. A band of
those-who-may-not-enter-cities attacked us, and we defended ourselves. I
travelled with so many men only because I feared to travel the passes
alone."
"But does that explain why you have returned at all?" The reason and
reproach in his voice made sense.
Finally I said, "Old One, we come as suppliants. My people appeal to
your people in the hope that you will be--" I started to say, _as
human_, stopped and amended "--that you will deal as kindly with them as
with me."