I explained. I told it badly, stumbling, not knowing the technical
terms, knowing they had no equivalents anyway in the trailmen's
language. He listened, asking a penetrating question now and again. When
I mentioned the Terran Legate's offer to recognize the trailmen as a
separate and independent government, he frowned and rebuked me:
"We of the Sky People have no dealings with the Terrans, and care
nothing for their recognition--or its lack."
For that I had no answer, and the Old One continued, kindly but
indifferently, "We do not like to think that the fever which is a
children's little sickness with us shall kill so many of your kind. But
you cannot in all honesty blame us. You cannot say that we spread the
disease; we never go beyond the mountains. Are we to blame that the
winds change or the moons come together in the sky? When the time has
come for men to die, they die." He stretched his hand in dismissal. "I
will give your men safe-conduct to the river, Jason. Do not return."
Regis Hastur rose suddenly and faced him. "Will you hear me, Father?" He
used the ceremonial title without hesitation, and the Old One said in
distress, "The son of Hastur need never speak as a suppliant to the Sky
People!"
"Nevertheless, hear me as a suppliant, Father," Regis said quietly. "It
is not the strangers and aliens of Terra who are pleading. We have
learned one thing from the strangers of Terra, which you have not yet
learned. I am young and it is not fitting that I should teach you, but
you have said; are we to blame that the moons come together in the sky?
No. But we have learned from the Terrans not to blame the moons in the
sky for our own ignorance of the ways of the Gods--by which I mean the
ways of sickness or poverty or misery."
"These are strange words for a Hastur," said the Old One, displeased.
"These are strange times for a Hastur," said Regis loudly. The Old One
winced, and Regis moderated his tone, but continued vehemently, "You
blame the moons in the sky. _I_ say the moons are not to blame--nor the
winds--nor the Gods. The Gods send these things to men to test their
wits and to find if they have the will to master them!"
* * * * *
The Old One's forehead ridged vertically and he said with stinging
contempt, "Is this the breed of king which men call Hastur now?"
"Man or God or Hastur, I am not too proud to plead for my people,"
retorted Regis, flushing with anger. "Never in all the history of
Darkover has a Hastur stood before one of you and begged--"
"--for the men from another world."
"--for all men on our world! Old One, I could sit and keep state in the
House of the Hasturs, and even death could not touch me until I grew
weary of living! But I preferred to learn new lives from new men. The
Terrans have something to teach even the Hasturs, and they can learn a
remedy against the trailmen's fever." He looked round at me, turning the
discussion over to me again, and I said:
"I am no alien from another world, Old One. I have been a son in your
house. Perhaps I was sent to teach you to fight destiny. I cannot
believe you are indifferent to death."
Suddenly, hardly knowing what I was going to do until I found myself on
my knees, I knelt and looked up into the quiet stern remote face of the
nonhuman:
"My father," I said, "you took a dying man and a dying child from a
burning plane. Even those of their own kind might have stripped their
corpses and left them to die. You saved the child, fostered him and
treated him as a son. When he reached an age to be unhappy with you, you
let a dozen of your people risk their lives to take him to his own. You
cannot ask me to believe that you are indifferent to the death of a
million of my people, when the fate of one could stir your pity!"
* * * * *
There was a moment's silence. Finally the Old One said,
"Indifferent--no. But helpless. My people die when they leave the
mountains. The air is too rich for them. The food is wrong. The light
blinds and tortures them. Can I send them to suffer and die, those
people who call me father?"
And a memory, buried all my life, suddenly surfaced. I said urgently,
"Father, listen. In the world I live in now, I am called a wise man. You
need not believe me, but listen; I know your people, they are my people.
I remember when I left you, more than a dozen of my foster-parents'
friends offered, knowing they risked death, to go with me. I was a
child; I did not realize the sacrifice they made. But I watched them
suffer, as we went lower in the mountains, and I resolved ... I resolved
..." I spoke with difficulty, forcing the words through a reluctant
barricade, "... that since others had suffered so for me ... I would
spend my life in curing the sufferings of others. Father, the Terrans
call me a wise doctor, a man of healing. Among the Terrans I can see
that my people, if they will come to us and help us, have air they can
breathe and food which will suit them and that they are guarded from the
light. I don't ask you to send anyone, father. I ask only--tell your
sons what I have told you. If I know your people--who are my people
forever--hundreds of them will offer to return with me. And you may
witness what your foster-son has sworn here; if one of your sons dies,
your alien son will answer for it with his own life."
The words had poured from me in a flood. They were not all mine; some
unconscious thing had recalled in me that Jay Allison had power to make
these promises. For the first time I began to see what force, what
guilt, what dedication working in Jay Allison had turned him aside from
me. I remained at the Old One's feet, kneeling, overcome, ashamed of the
thing I had become. Jay Allison was worth ten of me. Irresponsible,
Forth had said. Lacking purpose, lacking balance. What right had I to
despise my soberer self?
At last I felt the Old One touch my head lightly.
"Get up, my son," he said, "I will answer for my people. And forgive me
for my doubts and my delays."
* * * * *
Neither Regis nor I spoke for a minute after we left the audience room;
then, almost as one, we turned to each other. Regis spoke first,
soberly.
"It was a fine thing you did, Jason. I didn't believe he'd agree to it."
"It was your speech that did it," I denied. The sober mood, the
unaccustomed surge of emotion, was still on me, but it was giving way to
a sudden upswing of exaltation. Damn it, I'd _done_ it! Let Jay Allison
try to match _that_ ...
Regis still looked grave. "He'd have refused, but you appealed to him as
one of themselves. And yet it wasn't quite that ... it was something
more ..." Regis put a quick embarrassed arm around my shoulders and
suddenly blurted out, "I think the Terran Medical played hell with your
life, Jason! And even if it saves a million lives--it's hard to forgive
them for that!"
* * * * *
Late the next day the Old One called us in again, and told us that a
hundred men had volunteered to return with us and act as blood donors
and experimental subjects for research into the trailmen's disease.
The trip over the mountains, so painfully accomplished was easier in
return. Our escort of a hundred trailmen guaranteed us against attack,
and they could choose the easiest paths.
Only as we undertook the long climb downward through the foothills did
the trailmen, un-used to ground travel at any time, and suffering from
the unaccustomed low altitude, begin to weaken. As we grew stronger,
more and more of them faltered, and we travelled more and more slowly.
Not even Kendricks could be callous about "inhuman animals" by the time
we reached the point where we had left the pack animals. And it was Rafe
Scott who came to me and said desperately, "Jason, these poor fellows
will never make it to Carthon. Lerrys and I know this country. Let us go
ahead, as fast as we can travel alone, and arrange at Carthon for
transit--maybe we can get pressurized aircraft to fly them from here. We
can send a message from Carthon, too, about accommodations for them at
the Terran HQ."
I was surprised and a little guilty that I had not thought of this
myself. I covered it with a mocking, "I thought you didn't give a damn
about 'any of my friends.'"
Rafe said doggedly, "I guess I was wrong about that. They're going
through this out of a sense of duty, so they must be pretty different
than I thought they were."
Regis, who had overheard Rafe's plan, now broke in quietly, "There's no
need for you to travel ahead, Rafe. I can send a quicker message."
I had forgotten that Regis was a trained telepath. He added, "There are
some space and distance limitations to such messages, but there is a
regular relay net all over Darkover, and one of the relays is a girl who
lives at the very edge of the Terran Zone. _If_ you'll tell me what will
give her access to the Terran HQ--" he flushed slightly and explained,
"from what I know of the Terrans, she would not be very fortunate
relaying the message if she merely walked to the gate and said she had a
relayed telepathic message for someone, would she?"
I had to smile at the picture that conjured up in my mind. "I'm afraid
not," I admitted. "Tell her to go to Dr. Forth, and give the message
from Dr. Jason Allison."
Regis looked at me curiously--it was the first time I had spoken my own
name in the hearing of the others. But he nodded, without comment. For
the next hour or two he seemed somewhat more pre-occupied than usual,
but after a time he came to me and told me that the message had gone
through. Sometime later he relayed an answer; that airlift would be
waiting for us, not at Carthon, but a small village near the ford of the
Kadarin where we had left our trucks.
When we camped that night there were a dozen practical problems needing
attention; the time and exact place of crossing the ford, the
reassurance to be given to terrified trailmen who could face leaving
their forests but not crossing the final barricade of the river, the
small help in our power to be given the sick ones. But after everything
had been done that I could do, and after the whole camp had quieted
down, I sat before the low-burning fire and stared into it, deep in
painful lassitude. Tomorrow we would cross the river and a few hours
later we would be back in the Terran HQ. And then....
And then ... and then nothing. I would vanish, I would utterly cease to
exist anywhere, except as a vagrant ghost troubling Jay Allison's
unquiet dreams. As he moved through the cold round of his days I would
be no more than a spent wind, a burst bubble, a thinned cloud.
The rose and saffron of the dying fire-colors gave shape to my dreams.
Once more, as in the trailcity that night, Kyla slipped through
firelight to my side, and I looked up at her and suddenly I knew I could
not bear it. I pulled her to me and muttered, "Oh, Kyla--Kyla, I won't
even remember you!"
She pushed my hands away, kneeling upright, and said urgently, "Jason,
listen. We are close to Carthon, the others can lead them the rest of
the way. Why go back to them at all? Slip away now and never go back! We
can--" she stopped, coloring fiercely, that sudden and terrifying
shyness overcoming her again, and at last she said in a whisper,
"Darkover is a wide world, Jason. Big enough for us to hide in. I don't
believe they would search very far."
They wouldn't. I could leave word with Kendricks--not with Regis, the
telepath would see through me immediately--that I had ridden ahead to
Carthon, with Kyla. By the time they realized that I had fled, they
would be too concerned with getting the trailmen safely to the Terran
Zone to spend much time looking for a runaway. As Kyla said, the world
was wide. And it was my world. And I would not be alone in it.
"Kyla, Kyla," I said helplessly, and crushed her against me, kissing
her. She closed her eyes and I took a long, long look at her face. Not
beautiful, no. But womanly and brave and all the other beautiful things.
It was a farewell look, and I knew it, if she didn't.
After the briefest time, she pulled a little away, and her flat voice
was gentler and more breathless than usual. "We'd better leave before
the others waken." She saw that I did not move. "Jason--?"
I could not look at her. Muffled behind my hands, I said, "No, Kyla.
I--I promised the Old One to look after my people in the Terran world. I
must go back--"
"You won't be _there_ to look after them! You won't be _you_!"
I said bleakly, "I'll write a letter to remind myself. Jay Allison has a
very strong sense of duty. He'll look after them for me. He won't like
it, but he'll do it, with his last breath. He's a better man than I am,
Kyla. You'd better forget about me." I said, wearily, "I never existed."
That wasn't the end. Not nearly. She--begged, and I don't know why I put
myself through the hell of stubbornness. But in the end she ran away,
crying, and I threw myself down by the fire, cursing Forth, cursing my
own folly, but most of all cursing Jay Allison, hating my other self
with a blistering, sickening rage.
* * * * *
Coming through the outskirts of the small village the next afternoon,
the village where the airlift would meet us, we noted that the poorer
quarter was almost abandoned. Regis said bleakly, "It's begun," and
dropped out of line to stand in the doorway of a silent dwelling. After
a minute he beckoned to me, and I looked inside.
I wished I hadn't. The sight would haunt me while I lived. An old man,
two young women and half a dozen children between four and fifteen years
old lay inside. The old man, one of the children, and one of the young
women were laid out neatly in clean death, shrouded, their faces covered
with green branches after the Darkovan custom for the dead. The other
young woman lay huddled near the fireplace, her coarse dress splattered
with the filthy stuff she had vomited, dying. The children--but even now
I can't think of the children without retching. One, very small, had
been in the woman's arms when she collapsed; it had squirmed free--for a
little while. The others were in an indescribable condition and the
worst of it was that one of them was still moving, feebly, long past
help. Regis turned blindly from the door and leaned against the wall,
his shoulders heaving. Not, as I first thought, in disgust, but in
grief. Tears ran over his hands and spilled down, and when I took him by
the arm to lead him away, he reeled and fell against me.
He said in a broken, blurred, choking voice, "Oh, Lord, Jason, those
children, those children--if you ever had any doubts about what you're
doing, any doubts about what you've done, think about that, think that
you've saved a whole world from that, think that you've done something
even the Hasturs couldn't do!"
My own throat tightened with something more than embarrassment. "Better
wait till we know for sure whether the Terrans can carry through with
it, and you'd better get to hell away from this doorway. I'm immune, but
damn it, you're not." But I had to take him and lead him away, like a
child, from that house. He looked up into my face and said with burning
sincerity, "I wonder if you believe I'd give my life, a dozen times
over, to have done that?"
It was a curious, austere reward. But vaguely it comforted me. And then,
as we rode into the village itself, I lost myself, or tried to lose
myself, in reassuring the frightened trailmen who had never seen a city
on the ground, never seen or heard of an airplane. I avoided Kyla. I
didn't want a final word, a farewell. We had had our farewells already.
* * * * *
Forth had done a marvelous job of having quarters ready for the
trailmen, and after they were comfortably installed and reassured, I
went down wearily and dressed in Jay Allison's clothing. I looked out
the window at the distant mountains and a line from the book on
mountaineering, which I had bought as a youngster in an alien world, and
Jay had kept as a stray fragment of personality, ran in violent conflict
through my mind:
_Something hidden--go and find it_ ...
_Something lost beyond the ranges_ ...
* * * * *
I had just begun to live. Surely I deserved better than this, to vanish
when I had just discovered life. Did the man who did not know how to
live, deserve to live at all? Jay Allison--that cold man who had never
looked beyond any ranges--why should I be lost in him?
Something lost beyond the ranges ... nothing would be lost but myself. I
was beginning to loathe the overflown sense of duty which had brought me
back here. Now, when it was too late, I was bitterly regretting ... Kyla
had offered me life. Surely I would never see Kyla again.
Could I regret what I would never remember? I walked into Forth's office
as if I were going to my doom. I _was_ ...
Forth greeted me warmly.
"Sit down and tell me all about it ..." he insisted. I would rather not
speak. Instead, compulsively, I made it a full report ... and curious
flickers came in and out of my consciousness as I spoke. By the time I
realized I was reacting to a post-hypnotic suggestion, that in fact I
was going under hypnosis again, it was too late and I could only think
that this was worse than death because in a way I would be alive ...
* * * * *
Jay Allison sat up and meticulously straightened his cuff before
tightening his mouth in what was meant for a smile. "I assume, then,
that the experiment was a success?"
"A complete success." Forth's voice was somewhat harsh and annoyed, but
Jay was untroubled; he had known for years that most of his subordinates
and superiors disliked him, and had long ago stopped worrying about it.
"The trailmen agreed?"
"They agreed," Forth said, surprised. "You don't remember anything at
all?"
"Scraps. Like a nightmare." Jay Allison looked down at the back of his
hand, flexing the fingers cautiously against pain, touching the
partially healed red slash. Forth followed the direction of his eyes and
said, not unsympathetically, "Don't worry about your hand. I looked at
it pretty carefully. You'll have the total use of it."
Jay said rigidly, "It seems to have been a pretty severe risk to take.
Did you ever stop to think what it would have meant to me, to lose the
use of my hand?"
"It seemed a justifiable risk, even if you had," Forth said dryly. "Jay,
I've got the whole story on tape, just as you told it to me. You might
not like having a blank spot in your memory. Want to hear what your
alter ego did?"
Jay hesitated. Then he unfolded his long legs and stood up. "No, I don't
think I care to know." He waited, arrested by a twinge of a sore muscle,
and frowned.
What had happened, what would he never know, why did the random ache
bring a pain deeper than the pain of a torn nerve? Forth was watching
him, and Jay asked irritably, "What is it?"
"You're one hell of a cold fish, Jay."
"I don't understand you, sir."
"You wouldn't," Forth muttered. "Funny. I _liked_ your subsidiary
personality."
Jay's mouth contracted in a mirthless grin.
"You would," he said, and swung quickly round.
"Come on. If I'm going to work on that serum project I'd better inspect
the volunteers and line up the blood donors and look over old
whatshisname's papers."
But beyond the window the snowy ridges of the mountain, inscrutable,
caught and held his eye; a riddle and a puzzle--
"Ridiculous," he said, and went to his work.
* * * * *
Four months later, Jay Allison and Randall Forth stood together,
watching the last of the disappearing planes, carrying the volunteers
back toward Carthon and their mountains.
"I should have flown back to Carthon with them," Jay said moodily. Forth
watched the tall man stare at the mountain; wondered what lay behind the
contained gestures and the brooding.
He said, "You've done enough, Jay. You've worked like the devil.
Thurmond--the Legate--sent down to say you'd get an official
commendation and a promotion for your part. That's not even mentioning
what you did in the trailmen's city." He put a hand on his colleague's
shoulder, but Jay shook it off impatiently.
All through the work of isolating and testing the blood fraction, Jay
had worked tirelessly and unsparingly; scarcely sleeping, but brooding;
silent, prone to fly into sudden savage rages, but painstaking. He had
overseen the trailmen with an almost fatherly solicitude--but from a
distance. He had left no stone unturned for their comfort--but refused
to see them in person except when it was unavoidable.
Forth thought, we played a dangerous game. Jay Allison had made his own
adjustment to life, and we disturbed that balance. Have we wrecked the
man? He's expendable, but damn it, what a loss! He asked, "Well, why
_didn't_ you fly back to Carthon with them? Kendricks went along, you
know. He expected you to go until the last minute."
Jay did not answer. He had avoided Kendricks, the only witness to his
duality. In all his nightmare brooding, the avoidance of anyone who had
known him as Jason became a mania. Once, meeting Rafe Scott on the lower
floor of the HQ, he had turned frantically and plunged like a madman
through halls and corridors, to avoid coming face to face with the man,
finally running up four flights of stairs and taking shelter in his
rooms, with the pounding heart and bursting veins of a hunted criminal.
At last he said, "If you've called me down here to read me the riot act
about not wanting to make another trip into the Hellers--!"
"No, no," Forth said equably, "there's a visitor coming. Regis Hastur
sent word he wants to see you. In case you don't remember him, he was on
Project Jason--"
"I remember," Jay said grimly. It was nearly his one clear memory--the
nightmare of the ledge, his slashed hand, the shameful naked body of the
Darkovan woman, and--blurring these things, the too-handsome Darkovan
aristocrat who had banished him for Jason again. "He's a better
psychiatrist than you are, Forth. He changed me into Jason in the
flicker of an eyelash, and it took you half a dozen hypnotic sessions."
"I've heard about the psi powers of the Hasturs," Forth said, "but I've
never been lucky enough to meet one in person. Tell me about it. What
did he do?"
* * * * *
Jay made a tight movement of exasperation, too controlled for a shrug.
"Ask him, why don't you. Look, Forth, I don't much care to see him. I
didn't do it for Darkover; I did it because it was my job. I'd prefer to
forget the whole thing. Why don't you talk to him?"
"I rather had the idea that he wanted to see you personally. Jay, you
did a tremendous thing, man! Damn it, why don't you strut a little?
Be--be normal for once! Why, I'd be damned near bursting with pride if
one of the Hasturs insisted on congratulating me personally!"
Jay's lip twitched, and his voice shook with controlled exasperation.
"Maybe you would. I don't see it that way."
"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to. On Darkover nobody refuses when the
Hasturs make a request--and certainly not a request as reasonable as
this one." Forth sat down beside the desk. Jay struck the woodwork with
a violent clenched fist and when he lowered his hand there was a tiny
smear of blood along his knuckles. After a minute he walked to the couch
and sat down, very straight and stiff, saying nothing. Neither of the
men spoke again until Forth started at the sound of a buzzer, drew the
mouthpiece toward him, and said, "Tell him we are honored--you know the
routine for dignitaries, and send him up here."
Jay twisted his fingers together and ran his thumb, in a new gesture,
over the ridge of scar tissue along the knuckles. Forth was aware of an
entirely new quality in the silence, and started to speak to break it,
but before he could do so, the office door slid open on its silent beam,
and Regis Hastur stood there.
Forth rose courteously and Jay got to his feet like a mechanical doll
jerked on strings. The young Darkovan ruler smiled engagingly at him:
"Don't bother, this visit is informal; that's the reason I came here
rather than inviting you both to the Tower. Dr. Forth? It is a pleasure
to meet you again, sir. I hope that our gratitude to you will soon take
a more tangible form. There has not been a single death from the
trailmen's fever since you made the serum available."
Jay, motionless, saw bitterly that the old man had succumbed to the
youngster's deliberate charm. The chubby, wrinkled old face seamed up in
a pleased smile as Forth said, "The gifts sent to the trailmen in your
name, Lord Hastur, were greatly welcomed."
"Do you think that any of us will ever forget what they have done?"
Regis replied. He turned toward the window and smiled rather tentatively
at the man who stood there; motionless since his first conventional
gesture of politeness:
"Dr. Allison, do you remember me at all?"
"I remember you," Jay Allison said sullenly.
His voice hung heavy in the room, its sound a miasma in his ears. All
his sleepless, nightmare-charged brooding, all his bottled hate for
Darkover and the memories he had tried to bury, erupted into
overwrought bitterness against this too-ingratiating youngster who was
a demigod on this world and who had humiliated him, repudiated him for
the hated Jason ... for Jay, Regis had suddenly become the symbol of a
world that hated him, forced him into a false mold.
A black and rushing wind seemed to blur the room. He said hoarsely, "I
remember you all right," and took one savage, hurtling step.
The weight of the unexpected blow spun Regis around, and the next moment
Jay Allison, who had never touched another human being except with the
remote hands of healing, closed steely, murderous hands around Regis'
throat. The world thinned out into a crimson rage. There were shouting
and sudden noises, and a red-hot explosion in his brain ...
* * * * *
"You'd better drink this," Forth remarked, and I realized I was turning
a paper cup in my hands. Forth sat down, a little weakly, as I raised it
to my lips and sipped. Regis took his hand away from his throat and said
huskily, "I could use some of that, Doctor."
I put the whiskey down. "You'll do better with water until your throat
muscles are healed," I said swiftly, and went to fill a throwaway cup
for him, without thinking. Handing it to him. I stopped in sudden dismay
and my hand shook, spilling a few drops. I said hoarsely, swallowing,
"--but drink it, anyway--"
Regis got a few drops down, painfully, and said, "My own fault. The
moment I saw--Jay Allison--I knew he was a madman. I'd have stopped him
sooner only he took me by surprise."
"But--you say _him_--I'm Jay Allison," I said, and then my knees went
weak and I sat down. "What in hell is this? I'm not Jay--but I'm not
Jason, either--"
I could remember my entire life, but the focus had shifted. I still felt
the old love, the old nostalgia for the trailmen; but I also knew, with
a sure sense of identity, that I was Doctor Jason Allison, Jr., who had
abandoned mountain climbing and become a specialist in Darkovan
parasitology. Not Jay who had rejected his world; not Jason who had been
rejected by it. But then who?
Regis said quietly, "I've seen you before--once. When you knelt to the
Old One of the trailmen." With a whimsical smile he said, "As an
ignorant superstitious Darkovan, I'd say that you were a man who'd
balanced his god and daemon for once."
I looked helplessly at the young Hastur. A few seconds ago my hands had
been at his throat. Jay or Jason, maddened by self-hate and jealousy,
could disclaim responsibility for the other's acts.