SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

THE

PLANET

SAVERS

By

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

ILLUSTRATOR NOVICK

A SHORT NOVEL

the planet savers

By the time I got myself all[84]
the way awake I thought I
was alone. I was lying on a
leather couch in a bare white
room with huge windows, alternate
glass-brick and clear glass.
Beyond the clear windows was a
view of snow-peaked mountains
which turned to pale shadows in
the glass-brick.

Habit and memory fitted
names to all these; the bare office,
the orange flare of the great
sun, the names of the dimming
mountains. But beyond a polished
glass desk, a man sat watching
me. And I had never seen the
man before.

He was chubby, and not
young, and had ginger-colored
eyebrows and a fringe of ginger-colored
hair around the edges of
a forehead which was otherwise
quite pink and bald. He was
wearing a white uniform coat,
and the intertwined caduceus on
the pocket and on the sleeve proclaimed
him a member of the
Medical Service attached to the
Civilian HQ of the Terran Trade
City.

I didn't stop to make all
these evaluations consciously, of
course. They were just part of
my world when I woke up and
found it taking shape around me.
The familiar mountains, the
familiar sun, the strange man.
But he spoke to me in a friendly
way, as if it were an ordinary
thing to find a perfect stranger
sprawled out taking a siesta in
here.

"Could I trouble you to tell me
your name?"[85]

That was reasonable enough.
If I found somebody making
himself at home in my office—if
I had an office—I'd ask him his
name, too. I started to swing my
legs to the floor, and had to stop[86]
and steady myself with one
hand while the room drifted in
giddy circles around me.

"I wouldn't try to sit up just
yet," he remarked, while the
floor calmed down again. Then
he repeated, politely but insistently,
"Your name?"

"Oh, yes. My name." It was—I
fumbled through layers of
what felt like gray fuzz, trying
to lay my tongue on the most
familiar of all sounds, my own
name. It was—why, it was—I
said, on a high rising note,
"This is damn silly," and swallowed.
And swallowed again.
Hard.

"Calm down," the chubby man
said soothingly. That was easier
said than done. I stared at him
in growing panic and demanded,
"But, but, have I had amnesia
or something?"

"Or something."

"What's my name?"

"Now, now, take it easy! I'm
sure you'll remember it soon
enough. You can answer other
questions, I'm sure. How old are
you?"

I answered eagerly and quickly,
"Twenty-two."

The chubby man scribbled
something on a card. "Interesting.
In-ter-est-ing. Do you know
where we are?"

I looked around the office. "In
the Terran Headquarters. From
your uniform, I'd say we were
on Floor 8—Medical."

He nodded and scribbled
again, pursing his lips. "Can
you—uh—tell me what planet we
are on?"

I had to laugh. "Darkover," I
chuckled, "I hope! And if you
want the names of the moons,
or the date of the founding of
the Trade City, or something—"

He gave in, laughing with me.
"Remember where you were
born?"

"On Samarra. I came here
when I was three years old—my
father was in Mapping and Exploring—"
I stopped short, in
shock. "He's dead!"

"Can you tell me your father's
name?"

"Same as mine. Jay—Jason—"
the flash of memory closed
down in the middle of a word.
It had been a good try, but it
hadn't quite worked. The doctor
said soothingly, "We're doing
very well."

"You haven't told me anything,"
I accused. "Who are
you? Why are you asking me all
these questions?"

He pointed to a sign on his
desk. I scowled and spelled out
the letters. "Randall ... Forth
... Director ... Department
..." and Dr. Forth made a note.
I said aloud, "It is—Doctor
Forth, isn't it?"

"Don't you know?"

I looked down at myself, and
shook my head. "Maybe I'm Doctor
Forth," I said, noticing for
the first time that I was also
wearing a white coat with the
caduceus emblem of Medical.
But it had the wrong feel, as if
I were dressed in somebody else's
clothes. I was no doctor, was I?[87]
I pushed back one sleeve slightly,
exposing a long, triangular scar
under the cuff. Dr. Forth—by
now I was sure he was Dr. Forth—followed
the direction of my
eyes.

"Where did you get the scar?"

"Knife fight. One of the bands
of those-who-may-not-enter-cities
caught us on the slopes,
and we—" the memory thinned
out again, and I said despairingly,
"It's all confused! What's the
matter? Why am I up on Medical?
Have I had an accident?
Amnesia?"

"Not exactly. I'll explain."

I got up and walked to the
window, unsteadily because my
feet wanted to walk slowly while
I felt like bursting through some
invisible net and striding there
at one bound. Once I got to the
window the room stayed put
while I gulped down great
breaths of warm sweetish air. I
said, "I could use a drink."

"Good idea. Though I don't
usually recommend it." Forth
reached into a drawer for a flat
bottle; poured tea-colored liquid
into a throwaway cup. After a
minute he poured more for himself.
"Here. And sit down, man.
You make me nervous, hovering
like that."

I didn't sit down. I strode to
the door and flung it open.
Forth's voice was low and unhurried.

"What's the matter? You can
go out, if you want to, but won't
you sit down and talk to me for
a minute? Anyway, where do
you want to go?"

The question made me uncomfortable.
I took a couple of long
breaths and came back into the
room. Forth said, "Drink this,"
and I poured it down. He refilled
the cup unasked, and I
swallowed that too and felt the
hard lump in my middle begin
to loosen up and dissolve.

Forth said, "Claustrophobia
too. Typical," and scribbled on
the card some more. I was getting
tired of that performance.
I turned on him to tell him so,
then suddenly felt amused—or
maybe it was the liquor working
in me. He seemed such a funny
little man, shutting himself up
inside an office like this and talking
about claustrophobia and
watching me as if I were a big
bug. I tossed the cup into a disposal.

"Isn't it about time for a few
of those explanations?"

"If you think you can take it.
How do you feel now?"

"Fine." I sat down on the
couch again, leaning back and
stretching out my long legs comfortably.
"What did you put in
that drink?"

He chuckled. "Trade secret.
Now; the easiest way to explain
would be to let you watch a film
we made yesterday."

"To watch—" I stopped. "It's
your time we're wasting."

He punched a button on the
desk, spoke into a mouthpiece.
"Surveillance? Give us a monitor
on—" he spoke a string of
incomprehensible numbers, while
I lounged at ease on the couch.[88]
Forth waited for an answer,
then touched another button and
steel louvers closed noiselessly
over the windows, blacking them
out. I rose in sudden panic, then
relaxed as the room went dark.
The darkness felt oddly more
normal than the light, and I
leaned back and watched the
flickers clear as one wall of the
office became a large visionscreen.
Forth came and sat beside
me on the leather couch, but
in the picture Forth was there,
sitting at his desk, watching another
man, a stranger, walk into
the office.

Like Forth, the newcomer
wore a white coat with the caduceus
emblems. I disliked the
man on sight. He was tall and
lean and composed, with a dour
face set in thin lines. I guessed
that he was somewhere in his
thirties. Dr.-Forth-in-the-film
said, "Sit down, Doctor," and I
drew a long breath, overwhelmed
by a curious, certain sensation.

I have been here before. I
have seen this happen before.

(And curiously formless I felt.
I sat and watched, and I knew I
was watching, and sitting. But
it was in that dreamlike fashion,
where the dreamer at once
watches his visions and participates
in them....)

"Sit down, Doctor," Forth said,
"did you bring in the reports?"

Jay Allison carefully took the
indicated seat, poised nervously
on the edge of the chair. He sat
very straight, leaning forward
only a little to hand a thick folder
of papers across the desk.
Forth took it, but didn't open it.
"What do you think, Dr. Allison?"

"There is no possible room for
doubt." Jay Allison spoke precisely,
in a rather high-pitched
and emphatic tone. "It follows
the statistical pattern for all recorded
attacks of 48-year fever
... by the way, sir, haven't we
any better name than that for
this particular disease? The
term '48-year fever' connotes a
fever of 48 years duration,
rather than a pandemic recurring
every 48 years."

"A fever that lasted 48 years
would be quite a fever," Dr.
Forth said with the shadow of a
grim smile. "Nevertheless that's
the only name we have so far.
Name it and you can have it.
Allison's disease?"

Jay Allison greeted this pleasantry
with a repressive frown.
"As I understand it, the disease
cycle seems to be connected
somehow with the once-every-48-years
conjunction of the four
moons, which explains why the
Darkovans are so superstitious
about it. The moons have remarkably
eccentric orbits—I
don't know anything about that
part, I'm quoting Dr. Moore. If
there's an animal vector to the
disease, we've never discovered
it. The pattern runs like this; a
few cases in the mountain districts,
the next month a hundred-odd
cases all over this part
of the planet. Then it skips exactly
three months without increase.
The next upswing puts[89]
the number of reported cases in
the thousands, and three months
after that, it reaches real pandemic
proportions and decimates
the entire human population of
Darkover."

"That's about it," Forth admitted.
They bent together over
the folder, Jay Allison drawing
back slightly to avoid touching
the other man.

Forth said, "We Terrans have
had a Trade compact on Darkover
for a hundred and fifty-two
years. The first outbreak of this
48-year fever killed all but a
dozen men out of three hundred.
The Darkovans were worse off
than we were. The last outbreak
wasn't quite so bad, but it was
bad enough, I've heard. It has
an 87 per cent mortality—for
humans, that is. I understand the
trailmen don't die of it."

"The Darkovans call it the
trailmen's fever, Dr. Forth, because
the trailmen are virtually
immune to it. It remains in their
midst as a mild ailment taken by
children. When it breaks out
into the virulent form every 48
years, most of the trailmen are
already immune. I took the disease
myself as a child—maybe
you heard?"

Forth nodded. "You may be
the only Terran ever to contract
the disease and survive."

"The trailmen incubate the
disease," Jay Allison said. "I
should think the logical thing
would be to drop a couple of
hydrogen bombs on the trail
cities—and wipe it out for good
and all."

(Sitting on the Sofa in Forth's
dark office, I stiffened with such
fury that he shook my shoulder
and muttered, "Easy, there,
man!")

Dr. Forth, on the screen, looked
annoyed, and Jay Allison
said, with a grimace of distaste,
"I didn't mean that literally. But
the trailmen are not human. It
wouldn't be genocide, just an exterminator's
job. A public health
measure."

Forth looked shocked as he
realized that the younger man
meant what he was saying. He
said, "Galactic center would
have to rule on whether they're
dumb animals or intelligent non-humans,
and whether they're
entitled to the status of a civilization.
All precedent on Darkover
is toward recognizing them
as men—and good God, Jay,
you'd probably be called as a witness
for the defense! How can
you say they're not human after
your experience with them?
Anyway, by the time their status
was finally decided, half of the
recognizable humans on Darkover
would be dead. We need a
better solution than that."

He pushed his chair back and
looked out the window.

"I won't go into the political
situation," he said, "you aren't
interested in Terran Empire
politics, and I'm no expert either.
But you'd have to be deaf, dumb
and blind not to know that Darkover's
been playing the immovable
object to the irresistible
force. The Darkovans are more[90]
advanced in some of the non-causative
sciences than we are,
and until now, they wouldn't admit
that Terra had a thing to
contribute. However—and this is
the big however—they do know,
and they're willing to admit, that
our medical sciences are better
than theirs."

"Theirs being practically non-existent."

"Exactly—and this could be
the first crack in the barrier.
You may not realize the significance
of this, but the Legate received
an offer from the Hasturs
themselves."

Jay Allison murmured, "I'm
to be impressed?"

"On Darkover you'd damn well
better be impressed when the
Hasturs sit up and take notice."

"I understand they're telepaths
or something—"

"Telepaths, psychokinetics,
parapsychs, just about anything
else. For all practical purposes
they're the Gods of Darkover.
And one of the Hasturs—a
rather young and unimportant
one, I'll admit, the old man's
grandson—came to the Legate's
office, in person, mind you. He
offered, if the Terran Medical
would help Darkover lick the
trailmen's fever, to coach selected
Terran men in matrix mechanics."

"Good Lord," Jay said. It was
a concession beyond Terra's
wildest dreams; for a hundred
years they had tried to beg, buy
or steal some knowledge of the
mysterious science of matrix
mechanics—that curious discipline
which could turn matter
into raw energy, and vice versa,
without any intermediate stages
and without fission by-products.
Matrix mechanics had made the
Darkovans virtually immune to
the lure of Terra's advanced
technologies.

Jay said, "Personally I think
Darkovan science is over-rated.
But I can see the propaganda
angle—"

"Not to mention the humanitarian
angle of healing—"

Jay Allison gave one of his
cold shrugs. "The real angle
seems to be this; can we cure
the 48-year fever?"

"Not yet. But we have a lead.
During the last epidemic, a Terran
scientist discovered a blood
fraction containing antibodies
against the fever—in the trailmen.
Isolated to a serum, it
might reduce the virulent 48-year
epidemic form to the mild
form again. Unfortunately, he
died himself in the epidemic,
without finishing his work, and
his notebooks were overlooked
until this year. We have 18,000
men, and their families, on Darkover
now, Jay. Frankly, if we
lose too many of them, we're going
to have to pull out of Darkover—the
big brass on Terra
will write off the loss of a garrison
of professional traders, but
not of a whole Trade City colony.
That's not even mentioning the
prestige we'll lose if our much-vaunted
Terran medical sciences
can't save Darkover from an
epidemic. We've got exactly five[91]
months. We can't synthesize a
serum in that time. We've got
to appeal to the trailmen. And
that's why I called you up here.
You know more about the trailmen
than any living Terran.
You ought to. You spent eight
years in a Nest."

(In Forth's darkened office I
sat up straighter, with a flash
of returning memory. Jay Allison,
I judged, was several years
older than I, but we had one
thing in common; this cold fish
of a man shared with myself that
experience of marvelous years
spent in an alien world!)

Jay Allison scowled, displeased.
"That was years ago. I was
hardly more than a baby. My
father crashed on a Mapping
expedition over the Hellers—God
only knows what possessed
him to try and take a light plane
over those crosswinds. I survived
the crash by the merest chance,
and lived with the trailmen—so
I'm told—until I was thirteen or
fourteen. I don't remember much
about it. Children aren't particularly
observant."

Forth leaned over the desk,
staring. "You speak their language,
don't you?"

"I used to. I might remember
it under hypnosis, I suppose.
Why? Do you want me to translate
something?"

"Not exactly. We were thinking
of sending you on an expedition
to the trailmen themselves."

(In the darkened office, watching
Jay's startled face, I
thought; God, what an adventure!
I wonder—I wonder if
they want me to go with him?)

Forth was explaining: "It
would be a difficult trek. You
know what the Hellers are like.
Still, you used to climb mountains,
as a hobby, before you
went into Medical—"

"I outgrew the childishness of
hobbies many years ago, sir,"
Jay said stiffly.

"We'd get you the best guides
we could, Terran and Darkovan.
But they couldn't do the one
thing you can do. You know the
trailmen, Jay. You might be able
to persuade them to do the one
thing they've never done before."

"What's that?" Jay Allison
sounded suspicious.

"Come out of the mountains.
Send us volunteers—blood donors—we
might, if we had enough
blood to work on, be able to isolate
the right fraction, and
synthesize it, in time to prevent
the epidemic from really taking
hold. Jay, it's a tough mission
and it's dangerous as all hell, but
somebody's got to do it, and I'm
afraid you're the only qualified
man."

"I like my first suggestion
better. Bomb the trailmen—and
the Hellers—right off the
planet." Jay's face was set in
lines of loathing, which he controlled
after a minute, and said,
"I—I didn't mean that. Theoretically
I can see the necessity,
only—" he stopped and swallowed.

"Please say what you were going
to say."[92]

"I wonder if I am as well
qualified as you think? No—don't
interrupt—I find the natives
of Darkover distasteful,
even the humans. As for the
trailmen—"

(I was getting mad and impatient.
I whispered to Forth in
the darkness, "Shut the damn
film off! You couldn't send that
guy on an errand like that! I'd
rather—"

(Forth snapped, "Shut up and
listen!"

(I shut up and the film continued
to repeat.)

Jay Allison was not acting. He
was pained and disgusted. Forth
wouldn't let him finish his explanation
of why he had refused
even to teach in the Medical college
established for Darkovans
by the Terran empire. He interrupted,
and he sounded irritated.

"We know all that. It evidently
never occurred to you, Jay,
that it's an inconvenience to us—that
all this vital knowledge
should lie, purely by accident, in
the hands of the one man who's
too damned stubborn to use it?"

Jay didn't move an eyelash,
where I would have squirmed,
"I have always been aware of
that, Doctor."

Forth drew a long breath. "I'll
concede you're not suitable at
the moment, Jay. But what do
you know of applied psychodynamics?"

"Very little, I'm sorry to say."
Allison didn't sound sorry,
though. He sounded bored to
death with the whole conversation.

"May I be blunt—and personal?"

"Please do. I'm not at all sensitive."

"Basically, then, Doctor Allison,
a person as contained and
repressed as yourself usually has
a clearly defined subsidiary personality.
In neurotic individuals
this complex of personality traits
sometimes splits off, and we get
a syndrome known as multiple,
or alternate personality."

"I've scanned a few of the
classic cases. Wasn't there a
woman with four separate personalities?"

"Exactly. However, you aren't
neurotic, and ordinarily there
would not be the slightest chance
of your repressed alternate taking
over your personality."

"Thank you," Jay murmured
ironically, "I'd be losing sleep
over that."

"Nevertheless I presume you
do have such a subsidiary personality,
although he would
normally never manifest. This
subsidiary—let's call him Jay₂—would
embody all the characteristics
which you repress. He
would be gregarious, where you
are retiring and studious; adventurous
where you are cautious;
talkative while you are
taciturn; he would perhaps enjoy
action for its own sake,
while you exercise faithfully in
the gymnasium only for your
health's sake; and he might even
remember the trailmen with
pleasure rather than dislike."[93]

"In short—a blend of all the
undesirable characteristics?"

"One could put it that way.
Certainly he would be a blend of
all the characteristics which you,
Jay₁, consider undesirable. But—if
released by hypnotism and
suggestion, he might be suitable
for the job in hand."

"But how do you know I actually
have such an—alternate?"

"I don't. But it's a good guess.
Most repressed—" Forth coughed
and amended, "most disciplined
personalities possess such
a suppressed secondary personality.
Don't you occasionally—rather
rarely—find yourself doing
things which are entirely out
of character for you?"

I could almost feel Allison taking
it in, as he confessed, "Well—yes.
For instance—the other
day—although I dress conservatively
at all times—" he glanced
at his uniform coat, "I found
myself buying—" he stopped
again and his face went an unlovely
terra-cotta color as he finally
mumbled, "a flowered red
sports shirt."

Sitting in the dark I felt
vaguely sorry for the poor gawk,
disturbed by, ashamed of the
only human impulses he ever
had. On the screen Allison
frowned fiercely, "A crazy impulse."

"You could say that, or say it
was an action of the suppressed
Jay₂. How about it, Allison? You
may be the only Terran on Darkover,
maybe the only human,
who could get into a trailman's
Nest without being murdered."

"Sir—as a citizen of the Empire,
I don't have any choice, do
I?"

"Jay, look," Forth said, and I
felt him trying to reach through
the barricade and touch, really
touch that cold contained young
man, "we couldn't order any man
to do anything like this. Aside
from the ordinary dangers, it
could destroy your personal balance,
maybe permanently. I'm
asking you to volunteer something
above and beyond the call
of duty. Man to man—what do
you say?"

I would have been moved by
his words. Even at secondhand
I was moved by them. Jay Allison
looked at the floor, and I saw
him twist his long well-kept
surgeon's hands and crack the
knuckles with an odd gesture.
Finally he said, "I haven't any
choice either way, Doctor. I'll
take the chance. I'll go to the
trailmen."

The screen went dark again
and Forth flicked the light on.
He said, "Well?"

I gave it back, in his own intonation,
"Well?" and was exasperated
to find that I was
twisting my own knuckles in the
nervous gesture of Allison's
painful decision. I jerked them
apart and got up.

"I suppose it didn't work,
with that cold fish, and you decided
to come to me instead?
Sure, I'll go to the trailmen for
you. Not with that Allison—I
wouldn't go anywhere with that
guy—but I speak the trailmen's[94]
language, and without hypnosis
either."

Forth was staring at me. "So
you've remembered that?"

"Hell, yes," I said, "my dad
crashed in the Hellers, and a
band of trailmen found me, half
dead. I lived there until I was
about fifteen, then their Old-One
decided I was too human for
them, and they took me out
through Dammerung Pass and
arranged to have me brought
here. Sure, it's all coming back
now. I spent five years in the
Spacemen's Orphanage, then I
went to work taking Terran
tourists on hunting parties and
so on, because I liked being
around the mountains. I—" I
stopped. Forth was staring at
me.

"You think you'd like this
job?"

"It would be tough," I said,
considering. "The People of the
Sky—" (using the trailmen's
name for themselves) "—don't
like outsiders, but they might be
persuaded. The worst part would
be getting there. The plane, or
the 'copter, isn't built that can
get through the crosswinds
around the Hellers and land inside
them. We'd have to go on
foot, all the way from Carthon.
I'd need professional climbers—mountaineers."

"Then you don't share Allison's
attitude?"

"Dammit, don't insult me!" I
discovered that I was on my feet
again, pacing the office restlessly.
Forth stared and mused
aloud, "What's personality anyway?
A mask of emotions, superimposed
on the body and the intellect.
Change the point of
view, change the emotions and
desires, and even with the same
body and the same past experiences,
you have a new man."

I swung round in mid-step. A
new and terrible suspicion, too
monstrous to name, was creeping
up on me. Forth touched a
button and the face of Jay Allison,
immobile, appeared on the
visionscreen. Forth put a mirror
in my hand. He said, "Jason Allison,
look at yourself."

I looked.

"No," I said. And again, "No.
No. No."

Forth didn't argue. He pointed,
with a stubby finger. "Look—"
he moved the finger as he
spoke, "height of forehead. Set
of cheekbones. Your eyebrows
look different, and your mouth,
because the expression is different.
But bony structure—the
nose, the chin—"

I heard myself make a queer
sound; dashed the mirror to the
floor. He grabbed my forearm.
"Steady, man!"

I found a scrap of my voice.
It didn't sound like Allison's.
"Then I'm—Jay₂? Jay Allison
with amnesia?"

"Not exactly." Forth mopped
his forehead with an immaculate
sleeve and it came away damp
with sweat, "No—not Jay Allison
as I know him!" He drew a
long breath. "And sit down.
Whoever you are, sit down!"

I sat. Gingerly. Not sure.[95]

"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 Jay₂. 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[96]
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[97]
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 al[98]ways
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."[99]

"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[100]—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[101]
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?"

The Darkovans muttered. The
man in the shadows said, "Regis
Hastur."

Kendricks stared pop-eyed. My
own eyes could have popped, but
I decided it was time for me to
take charge, if I were ever going
to. I rapped, "All right, this
is my show. Buck, give me the
gun."[102]

He looked wrathfully at me
for a space of seconds, while I
wondered what I'd do if he
didn't. Then, slowly, he unbuckled
the straps and handed it to
me, butt first.

I'd never realized quite how
undressed a Spaceforce man
looked without his blaster. I balanced
it on my palm for a minute
while Regis Hastur came out
of the shadows. He was tall, and
had the reddish hair and fair
skin of Darkovan aristocracy,
and on his face was some indefinable
stamp—arrogance, perhaps,
or the consciousness that
the Hasturs had ruled this world
for centuries long before the
Terrans brought ships and trade
and the universe to their doors.
He was looking at me as if he
approved of me, and that was
one step worse than the former
situation.

So, using the respectful Darkovan
idiom of speaking to a
superior (which he was) but
keeping my voice hard, I said,
"There's just one leader on any
trek, Lord Hastur. On this one,
I'm it. If you want to discuss
whether or not we carry guns, I
suggest you discuss it with me
in private—and let me give the
orders."

One of the Darkovans gasped.
I knew I could have been mobbed.
But with a mixed bag of
men, I had to grab leadership
quick or be relegated to nowhere.
I didn't give Regis Hastur
a chance to answer that,
either; I said, "Come back here.
I want to talk to you anyway."

He came, and I remembered to
breathe. I led the way to a fairly
deserted corner of the immense
place, faced him and demanded,
"As for you—what are you doing
here? You're not intending
to cross the mountains with
us?"

He met my scowl levelly. "I
certainly am."

I groaned. "Why? You're the
Regent's grandson. Important
people don't take on this kind of
dangerous work. If anything
happens to you, it will be my
responsibility!" I was going to
have enough trouble, I was
thinking, without shepherding
along one of the most revered
Personages on the whole damned
planet! I didn't want anyone
around who had to be fawned
on, or deferred to, or even listened
to.

He frowned slightly, and I had
the unpleasant impression that
he knew what I was thinking.
"In the first place—it will mean
something to the trailmen, won't
it—to have a Hastur with you,
suing for this favor?"

It certainly would. The trailmen
paid little enough heed to
the ordinary humans, except for
considering them fair game for
plundering when they came uninvited
into trailman country.
But they, with all Darkover,
revered the Hasturs, and it was
a fine point of diplomacy—if the
Darkovans sent their most important
leader, they might listen
to him.

"In the second place," Regis[103]
Hastur continued, "the Darkovans
are my people, and it's my
business to negotiate for them.
In the third place, I know the
trailmen's dialect—not well, but
I can speak it a little. And in the
fourth, I've climbed mountains
all my life. Purely as an amateur,
but I can assure you I
won't be in the way."

There was little enough I
could say to that. He seemed to
have covered every point—or
every point but one, and he
added, shrewdly, after a minute,
"Don't worry; I'm perfectly willing
to have you take charge. I
won't claim—privilege."

I had to be satisfied with that.

Darkover is a civilized planet
with a fairly high standard of
living, but it is not a mechanized
or a technological culture. The
people don't do much mining, or
build factories, and the few
which were founded by Terran
enterprise never were very successful;
outside the Terran
Trade City, machinery or modern
transportation is almost unknown.

While the other men checked
and loaded supplies and Rafe
Scott went out to contact some
friends of his and arrange for
last-minute details, I sat down
with Forth to memorize the
medical details I must put so
clearly to the trailmen.

"If we could only have kept
your medical knowledge!"

"Trouble is, being a doctor
doesn't suit my personality," I
said. I felt absurdly light-hearted.
Where I sat, I could raise my
head and study the panorama of
blackish-green foothills which
lay beyond Carthon, and search
out the stone roadways, like a
tiny white ribbon, which we
could follow for the first stage
of the trip. Forth evidently did
not share my enthusiasm.

"You know, Jason, there is one
real danger—"

"Do you think I care about
danger? Or are you afraid I'll
turn—foolhardy?"

"Not exactly. It's not a physical
danger, Jason. It's an emotional—or
rather an intellectual
danger."

"Hell, don't you know any language
but that psycho double-talk?"

"Let me finish, Jason. Jay
Allison may have been repressed,
overcontrolled, but you are seriously
impulsive. You lack a
balance-wheel, if I could put it
that way. And if you run too
many risks, your buried alter-ego
may come to the surface and
take over in sheer self-preservation."

"In other words," I said,
laughing loudly, "if I scare that
Allison stuffed-shirt he may
start stirring in his grave?"

Forth coughed and smothered
a laugh and said that was one
way of putting it. I clapped him
reassuringly on the shoulder and
said, "Forget it, sir. I promise
to be godly, sober and industrious—but
is there any law
against enjoying what I'm doing?"

Somebody burst out of the[104]
warehouse-palace place, and
shouted at me. "Jason? The
guide is here," and I stood up,
giving Forth a final grin. "Don't
you worry. Jay Allison's good
riddance," I said, and went back
to meet the other guide they had
chosen.

And I almost backed out when
I saw the guide. For the guide
was a woman.

She was small for a Darkovan
girl, and narrowly built, the sort
of body that could have been
called boyish or coltish but certainly
not, at first glance, feminine.
Close-cut curls, blue-black
and wispy, cast the faintest of
shadows over a squarish sunburnt
face, and her eyes were so
thickly rimmed with heavy dark
lashes that I could not guess
their color. Her nose was snubbed
and might have looked
whimsical and was instead oddly
arrogant. Her mouth was wide,
and her chin round, and altogether
I dismissed her as not at
all a pretty woman.

She held up her palm and said
rather sullenly, "Kyla-Raineach,
free Amazon, licensed guide."

I acknowledged the gesture
with a nod, scowling. The guild
of free Amazons entered virtually
every masculine field, but that
of mountain guide seemed somewhat
bizarre even for an Amazon.
She seemed wiry and agile
enough, her body, under the
heavy blanket-like clothing, almost
as lean of hip and flat of
breast as my own; only the slender
long legs were unequivocally
feminine.

The other men were checking
and loading supplies; I noted
from the corner of my eye that
Regis Hastur was taking his
turn heaving bundles with the
rest. I sat down on some still-undisturbed
sacks, and motioned
her to sit.

"You've had trail experience?
We're going into the Hellers
through Dammerung, and that's
rough going even for professionals."

She said in a flat expressionless
voice, "I was with the Terran
Mapping expedition to the
South Polar ridge last year."

"Ever been in the Hellers? If
anything happened to me, could
you lead the expedition safely
back to Carthon?"

She looked down at her stubby
fingers. "I'm sure I could,"
she said finally, and started to
rise. "Is that all?"

"One thing more—" I gestured
to her to stay put. "Kyla,
you'll be one woman among
eight men—"

The snubbed nose wrinkled
up; "I don't expect you to crawl
into my blankets, if that's what
you mean. It's not in my contract—I
hope!"

I felt my face burning. Damn
the girl! "It's not in mine, anyway,"
I snapped, "but I can't
answer for seven other men,
most of them mountain roughnecks!"
Even as I said it I wondered
why I bothered; certainly
a free Amazon could defend her
own virtue, or not, if she wanted
to, without any help from me. I[105]
had to excuse myself by adding,
"In either case you'll be a disturbing
element—I don't want
fights, either!"

She made a little low-pitched
sound of amusement. "There's
safety in numbers, and—are you
familiar with the physiological
effect of high altitudes on men
acclimated to low ones?" Suddenly
she threw back her head
and the hidden sound became
free and merry laughter. "Jason,
I'm a free Amazon, and that
means—no, I'm not neutered,
though some of us are. But you
have my word, I won't create
any trouble of any recognizably
female variety." She stood up.
"Now, if you don't mind, I'd like
to check the mountain equipment."

Her eyes were still laughing
at me, but curiously I didn't
mind at all. There was a refreshing
element in her manner.

We started that night, a
curiously lopsided little caravan.
The pack animals were loaded
into one truck and didn't like it.
We had another stripped-down
truck which carried supplies.
The ancient stone roads, rutted
and gullied here and there with
the flood-waters and silt of
decades, had not been planned
for any travel other than the
feet of men or beasts. We passed
tiny villages and isolated country
estates, and a few of the
solitary towers where the matrix
mechanics worked alone with the
secret sciences of Darkover, towers
of glareless stone which
sometimes shone like blue beacons
in the dark.

Kendricks drove the truck
which carried the animals, and
was amused by it. Rafe and I
took turns driving the other
truck, sharing the wide front
seat with Regis Hastur and the
girl Kyla, while the other men
found seats between crates and
sacks in the back. Once while
Rafe was at the wheel and the
girl dozing with her coat over
her face to shut out the fierce
sun, Regis asked me, "What are
the trailcities like?"

I tried to tell him, but I've
never been good at boiling things
down into descriptions, and
when he found I was not disposed
to talk, he fell silent and
I was free to drowse over what
I knew of the trailmen and their
world.

Nature seems to have a sameness
on all inhabited worlds,
tending toward the economy and
simplicity of the human form.
The upright carriage, freeing
the hands, the opposable thumb,
the color-sensitivity of retinal
rods and cones, the development
of language and of lengthy parental
nurture—these things
seem to be indispensable to the
growth of civilization, and in the
end they spell human. Except for
minor variations depending on
climate or foodstuff, the inhabitant
of Megaera or Darkover is
indistinguishable from the Terran
or Sirian; differences are
mainly cultural, and sometimes
an isolated culture will mutate
in a strange direction or remain,[106]
atavists, somewhere halfway to
the summit of the ladder of evolution—which,
at least on the
known planets, still reckons
homo sapiens as the most complex
of nature's forms.

The trailmen were a pausing-place
which had proved tenacious.
When the mainstream of
evolution on Darkover left the
trees to struggle for existence
on the ground, a few remained
behind. Evolution did not cease
for them, but evolved homo arborens;
nocturnal, nystalopic
humanoids who lived out their
lives in the extensive forests.

The truck bumped over the
bad, rutted roads. The wind was
chilly—the truck, a mere conveyance
for hauling, had no such
refinements of luxury as windows.
I jolted awake—what nonsense
had I been thinking?
Vague ideas about evolution
swirled in my brain like burst
bubbles—the trailmen? They
were just the trailmen, who
could explain them? Jay Allison,
maybe? Rafe turned his head
and asked, "Where do we pull
up for the night? It's getting
dark, and we have all this gear
to sort!" I roused myself, and
took over the business of the expedition
again.

But when the trucks had been
parked and a tent pitched and
the pack animals unloaded and
hobbled, and a start made at getting
the gear together—when all
this had been done I lay awake,
listening to Kendricks' heavy
snoring, but myself afraid to
sleep. Dozing in the truck, an
odd lapse of consciousness had
come over me ... myself yet not
myself, drowsing over thoughts
I did not recognize as my own.
If I slept, who would I be when
I woke?

We had made our camp in the
bend of an enormous river, wide
and shallow and unbridged; the
river Kadarin, traditionally a
point of no return for humans
on Darkover. The river is fed by
ocean tides and we would have
to wait for low water to cross.
Beyond the river lay thick forests,
and beyond the forests the
slopes of the Hellers, rising upward
and upward; and their
every fold and every valley was
filled to the brim with forest,
and in the forests lived the trailmen.

But though all this country
was thickly populated with outlying
colonies and nests, it
would be no use to bargain with
any of them; we must deal with
the Old One of the North Nest,
where I had spent so many of
my boyhood years.

From time immemorial, the
trailmen—usually inoffensive—had
kept strict boundaries marked
between their lands and the
lands of ground-dwelling men.
They never came beyond the
Kadarin. On the other hand, almost
any human who ventured
into their territory became, by
that act, fair game for attack.

A few of the Darkovan mountain
people had trade treaties
with the trailmen; they traded
clothing, forged metals, small[107]
implements, in return for nuts,
bark for dyestuffs and certain
leaves and mosses for drugs. In
return, the trailmen permitted
them to hunt in the forest lands
without being molested. But
other humans, venturing into
trailman territory, ran the risk
of merciless raiding; the trailmen
were not bloodthirsty, and
did not kill for the sake of killing,
but they attacked in packs
of two or three dozen, and their
prey would be stripped and plundered
of everything portable.

Travelling through their country
would be dangerous....

The sun was high before we
struck the camp. While the others
were packing up the last
oddments, ready for the saddle,
I gave the girl Kyla the task of
readying the rucksacks we'd
carry after the trails got too bad
even for the pack animals, and
went to stand at the water's
edge, checking the depth of the
ford and glancing up at the
smoke-hazed rifts between peak
and peak.

The men were packing up the
small tent we'd use in the forests,
moving around with a good
deal of horseplay and a certain
brisk bustle. They were a good
crew, I'd already discovered.
Rafe and Lerrys and the three
Darkovan brothers were tireless,
cheerful and mountain-hardened.
Kendricks, obviously out of his
element, could be implicitly relied
on to follow orders, and I
felt that I could fall back on
him. Strange as it seemed, the
very fact that he was a Terran
was vaguely comforting, where
I'd anticipated it would be a
nuisance.

The girl Kyla was still something
of an unknown quantity.
She was too taut and quiet,
working her share but seldom
contributing a word—we were
not yet in mountain country. So
far she was quiet and touchy
with me, although she seemed
natural enough with the Darkovans,
and I let her alone.

"Hi, Jason, get a move on,"
someone shouted, and I walked
back toward the clearing squinting
in the sun. It hurt, and I
touched my face gingerly, suddenly
realizing what had happened.
Yesterday, riding in the
uncovered truck, and this morning,
un-used to the fierce sun of
these latitudes, I had neglected
to take the proper precautions
against exposure and my face
was reddening with sunburn. I
walked toward Kyla, who was
cinching a final load on one of
the pack-animals, which she did
efficiently enough.

She didn't wait for me to ask,
but sized up the situation with
one amused glance at my face.
"Sunburn? Put some of this on
it." She produced a tube of
white stuff; I twisted at the top
inexpertly, and she took it from
me, squeezed the stuff out in her
palm and said, "Stand still and
bend down your head."

She smeared the mixture efficiently
across my forehead and
cheeks. It felt cold and good. I
started to thank her, then broke[108]
off as she burst out laughing.
"What's the matter?"

"You should see yourself!"
she gurgled.

I wasn't amused. No doubt I
presented a grotesque appearance,
and no doubt she had the
right to laugh at it, but I scowled.
It hurt. Intending to put
things back on the proper footing,
I demanded, "Did you make
up the climbing loads?"

"All except bedding. I wasn't
sure how much to allow," she
said. "Jason, have you eyeshades
for when you get on snow?" I
nodded, and she instructed me
severely, "Don't forget them.
Snowblindness—I give you my
word—is even more unpleasant
than sunburn—and very painful!"

"Damn it, girl, I'm not stupid!"
I exploded.

She said, in her expressionless
monotone again, "Then you
ought to have known better than
to get sunburnt. Here, put this
in your pocket," she handed me
the tube of sunburn cream,
"maybe I'd better check up on
some of the others and make
sure they haven't forgotten."
She went off without another
word, leaving me with an unpleasant
feeling that she'd come
off best, that she considered me
an irresponsible scamp.

Forth had said almost the
same thing....

I told off the Darkovan brothers
to urge the pack animals
across the narrowest part of the
ford, and gestured to Corus and
Kyla to ride one on either side
of Kendricks, who might not be
aware of the swirling, treacherous
currents of a mountain river.
Rafe could not urge his edgy
horse into the water; he finally
dismounted, took off his boots,
and led the creature across the
slippery rocks. I crossed last, riding
close to Regis Hastur, alert
for dangers and thinking resentfully
that anyone so important
to Darkover's policies should not
be risked on such a mission.
Why, if the Terran Legate had
(unthinkably!) come with us, he
would be surrounded by bodyguards,
secret service men and
dozens of precautions against
accident, assassination or misadventure.

All that day we rode upward,
encamping at the furthest point
we could travel with pack animals
or mounted. The next day's
climb would enter the dangerous
trails we must travel afoot. We
pitched a comfortable camp, but
I admit I slept badly. Kendricks
and Lerrys and Rafe had blinding
headaches from the sun and
the thinness of the air; I was
more used to these conditions,
but I felt a sense of unpleasant
pressure, and my ears rang.
Regis arrogantly denied any discomfort,
but he moaned and
cried out continuously in his
sleep until Lerrys kicked him,
after which he was silent and,
I feared, sleepless. Kyla seemed
the least affected of any; probably
she had been at higher altitudes
more continuously than
any of us. But there were dark
circles beneath her eyes.[109]

However, no one complained as
we readied ourselves for the final
last long climb upward. If
we were fortunate, we could
cross Dammerung before nightfall;
at the very least, we
should bivouac tonight very
near the pass. Our camp had
been made at the last level spot;
we partially hobbled the pack
animals so they would not stray
too far, and left ample food for
them, and cached all but the most
necessary of light trail gear. As
we prepared to start upward on
the steep, narrow track—hardly
more than a rabbit-run—I
glanced at Kyla and stated,
"We'll work on rope from the
first stretch. Starting now."

One of the Darkovan brothers
stared at me with contempt.
"Call yourself a mountain man,
Jason? Why, my little daughter
could scramble up that track
without so much as a push on
her behind!"

I set my chin and glared at
him. "The rocks aren't easy, and
some of these men aren't used
to working on rope at all. We
might as well get used to it, because
when we start working
along the ledges, I don't want
anybody who doesn't know
how."

They still didn't like it, but
nobody protested further until I
directed the huge Kendricks to
the center of the second rope. He
glared viciously at the light nylon
line and demanded in some
apprehension, "Hadn't I better go
last until I know what I'm doing?
Hemmed in between the
two of you, I'm apt to do something
damned dumb!"

Hjalmar roared with laughter
and informed him that the center
place on a 3-man rope was
always reserved for weaklings,
novices and amateurs. I expected
Kendricks' temper to flare up:
the burly Spaceforce man and
the Darkovan giant glared at
one another, then Kendricks only
shrugged and knotted the line
through his belt. Kyla warned
Kendricks and Lerrys about
looking down from ledges, and
we started.

The first stretch was almost
too simple, a clear track winding
higher and higher for a couple
of miles. Pausing to rest for a
moment, we could turn and see
the entire valley outspread below
us. Gradually the trail grew
steeper, in spots pitched almost
at a 50-degree angle, and was
scattered with gravel, loose rock
and shale, so that we placed our
feet carefully, leaning forward
to catch at handholds and steady
ourselves against rocks. I tested
each boulder carefully, since any
weight placed against an unsteady
rock might dislodge it on
somebody below. One of the
Darkovan brothers—Vardo, I
thought—was behind me, separated
by ten or twelve feet of
slack rope, and twice when his
feet slipped on gravel he stumbled
and gave me an unpleasant
jerk. What he muttered was perfectly
true; on slopes like this,
where a fall wasn't dangerous
anyhow, it was better to work
unroped; then a slip bothered no[110]
one but the slipper. But I was
finding out what I wanted to
know—what kind of climbers I
had to lead through the Hellers.

Along a cliff face the trail narrowed
horizontally, leading
across a foot-wide ledge overhanging
a sheer drop of fifty
feet and covered with loose
shale and scrub plants. Nothing,
of course, to an experienced
climber—a foot-wide ledge
might as well be a four-lane superhighway.
Kendricks made a
nervous joke about a tightrope
walker, but when his turn came
he picked his way securely, without
losing balance. The amateurs—Lerrys
Ridenow, Regis, Rafe—came
across without hesitation,
but I wondered how well
they would have done at a less
secure altitude; to a real mountaineer,
a footpath is a footpath,
whether in a meadow, above a
two-foot drop, a thirty-foot
ledge, or a sheer mountain face
three miles above the first level
spot.

After crossing the ledge the
going was harder. A steeper
trail, in places nearly imperceptible,
led between thick scrub
and overhanging trees, thickly
forested. In spots their twisted
roots obscured the trail; in others
the persistent growth had
thrust aside rocks and dirt. We
had to make our way through
tangles of underbrush which
would have been nothing to a
trailman, but which made our
ground-accustomed bodies ache
with the effort of getting over
or through them; and once the
track was totally blocked by a
barricade of tangled dead brushwood,
borne down on floodwater
after a sudden thaw or cloud-burst.
We had to work painfully
around it over a three-hundred-foot
rockslide, which we could
cross only one at a time, crab-fashion,
leaning double to balance
ourselves; and no one complained
now about the rope.

Toward noon I had the first
intimation that we were not
alone on the slope.

At first it was no more than
a glimpse of motion out of the
corner of my eyes, the shadow
of a shadow. The fourth time I
saw it, I called softly to Kyla:
"See anything?"

"I was beginning to think it
was my eyes, or the altitude. I
saw, Jason."

"Look for a spot where we
can take a break," I directed. We
climbed along a shallow ledge,
the faint imperceptible flutters
in the brushwood climbing with
us on either side. I muttered to
the girl, "I'll be glad when we
get clear of this. At least we'll
be able to see what's coming after
us!"

"If it comes to a fight," she
said surprisingly, "I'd rather
fight on gravel than ice."

Over a rise, there was a roaring
sound; Kyla swung up and
balanced on a rock-wedged tree
root, cupped her mouth to her
hands and called, "Rapids!"

I pulled myself up to the edge
of the drop and stood looking
down into the narrow gully. Here[111]
the narrow track we had been
following was crossed and obscured
by the deep, roaring rapids
of a mountain stream.

Less than twenty feet across,
it tumbled in an icy flood, almost
a waterfall, pitching over
the lip of a crag above us. It had
sliced a ravine five feet deep in
the mountainside, and came roaring
down with a rushing noise
that made my head vibrate. It
looked formidable; anyone stepping
into it would be knocked
off his feet in seconds, and swept
a thousand feet down the mountainside
by the force of the current.

Rafe scrambled gingerly over
the gullied lip of the channel it
had cut, and bent carefully to
scoop up water in his palm and
drink. "Phew, it's colder than
Zandru's ninth hell. Must come
straight down from a glacier!"

It did. I remembered the trail
and remembered the spot. Kendricks
joined me at the water's
edge, and asked, "How do we get
across?"

"I'm not sure," I said, studying
the racing white torrent.
Overhead, about twenty feet
from where we clustered on the
slope, the thick branches of
enormous trees overhung the
rapids, their long roots partially
bared, gnarled and twisted by
recurrent floods; and between
these trees swayed one of the
queer swing-bridges of the trailmen,
hanging only about ten feet
above the water.

Even I had never learned to
navigate one of these swing-bridges
without assistance; human
arms are no longer suited
to brachiation. I might have
managed it once; but at present,
except as a desperate final expedient,
it was out of the question.
Rafe or Lerrys, who were lightly
built and acrobatic, could probably
do it as a simple stunt on
the level, in a field; on a steep
and rocky mountainside, where
a fall might mean being dashed
a thousand feet down the torrent,
I doubted it. The trailmen's
bridge was out ... but what other
choice was there?

I beckoned to Kendricks, he
being the man I was the most
inclined to trust with my life at
the moment, and said, "It looks
uncrossable, but I think two men
could get across, if they were
steady on their feet. The others
can hold us on ropes, in case we
do get knocked down. If we can
get to the opposite bank, we can
stretch a fixed rope from that
snub of rock—" I pointed, "and
the others can cross with that.
The first men over will be the
only ones to run any risk. Want
to try?"

The rope swung perilously, threatening

to dash her on the rocks.

I liked it better that he didn't
answer right away, but went to
the edge of the gully and peered
down the rocky chasm. Doubtless,
if we were knocked down,
all seven of the others could haul
us up again; but not before we'd
been badly smashed on the rocks.
And once again I caught that
elusive shadow of movement in
the brushwood; if the trailmen
chose a moment when we were
half-in, half-out of the rapids,[112]
we'd be ridiculously vulnerable
to attack.

"We ought to be able to get a
fixed rope easier than that,"
Hjalmar said, and took one of
the spares from his rucksack. He
coiled it, making a running loop
on one end, and standing precariously
on the lip of the rapids,
sent it spinning toward the outcrop
of rock we had chosen as a
fixed point. "If I can get it
over...."

The rope fell short, and Hjalmar
reeled it in and cast the
loop again. He made three more
unsuccessful tries before finally,
with held breath, we watched the
noose settle over the rocky snub.
Gently, pulling the line taut, we
watched it stretch above the
rapids. The knot tightened, fastened.
Hjalmar grinned and let
out his breath.

"There," he said, and jerked
hard on the rope, testing it with
a long hard pull. The rocky outcrop
broke, with a sharp crack,
split, and toppled entirely into the
rapids, the sudden jerk almost
pulling Hjalmar off his feet. The
boulder rolled, with a great
bouncing splash, faster and faster
down the mountain, taking the
rope with it.

We just stood and stared for
a minute. Hjalmar swore horribly,
in the unprintable filth of
the mountain tongue, and his
brothers joined in. "How the
devil was I to know the rock
would split off?"

"Better for it to split now
than when we were depending
on it," Kyla said stolidly. "I
have a better idea." She was untying
herself from the rope as
she spoke, and knotting one of
the spares through her belt. She
handed the other end of the rope
to Lerrys. "Hold on to this," she
said, and slipped out of her
blankety windbreak, standing
shivering in a thin sweater. She
unstrapped her boots and tossed
them to me. "Now boost me on
your shoulders, Hjalmar."

Too late, I guessed her intention
and shouted, "No, don't
try—!" But she had already
clambered to an unsteady perch
on the big Darkovan's shoulders
and made a flying grab for the
lowest loop of the trailmen's
bridge. She hung there, swaying
slightly and sickeningly, as the
loose lianas gave to her weight.

"Hjalmar—Lerrys—haul her
down!"

"I'm lighter than any of you,"
Kyla called shrilly, "and not
hefty enough to be any use on
the ropes!" Her voice quavered
somewhat as she added, "—and
hang on to that rope, Lerrys! If
you lose it, I'll have done this
for nothing!"

She gripped the loop of vine
and reached, with her free hand,
for the next loop. Now she was
swinging out over the edge of
the boiling rapids. Tight-mouthed,
I gestured to the others to
spread out slightly below—not
that anything would help her if
she fell.

Hjalmar, watching as the
woman gained the third loop—which
joggled horribly to her
slight weight—shouted suddenly,[113]
"Kyla, quick! The loop beyond—don't
touch the next one! It's
frayed—rotted through!"

Kyla brought her left hand up
to her right on the third loop.
She made a long reach, missed
her grab, swung again, and
clung, breathing hard, to the
safe fifth loop. I watched, sick
with dread. The damned girl
should have told me what she intended.

Kyla glanced down and we got
a glimpse of her face, glistening
with the mixture of sunburn
cream and sweat, drawn with effort.
Her tiny swaying figure
hung twelve feet above the
white tumbling water, and if she
lost her grip, only a miracle
could bring her out alive. She
hung there for a minute, jiggling
slightly, then started a long
back-and-forward swing. On the
third forward swing she made
a long leap and grabbed at the
final loop.

It slipped through her fingers;
she made a wild grab with the
other hand, and the liana dipped
sharply under her weight, raced
through her fingers, and with a
sharp snap, broke in two. She
gave a wild shriek as it parted,
and twisted her body frantically
in mid-air, landing asprawl half-in,
half-out of the rapids, but on
the further bank. She hauled her
legs up on dry land and crouched
there, drenched to the waist but
safe.

The Darkovans were yelling
in delight. I motioned to Lerrys
to make his end of the rope fast[114]
around a hefty tree-root, and
shouted, "Are you hurt?" She
indicated in pantomime that the
thundering of the water drowned
words, and bent to belay her
end of the rope. In sign-language
I gestured to her to make very
sure of the knots; if anyone slipped,
she hadn't the weight to
hold us.

I hauled on the rope myself to
test it, and it held fast. I slung
her boots around my neck by
their cords, then, gripping the
fixed rope, Kendricks and I stepped
into the water.

It was even icier than I expected,
and my first step was
nearly the last; the rush of the
white water knocked me to my
knees, and I floundered and
would have measured my length
except for my hands on the
fixed rope. Buck Kendricks grabbed
at me, letting go the rope
to do it, and I swore at him, raging,
while we got on our feet
again and braced ourselves
against the onrushing current.
While we struggled in the pounding
waters, I admitted to myself;
we could never have crossed
without the rope Kyla had risked
her life to fix.

Shivering, we got across and
hauled ourselves out. I signalled
to the others to cross two at a
time, and Kyla seized my elbow.
"Jason—"

"Later, dammit!" I had to
shout to make myself heard over
the roaring water, as I held out
a hand to help Rafe get his footing
on the ledge.

"This—can't—wait," she yelled,
cupping her hands and
shouting into my ear. I turned
on her. "What!"

"There are—trailmen—on the
top level—of that bridge! I saw
them! They cut the loop!"

Regis and Hjalmar came
struggling across last; Regis,
lightly-built, was swept off his
feet and Hjalmar turned to grab
him, but I shouted to him to
keep clear—they were still roped
together and if the ropes fouled
we might drown someone. Lerrys
and I leaped down and hauled
Regis clear; he coughed, spitting
icy water, drenched to the skin.

I motioned to Lerrys to leave
the fixed rope, though I had little
hope that it would be there when
we returned, and looked quickly
around, debating what to do.
Regis and Rafe and I were wet
clear through; the others to well
above the knee. At this altitude,
this was dangerous, although we
were not yet high enough to
worry about frostbite. Trailmen
or no trailmen, we must run the
lesser risk of finding a place
where we could kindle a fire and
dry out.

"Up there—there's a clearing,"
I said briefly, and hurried
them along.

It was hard climbing now, on
rock, and there were places
where we had to scrabble for
handholds, and flatten ourselves
out against an almost sheer wall.
The keen wind rose as we climbed
higher, whining through the
thick forest, soughing in the
rocky outcrops, and biting[115]
through our soaked clothing with
icy teeth. Kendricks was having
hard going now, and I helped
him as much as I could, but I
was aching with cold. We gained
the clearing, a small bare spot
on a lesser peak, and I directed
the two Darkovan brothers who
were the driest to gather dry
brushwood and get a fire going.
It was hardly near enough sunset
to camp; but by the time we
were dry enough to go on safely,
it would be, so I gave orders to
get the tent up, then rounded
angrily on Kyla.

"See here, another time don't
try any dangerous tricks unless
you're ordered to!"

"Go easy on her," Regis Hastur
interceded, "we'd never have
crossed without the fixed rope.
Good work, girl."

"You keep out of this!" I snapped.
It was true, yet resentment
boiled in me as Kyla's plain sullen
face glowed under the praise
from the Hastur.

The fact was—I admitted it
grudgingly—a lightweight like
Kyla ran less risk on an acrobat's
bridge than in that kind
of roaring current. That did not
lessen my annoyance; and Regis
Hastur's interference, and the
foolish grin on the girl's face,
made me boil over.

I wanted to question her further
about the sight of trailmen
on the bridge, but decided
against it. We had been spared
attack on the rapids, so it wasn't
impossible that a group, not
hostile, was simply watching our
progress—maybe even aware
that we were on a peaceful mission.

But I didn't believe it for a
minute. If I knew anything
about the trailmen, it was this—one
could not judge them by
human standards at all. I tried
to decide what I would have
done, as a trailman, but my
brain wouldn't run that way at
the moment.

The Darkovan brothers had
built up the fire with a thoroughly
reckless disregard of watching
eyes. It seemed to me that
the morale and fitness of the
shivering crew was of more
value at the moment than caution;
and around the roaring
fire, feeling my soaked clothes
warming to the blaze and drinking
boiling hot tea from a mug,
it seemed that we were right.
Optimism reappeared; Kyla, letting
Hjalmar dress her hands
which had been rubbed raw by
the slipping lianas, made jokes
with the men about her feat of
acrobatics.

We had made camp on the
summit of an outlying arm of
the main ridge of the Hellers,
and the whole massive range lay
before our eyes, turned to a million
colors in the declining sun.
Green and turquoise and rose,
the mountains were even more
beautiful than I remembered.
The shoulder of the high slope
we had just climbed had obscured
the real mountain massif
from our sight, and I saw Kendricks'
eyes widen as he realized
that this high summit we had
just mastered was only the first[116]
step of the task which lay before
us. The real ridge rose ahead,
thickly forested on the lower
slopes, then strewn with rock
and granite like the landscape of
an airless, deserted moon. And
above the rock, there were
straight walls capped with blinding
snow and ice. Down one peak
a glacier flowed, a waterfall, a
cascade shockingly arrested in
motion. I murmured the trailman's
name for the mountain,
aloud, and translated it for the
others:

"The Wall Around the
World."

"Good name for it," Lerrys
murmured, coming with his mug
in his hand to look at the mountain.
"Jason, the big peak there
has never been climbed, has it?"

"I can't remember." My teeth
were chattering and I went back
toward the fire. Regis surveyed
the distant glacier and murmured,
"It doesn't look too bad.
There could be a route along that
western arête—Hjalmar, weren't
you with the expedition that
climbed and mapped High Kimbi?"

The giant nodded, rather
proudly. "We got within a hundred
feet of the top, then a snowstorm
came up and we had to
turn back. Some day we'll tackle
the Wall Around the World—it's
been tried, but no one ever climbed
the peak."

"No one ever will," Lerrys
stated positively, "There's two
hundred feet of sheer rock cliff,
Prince Regis, you'd need wings
to get up. And there's the avalanche
ledge they call Hell's
Alley—"

Kendricks broke in irritably,
"I don't care whether it's ever
been climbed or ever will be
climbed, we're not going to climb
it now!" He stared at me and
added, "I hope!"

"We're not." I was glad of the
interruption. If the youngsters
and amateurs wanted to amuse
themselves plotting hypothetical
attacks on unclimbable sierras,
that was all very well, but it
was, if nothing worse, a great
waste of time. I showed Kendricks
a notch in the ridge, thousands
of feet lower than the
peaks, and well-sheltered from
the icefalls on either side.

"That's Dammerung; we're
going through there. We won't
be on the mountain at all, and
it's less than 22,000 feet high in
the pass—although there are
some bad ledges and washes.
We'll keep clear of the main
tree-roads if we can, and all the
mapped trailmen's villages, but
we may run into wandering
bands—" abruptly I made my
decision and gestured them
around me.

"From this point," I broke the
news, "we're liable to be attacked.
Kyla, tell them what you
saw."

She put down her mug. Her
face was serious again, as she
related what she had seen on the
bridge. "We're on a peaceful mission,
but they don't know that
yet. The thing to remember is
that they do not wish to kill,[117]
only to wound and rob. If we
show fight—" she displayed a
short ugly knife, which she tucked
matter-of-factly into her
shirt-front, "they will run away
again."

Lerrys loosened a narrow dagger
which until this moment I
had thought purely ornamental.
He said, "Mind if I say something
more, Jason? I remember
from the 'Narr campaign—the
trailmen fight at close quarters,
and by human standards they
fight dirty." He looked around
fiercely, his unshaven face glinting
as he grinned. "One more
thing. I like elbow room. Do we
have to stay roped together when
we start out again?"

I thought it over. His enthusiasm
for a fight made me feel
both annoyed and curiously delighted.
"I won't make anyone
stay roped who thinks he'd be
safer without it," I said, "we'll
decide that when the time comes,
anyway. But personally—the
trailmen are used to running
along narrow ledges, and we're
not. Their first tactic would
probably be to push us off, one
by one. If we're roped, we can
fend them off better." I dismissed
the subject, adding, "Just
now, the important thing is to
dry out."

Kendricks remained at my
side after the others had gathered
around the fire, looking into
the thick forest which sloped up
to our campsite. He said, "This
place looks as if it had been used
for a camp before. Aren't we
just as vulnerable to attack here
as we would be anywhere else?"

He had hit on the one thing I
hadn't wanted to talk about. This
clearing was altogether too convenient.
I only said, "At least
there aren't so many ledges to
push us off."

Kendricks muttered, "You've
got the only blaster!"

"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.[118]

"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[119]
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[120]
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[121]
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.[122]

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.

He muttered, "I thought you
said this was a trail!"

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[123]
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 for[124]est
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[125]
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[126]
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[127]
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 re[128]turn
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[129]
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."

I shook my head savagely. "To
the Terrans, I'm the ghost!"

"Poor ghost," she whispered.

Her pity stung. I didn't want
it.

"What I don't remember I
can't regret. Probably I won't
even remember you." But I lied.
I knew that although I forgot
everything else, unregretting because
unremembered, I could
not bear to lose this girl, that
my ghost would walk restless
forever if I forgot her. I looked
across the fire at Kyla, cross-legged
in the faint light—only
a few coals in the brazier. She
had removed her sexless outer
clothing, and wore some clinging
garment, as simple as a child's
smock and curiously appealing.
There was still a little ridge of
bandage visible beneath it and
a random memory, not mine, remarked
in the back corners of
my brain that with the cut improperly
sutured there would be
a visible scar. Visible to whom?

She reached out an appealing
hand. "Jason! Jason—?"

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[130]—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.

"You—" he fished desperately[131]
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[132]
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[133]
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."

His face betrayed nothing.
"What do you ask?"

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[134]
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[135]
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[136]
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,[137]
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.[138]

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,[139]
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 be[140]fore
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.[141]

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 for[142]get
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[143]
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.

I couldn't.

Regis said, "We could take the
easy way out, and arrange it so[144]
we'd never have to see each other
again. Or we could do it the hard
way." He extended his hand, and
after a minute, I understood, and
we shook hands briefly, like
strangers who have just met. He
added, "Your work with the
trailmen is finished, but We Hasturs
committed ourselves to
teach some of the Terrans our
science—matrix mechanics. Dr.
Allison—Jason—you know Darkover,
and I think we could work
with you. Further, you know
something about slipping mental
gears. I meant to ask; would
you care to be one of them?
You'd be ideal."

I looked out the window at the
distant mountains. This work—this
would be something which
would satisfy both halves of myself.
The irresistible force, the
immovable object—and no
ghosts wandering in my brain.
"I'll do it," I told Regis. And
then, deliberately, I turned my
back on him and went up to the
quarters, now deserted, which
we had readied for the trailmen.
With my new doubled—or complete—memories,
another ghost
had roused up in my brain, and
I remembered a woman who had
appeared vaguely in Jay Allison's
orbit, unnoticed, working
with the trailmen, tolerated because
she could speak their language.
I opened the door, searched
briefly through the rooms,
and shouted, "Kyla!" and she
came. Running. Disheveled.
Mine.

At the last moment, she drew
back a little from my arms and
whispered, "You're Jason—but
you're something more. Different ..."

"I don't know who I am," I
said quietly, "but I'm me. Maybe
for the first time. Want to help
me find out just who that is?"

I put my arm around her, trying
to find a path between memory
and tomorrow. All my life, I
had walked a strange road toward
an unknown horizon. Now,
reaching my horizon, I found it
marked only the rim of an unknown
country.

Kyla and I would explore it together.

THE END