 Part 3 of The Planet Savers by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It was hard climbing now, on rock, and there were places where we had to scrabble for hand-holds and flatten ourselves out against an almost sheer wall. The keen wind rose as we climbed higher, whining through the thick forest, sowing in the rocky outcrops, and biting through our soaked clothing with icy teeth. Candricks 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 bear-spot on a lesser peak, and I directed the two dark-oven 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 Hastor 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 Hastor. 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 Hastor'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 Trailman 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 Trailman, 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 Dark Oven 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 Calmar dress her hands which had been rubbed raw by the slipping Leonas, made jokes with the men about her feet 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 massive from our sight, and I saw Kendrick's eyes widen as he realized that this high summit we had just mastered was only the first 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, Laris 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 shattering, and I went back toward the fire. Others surveyed the distant glacier and murmured, It doesn't look too bad. There could be a route along the western arete. Hjalmar, weren't you with the expedition that climbed and mapped High Kimby? 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, Laris stated positively. There's two hundred feet of sheer rock cliff, Prince Regis. You need wings to get up. And there's the avalanche ledge they call Hell's Alley. Kendrick's broken 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 Kendrick's a notch in the ridge, thousands of feet lower than the peaks, and well sheltered from the ice falls on either side. That's dammering. We're going through there. We won't be on the mountain at all, and it's less than twenty-two thousand 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 trailman's villages, but we may run into wandering bands. Abruptly I made my decision and gestured them around me. At 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, 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. Laris 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 NAR campaign. The trailman 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 and self-defense, we might as well pack up and go home. We're on a peaceful mission and we're begging a favour. Even if we're attacked, we kill only as a last resort and in hand-to-hand combat.'" "'Damn primitive frontier planet. Would you rather die of the trailman'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 dammit, 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 Damarung, it's easy going into Trailman City. Beyond there it's all civilized.'" "'Maybe you call it civilization,' Kendrick said, and turned away. "'Come on, let's finish drying our feet.' And at that moment they hit us." Kendrick's 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 lightly upward into the treetops. I searched quickly, gripped with my good hand at the bleeding knuckles, and found Regis Hastor 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 dark over would rise and exterminate the trailman, 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 of 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 damn 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?' Garen was blinking senselessly, half dazed by a blow. Regis' forehead had been gashed and dripped blood, and Hjalmar's thigh sliced in a clean cut. My own knuckles were laid bare, and the hand was getting numb. It was a little while before anybody noticed Kyla crouched over speechless with pain. She reeled and turned deathly white when we touched her. He 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. But Kendricks was bone-white, his mouth widening as he said hoarsely. "'Jay, Dr. 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 dark-oven, "'Let her alone. This is my work.' He didn't know enough words to curse them away, so he switched to Tarran, 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 should 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, "'Jayson?' "'Dr. Allison,' he corrected tersely, surprised in a minor way. The major surprise had blurred the lesser ones, that she knew his name. Kendricks spoke swiftly to the girl in one of the dark-oven 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 Dr. Allison? Good Lord, Jason!' And then he moved fast. "'What's the matter? Oh, hell Jay, don't fade on me!' Jay was aware that he didn't come out of it too bravely, but anyone who blamed him, he thought resentfully, should try it on for size, going to sleep in a comfortably closed-in office, and waking up on a cliff at the outer edges of nowhere. His hand hurt. He saw that it was bleeding and flexed it experimentally, trying to determine that no tendons had been injured. He rapped, "'How did this happen?' "'Sir, keep your voice down, or speak dark-oven.'" Jay blinked again. Kendricks was still the only familiar thing in a strangely vertiginous universe. The Space Force 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 fourth!' and swore the colorless profanity of an indoor man. Somebody shouted, "'Jayson!' 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 aside. "'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 dark-oven 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 dark-ovans, 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, Dr. 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 hasters are partly telepathic, Jason. Forgive me, Dr. Allison. I have known from the first that you were possessed by a god or demon.' "'Superstitious rubbish!' Jay snapped, typical of a dark-oven. "'It is a convenient manner of speaking, no more,' said the young haster, overlooking the rudeness. "'I suppose I could learn your terminology if I considered it worth the effort. I have had Psy training, and I can tell the difference when half of a man's soul has driven out the other half. Perhaps I can restore you to yourself.' "'If you think I'd have some dark-oven 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. 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 parasite. If you can switch me off, go right ahead.' I stared at Regis, passing a hand across my forehead. "'What happened?' I demanded, and an even swift her 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, Dr. 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 J. 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 Damerung past to-night, then tomorrow we could cross it early, before the sun warmed the snow and we had snow slides and slush to deal with. Beyond Damerung I knew the tribesmen and could speak their language. I mentioned this, and Kendricks looked doubtfully at Kyla. Can she climb?' "'Can she stay here?' I countered, but I went and sat beside her anyhow. "'How badly are you hurt? Do you think you can travel?' She said fiercely, "'Of course I can climb. I tell you I'm no weak girl. I'm a free Amazon.'" She flung off the blanket, somebody had tucked around her legs. Her lips looked a little pinched, but the long stride was steady as she walked to the fire and demanded more soup. We struck the camp in minutes. The trailman band of raiding females had snatched up almost everything portable, and there was no sense in striking and cashing the tent. They'd return and hunt it out. If we came back with the trailman 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. The every one 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, flatten like bugs against a wall scrabbling for handholds and footholds. I felt at 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. Crouting together on the ledge I changed places with the veteran Laris, 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 trailman this is a super highway, 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-site 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 treeline, where only scrubby, unkillable thornbushes clustered. We tore down some of them and piled them up as a windbreak, and bedded beneath it, but we all thought with aching regret of the comfort of the camp-gear we'd abandoned. The going had gotten good and rough. That night remains in my mind as one of the most miserable in memory, except for the slight ringing in my ears the height alone did not bother me, but the others did not fare so well. Most of the men had blinding headaches. Kyla's slashed side must have given her considerable pain, and Kendrick's 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 from 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 closed space before crawling in beside Kendrick's, and saw the girl bedding down slightly apart from the others. I started to say something, but Kendrick spoke first, voicing my thoughts. Better crawl in with us, girl," he added, coldly, but not unkindly. You'd eat and worry about any funny stuff. Kyla gave me just the flicker of a grin, and I realized she was including me on the dark-oven side of a joke against this big man who was so unaware of dark-oven 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-herding? Are you cold?' "'A little. It's been a long time since I've been at these altitudes, too. But it really is. I can't get those women out of my head.'" Hendrick's coughed and moved 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 trailman's lives are so balanced that they have no room for extra females within the nests, the cities. So when a girl child of the sky people reaches womanhood, the other women drive her out of the city with kicks and blows, and she has to wander in the forest until some male comes after her and claims her and brings her back as his own. Then she can never be driven forth again, although, if she bears no children, she can be forced to be a servant to his other wives.'" Hendrick's made a little sound of disgust. "'You think it's 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. Hendrick's 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 better quit talking. The others want to sleep, if we don't.'" After a time I heard Hendrick snoring and Kyla's quiet even breaths. I wondered drowsily how Jay would have felt about this situation. He who hated dark-over and avoided contact with every other human being, crowded between a dark-over and 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 fourth 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 fourth 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. Fourth was standing between us in the tree-road, with the caduceus emblem on his coat stretched like a red staff between us. Kendrick's in his Space Force uniform was threatening us with a blaster, and Regis Haster was suddenly wearing Space Service uniform too, and saying, Jay Allison, Jay Allison, as the tree-road splintered and cracked beneath our feet, and we were stumbling 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 vanishing nightmare. What's the matter? You were moaning. Touch of altitude sickness? I grunted, realizing my arm was around her shoulder, and pulled it quickly away. After a while 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 Damarung should be an anti-climax 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. Some time, and you have the word of a haster, you'll be along on that expedition. The young fellow's 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 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 Damarung inside the ridge, unlike the outside trail, was clear and well marked, and we wound down the slope, walking in an easy single file. As the mist thinned and we'd left the snowline 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 trail-city. An hour's walking brought us to the edge of the forest. We traveled swiftly now, forgetting our weariness, eager to reach the city before nightfall. It was quiet in the forest, almost ominously still. Over our heads 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, rave-muttered. Anyone living in this forest would have to live in the treetops, or go totally blind. Kendrick's 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 trailman'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,' Laris said. She must belong to one of us.' "'He didn't add a syllable. No one could have expected it. Dark oven 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 unfunny 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 trail-city,' I whispered, and pointed upward. All around us the hundred trees rose, branchless pillars so immense that four men, hands joined, could not have encircled one with their arms. They stretched upward for some three hundred feet before stretching out their interweaving branches. Above that nothing was visible but blackness.' Yet the grove was not dark, but lighted with the startlingly brilliant phosphorescence of the fungi growing on the trunks and trimmed into bizarre ornamental shapes. In cages of transparent fiber 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 glowworms 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 to-night 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 Caro. 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 Caro, 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. Kendrick stepped gingerly on the swaying jiggling floor of the square. It gave slightly at every step, and Kendrick swore morosely in a language that fortunately only Rafe and I understood. Curious trailman flocked to the street and twittered welcome and surprise. Rafe and Kendrick's 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 roomy. They welcomed me and made arrangements for the others in my party to be housed in an abandoned house nearby. They had insisted that I, of course, must return to their roof, and Kyla, of course, had to stay with me. Could we camp on the ground instead? Kendrick's asked, eyeing 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 weather tight and seemed comfortable to me. The first thing to be done was to dispatch a messenger to the old one, begging the favour of an audience with him. That done, by one of my foster brothers, we settled down to a meal of buds, honey, insects, and bird 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 Hastor 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 Hastor, 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 Hastor, 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'd 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 Hastor, be jealous of Kyla? Jealous of me? It had never occurred to me that he might somehow be attracted to Kyla. I tried to pass it off lightly. Kyla might divert me, Regis said without emphasis. Yet she brought Dr. Allison back once before. Then, surprisingly, he laughed. Or maybe you're right. Maybe Kyla will scare away Dr. Allison if he shows up. The coals of the dying fire laid strange tints of color on Kyla's face and shoulders and the wispy waves of her dark hair. Now that we were alone, I felt constrained. Can't you sleep, Jason? I shook my head. Better sleep while you can. I felt that this night of all nights I dared not close my eyes, or when I woke I would have vanished into the Jay Allison I hated. For a moment I saw the room with his eyes. To him it would not seem cozy and clean, but habituated to white sterile tile, tarren 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 Tara'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 is 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 tarrens and their sciences, that they make men who aren't real, men of metal, not bone and flesh. Before the dawning of that naïve 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 is 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 her softly, and said, I saw, someone else, looking from your eyes at me once, a ghost. I shook my head savagely. To the tarrens, 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, unregrating 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. End of Part 3. Part 4 of The Planet Savors by Marion Zimmer Bradley. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Planet Savors. Part 4. 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 the lens. Her hands closed on my shoulders. I put out a groping hand to push her away. Jason, she implored, don't go away from me like that. Talk to me, tell me. But her words reached me through emptiness. I knew important things might hang on tomorrow's meeting. Jason alone could come through that meeting where the Terrans, for some reason, put him through this hell and damnation and torture. Oh, yes, the trailman'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 trailman 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. Kendrick's now. Jay knew precisely why Fourth had sent the big, reliable spaceman at his back. And that handsome, arrogant Darkoven, 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 Haster 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 trailman's language, that it had slipped from his thoughts completely. You, he fished desperately for the girl's name, Kyla, you don't speak the trailman'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... 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 trailman's language. He had spoken it as a child. He must recall enough to speak to the woman who had been a kind of foster-mother to her alien son. He tried to form his lips into the unfamiliar shapes of words. Jay covered his face with his hands again. Jason was the part of himself that remembered the trailman. 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 are only some way to get back the Jason memories, skills, without losing himself. He said to the girl, Let me think. Let me... To his surprise and horror his voice broke into an alien tongue. Let me alone, will you? Maybe Jay thought I could stay myself if I could remember the rest. Dr. Forth said Jason would remember the trailman 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. Accept my fathers, for trying to fly over the hellers into a country where no man belongs. He hadn't belonged. And yet the trailman, 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. Oh, 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 my 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 intense 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 Hastor. 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 Tramlin, he had the chinless face and loblous ears, the heavy-haired body which looked slightly less than human. He spoke very low, the Tramlin have very acute hearing, and I had to strain my ears to listen and remember to keep my own voice down. He stretched his hand to me and I lowered my head over it and murmured, I take submission, old one. Never mind that, he said in his gentle, twittering voice, Sit down, my son, you are welcome here, but I feel you have abused our trust in you. We dismissed you to your own kind because we felt you would be happier so. Did we show you anything but kindness that after so many years you return with armed men? The reproof in his red eyes was hardly an auspicious beginning. I said, helplessly, Old one, the men with me are not armed, a band of those who may not enter cities attacked us and we defended ourselves. I travelled with so many men only because I feared to travel the passes alone. But does that explain why you have returned at all? The reason and reproach in his voice made sense. Finally, I said, Old one, we come as suppliants. My people appeal to your people in the hope that you will be—I started to say, as human, stopped and amended—that you will deal as kindly with them as with me. His face betrayed nothing. What do you ask? I explained. I told it badly, stumbling, not knowing the technical terms, knowing they had no equivalence anyway in the trailman's language. He listened, asking a penetrating question now and again. When I mentioned the Terran legate's offer to recognize the trailman 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 Hastor 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 Hastor need never speak as a supplient to the sky people. Nevertheless, hear me as a supplient, Father, Regis said quietly. It is not the strangers and aliens of Terra who are pleading. We have learned one thing from the strangers of Terra which you have not yet learned. I am young, and it is not fitting that I should teach you. But you have said. Are we to blame that the moons come together in the sky? No. But we have learned from the Terrans not to blame the moons in the sky for our own ignorance of the ways of the gods, by which I mean the ways of sickness or poverty or misery. These are strange words for a Hastor, said the Old one, displeased. These are strange times for a Hastor, 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 Hastor now? Man or God or Hastor, I am not too proud to plead for my people, retorted Regis, flushing with anger. Never in all the history of Darkover has a Hastor stood before one of you and begged. For the men of another world. For all men on our world. Old one, I could sit and keep stayed in the house of the Hastors, and even death could not touch me until I grew weary of living. But I prefer to learn new lives from new men. The Terrans have something to teach even the Hastors, 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 non-human. My father, I said, you took a dying man and a dying child from a burning plane. Even those of their own kind might have stripped their corpses and left them to die. You saved the child, fostered him, and treated him as a son. When he reached an age to be unhappy with you, you let a dozen of your people risk their lives to take him to his own. You cannot ask me to believe that you are indifferent to the death of a million of my people when the fate of one could stir your pity. There was a moment's silence. Finally, the old one said, indifferent, no, but helpless. My people die when they leave the mountains. The air is too rich for them. The food is wrong. The light blinds and tortures them. Can I send them to suffer and die, those people who call me father? And a memory buried all my life suddenly surfaced. I said, urgently, Father, listen. In the world I live in now, I am called a wise man. You need not believe me, but listen. I know your people. They are my people. I remember when I left you, more than a dozen of my foster parents' friends offered, knowing they risked death to go with me. I was a child. I did not realize the sacrifice they made. But I watched them suffer as they 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 any one, 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, Jay Allison. 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 still giving way to a sudden upswing of exaltation. Damn it, I'd done it. Let Jay Allison try to match that. Regis still looked grave. He'd have refused, but you appealed to him as one of themselves. And yet it wasn't quite that. It was something more. Regis put a quick, embarrassed arm around my shoulders and suddenly blurted out. I think the Terran Medical played hell with your life, Jason. And even if it saves a million lives, it's hard to forgive them for that. Late the next day the old one called us in again and told us that a hundred men had volunteered to return with us and act as blood donors and experimental subjects for research into the trailman'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 trailman, unused to ground, travel at any time, and suffering from the unaccustomed low altitude began to weaken. As we grew stronger, more and more of them faltered, and we traveled 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. Larissa 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 dark over, 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 through the gate and said she had a relayed telepathic message for someone, would she? I had to smile at the picture that conjured up in my mind. I'm afraid not, I admitted. Tell her to go to Dr. Forth, and give the message from Dr. Jason Allison. Regis looked at me curiously. It was the first time I had spoken my own name in the hearing of the others. But he nodded without comment. For the next hour or two he seemed somewhat more preoccupied than usual, but after a time he came to me and told me that the message had gone through. Some time later he relayed an answer. That airlift would be waiting for us, but not at Carthon, but a small village near the Fort of the Kaderan where we had left our trucks. When we capped that night there were a dozen practical problems needing attention. The time and exact place of crossing the Fort, 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 latitude. 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 thin cloud. The rose and saffron of the dying fire, colors gave shape to my dreams. Once more, as in the trail-city that night, Kyla slipped through fire-light 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, then sudden and terrifying shyness overcoming her again, and at last she said in a whisper, Darkover is a wide world, Jason. Big enough for us to hide in. I don't believe they would search very far. They wouldn't. I could leave word with Kendricks, not with Regis. The telepath would see through me immediately. That I had ridden ahead to Carthon with Kyla. By the time they realized that I had fled, they would be too concerned with getting the trailmen safely to the Terran Zone to spend much time looking for a runaway. As Kyla said, the world was wide. And it was my world, and I would not be alone in it. Kyla, Kyla, I said helplessly, and crushed her against me, kissing her. She closed her eyes, and I took a long, long look at her face. Not beautiful, no. But womanly, and brave, and all the other beautiful things. It was a farewell look, and I knew it, if she didn't. After the briefest time, she pulled a little away, and her flat voice was gentler and more breathless than usual. We'd better leave before the others waken. She saw that I did not move. Jason? I could not look at her. Muffled behind my hands, I said. No, Kyla. I... I promised the old one to look after my people in the Terran World. I must go back. You won't be there to look after them. You won't be you! I said, bleakly, I'll write a letter to remind myself. Jay Allison has a very strong sense of duty. He'll look after them for me. He won't like it, but he'll do it with his last breath. He's a better man than I am, Kyla. You 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 dark-oven 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 indescribable condition, and the worst of it was that one of them was still moving, feebly, long past help. Regis turned blindly from the door and leaned against the wall, his shoulders heaving. Not, as I first thought, in disgust, but in grief. Tears ran over his hands and spilled down, and when I took him by the arm to lead him away, he reeled and fell against me. He said in a broken, blurred, choking voice, Oh Lord Jason, those children, those children! If you ever had any doubts about what you're doing, any doubts about what you've done, think about that. Think that you've saved a whole world from that. Think that you've done something even the hasters 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 trailman 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. Fourth had done a marvellous job of having quarters ready for the trailman, 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 aligned 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 low 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. Set down and tell me all about it, he insisted. I would rather not speak. Instead, compulsively, I made it a full report, and curious flickers came in and out of my consciousness as I spoke. By the time I realized I was reacting to a post-hypnotic suggestion that, in fact, I was going under hypnosis again, it was too late, and I could only think that this was worse than death, because in a way I would be alive. Jay Allison sat up and meticulously straightened his cuff before tightening his mouth in what was meant for a smile. I assumed, 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 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 What's-His-Names 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 Randolph Forth stood together, watching the last of the disappearing planes, carrying the volunteers back toward Carthon and their mountains. I should have flown back to Carthon with them, Jay said, moodily. Forth watched the tall man stare at the mountain, wondered what lay behind the contained gestures and the brooding. He said, You've done enough, Jay. You've worked like the devil. Thurman, the legate, sent down to say you get an official commendation and a promotion for your part. That's not even mentioning what you did in the trailman 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 trailman 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 Carthen 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 Rave 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 to the Hellers. No, no, forth said equably. There's a visitor coming. Regis Hastor 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 Darkoven woman, and, blurring these things, the two handsome Darkoven 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 sigh powers of the Hastors, 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 Darkoven. I did it because it was my job. I'd prefer to forget the whole thing. Why don't you talk to him? I rather had the idea that he wanted to see you personally. Jay, you did a tremendous thing, man. Damn it, why don't you strut a little? Be—be normal for once. Why, I'd be damn near bursting with pride if one of the Hastors 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 Darkoven nobody refuses when the Hastors make a request, and certainly not a request as reasonable as this one. Fourth 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 Fourth started at the sound of a buzzer, drew the mouthpiece toward him, and said, Tell him we are honoured. 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. Fourth 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 Hastor stood there. Fourth rose courteously, and Jay got to his feet like a mechanical doll jerked on strings. The young Darkoven 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. Fourth, 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 trailman'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 seemed up in a pleased smile, as Fourth said, The gifts sent to the trailman in your name, Lord Hastor, 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. It sounded a miasma in his ears. All his sleepless nightmare charged brooding. All his bottled hate for darkover and the memories he had tried to bury erupted into overwrought bitterness against this two 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's 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, fourth remarked, and I realized I was turning a paper cup in my hands. Fourth sat down, a little weakly, as I raced 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 trailman, but I also knew, with a sure sense of identity, that I was Dr. Jason Allison, Jr., who had abandoned mountain climbing and become a specialist in Darkoven 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 trailman. With a whimsical smile, he said, as an ignorant superstitious Darkoven, I'd say that you were a man who'd balanced his God and demon for once. I looked helplessly at the young Haster. 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 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 trailman is finished, but we Hasters committed ourselves to teach some of the Terrans our science, Matrix Mechanics. Dr. Allison, Jason, you know Darkoven, 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 up 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 trailman. 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 trailman, tolerated because she could speak their language. I opened the door, searched briefly through the rooms, and shouted, Kyla! And she came, running, dishevelled, 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. What to help me find out just who that is? I put my arm around her, tried 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 of The Planet Savers by Marion Zimmer Bradley