The chieri said, slowly as if the words were long rusty with nonuse, "I am—very stranger here to this place. I have been—" a word none of them could comprehend. "There is a Hastur here. Can you direct me to that place where he is?"
The old scholar said, "If you will follow, Noble One," and led the way toward the Tower. He told his friends later: "It looked at me, and I realized it was afraid, afraid in a way that none of us has ever been afraid. I still shake all over when I think about anything like that, being as frightened as all that. I wonder what it wanted?"
Regis Hastur was at breakfast in his rooms in the Arilinn Tower, making ready for the departure of the plane that had brought him here, when one of the young matrix workers of the Tower, a boy of seventeen or eighteen, came to his door.
"Vai dom—"
Regis turned and said courteously, "How may I serve you, Marton?"
"Lord, there is a chieri at the gates below, asking to meet with you, with the Hastur."
"A chieri?" Suddenly Regis laughed. "This language of Arilinn still defeats me at times; I misheard you; a kyrri we would say in Thendara, one of your nonhuman servants here. Can you find out what it wants for me?"
"No, my lord, not a kyrri," Marton looked scandalized. "As if any of them would so presume! No, Lord Regis, a chieri, one of the old Beautiful Folk of the Forest."
Startled, Regis said, "If this is a jest I find it ill-timed," but another look at the boy convinced him that the youngster was as surprised and disbelieving as he was himself. He rose without further delay and went down to the foot of the Tower.
A chieri! Even in his grandfather's day it was rumored that few or none of that oldest race on Darkover still survived, deep in the deepest woods. Never in living memory had one come out of the forest; at most there were strange tales of folk lost or hurt or benighted in the forest, who found themselves succored by strange hands, gentle voices and kindliness, and promptly guided on their way again, and no more than this.
He came out of the dark corridors at the foot of the Tower, and into the pale light of the rising sun, and there, standing in a little awed circle of the servitors, the furred kyrri and the uniformed City Guard and a few bystanders, he had his first sight of the chieri.
It stood on the cobblestones, seeming to stand apart from the others, looking very much like a tall young man, or even a tall young girl, except that the features seemed a little too thin, too pale, too delicate to be human. It was taller than tall Regis, by almost a full head. It had quantities of pale hair that glinted silver gilt. It turned slowly to Regis, moving with a grace and beauty alien and unknown to humankind; and then Regis raised his eyes and met those of the chieri.
The chieri had pale gray eyes, very pale gray with silvery lights deep in them, and as Regis looked into the non-human's eyes, he suddenly stopped thinking in terms of awe and wonder and reverence and old legends. He suddenly realized that this chieri was only a young creature, very confused by the strange sights of the city, very young, very wild and very frightened. He put out his hands with a sudden spontaneous sympathy and said in casta, the archaic and little used tongue of the Comyn Domains, "Why, you poor thing, how did you come here? I am Regis Hastur, grandson of Hastur; and I am at your service. Will you not come in out of the cold—and away from all these eyes," he added suddenly.
"I thank you, young Hastur," the chieri said in that slow, halting speech. Regis stepped back in courtesy to allow his strange guest to pass inside. With a wave of his hand he dismissed the guards and the others. Danilo followed them as Regis led the chieri into one of the small reception rooms on the lowest floor, a room of white translucent stone hung with pale luminescent hangings. Regis motioned the chieri to a seat, but the nonhuman remained standing, seeming to misunderstand the gesture, and said in his hesitant, slow, archaic speech, "It has come to us in the Yellow Forest, Hastur, that you are searching for those with the old powers: to study these powers, to know more of them, whence they came, and what manner of folk have them."
"Why, that's true," Regis said. He realized that the chieri was already imitating his own accent and speech and that he could understand it perfectly well. "But how did you come to know it in the Yellow Forest, Noble One?"
"We chieri—such as we are in these days—know things, Lord of Hastur. It seemed well to us that one of our kind should come and be with you in your search, if you will have us. And since I was the youngest and they felt I could—adjust myself—most easily to leaving the Forest and to changing myself to live among mankind, I was told to come to you and do as you would have me do."
"How far have you come, then?" asked Regis in wonder.
"Many, many days journey, Regis Hastur. I went first to Armida, for my people knew some young folk from there a generation ago; but they were gone, all the Altons, and so I came here."
Danilo stepped forward and motioned to Regis. He did not speak aloud, but linking directly with Regis asked, "Are you sure you can trust this nonhuman? Are you sure it's not a trap?"
"It is not," said the chieri aloud, turning to face Danilo and smiling at him. "I have no contact with the enemies of your friend; before this day I have never had speech with a man of your people, Danilo."
"You know my name?"
"Forgive me—I do not know your ways—is it a rudeness to speak the name?"
"No," said Danilo, baffled. "I just didn't know how you knew it, but you must have uncanny good telepathic power; more than I'm used to dealing with in nonhumans."
The chieri's light gray eyes met Danilo's for a minute; then the chieri smiled and said to Regis, "You are fortunate in your friend; he loves you well and would protect you with his own life. Nevertheless, reassure him that I will never harm you or your kind. I could not if I would."
"I know," Regis said. He felt suddenly warm and at ease. He had heard old tales of the chieri, of their beauty and kindliness, and although this one seemed young and frightened by the strangeness, Regis knew that there was no threat here.
Dando was about to speak; then he looked from the chieri to Regis, struck at once by something strange. The nonhuman was taller, by about a head, and slenderer, his face narrow, the pale, narrow, six-fingered hands inhumanly long and graceful; yet the resemblance, like a shadow, was there, accentuated by Regis' prematurely white hair; the curious cast of feature which marked off the old Comyn type on Darkover.
Some of those old families, they used to say, were akin to the chieri. I can well believe it.
Regis said, "Are you willing to go back with us, then, to Thendara?"
"I came here for that," said the chieri, but he looked around him in an appeal that was like panic. "I am not accustomed to being—within walls."
Poor thing, what will he do on the plane? "I'll look after you," Regis said. "You mustn't be afraid."
"I am afraid because it is very strange and I have never been out of the shadow of my forests before this," said the chieri, and somehow the confession of his fear had a deep dignity which added to Regis' respect and sympathy. "But I am not afraid otherwise and I am at your disposal."
Regis asked, "What is your name? What can we call you?"
"My name is very long and would be hard to say in your speech," said the chieri. "But when I was very small, I called myself s'Keral. You may call me Keral, if you like."
Regis called a servant and asked him to have the plane made ready at once. His brain was spinning.
It has not been more than a few months since the project to study telepath powers had been set up by the Terran Empire's medical facility. Not more than a scant half-dozen Darkovans had been willing to give themselves to this project. And now a chieri, oldest and least known of the nonhuman races of Darkover, traditionally most alien to mankind, (despite old stories, never more than legends, of chieri and mortal) had come unasked and unsought to them, volunteering—when they had hidden for centuries even from the Comyn, except for legends as impalpable as leaves blown on the wind.
How had this happened, an
d what would come of it?
He suddenly realized that he could not even decide adequately whether this strange being out of the woods were male or female. In its positiveness and strength and in the prompt manner it had reassured Danilo, it seemed like a man; yet the delicate voice and hands, the flowing hair and light garments, the timidity and the way in which, as they passed the doors, it clung to Regis' hand in a renewal of panic, was altogether feminine. Do they have gender at all, anyhow? There was an old joke about the nonhuman cralmacs which had become a proverb on Darkover: the sex of a cralmac is of interest to nobody but another cralmac. He supposed the apparent sexlessness of the chieri was some such thing.
I'll have to remember that Keral isn't human. From the minute it went into rapport with me, it seemed that Keral was all too human, one of my own kind, more than most of the people I'd known . . . .
Small wonder the legends speak of men who died of love, having seen a chieri in the woods . . . and pined away for a voice, a beauty more than mortal . . . . Regis was shocked, startled at the turn his own thoughts were taking. He said to Keral, not looking at the chieri, "We will go soon," and went to take leave of his grandfather.
CHAPTER FOUR
A HOSPITAL was a hospital, even at the far end of the galaxy. Waking early and not yet sure where he was, before opening his eyes David felt the familiar ambiance around him, the years-long texture of the life which had become second nature: the preoccupation of busy doctors, the subliminal feel of pain kept under and at a distance, the hurried pace of healing.
Then he opened his eyes and remembered that he was on Darkover, uncounted light-years away from his own home, and that if they had quartered him in a hospital it was not because of the M.D. that he could still write after his name but because of the generally medical nature of this project.
Freaks and telepaths—and I'm going to be one of them! What kind of a planet have they landed me on?
All he remembered of disembarking last night—spaceports were all alike—was a glimpse of a great, luminous, pale purple moon, and another, smaller and crescent, floating low in a strangely colored night sky.
The light in here was Earth-normal yellow, but when he went to the window he saw high, craggy, dark mountains and a great, inflamed, red sun, already high in the sky. He'd come in late; they'd let him sleep, but probably someone would be coming for him sooner or later. Try as he would—and he had tried on the ship that brought him here—he couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the project. Hell, he didn't want to know more about the freak talent that had swept away his chosen career; he wanted to be rid of it!
Oh, well, he thought, turning away from the strange sun and mountains and going toward the bathroom, maybe this will help, and if not maybe it will help somebody else. Treat it like research—a chance to research a rare and freakish disease. Like Madame Curie studying her own radiation burns, or Lanach on Vega Nine doing work on space rot when he was literally rotting away with it.
Anyhow, there was no point to a long face. If his fellow members on the project were telepaths, a cheerful one wouldn't fool them, but it might raise his own morale. By the time he had finished his bath and dressed, he was singing under his breath. He was young and, against his own will, curious.
The hospital cafeteria, where they had told him last night to go for meals, was crowded at this hour. David hated crowds, always had—it took too much work to shut out the sense of people jostling him even when they weren't—but at least it was a familiar crowd, even though there were racial and ethnic types he'd never seen before. Doctors and nurses, mostly in the caduceus-adorned uniform of Terran Empire Medical, but they all had the unmistakable stamp of the profession. Many of the younger ones were a single unfamiliar type he supposed must be Darkovan, swan-skinned with dark crisp-curling hair, ridged foreheads, short broad six-fingered hands, and gray eyes.
He was finishing his breakfast when a young man, not in medical uniform but in green tunic and high, soft leather boots with short-cut red hair, came up to him and said, "Doctor Hamilton? I recognized you at once. Will you come and join us, please? My name is Danilo. I hope the food is to your liking; that is one thing we can never predict. I know that here in the Terran HQ building they can adjust the lights and even the gravity to the planet of your origin, but cultural preferences about what is and what isn't good to eat—" he shrugged. "All they can do here, I guess, is offer a sort of inoffensive lowest common denominator and hope it won't offend anyone too much."
David chuckled. "In hospitals that's standard, I guess. As a matter of fact, I've gotten used to eating whatever they put in front of me and hoping I'll have time to finish it before somebody yells for me. If you were to ask me what I just ate, I probably couldn't tell you under oath." He looked curiously at Danilo. "Are you on the hospital staff?" The kid didn't look old enough to be a doctor but you never could tell with some planetary types.
Danilo, however, offered no explanation of his status beyond a negative gesture. "Come along and meet the others on the project."
"Are—they—all here already?"
"Most of them. The Darkovan ones are lodged in the city, but at least at first, they felt that the facilities here might be more helpful. Jason—" Danilo raised his voice and a young doctor, hurrying past through the halls, came toward them. He was sturdy and dark-haired. David liked his looks at once. He said, "Dr. Hamilton? How was the trip? I've never been off Darkover myself—born here. I'm Jason Allison." He offered his hand and David shook it, realizing suddenly that this was what had been lacking in Danilo's greeting. Darkovan custom? "I see Danilo's introduced himself. I'm a liaison man between Darkovan medical staff and trainees and Empire medical people. Incidentally, I'm a doctor myself, though I don't have time to practice much."
He led the way along the corridor, Danilo easily keeping pace. Now that the meeting with the others on the project was imminent, David's unease became palpable again. A crew of freaks—and he was one of them.
"Dr. Allison—"
Jason Allison grinned. "Jason will do. And I'll call you David, if you don't mind. Darkovans don't use honorifics unless they're way up at the top of the caste hierarchy; any title below Lord simply doesn't exist. No misters, ma'ams, doctor, this or that. It simplifies things, anyhow."
Swept away. Even that gone. "David's okay," he said listlessly. "I—I've never met another telepath—"
Danilo laughed. "Now you have," he said, and grinned. "We don't bite. Or go around casually reading minds. And you aren't a telepath anyhow as far as I can tell. You're an empath and probably have some other psi talents."
David stared at the kid and shook his head slightly, abruptly revising a lot of preconceived notions. Danilo said, "I'm sorry. I was brought up around Darkovans with laran and I spot it automatically. I take you for granted because I feel comfortable around you, that's all; you feel like one of us."
David felt bewildered. Jason said, "Slow down, Dani. David, believe it or not, I know how you feel; remind me to tell you sometime about my first clash—and it was really a clash—with the Hasturs. Here we are."
It was a long room, filled with light and hung about with translucent draperies in pale and lightly varying rainbow colors. David took it in at a glance, the talent he had never recognized because he took it so much for granted that he believed everyone had it and didn't consider it worth mentioning:
—impact of fear/ brilliance/ fear from a tall girl at the far end, tall gird/no, boy/no, girl, with masses of long, loose, fair hair, slender, sexless figure—human?
—slight, authoritative young man with white hair and young gray eyes—wizened small man in his forties, Earth-type, tanned, shifty-looking: dark-skinned nonentity, trembling, spaceman's uniform
—tall, commanding old woman, old to decrepitude but with the same air of command and dominance as if she were young and queenly
—slight, sensual-looking, sullen girl slouched in a deep chair with her eyes moving, in little quick glances like a mouse's, all rou
nd the room and among the men
—and yet again: fear/brilliance/fear from the tall girl/boy with the light hair, in the long tunic . . . .
Is this all?
"You are David Hamilton," said the slight young man with the hair which David somehow knew to be prematurely white. "I am Regis Hastur. I'm very glad you are with us, Dr. Hamilton. Nothing of this sort's been done before; ordinary medical men may be all at sea. The people who know about telepaths don't seem to develop medical sciences; for all I know, don't need them. We didn't, especially. And the Terran medics aren't even sure we exist. They've had to admit it but they don't like it—present company excepted," he added, with a friendly look at Jason Allison.
"I'm being brought here as a doctor?"
"Oh, yes. Once you get this thing, this talent of yours, in hand, it should make you an especially good one, you know," Regis said; "and it won't take you long to learn how to shut out contacts you don't want; every Comyn teenager manages to learn it within a few weeks. You will too, being around other telepaths. That was your problem, you know; no one to help you handle it. Lucky we found you young enough. A lot of isolated telepaths in non-telepath cultures go psychotic and are no use to anyone. We found that out when the HQ was hunting for them for this project. So, as you can see, having one who's also a well-qualified doctor—well, we were ready to fall on your neck and hug you!"
It was like the sudden lifting of a black cloud. David never wondered how Regis had known of his deep encompassing fear. He didn't even try to hide the smile of wondering delight that replaced his strain and fear. It may have been this which made him, for the first time in his life, relax and accept the flow of sensations which came now, unstressed, across the level of his heightened perception as Jason said, "Didn't they tell you this, David? Come on; meet the rest of us; you're the last from offworld in this group; there may be another shipment later but this was the sum of what the Empire could find in nonpsychotic telepaths, Rondo—"
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