Keral laughed. "I don't think you will. I'm not really that fragile. I didn't hurt you, touching you, did I?" David realized that they had come a long way; Keral could touch him now, easily and without hesitation or fear. The change must be far advanced, and he took courage from that.
There was no great strangeness and nothing repellent. At the front of the slit, retracted now like a small folded bud, the male organ, smaller now than a human baby's, although when David, telling himself that he must somehow come to terms with the male in Keral, touched it gently, Keral murmured softly with pleasure. Behind it, deepening in color and faintly swelling, was the female organ, and David, losing his detachment, trembled slightly as he felt the slow throb under his hand. He closed his eyes and moved away, afraid again to hurry anything. Keral broke into violent shuddering and pulled him closer.
"I'm not sure; it's not the same—I can't stand this," he said fiercely, "not knowing, something's got to change, it's killing me—"
We should have expected this, David thought bleakly. Deadlock. So far and no further, and the cultural taboos so strong neither of us can break through them. The attempt had to be made before he lost his nerve, and yet the fear of what a premature attempt could mean held him paralyzed. He moved carefully above Keral, and the chieri's eyes closed, as he clutched David's shoulders, still trembling. He said, "I don't know—I'm afraid—"
David himself was so frightened that it nearly unmanned him. Oh God, why did we try, we had so much . . . . He found himself sobbing, limp, lying across Keral's breast and crying helplessly. He had never known such terror. Keral was crying, too; they held each other, clinging in a sort of blind panic. David finally managed to gasp, "What shall we do? What shall we do?"
Slowly, Keral quieted. He held David close, his lips against David's hair, and for the first time tonight, David was aware of the softness of his skin, the feminine lightness of his touch, as Keral whispered softly in his own language, words David could not understand, although he knew them for endearments. At last he murmured, "David, my dear, we should have expected this. We were both too—too tense, too aware. Maybe love needs a little madness. Remember what you said about blind alleys?"
"It's hopeless, then?"
"No. No. A mistake, not a catastrophe. We were frightened, and—well, self-conscious." He raised himself and kissed David, brushing the hair out of his eyes. "Lie here close to me, David. We were both in a hurry. As if we had to make sure of each other right away."
"I'm ashamed—" David muttered.
"I was before, but it's easier for me if I know that you're frightened too," Keral said simply. "You seemed so sure of yourself, I wondered if you had any idea how hard it was for me—"
"I was pretending," David muttered against his throat, "I wanted to give you confidence, too."
Slowly they quieted, lying close together, feeling the rhythm of each other's hearts. They had been like this before, David remembered, but not so honest with each other. Warmth and security had done their work. David found himself erect again, throbbingly aware of Keral warm and trustful against him. Keral smiled and pulled him close.
"Don't be afraid. We can try."
At first David could not find the entrance and Keral had to help him. He. She. Damn, damn. Fear again, and momentary awkwardness; a drawn breath from Keral; tension that nearly undid David again. Then he realized that he had actually entered. He felt dizzily strange, resisting the instinct to move, and whispered, controlling himself:
"Keral?"
"It's all right—" but the voice was a threadlike gasp.
"Not—afraid?"
"A little, but—go on, I want you to—"
It was hard and awkward, and for a moment they struggled helplessly toward each other, in a renewed spasmodic fear and anger; and Keral sobbed again, in a last flare of panic trying to fight him away. And then, suddenly, they found that they fitted together, and David felt a relief so enormous that he could have burst into tears again. He rested a minute, leaning down to kiss the wet face beneath his, then hunger and desire quickly overcame him again, surging up at the lessening of the seemingly endless tension and fear.
They clung together, moving almost savagely, learning each other's rhythms and movements. Keral was still sobbing, but not, now, with fear. And then, swiftly, it was over for David, in an exploding, blackout burst of light.
When he got his breath again he leaned down and kissed Keral; then, in swift compunction for his tears, gathered him close:
"Don't, there's nothing to cry about—is there? Did I hurt you so much? I tried—"
"No, no, you didn't hurt me, I was so afraid something would go wrong again and now—now I want to cry, to laugh, to fly . . . ."
They fell together into silence, still aware of the soft snow whispering against the window. David had not realized how wholly the strangeness had gone, and yet; this was still Keral. He still did not think of Keral as a woman; and yet—oh, hell! Why struggle for labels? Keral was Keral; and he loved him; and he didn't care; and he fell asleep in Keral's arms not caring.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ON A DAY late in the winter, Jason stopped by the laboratory and said, "David? Regis Hastur just sent me a message; he wants us all to come up to the castle. He didn't say why. Will you walk there with me?"
David got his heaviest coat—a Darkovan one; the ones he had owned on other planets would have been summerweight here—and came along. Jason asked, "How is it going?"
"Busy, as usual. I was right, by the way; all of the other telepaths in the new group have gray eyes, and all of the Comyn and Darkovans have the typical brain wave readings; not as pronounced as in the chieri, but the same thing on a lesser scale."
Jason chuckled. "Did you ever see so many redheads?"
"No, I read an old story once—from prehistory—called The Red-headed League, a foolish tale about something that was a crime then; I can't remember, but one paragraph in it—I thought of it this morning: 'I never hope to see such a sight as that again. From north, south, east and west, every man who had a shade of red in his hair had tramped in. I should not have thought there were so many in the whole country. Every shade of red they were: straw, lemon, orange, brick, liver, clay and the real flame-haired tint.' "
"Well, you look as if you belong," Jason said, and David laughed. "Coincidence; when I was a kid on Terra, red hair wasn't associated with anything except bad temper. I had that too; that was before I realized that everybody around me couldn't tell what I was thinking as easily as I could tell it about them. But where in hell did you get it, Jason? You're not red-headed."
"I was as a kid, but I'd forgotten. My mother was," Jason said; "she was Darkovan, but she died before I was old enough to remember. As for being a telepath, I never suspected I was until being around all of you I started picking things up. Where's Keral?"
They had gone down to the spaceport gates now and passed through, climbing the steep old streets toward the old castle on the cliffs high above them. David said, "He went out for a walk in the fields; I think the streets and buildings stifle him."
"Alone?"
"No; Conner was with him, and some guards—I had work I wanted to finish."
"Keral doesn't look nearly as—well, as girlish—as Missy. I notice you still say he."
David shrugged. "I still think of him that way. Maybe Missy changed so much only because she was mimicking humans; a lot of behavior we think of as sex linked is really just culture linked; I don't know."
Jason said, "I loved a Free Amazon once; in many ways it was like loving a man, and more so toward the end than at first."
"I've heard Linnea speak of the Free Amazons but somehow I thought they only loved other women."
"Oh, no! But they do as they please, and no man holds one of them for long. Kyla stayed with me for three years and that was a long time, for a woman with no child; then she grew weary of the city, but my work was here and I decided to stay. I'm not sure if I was right or wrong, but I'm a docto
r, and for better or worse—" Jason fell silent, and David said, "I understand."
"The work we're doing now, a reliable study of telepaths and their powers, is going to make all the difference to Darkover," Jason said; "it's been tried before, but nothing ever came of it; the Darkovans wouldn't cooperate. Now they are doing it of their free will."
"Not entirely of their free will," David said, "but of necessity. I think seeing Keral and hearing about his people has frightened them; they see themselves. Their birth rate is falling too, you know. Appallingly. Not one of the women here has had more than one child; and the men—" he shrugged. "A few, like Regis, felt it their duty to make sure they had children; the others never thought of it."
Jason asked, "A case of nature breeding back to the norm?"
"I think not. It's a case of—sensitivity," David said. "Once you get habituated to that kind of contact, nothing less seems real. And there aren't so many potential mates either; marriages are made for political reasons, too, and the girls are brought up in isolation, seeing only their own blood kin. No one ever thought of trying to breed deliberately for the telepath genes, and as a result, half of the telepath families are diluted until the gift hardly shows, and the others so inbred that some awfully freaky recessives are coming out."
"True enough," Jason said. "Well, perhaps something will come of this gathering." As he spoke, they passed under the high gates of the old castle. The guards on duty there looked faintly askance at the two Terran Medics, in their white uniforms, but let them pass, and inside the corridors, which were, like most Darkovan buildings, of pale translucent stone with colored lights behind the panels, one of the servants told them that the Lord Hastur had given orders to bring them to the Council Chamber.
David already knew that the orders sent out by Regis to bring every known telepath on Darkover to Thendara had resulted in two hundred and thirty adult men and women—which on Darkover meant over fifteen years old. About a hundred more were accounted for as unable to come because of inaccessible weather and climate, extreme old age or illness, and a few because of advanced pregnancy. This was not a great number for a population which numbered somewhere in the low millions—a census of Darkover had never been made. David had heard the old estimates; in the old days, roughly one in a hundred of the population had displayed measurable telepathic gifts.
Regis did not long leave them in doubt about why he had called them together. After rehearsing a few of the known problems, and begging them to cooperate in the Terran-sponsored program to measure their gifts and train those which were latent, he broke off the formal speech and stepped down from the high platform from which he had spoken.
David had been in contact with him often enough to sense his complete dedication, but he had never before thought of Regis as much of a leader. Always before Regis had seemed to him a quiet, rather diffident youngster, pushed reluctantly into a position of power and not enjoying it. Regis was not especially tall, even for a Darkovan—they were not a particularly tall race. He was about five foot nine, and although his features were fine, the snowwhite hair lending them a steel-toned distinction, he would not of himself have drawn all eyes. But now, as he spoke, David sensed that he was drawing on some force which seemed above and beyond his own personality.
"Our world is in the hands of wreckers," he said, "and I cannot even urge you to seek help from the Terrans. It might be better to die our own way than to live in theirs. But I do not believe these are our only alternatives. We are something quite unusual among the hundred thousands of inhabited worlds; and we must keep what we have.
"Our traditional ways and governments have been broken up, and nothing has emerged to take their place. The Terran Empire is all too ready to step into this vacuum.
"The Comyn and the Comyn Council, our old hierarchy, are gone. I am going to ask you all to join with me in forming a new council; a council which will not rule Darkover, but which will lead it and work to restore it.
"For hundreds of years, those of you who, like myself, were born into telepath families and castes have had the tradition of spending your gifts for the good of our world as a whole. You have sacrificed yourselves and lived in isolation, working with the screens and matrices to give us such small technology as we have. And those of you born into other families and castes have been considered outcasts, freaks, strange and uncanny, both revered and feared.
"I ask you to join together: Comyn and commoner, peasant and lord, Free Amazon and stranger, valley man and mountain man. I ask you to spend yourselves further for our people. And for the time being, I ask you to lend your gifts to the Terrans in return for the help we need to rebuild our world. But in return I guarantee that we will never become just another of the lockstep worlds of the Empire. Maybe we can be the leaven in their dough. Maybe, when they find that they cannot remake us in their image, they will find that they remake themselves more like us.
"Will you give me all your help?"
He stood silent, and for a moment there was no answer.
It was not needed. It was like a visible storm in the room, as every man and woman there rose physically to his feet—and David found himself locked into the sudden and incredible joining.
There were superficial differences; there would even be hostilities. But at this moment they were all united; and David knew that never in the history of the known universe had anyone led such a united group with such a single mind.
He didn't know how they would meet the problems their world faced. But he'd bet on them to solve them—and he knew in that blinding moment of revelation that he would be a part of the answer.
The winter wore away, day by slow day, while Andrea Closson studied her plans, listened to her spies and cogitated the final act which would leave this planet defenseless. Once or twice she thought that she could hardly have planned it better, all the remaining telepaths coming together into the Comyn Castle; it was as if, in some lemming rush, they had hastened to put themselves into her hands.
The few who remained, old, insignificant, ill or trapped in isolated districts, they did not count; even the few young pregnant women who remained away. Nevertheless, without realizing it she was relieved, for she had an irrational prejudice against killing a woman with child; and this eliminated the need. Regis Hastur, who, when her assassins were still on this planet, had been her prime target, was rumored in the city to have another mistress. Andrea had never seen Regis Hastur, but she felt a vague admiration for him; he had thwarted so many attacks. Well, let him enjoy such time as was left to him and his people, in peace. The few who remained after her last act would be too few and too feeble to rebuild their kind; in another generation they would be no more than a memory and a few isolated throwbacks.
Working through a few agents (like most Trade Cities, you can buy anything in the main spaceport of Darkover if you have the price) she had managed to secure the materials she wanted.
One night toward spring, she heard the news she was waiting for:
"It's one of their special Festivals," the man told her, "and all of them, including the telepaths they've brought in from offworld on this special HQ Medic project—ten or fifteen of them by now—will be up in the castle that night. It's some kind of dance—to celebrate the spring thaw, or the first green leaves, or something like that. I don't know why they're taking time off to hold a dance at this time of year with all they've got on their minds, but I guess I'll never understand Darkovans."
"How reliable is this information?" Andrea asked.
"It's as straight as a computer readout," the man assured her. "One of the chaps in the telepath project is a great gambler. I can get his tongue loose if he wins—and I make sure he wins."
"Fool," Andrea said dispassionately, "if he's a telepath he probably knows you're picking his brains."
"Whether he knows or not, he doesn't give a damn," the spy retorted. "I don't know what you're plotting, or planning, if anything, so he couldn't read much. So what if he knows I don't mean them
any good. I'm no telepath, but I don't need to know that this cat Rondo means them no good either. He's probably delighted to know that I'm reporting back to somebody who doesn't love them."
Well, the harm was done; but Andrea doubted if anyone, now, would trouble to track down who was behind a single spy. In any case she doubted if anyone born human could read her thoughts. Certainly not after all these years. (Once, in the forest, when a copper-haired Free Amazon had watched her burying the black virus, she had felt a trace of contact and dismissed it with contempt. And after all, nothing had been done, although a brief check had told her that the Free Amazon had run to some local seeress for a counter-charm. So much for Darkovan telepaths!)
And if they read her mind too late—well, it would be too late. She never let it come up to the surface of her mind that after this final act she had not bothered to plan her own escape. (What for?)
Her excuse was simple. There was no one else she could trust to know her plans, or the telepaths would pick up the knowledge from his mind.
So that it would be her own act and another race would die. Like her own.
Without knowing it, David echoed the very words of Andrea's spy:
"I don't know why, with all they have on their minds, they're taking time off for a dance tonight!"
Jason chuckled. "When you've been on Darkover a few years longer, you'll understand it." It was taken for granted by them both now, David thought, that he was committed for life to this world. "Dancing is a big thing here. Get three Darkovans together anywhere and they hold a dance."
Regis said, "It's a primary study. I think it goes back into prehistory; perhaps rising out of old folk festivals at the eclipses; I don't know. It's the one exclusively human activity; there is a parallel for every other human thing in some lower animal, even music—the birds sing, and even some insects make artistic patterns. But there is an old poem which states it: only men laugh, only men weep and only men dance." He was resplendent in a jeweled costume of blue and silver; Linnea, at his side, was covered with pink flowers, some real and some artificial. He smiled kindly at David and asked Keral, beside him, "Do the chieri dance?"
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