“In other words,” I said, laughing loudly, “if I scare that Allison stuffed-shirt, he may start stirring in his grave?”
Forth coughed and smothered a laugh and said that was one way of putting it. I clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder and said “Forget it, sir. I promise to be godly, sober and industrious—but is there any law against enjoying what I’m doing?”
Somebody burst out of the warehouse-palace place, and shouted at me. “Jason? The guide is here,” and I stood up, giving Forth a final grin. “Don’t you worry. Jay Allison’s good riddance,” I said, and went back to meet the other guide they had chosen.
And I almost backed out when I saw the guide. For the guide was a woman.
She was small for a Darkovan girl, and narrowly built, the sort of body that could have been called boyish or coltish but certainly not, at first glance, feminine. Close-cut curls, blue-black and wispy, cast the faintest of shadows over a squarish sunburnt face, and her eyes were so thickly rimmed with heavy dark lashes that I could not guess their color. Her nose was snubbed and might have looked whimsical and was instead oddly arrogant. Her mouth was wide, and her chin round.
She held up her palm and said rather sullenly, “Kyla Rainéach, free Amazon, licensed guide.”
I acknowledged the gesture with a nod, scowling. The guild of free Amazons entered virtually every field, but that of mountain guide seemed somewhat bizarre even for an Amazon. She seemed wiry and agile enough, her body, under the heavy blanket-like clothing, almost as lean of hip and flat of breast as my own; only the slender long legs were unequivocally feminine.
The other men were checking and loading supplies; I noted from the corner of my eye that Regis Hastur was taking his turn heaving bundles with the rest. I sat down on some still-undisturbed sacks, and motioned her to sit.
“You’ve had trail experience? We’re going into the Hellers through Dammerung, and that’s rough going even for professionals.”
She said in a flat expressionless voice, “I was with the Terran Mapping expedition to the South Polar ridge last year.”
“Ever been in the Hellers? If anything happened to me, could you lead the expedition safely back to Carthon?”
She looked down at her stubby fingers. “I’m sure I could,” she said finally, and started to rise. “Is that all?”
“One more thing—” I gestured to her to stay put. “Kyla, you’ll be one woman among eight men—”
The snubbed nose wrinkled up. “I don’t expect you to crawl into my blankets, if that’s what you mean. It’s not in my contract—I hope!”
I felt my face burning. Damn the girl! “It’s not in mine, anyway,” I snapped, “ but I can’t answer for seven other men, most of them mountain roughnecks.” Even as I said it I wondered why I bothered; certainly a free Amazon could defend her own virtue, or not, if she wanted to, without any help from me. I had to excuse myself by adding, “In either case you’ll be a disturbing element—I don’t want fights either!”
She made a little low-pitched sound of amusement. “There’s safety in numbers, and—are you familiar with the physiological effect of high altitudes on men acclimated to low ones?” Suddenly she threw back her head and the hidden sound became free and merry laughter. “Jason, I’m a free Amazon, and that means—no, I’m not neutered, though some of us are. But you have my word, I won’t create any trouble of any recognizably female variety.” She stood up. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to check the mountain equipment.”
Her eyes were still laughing at me, but curiously I didn’t mind at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
STARTED that night, a curiously lopsided little caravan. The pack animals were loaded into one truck and didn’t like it. We had another stripped-down truck which carried supplies. The ancient stone roads, rutted and gullied here and there with the flood-waters and silt of decades, had not been planned for any travel other than the feet of men or beasts. We passed tiny villages and isolated country estates, and a few of the solitary towers where the matrix mechanics worked alone with the secret sciences of Darkover, towers of unpolished stone which sometimes shone like blue beacons in the dark.
Kendricks drove the truck which carried the animals, and was amused by it. Rafe and I took turns driving the other truck, sharing the wide front seat with Regis Hastur and Kyla, while the other men found seats between crates and sacks in the back. Once, while Rafe was at the wheel, and the girl was dozing with her coat over her face to shut out the fierce sun, Regis asked me, “What are the trailcities like?”
I tried to tell him, but I’ve never been good at boiling things down into descriptions, and when he found I was not disposed to talk, he fell silent and I was free to drowse over what I knew of the Trailmen and their world.
Nature seems to have a sameness on all inhabited worlds, tending toward the economy and simplicity of the human form. The upright carriage, freeing the hands, the opposable thumb, the color-sensitivity of retinal rods and cones, the development of language and of lengthy parental nurture—these things seem to be indispensable to the growth of civilization, and in the end they spell human. Except for minor variations depending on climate or foodstuffs, the inhabitant of Megaera or Darkover is indistinguishable from the Terran or Sirian; differences are mainly cultural, and sometimes an isolated culture will mutate in a strange direction or remain atavists, somewhere halfway to the summit of the ladder of evolution—which, at least on the known planets, still reckons homo sapiens as the most complex of nature’s forms.
The Trailmen were a pausing-place which had proved tenacious. When the mainstream of evolution on Darkover left the trees to struggle for existence on the ground, a few remained behind. Evolution did not cease for them, but evolved homo arborens: nocturnal, nyctalopic humanoids who live out their lives in the extensive forests.
The truck bumped over the bad, rutted roads. The wind was chilly. The truck, a mere conveyance for hauling, had no such refinements of luxury as windows. I jolted awake—what nonsense had I been thinking? Vague ideas about evolution swirled in my brain like burst bubbles—the Trailmen? They were just the Trailmen, who could explain them? Jay Allison, maybe? Rafe turned his head and asked, “Where do we pull up for the night? It’s getting dark, and we have all this gear to sort!” I roused myself, and took over the business of the expedition again.
But when the trucks had been parked and a tent pitched and the pack animals unloaded and hobbled, and a start made at getting the gear together —when all this had been done I lay awake, listening to Kendricks’ heavy snoring, but myself afraid to sleep. Dozing in the truck, an odd lapse of consciousness had come over me—myself yet not myself, drowsing over thoughts I did not recognize as my own. If I slept, who would I be when I woke?
We had made our camp in the bend of an enormous river, wide and shallow and unbridged—the river Kadarin, traditionally a point of no return for humans on Darkover. Beyond the river lay thick forests, and beyond the forests the slopes of the Hellers, rising upward and upward; and their every fold and every valley was filled to the brim with forest, and in the forests lived the Trailmen.
But though all this country was thickly populated with outlying colonies and nests, it would be no use to bargain with any of them; we must deal with the Old One of the North Nest, where I had spent so many of my boyhood years.
From time immemorial, the Trailmen—usually inoffensive—had kept strict boundaries marked between their lands and the lands of ground-dwelling men. They never came beyond the Kadarin. On the other hand, any human who ventured into their territory became, by that act, fair game for attack.
A few of the Darkovan mountain people had trade treaties with the Trailmen; they traded clothing, forged metals, small implements, in return for nuts, bark for dyestuffs and certain leaves and mosses for drugs. In return, the Trailmen permitted them to hunt in the forest lands without being molested. But other humans, venturing into Trailmen territory, ran the risk of merciless raiding; the Trailmen were not
bloodthirsty, and did not kill for the sake of killing, but they attacked in packs of two or three dozen, and their prey would be stripped and plundered of everything portable.
Traveling through their country would be dangerous.
I sat in front of the tent, staring at the expanse of water, rippling pink in the sunrise. The pack animals cropped short grass behind the tent. The trucks were vast sphinxes, shrouded under tarpaulins glistening with early dew. Regis Hastur came out of the tent, rubbed his eyes and joined me at the water’s edge.
“What do you think? Is it going to be a bad trip?”
“I wouldn’t think so. I know the main trails and I can keep clear of them. It’s only—” I hesitated, and Regis demanded, “What else?”
I said it, after a minute. “It’s—well, it’s you. If anything happens to you, we’ll be held responsible to all Darkover.”
He grinned. In the red sunlight he looked like a painting from some old legend. “Responsibility? You didn’t strike me as the worrying type, Jason. What sort of duffer do you take me for? I know how to handle myself in the mountains, and I’m not afraid of the Trailmen, even if I don’t know them as you do. Come on—shall I get breakfast or will you?”
I shrugged, busying myself near the fire. Somewhat to the surprise of the other Terrans—Kendricks and Rafe—Regis had done his share of the camp work at every halt; not ostentatiously either, but cheerfully and matter-of-factly. This surprised Rafe and Kendricks, who accepted the Terran custom of the higher echelons leaving such things to the buck privates. But in spite of their rigid caste distinctions, social differences of the Terran type simply don’t exist on Darkover. Neither does gallantry, and only Kendricks objected when Kyla took on the job of seeing to the packloading and did her share of heaving boxes and crates.
After a while Regis joined me at the fire again. The three roughneck brothers had come out and were splashing noisily in the ford of the river. The rest were still sleeping. Regis asked, “Shall I roust them out?”
“No need. The Kadarin’s fed by ocean tides and well have to wait for low water to cross. Nearly noon before we could get across without ruining half our gear.”
Regis sniffed at the kettle. “Sounds good,” he decided, and dunked his bowl in; sat down, balancing the food on his knee. I followed suit, and Regis demanded, “Tell me something about yourself, Jason. Where did you learn so much about the Hellers? Lerrys was on the ’Narr campaign, but you don’t seem old enough for that.”
“I’m older than I look,” I said, “but I wasn’t old enough for that.” (During the brief civil war when Darkovans fought Trailmen in the passes of ’Narr, I had—as a boy of eleven—spied on the human invaders; but I didn’t tell Regis that.) “I lived with them for eight years.”
“Sharra! Was that you?” The Darkovan prince looked genuinely impressed. “No wonder you got this assignment! Jason, I envy you!”
I gave a short bark of laughter.
“No, I’m serious, Jason. As a boy I tried to get into the Terran space service. But my family finally convinced me that as a Hastur I had my work already cut out for me—that we Hasturs were committed to trying to keep Terra and Darkover on a peaceful basis. It puts me at a terrific disadvantage, you know. They all think I ought to be wearing cushions around my head in case I take a tumble.”
I snapped, “Then why in hell did they let you come on a dangerous mission like this?”
The Hastur’s eyes twinkled, but his face was completely deadpan and his voice grave. “I pointed out to my grandsire that I have been assiduous in my duty to the Hasturs. I have five sons, three legitimate, born in the past two years.”
I choked, spluttered and exploded into laughter as Regis got to his feet and went to rinse his bowl in the river.
The sun was high before we left the camp. While the others were packing up the last oddments, ready for the saddle, I gave Kyla the task of readying the rucksacks we’d carry after the trails got too bad even for the pack animals, and went to stand at the water’s edge, checking the depth of the ford and glancing up at the smoke-hazed rifts between peak and peak.
The men were packing up the small tent we’d use in the forests, moving around with a good deal of horseplay and a certain brisk bustle. They were a good crew, I’d already discovered. Rafe and Lerrys and the three Darkovan brothers were tireless, cheerful, and mountain-hardened. Kendricks, obviously out of his element, could be implicitly relied on to follow orders, and I felt that I could fall back on him. Strange as it seemed, the very fact that he was a Terran was vaguely comforting, where I’d anticipated it would be a nuisance.
The girl Kyla was still something of an unknown quantity. She was too taut and quiet, working her share but seldom contributing a word—we were not yet in mountain country. So far she was quiet and touchy with me, although she seemed natural enough with the Darkovans, and I let her alone.
“Hi, Jason, get a move on,” someone shouted, and I walked back toward the clearing, squinting in the sun. It hurt, and I touched my face gingerly, suddenly realizing what had happened. Yesterday, riding in the uncovered truck, and this morning, unused to the fierce sun of these latitudes, I had neglected to take the proper precautions against exposure and my face was reddening with sunburn. I walked toward Kyla, who was cinching a final load on one of the pack animals, which she did efficiently enough.
She didn’t wait for me to ask, but sized up the situation with one amused glance at my face. “Sunburn? Put some of this on it.” She produced a tube of white stuff; I twisted at the top inexpertly, and she took it from me, squeezed the stuff out in her palm and said, “Stand still and bend down your head.”
She smeared the mixture across my forehead and cheeks. It felt cold and good. I started to thank her, then broke off as she burst out laughing. “What’s the matter?”
“You should see yourself!” she gurgled.
I wasn’t amused. No doubt I presented a grotesque appearance, and no doubt she had the right to laugh at it, but I scowled. It hurt. Intending to put things back on the proper footing, I demanded, “Did you make up the climbing loads?”
“All except bedding. I wasn’t sure how much to allow,” she said. “Jason, have you eyeshades for when you get on snow?” I nodded, and she instructed severely, “Don’t forget them. Snowblindness—I give you my word—is even more unpleasant than sunburn—and verypainful!”
“Damn it, girl, I’m not stupid!” I exploded.
She said, in her expressionless monotone again, “Then you ought to have known better than to get sunburnt. Here, put this in your pocket,” she handed me the tube of sunburn cream. “Maybe I’d better check up on some of the others and make sure they haven’t forgotten.” She went off without a word, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling that she’d come off best, that she considered me an irresponsible scamp.
Forth had said almost the same thing.
I told the Darkovan brothers to urge the pack animals across the narrowest part of the ford, and gestured to Lerrys and Kyla to ride one on either side of Kendricks, who might not be aware of the swirling, treacherous currents of a mountain river. Rafe could not urge his edgy horse into the water; he finally dismounted, took off his boots, and led the creature across the slippery rocks. I crossed last, riding close to Regis Hastur, alert for dangers and thinking resentfully that anyone so important to Darkover’s policies should not be risked on such a mission. Why, if the Terran Legate had (unthinkably!) come with us, he would be surrounded by bodyguards, Secret Service men and dozens of precautions against accident, assassination or misadventure.
All that day we rode upward, encamping at the furthest point we could travel with pack animals or mounted. The next day’s climb would enter the dangerous trails we must travel afoot. We pitched a comfortable camp, but I admit I slept badly. Kendricks and Lerrys and Rafe had blinding headaches from the sun and the thinness of the air; I was more used to these conditions, but I felt a sense of unpleasant pressure, and my ears rang. Regis arrogantly d
enied any discomfort, but he moaned and cried out continuously in his sleep until Lerrys kicked him, after which he was silent and, I feared, sleepless. Kyla seemed the least affected of any; probably she had been at higher altitudes more continuously than any of us. But there were dark circles beneath her eyes.
However, no one complained as we readied ourselves for the last long climb upward. If we were fortunate, we could cross Dammerung before nightfall; at the very least, we should bivouac tonight very near the pass. Our camp had been made at the last level spot; we partially hobbled the pack animals so they would not stray too far, and left ample food for them, and cached all but the most necessary of light trail gear. As we prepared to start upward on the steep, narrow track—hardly more than a rabbit-run—I glanced at Kyla and stated, “We’ll work on rope from the first stretch. Starting now.”
One of the Darkovan brothers stared at me with contempt. “Call yourself a mountain man, Jason? Why, my little daughter could scramble up that track without so much as a push on her behind!”
I set my chin and glared at him. “The rocks aren’t easy, and some of these men aren’t used to working on rope at all. We might as well get used to it, because when we start working along the ledges, I don’t want anybody who doesn’t know how.”
They still didn’t like it, but nobody protested, further until I directed the huge Kendricks to the center of the second rope. He glared viciously at the light nylon line and demanded with some apprehension, “Hadn’t I better go last until I know what I’m doing? Hemmed in between the two of you, I’m apt to do something damned dumb!”
Hjalmar roared with laughter and informed him that the center place on a three-man rope was always reserved for weaklings, novices and amateurs.
I expected Kendricks’ temper to flare up; the burly Spaceforce man and the Darkovan giant glared at one another, then Kendricks only shrugged and knotted the line through his belt. Kyla warned Kendricks and Lerrys about looking down from ledges, and we started.
To Save a World Page 23