Marion Zimmer Bradley Super Pack

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  He ripped the crucifix from her throat, gazed on it sadly and laid it aside.

  “Perhaps I never had a soul,” he said wearily, “but you, Teresa, cast yours away. You are too much monster even to live among my people.”

  The last thing the Contessa ever saw was his face, torn with pain, descending into a crimson blur into which she fell like death.

  Hours later villagers gathered to watch the Castello di Speranza crash down in flames, and none marked the quiet, scarred man who rode silently into the forest, bowed as if in long agony, crouched in his saddle with grief and pain. He never looked back at the rising flame, but rode with head bowed over the neck of his horse and muttered again and again, “Teresa! Teresa! Teresa!”

  Jackie Sees a Star

  So you want to hear about the Edwards child? Oh, no, you don’t get by with that one! You can just put on your hat again, and walk right back down those stairs, Mister, We’ve had too many psychologists and debunkers around here, and we don’t want any more.

  Oh—you’re from the University? Excuse me, professor. I’m sorry. But if you knew what we’ve put up with, from reporters, and all kinds of crackpots . . . and it isn’t good for Jackie, either. He’s getting awfully spoiled. If you knew how many paddlings I’ve had to give that kid in just this past week.

  His mother? Me? Oh, no! No, I’m just Jackie’s aunt. His mother, my sister Beth, works at the Tax Bureau. Jackie’s father died when he was only a week old. You know . . . he’d been in the Big Bombings in ‘64, and he never really got over it. It was pretty awful.

  Anyhow, I look after Jackie while my sister works. He’s a good little kid—spoiled, but what kid isn’t, these days?

  It was I who heard it first, as a matter of fact. You see I’m around Jackie a lot more than his mother is.

  I was making Jackie’s bed one morning when he came up behind me, and grabbed me round the waist, and asked, real serious, “Aunt Dorothy, are the stars really other suns like this one, and do they have planets too?”

  I said, “Why, sure, Jackie. I thought you knew that.”

  He gave me a hug. “Thanks, Aunt Dorothy. I thought Mig was kidding me.”

  “Who’s Mig?” I asked. I knew most of the kids on the block, you see, but there was a new little girl on the corner. I asked, “Is she the little Jackson girl?”

  Jackie said, “Mig isn’t a. girl!” And did he sound disgusted! “Besides,” he said, “Mig doesn’t live ‘round here at all. His name is really Migardolon Domier, but I call him Mig. He doesn’t really talk to me. I mean, just inside my head.”

  I said, “Oh.” I laughed a little bit, too, because Jackie isn’t really an imaginative kid. But I guess most kids go through the imaginary-playmate stage. I had one when I was a kid. I called her Bitsy—but anyway, Jackie just ran out to play, and I didn’t think about it again until one day he asked me what a spaceship looked like.

  So I took him to see that movie—you know the one Paul Douglas played in about the trip to Mars—but would you believe it, the kid just stuck up his nose.

  “I mean a real spaceship!” he said. “Mig showed me a lot better one than that!”

  “So I spoke kind of sharp. You know, I didn’t like him to be rude. And he said, “Well, Mig’s father is building a spaceship. It goes all the way across the Gal—the gallazzy, I guess, and goes through—Aunt Dorothy, what’s hyperspace?”

  “Oh, ask Mig what it is,” I said, real cross with him. You know how it is when kids act smart.

  The next day was Saturday, so Beth was at home with Jackie, and I stayed with Mother. But when I came over Monday morning, she asked me, “Dorrie, where on earth did Jack pick up all this rocketship lingo? And what kind of a phase is this Mig business?”

  I told her I’d taken him to see socket mars, and she was quite provoked. Beth still thinks rockets are kind of comicbook stuff, and she gave me a long talk about trashy movies, and getting him too excited, and overstimulating his imagination, and so forth.

  Then she gave me the latest developments on this Mig affair. It seemed that Jackie had given with the details. Mig was a little fellow who lived on a planet halfway across the “gallazzy,” and his father was a rocketship engineer.

  Well, you know how kids are about spaceships. Jackie wasn’t quite six, but he’s always been kind of old for his age. That afternoon he started teasing me to take him to the Planetarium. He kept on about it until I finally took him, that evening, after Beth got home.

  It was quite late when we left. The stars had all come out, and while we were walking home, I asked him which one of the stars Mig lived on. And, professor, do you know what that child said? He said, “You can’t live on a star, dummy! You’d burn up! He lives on a planet around the star!”

  He pointed off toward the north, fidgeted around for a few minutes, and finally said, “Well, the sky kind of looks different where Mig lives. But I think it’s up there somewhere,” and he pointed into the Big Dipper.

  I didn’t encourage the Mig business, but, good gosh, it didn’t need encouraging, I guess it was two or three days later when Jackie told me that Mig’s sun was going to blow up, so his father was building a spaceship, and they were coming here to live.

  I kept a straight face. But I couldn’t help wondering what would happen when Jackie got his Mig, so to speak, down to earth. Probably it would just ease the fantasy off into a more normal phase, and it would gradually disappear.

  One night in August, Beth wanted to go to a movie with some girls from her office, so I stayed with Jackie. I was reading downstairs when I suddenly heard him bawling upstairs—not very loud, but real unhappy and pitiful.

  I ran upstairs and took him up, thinking he’d had a bad dream, and held him, just shaking and trembling, until he finally quieted down to a hiccup now and then.

  And then he said, in the unhappiest little voice, “Mig has to leave his—his erling on the planet, to get blowed up with the sun! It’s a little bitty thing like a puppy, but his Daddy says there isn’t any room on the spaceship for it! But he got it for his—well, I guess it was kind of like a birthday—and he wanted to show it to me when he got here!”

  Well!

  I guess the lecture I gave him about imagination had something to do with it, because I didn’t hear any more about Mig for quite some time. He kept Beth posted, though. He even told her when the spaceship was going to take off and when Mig’s sun was going to blow up, or else where we’d see it. I don’t know which. But anyway, he made her mark it down on the Calendar. The fifth of November, it was.

  Well, in September I went back to college, and—well, I don’t just talk about—things outside of the family, but my boy friend, Dave, he was almost like one of the family, and this year he’d got a job working with Professor Milliken at the Observatory.

  You know Professor Milliken, don’t you? I thought so. I told Dave about this Mig phase of Jackie’s, and one night when Dave was over at Beth’s with me, he got the kid talking about it. He humored the kid a lot. He even took him over to the Observatory and let Jackie look through the big telescope there. And of course Jackie gave Dave all the latest details on Mig.

  It seems that this spaceship had already taken off—that was why he hadn’t heard much from Mig lately, because—“Mig’s Daddy sealed him up in a little capsule, so he won’t wake up till they are ‘way out in hyperspace. Because the spaceship will go faster and faster and awful fast, and unless he is sealed up, and asleep, it will hurt him something awful!” And Dave humored Jackie, and talked about acceleration and hyperspace and shortcuts across the Galaxy, and I don’t know what all, and Jackie just sat there and drank it all in as if he understood every word. Dave even wrote down the day when Mig’s sun was supposed to blow up, and promised to keep an eye on it.

  Jackie started to kindergarten, of course, about then, and I thought he’d forgotten all about Mig. I didn’t hear anything more for at least six weeks. But one night—I was babysitting for Beth again—the telephone rang, an
d it was Dave.

  “Dorothy! Remember Jackie’s little Galactic citizen whose world was supposed to go up in smoke tonight?”

  I glanced at the calendar. It was November fifth. “Now, look here, Dave,” I said firmly. “You are not going to disillusion the kid like that. He’s forgotten all about the silly business. Besides, he’s in bed.”

  “Well, get him up!” said Dave. “Dorrie, get a load of this. The biggest supernova I ever saw just exploded in the North. Get Jackie over here! I want to ask him some questions!”

  He meant it. I could tell that he meant it. I ran upstairs and bundled Jackie up in a blanket—I didn’t even bother to put his clothes on, just a blanket over his pajamas—and took him down to the Observatory in a taxi.

  I wish you could have seen the place. Jackie sitting on atable, in his pajamas, telling Professor Milliken all about Migand the spaceship and the little sealed capsule and the erlingand all the rest of it.

  *

  I guess you can imagine what a week we went through. Scientists, and reporters, and psychologists and parapsychologists and just plain debunkers. And the crackpots. Oh yes, the crackpots. And then they dug up the records about Jackie’s father.

  They couldn’t even let the poor man rest quiet in his grave, and when they found out about the Bombing, they talked about hard radiations and mutations until I darn’ near went crazy, and Beth had to quit her job.

  They even talked about telepathy. Just as if Jackie was some kind of a freak. We had to take the poor kid out of kindergarten. He hated that—he was getting so much good out of it. And he enjoyed it so much, having the other children to play with, and painting, and making those cute little baskets, and he’d learned to tell time, and everything.

  And then the spaceship landed, and I tell you, we haven’t had a minute’s peace since.

  Oh, that’s all right! I was going to call them in for lunch in a few minutes, anyway. “Jackie! Jackie—will you and Mig come in here for a few minutes? A friend of your uncle Dave’s wants to talk to you two boys.”

  The Planet Savers

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

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

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

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

  “Could I trouble you to tell me your name?”

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

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

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

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

  “Or something.”

  “What’s my name?”

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

  I answered eagerly and quickly, “Twenty-two.”

  *

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Can you tell me your father’s name?”

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

  “You haven’t told me anything,” I accused. “Who are you? Why are you asking me all these questions?”

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

  “Don’t you know?”

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

  “Where did you get the scar?”

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

  “Not exactly. I’ll explain.”

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

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

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

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

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

  *

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

  “Isn’t it about time for a few of those explanations?”

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

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

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

  “To watch—” I stopped. “It’s your time we’re wasting.”

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

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

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

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