by Ayn Rand
“See here, another time don’t try any dangerous tricks unless you’re ordered to!”
“Go easy on her,” Regis Hastur 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 Hastur.
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 Hastur’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 trailmen 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 trailmen, 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 Darkovan 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 Hjalmar dress her hands which had been rubbed raw by the slipping lianas, made jokes with the men about her feat 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 massif from our sight, and I saw Kendricks’ 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,” Lerrys 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 chattering and I went back toward the fire. Regis surveyed the distant glacier and murmured, “It doesn’t look too bad. There could be a route along that western arête—Hjalmar, weren’t you with the expedition that climbed and mapped High Kimbi?”
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,” Lerrys stated positively, “There’s two hundred feet of sheer rock cliff, Prince Regis, you’d need wings to get up. And there’s the avalanche ledge they call Hell’s Alley—”
Kendricks broke in 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 Kendricks a notch in the ridge, thousands of feet lower than the peaks, and well-sheltered from the icefalls on either side.
“That’s Dammerung; we’re going through there. We won’t be on the mountain at all, and it’s less than 22,000 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 trailmen’s villages, but we may run into wandering bands—” abruptly I made my decision and gestured them around me.
“From 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.”
Lerrys 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 ‘Narr campaign—the trailmen 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 in self-defense, we might as well pack up and go home. We’re on a peaceful mission, and we’re begging a favor. Even if we’re attacked—we kill only as a last resort, and in hand-to-hand combat!”
“Damned primitive frontier planet—”
“Would you rather die of the trailmen’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 damn it, 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 Dammerung, it’s easy going into the trailmen’s city. Beyond there, it’s all civilized.”
“Maybe you call it civilization,” Kendricks said, and turned away.
“Come on, let’s finish drying our feet.”
And at that moment they hit us.
* * *
Kendricks’ 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 snat
ched it up and made off with her prize, swinging lithely upward into the treetops.
I searched quickly, gripped with my good hand at the bleeding knuckles, and found Regis Hastur 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 Darkover would rise and exterminate the trailmen 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 a 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 damned 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?”
Garin 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; we 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.
Buck Kendricks was bone-white, his mouth widening as he said hoarsely, “Jay! Doctor 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 Darkovan, “Let her alone, this is my work.” He didn’t know enough words to curse them away, so he switched to Terran, 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 would 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, “Jason—?”
“Dr. Allison,” he corrected tersely, surprised in a minor way—the major surprise had blurred lesser ones—that she knew his name. Kendricks spoke swiftly to the girl, in one of the Darkovan 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 Doctor Allison? Good Lord—Jason!”
And then he moved fast. “What’s the matter? Oh, hell, Jay, don’t faint 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 Darkovan!”
Jay blinked again. Kendricks was still the only familiar thing in a strangely vertiginous universe. The Spaceforce 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 Forth!” and swore, the colorless profanity of an indoor man.
Somebody shouted, “Jason!” 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 inside. “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 Darkovan 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 Darkovans, 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, Doctor 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 Hasturs are partly telepathic, Jason—forgive me—Doctor Allison. I have known from the first that you were possessed by a god or daemon.”
“Superstitious rubbish,” Jay snapped. “Typical of a Darkovan!”
“It is a convenient manner of speaking, no more,” said the young Hastur, overlooking the rudeness. “I suppose I could learn your terminology, if I considered it worth the effort. I have had psi 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 Darkovan 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, but 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 parapsych. If you can switch me off—go right ahead!”
* * *
I stared at Regis, passing a hand across my forehead. “What happened?” I demanded, and in even swifter 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 d
idn’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, Doctor 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 Jay 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 Dammerung pass tonight, then tomorrow we could cross it early, before the sun warmed the snow and we had snowslides and slush to deal with. Beyond Dammerung, I knew the tribesmen and could speak their language.