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 didn’t conk out, did I, from a little scratch like this?” I looked carele
ssly 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.
I mentioned this, and Kendricks looked doubtfully at Kyla. “Can she climb?”
“Can she stay here?” I countered. But I went and sat beside her anyhow.
“How badly are you hurt? Do you think you can travel?”
She said fiercely, “Of course I can climb! I tell you, I’m no weak girl, I’m a free Amazon!” She flung off the blanket somebody had tucked around her legs. Her lips looked a little pinched, but the long stride was steady as she walked to the fire and demanded more soup.
We struck the camp in minutes. The trailmen band of raiding females had snatched up almost everything portable, and there was no sense in striking and caching the tent; they’d return and hunt it out. If we came back with a trailmen escort, we wouldn’t need it anyway. I ordered them to leave everything but the lightest gear, and examined each remaining rucksack. Rations for the night we would spend in the pass, our few remaining blankets, ropes, sunglasses. Everything else I ruthlessly ordered left behind.
It was harder going now. For one thing, the sun was lowering, and the evening wind was icy. Nearly everyone of us had some hurt, slight in itself, which hindered us in climbing. Kyla was white and rigid, but did not spare herself; Kendricks was suffering severely from mountain sickness at this altitude, and I gave him all the help I could, but with my stiffening slashed hand I wasn’t having too easy a time myself.
There was one expanse that was sheer rock-climbing, flattened like bugs against a wall, scrabbling for hand-holds and footholds. I felt it a point of pride to lead, and I led; but by the time we had climbed the thirty-foot wall, and scrambled along a ledge to where we could pick up the trail again, I was ready to give over. Crowding together on the ledge, I changed places with the veteran Lerrys, who was better than most professional climbers.
He muttered, “I thought you said this was a trail!”
I stretched my mouth in what was supposed to be a grin and didn’t quite make it. “For the trailmen, this is a superhighway. And no one else ever comes this way.”
Now we climbed slowly over snow; once or twice we had to flounder through drifts, and once a brief bitter snowstorm blotted out sight for twenty minutes, while we hugged each other on the ledge, clinging wildly against wind and icy sleet.
* * * *
We bivouacked that night in a crevasse blown almost clean of snow, well above the tree-line, where only scrubby unkillable thornbushes clustered. We tore down some of them and piled them up as a windbreak, and bedded beneath it; but we all thought with aching regret of the comfort of the camp gear we’d abandoned. The going had gotten good and rough.
That night remains in my mind as one of the most miserable in memory. Except for the slight ringing in my ears, the height alone did not bother me, but the others did not fare so well. Most of the men had blinding headaches, Kyla’s slashed side must have given her considerable pain, and Kendricks had succumbed to mountain-sickness in its most agonizing form: severe cramps and vomiting. I was desperately uneasy about all of them, but there was nothing I could do; the only cure for mountain-sickness is oxygen or a lower altitude, neither of which was practical.
In the windbreak we doubled up, sharing blankets and body warmth: I took a last look around the close space before crawling in beside Kendricks, and saw the girl bedding down slightly apart from the others. I started to say something, but Kendricks spoke, first. Voicing my thoughts.
“Better crawl in with us, girl.” He added, coldly but not unkindly, “you needn’t worry about any funny stuff.”
Kyla gave me just the flicker of a grin, and I realized she was including me on the Darkovan side of a joke against this big man who was so unaware of Darkovan etiquette. But her voice was cool and curt as she said, “I’m not worrying,” and loosened her heavy coat slightly before creeping into the nest of blankets between us.
It was painfully cramped, and chilly in spite of the self-heating blankets; we crowded close together and Kyla’s head rested on my shoulder. I felt her snuggle closely to me, half asleep, hunting for a warm place; and I found myself very much aware of her closeness, curiously grateful to her. An ordinary woman would have protested, if only as a matter of form, sharing blankets with two strange men. I realized that if Kyla had refused to crawl in with us, she would have called attention to her sex much more than she did by matter-of-factly behaving as if she were, in fact, male.
She shivered convulsively, and I whispered, “Side hurting? Are you cold?”
“A little. It’s been a long time since I’ve been at these altitudes, too. What it really is—I can’t get those women out of my head.”
Kendricks coughed, moving uncomfortably. “I don’t understand—those creatures who attacked us—all women—?”
I explained briefly. “Among the people of the Sky, as everywhere, more females are born than males. But the trailmen’s lives are so balanced that they have no room for extra females within the Nests—the cities. So when a girl child of the Sky People reaches womanhood, the other women drive her out of the city with kicks and blows, and she has to wander in the forest until some male comes after her and claims her and brings her back as his own. Then she can never be driven forth again, although if she bears no children she can be forced to be a servant to his other wives.”
Kendricks made a little sound of disgust.
“You think it cruel,” Kyla said with sudden passion, “but in the forest they can live and find their own food; they will not starve or die. Many of them prefer the forest life to living in the Nests, and they will fight away any male who comes near them. We who call ourselves human often make less provision for our spare women.”
She was silent, sighing as if with pain. Kendricks made no reply except a non-committal grunt. I held myself back by main force from touching Kyla, remembering what she was, and finally said, “We’d better quit talking. The others want to sleep, if we don’t.”
* * * *
After a time I heard Kendricks snoring, and Kyla’s quiet even breaths. I wondered drowsily how Jay would have felt about this situation—he who hated Darkover and avoided contact with every other human being, crowded between a Darkovan free-Amazon and half a dozen assorted roughnecks. I turned the thought off, fearing it might somehow re-arouse him in his brain.
But I had to think of something, anything to turn aside this consciousness of the woman’s head against my chest, her warm breath coming and going against my bare neck. Only by the severest possible act of will did I keep myself from slipping my hand over her breasts, warm and palpabl
e through the thin sweater, I wondered why Forth had called me undisciplined. I couldn’t risk my leadership by making advances to our contracted guide—woman, Amazon or whatever!
Somehow the girl seemed to be the pivot point of all my thoughts. She was not part of the Terran HQ, she was not part of any world Jay Allison might have known. She belonged wholly to Jason, to my world. Between sleep and waking, I lost myself in a dream of skimming flight-wise along the tree roads, chasing the distant form of a girl driven from the Nest that day with blows and curses. Somewhere in the leaves I would find her…and we would return to the city, her head garlanded with the red leaves of a chosen-one, and the same women who had stoned her forth would crowd about and welcome her when she returned. The fleeing woman looked over her shoulder with Kyla’s eyes; and then the woman’s form muted and Dr. Forth was standing between us in the tree-road, with the caduceus emblem on his coat stretched like a red staff between us. Kendricks in his Spaceforce uniform was threatening us with a blaster, and Regis Hastur was suddenly wearing Space Service uniform too and saying, “Jay Allison, Jay Allison,” as the tree-road splintered and cracked beneath our feet and we were tumbling down the waterfall and down and down and down.…
“Wake up!” Kyla whispered, and dug an elbow into my side. I opened my eyes on crowded blackness, grasping at the vanishing nightmare. “What’s the matter?”
“You were moaning. Touch of altitude sickness?”
I grunted, realized my arm was around her shoulder, and pulled it quickly away. After awhile I slept again, fitfully.
* * * *
Before light we crawled wearily out of the bivouac, cramped and stiff and not rested, but ready to get out of this and go on. The snow was hard, in the dim light, and the trail not difficult here. After all the trouble on the lower slopes, I think even the amateurs had lost their desire for adventurous climbing; we were all just as well pleased that the actual crossing of Dammerung should be an anticlimax and uneventful.
The sun was just rising when we reached the pass, and we stood for a moment, gathered close together, in the narrow defile between the great summits to either side.
The Second Science Fiction Megapack Page 68