Conner took the pictures. His face drained slowly of color, turning the grayish green sick tint of a black skin gone pale. He wet his lips, swallowing hard, and laid them down. Then he said, his voice strained and harsh, "I don't know how this happened. Maybe you can help her. But-with this happening-she'll need me more than ever. She'll need me to care for her."
"You don't understand," David almost shouted, "you still speak of her; she isn't a girl, she isn't a-or maybe you have a secret yen for men?"
Conner's face congested with rage and for a moment, as they faced each other, David felt it like a tangible, beating thing which would reach out, strike and kill. He faced Conner, not flinching, and then Conner drew a deep breath, controlling his fury.
"Listen, you bastard," he said evenly, "it's Missy I love, care about, need. Not the fact that she has a body I happened to enjoy going to bed with. I don't discount that, but I could get that almost anywhere, if I needed it that much. I happen to love Missy-love her. Or him. Or it, if you prefer. Which means that I care what happens to her, whether I can bang her or not. Which is something you evidently have never felt for anyone, and I'm sorry for you, you bastard. But if you keep me away from her any longer, damn you, the wingding she threw is going to look like a little girl crying for her doll, compared to the one I'll throw!"
The words echoed in the room, tangible, vibrating, as if they had been written in lines of fire in the air. David said, and had the sense that it was an enormous and somehow personal capitulation, "Dave. I didn't understand. I'm-I'm sorry. Forgive me. Jason-" he turned to the other doctor, "I think we'll have to let Missy see him. If he can get through to her, if he can make her understand this, maybe we won't have any more trouble with her."
"It's a risk we've got to take. But suppose she kills you before you can get through?"
"That's a risk I'll take," Conner said. "You don't realize. Missy brought me up alive out of hell; and do you think I'm going to stop at trying to bring her out of her own hell, whatever it may be?"
The room was white with the reflected light from the falling snow beyond the windows. Missy lay huddled beneath a sheet, pale and motionless, her colorless hair spread on the pillow. Her face seemed narrow, pale, and inhuman, features bony and protruding.
No, Conner thought with a curious pang, she was no longer beautiful. Had she ever been beautiful or was it only the strange glamour she cast about him?
Jason had told him that the drugs were being allowed to wear off; that she would waken naturally soon. Conner went quietly to her side and sat down to wait. She slept still, breathing quietly and moaning a little under her breath, and even through her disturbed dreams Conner sensed grief, shock and a frightening shame. He reached for her limp white hand and took it between his own. The skin felt rough and harsh, faintly discolored. Conner had the sketchy medical training given to all ship's officers who may have to be responsible for passengers and crew in the absence of trained men, and he could follow, to some slight extent, the briefing Jason had given him. Extreme hormone imbalance; recession of female hormones and overbalance of androgens, pituitary and thyroid imbalance out of control; this created the skin troubles. Recession of breast tissue, partial atrophy of female genital structures, all accelerated. ...
"The instability is hormone induced, of course," Jason had said, "but the emotional shock is considerable, too; I gather she wasn't aware this could happen."
Conner could reach her frightened mind, feel her fear and shock at the failure of the one stable thing in her world, her fascination over anyone she sought to fascinate. (Had her failure to attract David touched off the first uncertainty?) Conner set himself to reach out, in the old way he had learned. . . .
. . . spinning in space, a point of nothingness, he left his body behind, reaching out with the inner self which had nothing to do with his body:
Missy, Missy. I am here. I am with you. Bodies are little to us: we can use them or leave them, enjoy them or forget them; but we are more together than we would be, locked in love, when we can reach one another this way. ...
He came back slowly to awareness. Missy had opened her great gray eyes and lay staring up at him.
"Dave?" she said, in an accepting whisper, and smiled. His dark hand clasped hard on her pallid one. There was no need for words, but he whispered them anyway, his face bending over hers:
"I don't care what you are, Missy. I love you, and I need you. Maybe they can help you, but whether or not they can, we belong together and we'll come through this together, one way or the other. Now we've found someone to belong to, nothing else matters."
She was too weak to move, but she turned her face and pressed her lips to his palm. Then she fell asleep, her hand still clasped in Conner's.
XI
day by day, they streamed into the city, in caravans and alone, red-headed Darkovan telepaths: Comyn and commoner, city dweller and rustic, noble and peasant, with only one thing in common; the flaming red hair which had been, from time immemorial on Darkover, linked indissolubly with the telepath genes and the laran powers of the ancient world.
No; more than one thing in common. Each one, as he came, through snow-clogged passes or dust-choked dry plains, had another story to tell of a world lying in ruin, near death.
"For the fall plowing, the earth has turned to black choking dust," said a quiet bitter man from the lowlands. "Even the weeds will not grow. The soil is barren as a woman of ninety years."
"We die from the blazing sun," said a tall, wild-faced mountain lord, dressed in the embroidered leather cloaks which had been abandoned in the cities for more than a hundred years; "there is no fog on the hills, no rain. The fumes of the resin trees poison our beasts in the sun."
"The trees are leafless, turned to yellow brown and spreading no seeds this autumn," said a quiet aristocrat with the face of a Hastur and the gray eyes of the forest people. "The trailmen are dying in their villages; they come to the edge of their forests with their red eyes seared almost to white, standing there, no longer afraid of mankind. We
spare them what food we can, but we too are facing .hunger and privation."
"There is no Ghost Wind, and yet the Ya-men are coming from the hills," said a sad-faced girl with braided hair, her dress caught with silver butterflies and the blue star-stone of a Keeper like a pendant jewel at her throat. "No living human has seen them before, and now we see only their dead bodies lying at the edge of the deep woods. We have feared them always, because when the Ghost Wind brought them from the hills they came in a cannibal rage, to pillage and tear and raven, but it is terrible to know that they are dying away and there will be no more."
"The very land is washing away where there has been fire. . . ."
"The trees bear no fruit, no nuts, no oil...."
"The voices even of the catmen are stilled in the ranges. . . ."
"We are dying. . .."
"We are dying. .. ."
"Dying"
The Terrans set up food programs; but with the lack of transportation on Darkover, there was little help available for the more remote districts. Regis had thrown his own personal fortune into the gap, but it was necessary to prove, first, what was happening and how. As more and more of his kinsmen streamed into the city-kinsmen and others, kin by virtue of the curious genetic quality they bore-he grew silent and desperate. How could he find a way to draw them together, in some fashion that would save their world? Could even all the resources and wealth of Darkover do ft?
He had left Project Telepath to David and Jason. There was no time for it, now. If it could be of help, Jason would know, and tell him. His own personal Me was in abeyance, held to the one agonizing preoccupation of safeguarding his surviving children.
Linnea had not returned to Arilinn; she remained at his side, and her presence was both comfort and torture: the torture of longing and need; and yet he would not expose her to the danger that had struck at Melora and her child within the very walls of the Terran HQ. If an assassin could
strike there, then the very Tower of Ashara or the sanctuaries at Hali could provide no surety for the woman who bore the seed of Hastur. And he would not expose Linnea to that.
With Regis withdrawn, much of the onus of the project fell on David, but it seemed meaningless, and he had abandoned routine tests. What good would it do to discover that Desideria could manipulate small objects up to but not including eighteen grams gross weight? He occupied himself, feeling faintly guilty, with the records of the curious changes in Missy. He and Keral were together in his quarters late one afternoon going over them with interest.
"I found it hard to believe what you told me, about emotional factors initiating the changes," he said; "but it seems to be contact with Conner which is having some effect on Missy. Evidently the shift back to female phase is reasonably complete, although it's true we've used some hormones. It was a matter of desperation; she was terribly ill; there was a partial failure of the adrenals and thyroid. We had to try."
He studied Keral and did not have to say the next thought in his mind: that the increasing delicacy of Keral's skin color, something in his growing passivity, made him suspect a slow, beginning change in the chieri. It was a faintly frightening thing to contemplate. Keral, following his thoughts with that bewildering accuracy, said, "David, could you-bring on that change in me? You said the hormones were similar."
"With Missy, it was life and death," David said. "I wouldn't risk it for anything less, Keral, even with humans, hormone treatment is risky and inexact, and we've been studying it for three thousand years! The quantities needed for changes are so minute, and a mistake can mean madness and death. We've simply got to wait and see . . . how long does the shift usually take?"
"Under the proper stimulus," Keral said, "not long. As you know, we chieri are not so tied to clocks and sun cycles as you; but perhaps, for a full phase shift, a night and a day ... at a rough guess."
"What usually touches off the shift, Keral? Is it the seasons? The phases of the moons?" There were four, David remembered, on Darkover, and keeping track of their eclipses and phases would have been a task to drive an astrologer wild.
"I am not certain what brings on the change to a fertile state," Keral said. "How could I be sure? I have been told by my elders that I am of an age for bearing-no, I don't mind talking of it now; earlier I did not know you, or your language, well enough to make myself understood. In the ordinary way, many things which we find hard to-to analyze in your way-can bring on the changes for mating. The most common is-well, the preliminaries of love, the very stimulus of contact. I don't know how it works, myself."
David said, with some wryness, "I never thought I'd be part of an investigation into the sex life of your people. It might be easier if I, if I hadn't involved myself in it!"
Keral said, "Do you wish you hadn't?"
"No, I'm committed." He laughed suddenly, stirred by a sudden and imaginary picture of Keral as a woman. It was hard to imagine, harder to believe. His picture of the chieri as a female was ineradicably colored by his memory of Missy as he had first known her, and her somewhat crude seductiveness.
"I know," said Keral in a low voice, "I'm afraid of that, too. And perhaps that very fear is-is inhibiting the changes."
The knock at the door which interrupted them was welcome, at least to David; but Keral flinched as he saw Missy standing in the door.
The only remaining trace of the acute psychotic episode was a certain scarring and discoloration of her skin; and she had wholly ceased to project the blatant female sexuality, although she had a faintly feminine appeal which David was glad, for Conner's sake, to see. She was still, obviously,
in the neuter state, and David had no idea whether she and Conner had resumed any sort of sexual relationship, though he supposed, if they had, he would probably know. He was quite aware of the tension of abstinence between Linnea and Regis, and it was very wearing. What had Regis said, that sex let loose in a group of strange telepaths was disruptive? That was an understatement if there'd ever been one. There were times when, looking at Desideria, he still saw the vague and disturbing image of the exquisitely sensual young girl which she had once been, and could not control a flare of desire quite incongruous when he looked at the present Desideria, with her great age and sexless dignity. Well, she was one hell of a personality and she'd be a woman until she died! He wouldn't have touched her- good God, she could have been his great-grandmother-but it was there, and they both knew it, and it made them gentle and warm with one another, and strangely like lovers. . . .
He came back quickly to Missy; taking refuge in the commonplaces of courtesy.
"Did you want something?"
Keral had gone white with fear, and Missy looked past David to say quickly, "I won't hurt you, either of you." Her eyes rested on Keral with a curious, veiled contempt as she said, "You've lived a sheltered life, haven't you?"
Keral said, "I've no right to judge you, Missy."
Her face softened slightly. "I know what you were trying to do, Keral. I'm sorry I couldn't-respond. I wasn't sane. But I do thank you, and I've come to ask you to do something else for me."
Keral bent his head. "I'll do what I can to help, you know that."
"You tell me that I belong to your own race, your kind. I know nothing, nothing of my people. I was a foundling, literally a castaway, abandoned with my birth wounds still bleeding, thrown out to die like some abortion." Her face was bitter with an old anguish and Keral shook his head in bewilderment.
"I cannot understand it, either. To our people, children are precious beyond words, beloved, welcome, cause for incredible rejoicing and joy. That a woman of the chieri should cast her own child out to die . . . unless she herself was dead or mad-"
"You've had proof that we can go mad, all right," said Missy with a wry smile. "Oh, I believe what you say; I saw you with the child in your arms, the child of Regis Hastur's woman, and it evidently did something strange to you, too. But I want to know more of your people."
"You shall know everything I know myself," Keral promised, and David said, "There are also legends of the chieri among men. Desideria knows those, and she has promised to tell what she knows-for Keral and me. Why not come with us, Missy? I'm sure she'd be glad to have you. . . ."
Missy flinched slightly, then laughed a little. Like Keral, she had a magical laugh, light and clear as the chiming of a bell. "I'm still afraid of her," she confessed, "but she didn't mean to hurt me, either. And I must learn not to be afraid."
"That's true," David said gravely. He knew that somehow a strong bond was being woven, and that all resentments must vanish . . . and he was not sure why, but it was a part of what he must some day become.
It felt incredible now, to realize that he had not wanted to come to Darkover at all.
Before he came here, he had been only half alive. The thing he had regarded as a freakish deformity was now the major part of his life; and as he reached out to Keral for the familiar touch, he knew that being without it, now, would be worse than blinding.
XII
"This is a legend told in the heyday of the Comyn, years before the Terrans came with their ships and their Empire. I heard it when I was a young girl, Desideria Leynier, being
trained in Castle Aldaran as a matrix Keeper and technician. But it stems from the days before the Terrans ever came to our world, with their ships and their Empire.
In the ancient days when the valley lords held court at Thendara, and rode forth from Arilinn to Carthon, there dwelt a lord of the Old People in Carthon, king over those who dwelt there. There were no Seven Domains in those days, and none of the Comyn.
There was a maiden of the Fair People of the Wood, Kierestelli by name, which is to say Crystal in the valley speech. The legends say much of her beauty, but beauty dwells in the eyes of love and not in any single feature. In those days there was an evil queen in the forest, and she drove out Kierestelli to wander long in the woods alone, to flee into the lands of the valley people, and t
here she met with the Lord of Carthon, by the wells of Reuel. He took her home to his castle in the ancient city that now lies drowned in the Bay of Dreams, beyond the isle of Mormallor, and there she dwelt in happiness; but word came that she was held prisoner there, and the chieri lords sent a great treasure in gold and jewels-for they knew that the People of the Valley valued these things, which are nothing to the chieri folk-for her ransom. But Kierestelli chose to remain with the Lord of Carthon, because she loved him; so the Lord of Carthon sent back all the treasure but a single gold ring, which was long a treasure in the house of Hastur.
The treasure of the forest folk is a legend in the Venza Mountains, for when the Lord of Carthon sent it back, the caravan was waylaid and came never to the Yellow Forest. So the sire of Kierestelli said, 'These people would keep both gold and woman,' and gathered his people for the last battle to rescue her; but before the first arrow flew, Kierestelli came from the besieged castle, in her shift and barefoot, her hair hanging loose about her face, walking through the assembled defenders and besiegers alike, and knelt before her father, laying her hand in her lord's, and begging them to be reconciled.
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