To Save a World (14 page)

Perhaps more than any living person he could see all the ramifications of this. Had it been done by some Darkovan of the rabid anti-Terran party to discredit the Terrans—a Hastur child murdered under their very noses? Was it part of the plot to destroy all telepaths which he had sensed earlier? How would he face Melora's parents, after the struggle he had had to get them to permit this unheard-of thing—a Darkovan noblewoman to bear her child under the auspices of the Empire!

If it was one of our people who plotted this, we aren't worth saving!
he thought with the bleakness of despair, and drew his perceptions inward so that he need not sense the Terran guards who followed his steps, trying not to intrude on the strange man they guarded.

He knew, with the perceptions of the trained telepath, that there were strangers in his own house, and stood in the half-lit hallway, trying to sort out if there was any menace. He felt upstairs, where the two older children slept with their nurses in the guarded nursery. They were peaceful and undisturbed. He had sent the youngest surviving child to Castle Hastur, under guard, with his mother. The sense of a stranger present persisted—

Linnea! I had forgotten, on this dreadful night
—
have you come so soon?

He did not look up as he felt her running down the stairs to him; looked up just to clasp her in his arms. He held her, hungrily, with an almost anguished need, feeling her slight body melting into his as if the barriers between flesh could physically fade out and he could somehow absorb her into himself. (Far away in the HQ building, at that moment, David released Keral with a sudden abashed awareness. Far out in the Trade City, Missy stirred uneasily in her sodden sleep and whimpered.) Then he put her down, and drew away, sighed and smiled.

"It's selfish of me,
preciosa
, and I should send you away again. But I'm glad you've come."

"My great-grandame was glad to see me too, although she pretended to be shocked that I had left my post at Arilinn and wondered aloud what sort of girls they were training these days," Linnea said, laughing. "I am glad Melora and the child are safe. I will visit Melora if the Terrans will allow it and not think me a clever assassin."

"The worst of it is that I must listen to them all saying that they told me so," Regis said. "Although I am ashamed to think of that when they have both been in danger of death."

"You're too tired to think sensibly," Linnea said. "Let me call someone to bring you food. And then—Regis, I hate to pile more fear and responsibility on your shoulders, but I must tell you what I have seen."

Private Notebook of Andrea Closson
;
kept in code
:

The level of forest fire has served its purpose and no further effort need be made in that direction, as crop cover has been reduced below the critical level in at least three widespread areas. The normal lightning set fires during this season should be sufficient, considering the demoralization of fire fighters in the mountains.

With the beginning of the spring rains in sectors IV and VII, erosion should begin in the Hellers and spread into the foothills. Reduction in the water table due to excessive runoff in the burned areas should soon become critical. With the expected start of the dry season near Carthon there should be dust storms, reducing crops to a critical level.

Some food supply relief can be expected from the well-watered towns in the lowlands, but this will not be enough. Demands made on the Terran Empire may spark some political decisions favorable to the desired agreement. (N.B.; the Empire has submitted a request for enlargement of the spaceport facilities which was turned down in Council last year. The question is to be raised again in five months. This will be a watershed decision.)

Expected agricultural disasters will begin this summer although they will not be crucial, and true famine will not exist, except among isolated, forest-dwelling, nonhuman cultures, until three years from now. Nevertheless, some small amount of panic can be expected.

Agents should be dispatched to begin work among the nonhumans, stirring up panic and rebellion. If an attack on human towns can be engineered, this would be worth a great deal toward the ultimate solution, as war between human and nonhuman at this time, although not conclusive, might drain resources which would otherwise be turned to salvage work in agricultural areas.

Efforts should be redoubled to eliminate interference from any of the Hasturs. The telepath relay towers are probably impregnable, but the relatively low level of sophistication in interplanetary politics should keep anyone from awareness and coordination until too late. Fortunately, the highly individualized social order on this world precludes coordinated effort.

If my calculations are correct, the point of no return could be reached within a matter of months. After that time, efforts need no longer be kept secret, as the process will be irreversible and Darkover, for bare survival, will be forced to negotiate with technological experts in planetary repair. It is possible that this point has already been reached, since the apparent level of Darkovan technology would not make it possible to reclaim the world for the old style of life without expert help. For this help they would be forced to make political concessions which would achieve the desired objective of planetary opening equally well. It is possible I may have underestimated the Hasturs, but at this moment they seem to be preoccupied with minimal government facilities. In effect, there is no central government. This world is wide open.

"THIS PLANET is wide open," Regis repeated slowly, his eyes fixed on Linnea. "I should have guessed before. I've read enough Empire history—did I never tell you, when I was a boy, I wanted to go offworld, into space?—to know what worldwrecking is. I don't know why I thought Darkover would be immune."

Danilo Syrtis said, "I never trusted those Empire bastards." His tense, young face was implacable. "Some of the mountain men had the right idea. Rise up and throw every one of the accursed Terrans right off our world, tear down the spaceport and sow the ground there with salt."

"You're a fool,
bredú
," Regis said gently. "It's not the Empire. They have played honestly with us and they have honored their commitments. If they wanted to open this world by force they could and would have done so three hundred years ago."

"But who, then, Regis? If not the Terrans?" Linnea asked.

"All I can say to that is that it's a big galaxy and there are I forget how many inhabited worlds," Regis answered. "Talk about hunting for a nut in a forest! Even on one world, looking for one specific person—the facts of the matter are, Linnea, we don't have the kind of cen
tralized organization
—" he spoke in lingua franca, as the old Darkovan language had no such concepts or words—"to deal with this sort of thing. It's war; and we've done away with war long since. Fights, yes. Feuds, yes. Raids, yes. I fought my first raid-battle before my beard sprouted, when Kennard Alton led us against Kadarin and his crew. But we do our fighting and our hating by ones and twos and tens. It just isn't
reasonable
to hate large groups of people who have never harmed us personally, just because they're
there
. It's why we never really fought the idea of the Empire, although I don't think most people really wanted a spaceport on Darkover. It's a big world and there's always room enough for every kind of idea; that was what we thought. We've learned a lot from the Terrans, and they've given us a great deal. And in return we've made our own impression on the Empire. But while that kind of thinking is the only sane kind in the long run, we're looking at the short run now. And it's conditioned us against thinking in terms of war. We're a peaceful people, by and large, and we're wide open to this kind of sabotage."

"Do you mean there's no way to stop it, then?" Linnea asked; and Danilo, clenching his fists, said, "We can fight if we have to."

"I don't mean that," Regis said, "but we aren't set up to handle it now. We have one hope, and that's dying out."

"And that is?"

"The old telepath technology of Darkover," Regis said. "But we're inbred, our fertility is going downhill, and we're being killed at an appalling rate, as witness the attack tonight. There aren't enough of us alive on Darkover for the kind of coordinated effort we'd need to stop this. Oh, we've had warnings enough. For the last hundred years, the Terrans have been trying to work with us, to develop our old sciences, learn how to work with the matrices, encourage the training of more matrix technicians and telepaths. If we had several hundred functioning telepaths, with Towers and relay circles in full function, we could survey the planet, find out just what's being done, and reverse it. As it is, we have to rely on alien technologies, and our whole way of life is opposed to them."

He closed his eyes and considered. The first few weeks of Project Telepath had come up with only a few isolated telepaths, untrained; and the study had so far been unprofitable. True, David had saved Melora's life; they had some new and fascinating knowledge of the legendary chieri, but this was a drop in the bucket. A dozen or so telepaths discovered on other worlds were on their way to Darkover, but how many of them would turn out to be psychotics like Rondo, or, like Missy, unable to endure questioning?

Danilo asked, "How many telepaths
are
alive on Darkover?"

Regis said wearily, "Aldones! Do you think I am a god's self, that I know such things?" Then he was suddenly electrified:

But I can know!

Fool I am; I have studied everyone's powers but our own.

He said, with a controlled quiet that belied his own sudden excitement:

"Let's think about this. How many working Towers are there in function, Linnea?"

"Nine," she said, "widely scattered. At Arilinn there are eight of us; in the other towers, anywhere from seven to twelve or fourteen."

Regis said, "In the Trade City we have forty licensed matrix mechanics. I happen to know that there are other telepaths born into the various old families—throwbacks, and some of them not even trained, who have some of the old
laran
powers. No one has ever bothered to count them or to demand that they use their powers. But if we all worked together—"

"It's fantastic," Linnea said, "and probably impossible. You know what a Tower circle has to go through before we can work in concert, as a group, and accomplish anything. Every time a new member joins us, it takes weeks for us to tolerate his presence easily enough so that we can work with him touching our minds. Seven or eight seems to be the tolerable maximum."

Regis said, half aloud, "Three of us, linked in depth, destroyed the Sharra matrix. What could five hundred of us do?"

Linnea flinched. "All of the old matrix screens above ninth level were destroyed years ago. They were adjudicated to be illegal weapons, and too dangerous for human beings to handle, Regis." Her eyes went slowly to his bleached-white hair. "An hour with one of them did—that—to you."

He nodded, slowly. "Yes. It's too dangerous, in human terms. But if the alternative is the destruction of a planet?"

"The question is academic in any case," Linnea said, "since the matrices no longer exist and no one alive knows how to build them. And a good thing, too."

"Still, it's the only hope we have," Regis said, "the one thing Darkover has which the Empire cannot duplicate from outside. For this, the Empire might help us without demanding political concessions which would destroy Darkover as we know it. It's going to be a race; a race against time. But I'm going to do it." His face was bleak. "I didn't ask to be placed at the head of the Council," he said. "I never wanted anything of the sort. But I have that power and for better or worse I've got to use it."

"I don't understand," Linnea said. "Why should the Empire
want
telepaths? From what
I
hear, they just barely believe we exist!"

"Look," said Regis violently, "use your head, Linnea. A matrix, with a sufficiently trained telepath, can produce energy—right? What little mining we have on Darkover is done with a matrix circle to locate and teleport the minerals to the surface—right? We make do with small use of metals because we do not want factories and manufacturing industry, but for the small amount we use, we have technology sufficient to our needs, or did, until recently."

"Yes, but the human expenditure—"

"Can be compensated. A matrix, operated by a trained telepath, can substitute for conventional aircraft. And so we have use of aircraft only in emergency; we do not use it wastefully. And there is communication: we on Darkover have no need of long range mechanical communications equipment."

"Right—" The main function of the relays on Darkover, especially now, was the long distance transmission of messages.

"The Empire has long since realized what telepaths would be good for," Regis said: "in space, for communication. For the controlling of mechanical equipment when ordinary machinery fails, through levitation or energon-control; any child with a matrix can see into the structure of matter enough to reverse oxidation or metal fatigue, for instance. The bottleneck is the small supply of telepaths—and the general unwillingness of Darkovans to collaborate with the Empire. None of us has been available for study. We don't know ourselves how we use these old sciences. The few efforts made to study these things have lost out to human failures. But there must be a way, and now is the time to try it."

"What are you going to do?" Linnea shrank from trying to read his thoughts directly.

"I am going to demand that the relays send out a call to every telepath on Darkover," Regis said, "with all the authority of Hastur,
with all that means
."

Linnea met his eyes briefly and shrank from the contact. Regis seemed, at that moment, almost superhuman, and she thought of the old legends of the Son of Hastur, who was more than human—and Regis had once wielded the Sword of Aldones, forged for the hand of a god. Which was another way of saying that he had somehow managed to tame and use forces of the human mind which were incomprehensible to the ordinary person.

She seized on a minor aspect of this;

"Can we shut down the relay towers and pull them all in here? Can we afford to do away with what little technology we do have? We'd be barbarians, Regis."

"Yes," Danilo said unexpectedly, "Darkover takes the telepaths, the work of the relays, entirely too much for granted. Shut down the towers for a few months or years and let our world see what it would be like without the telepath powers. Within a month they'll rise up and stop letting us be killed off one by one. There was a time when a man who laid a rude hand on a Keeper would have been tortured to death. Now they can slaughter women and children without anyone even caring."

"Are you saying that we could stop what they're doing to our world just by telepath powers?" Linnea asked.

"No, I don't think so," Regis replied. "There is too much physical damage to the planet, I suspect. But we can find out who is doing it, and stop them. And we can, perhaps, trade on even terms with the Empire, for the help we need now. In any case, it's time to stop playing and take the telepath project seriously. Otherwise we are going to go the way of the chieri; and there are plenty of people in the Empire who wouldn't regret us at all. That would leave Darkover wide open for the kind of exploitation they want. We're standing in the door," Regis repeated, "and we've got to stay there."

It was a commonplace room, dull and dark and evil-smelling, and Missy lay huddled and quiet for long periods at a time, hardly knowing what was going on either within or without her. Time had ceased to have meaning, although she had long slowed her perceptions to see the world at least partly as those others did; the ones she must perforce live with.

So many changes, so many strangenesses. And the strange touch now. For the first time, someone who had returned the seeking touch, the thing she had never understood in herself. Always before, men had been merely a means of survival. She had known herself alien, freak, unable to find anyone who was able to meet her, join with her. Her body she had given freely to whoever wanted it. After the first few times (even now she flinched from remembering that old horror, the discovery that what meant much to her was beast-nothingness to them) it had meant nothing. But now:

Conner. Emotions long deadened, reaching and touching her (she could feel what had gone within him, the strange fears and loneliness that had shaped him) in a way she hardly understood. She knew little of her own emotions. She had never dared to be introspective, but she sensed that if she looked within herself she would see and feel some such whirling horror as had shaped Conner's madness. And now, far from him, she still felt the helpless loneliness of his need (how could she hold herself from running, flying back—).

Missy, I need you. Missy, come back, without you I am maddened and lost again
. . . .

And the blind outpouring of her name, the name which meant nothing to her (she had borne it only a few years) but the ache of Conner's far-off crying for her. He had touched her innerness, and she could not forget, she knew she could never forget. But she could get out of range . . . .

She could have stayed with Conner indefinitely, she knew, in what happiness was possible to the strange thing she was. (Ah, but could she have borne to see him grow old, die?)

But the touch of
that other
—

Keral had reached right inside her, as if he had physically put out his hand and thrust it through her and inside her body and twisted something. He hated her. He feared her. And yet there had been something between them, though he wasn't even a man. What was Keral and what had he
done
to her? And the other, David, had been indifferent to her, to Missy, (for the first time the spell had failed) when she knew that no man alive could normally resist.

From that instant of grabbing rapport Missy had felt a weird flowing, twisting, changing in her; deep in her body, deep in the forever unplumbed and unplumbable depths of her mind. She had known, then, that no planet could hold them both, and she had no taste for killing. She had killed twice: once to protect her life and once to protect her secret; but she loathed what it had done to her and would not kill again except in extremity.

Better to run again.

"Let me go," Conner said. "Look, I'm a spaceman; I know my way around the quarter. Darkover is a port like any other; if you've seen one, you've seen them all. I can hear the gossip of the quarter, and anything that's going on, I'd find out about."

He looked so lost and miserable that David felt wrenched with pity, in spite of his tendency to feel that he could, personally, survive Missy's absence from their midst. It was Rondo who said roughly, "Face it, Conner; good riddance to bad rubbish. The girl's a whore, and psychotic at that."

David said, "Conner, it's true. And there's something else; if it hadn't been for Desideria, she might very well have killed Keral. She's dangerous."

Jason Allison contributed: "We'll be alerted if she tries to leave the planet; there's a stop order at the spaceport. But I'm afraid that without her own cooperation we have no authority—"

"I'll keep her from hurting anyone else," Conner said miserably, "but I must find her, I
must!
"

It was Desideria who came, unexpectedly, to Conner's aid. "I think Conner is right," she said. "A psychotic whore with full
laran
, psychokinesis and poltergeist factor running around loose on Darkover and hating the whole human race isn't anything I can contemplate without at least a dozen shudders. Go ahead, Dave—and if I can help you, call on me."