Neither Regis nor I spoke for a minute after we left the audience room; then, almost as one, we turned to each other. Regis spoke first, soberly.
"It was a fine thing you did, Jason. I didn"t believe he"d agree to it."
"It was your speech that did it," I denied. The sober mood, the unaccustomed surge of emotion, was still on me, but it was giving way to a sudden upswing of exaltation. d.a.m.n it, I"d _done_ it! Let Jay Allison try to match _that_ ...
Regis still looked grave. "He"d have refused, but you appealed to him as one of themselves. And yet it wasn"t quite that ... it was something more ..." Regis put a quick embarra.s.sed arm around my shoulders and suddenly blurted out, "I think the Terran Medical played h.e.l.l with your life, Jason! And even if it saves a million lives--it"s hard to forgive them for that!"
Late the next day the Old One called us in again, and told us that a hundred men had volunteered to return with us and act as blood donors and experimental subjects for research into the trailmen"s disease.
The trip over the mountains, so painfully accomplished was easier in return. Our escort of a hundred trailmen guaranteed us against attack, and they could choose the easiest paths.
Only as we undertook the long climb downward through the foothills did the trailmen, un-used to ground travel at any time, and suffering from the unaccustomed low alt.i.tude, begin to weaken. As we grew stronger, more and more of them faltered, and we travelled more and more slowly.
Not even Kendricks could be callous about "inhuman animals" by the time we reached the point where we had left the pack animals. And it was Rafe Scott who came to me and said desperately, "Jason, these poor fellows will never make it to Carthon. Lerrys and I know this country. Let us go ahead, as fast as we can travel alone, and arrange at Carthon for transit--maybe we can get pressurized aircraft to fly them from here. We can send a message from Carthon, too, about accommodations for them at the Terran HQ."
I was surprised and a little guilty that I had not thought of this myself. I covered it with a mocking, "I thought you didn"t give a d.a.m.n about "any of my friends.""
Rafe said doggedly, "I guess I was wrong about that. They"re going through this out of a sense of duty, so they must be pretty different than I thought they were."
Regis, who had overheard Rafe"s plan, now broke in quietly, "There"s no need for you to travel ahead, Rafe. I can send a quicker message."
I had forgotten that Regis was a trained telepath. He added, "There are some s.p.a.ce and distance limitations to such messages, but there is a regular relay net all over Darkover, and one of the relays is a girl who lives at the very edge of the Terran Zone. _If_ you"ll tell me what will give her access to the Terran HQ--" he flushed slightly and explained, "from what I know of the Terrans, she would not be very fortunate relaying the message if she merely walked to the gate and said she had a relayed telepathic message for someone, would she?"
I had to smile at the picture that conjured up in my mind. "I"m afraid not," I admitted. "Tell her to go to Dr. Forth, and give the message from Dr. Jason Allison."
Regis looked at me curiously--it was the first time I had spoken my own name in the hearing of the others. But he nodded, without comment. For the next hour or two he seemed somewhat more pre-occupied than usual, but after a time he came to me and told me that the message had gone through. Sometime later he relayed an answer; that airlift would be waiting for us, not at Carthon, but a small village near the ford of the Kadarin where we had left our trucks.
When we camped that night there were a dozen practical problems needing attention; the time and exact place of crossing the ford, the rea.s.surance to be given to terrified trailmen who could face leaving their forests but not crossing the final barricade of the river, the small help in our power to be given the sick ones. But after everything had been done that I could do, and after the whole camp had quieted down, I sat before the low-burning fire and stared into it, deep in painful la.s.situde. Tomorrow we would cross the river and a few hours later we would be back in the Terran HQ. And then....
And then ... and then nothing. I would vanish, I would utterly cease to exist anywhere, except as a vagrant ghost troubling Jay Allison"s unquiet dreams. As he moved through the cold round of his days I would be no more than a spent wind, a burst bubble, a thinned cloud.
The rose and saffron of the dying fire-colors gave shape to my dreams.
Once more, as in the trailcity that night, Kyla slipped through firelight to my side, and I looked up at her and suddenly I knew I could not bear it. I pulled her to me and muttered, "Oh, Kyla--Kyla, I won"t even remember you!"
She pushed my hands away, kneeling upright, and said urgently, "Jason, listen. We are close to Carthon, the others can lead them the rest of the way. Why go back to them at all? Slip away now and never go back! We can--" she stopped, coloring fiercely, that sudden and terrifying shyness overcoming her again, and at last she said in a whisper, "Darkover is a wide world, Jason. Big enough for us to hide in. I don"t believe they would search very far."
They wouldn"t. I could leave word with Kendricks--not with Regis, the telepath would see through me immediately--that I had ridden ahead to Carthon, with Kyla. By the time they realized that I had fled, they would be too concerned with getting the trailmen safely to the Terran Zone to spend much time looking for a runaway. As Kyla said, the world was wide. And it was my world. And I would not be alone in it.
"Kyla, Kyla," I said helplessly, and crushed her against me, kissing her. She closed her eyes and I took a long, long look at her face. Not beautiful, no. But womanly and brave and all the other beautiful things.
It was a farewell look, and I knew it, if she didn"t.
After the briefest time, she pulled a little away, and her flat voice was gentler and more breathless than usual. "We"d better leave before the others waken." She saw that I did not move. "Jason--?"
I could not look at her. m.u.f.fled behind my hands, I said, "No, Kyla.
I--I promised the Old One to look after my people in the Terran world. I must go back--"
"You won"t be _there_ to look after them! You won"t be _you_!"
I said bleakly, "I"ll write a letter to remind myself. Jay Allison has a very strong sense of duty. He"ll look after them for me. He won"t like it, but he"ll do it, with his last breath. He"s a better man than I am, Kyla. You"d better forget about me." I said, wearily, "I never existed."
That wasn"t the end. Not nearly. She--begged, and I don"t know why I put myself through the h.e.l.l of stubbornness. But in the end she ran away, crying, and I threw myself down by the fire, cursing Forth, cursing my own folly, but most of all cursing Jay Allison, hating my other self with a blistering, sickening rage.
Coming through the outskirts of the small village the next afternoon, the village where the airlift would meet us, we noted that the poorer quarter was almost abandoned. Regis said bleakly, "It"s begun," and dropped out of line to stand in the doorway of a silent dwelling. After a minute he beckoned to me, and I looked inside.
I wished I hadn"t. The sight would haunt me while I lived. An old man, two young women and half a dozen children between four and fifteen years old lay inside. The old man, one of the children, and one of the young women were laid out neatly in clean death, shrouded, their faces covered with green branches after the Darkovan custom for the dead. The other young woman lay huddled near the fireplace, her coa.r.s.e dress splattered with the filthy stuff she had vomited, dying. The children--but even now I can"t think of the children without retching. One, very small, had been in the woman"s arms when she collapsed; it had squirmed free--for a little while. The others were in an indescribable condition and the worst of it was that one of them was still moving, feebly, long past help. Regis turned blindly from the door and leaned against the wall, his shoulders heaving. Not, as I first thought, in disgust, but in grief. Tears ran over his hands and spilled down, and when I took him by the arm to lead him away, he reeled and fell against me.
He said in a broken, blurred, choking voice, "Oh, Lord, Jason, those children, those children--if you ever had any doubts about what you"re doing, any doubts about what you"ve done, think about that, think that you"ve saved a whole world from that, think that you"ve done something even the Hasturs couldn"t do!"
My own throat tightened with something more than embarra.s.sment. "Better wait till we know for sure whether the Terrans can carry through with it, and you"d better get to h.e.l.l away from this doorway. I"m immune, but d.a.m.n it, you"re not." But I had to take him and lead him away, like a child, from that house. He looked up into my face and said with burning sincerity, "I wonder if you believe I"d give my life, a dozen times over, to have done that?"
It was a curious, austere reward. But vaguely it comforted me. And then, as we rode into the village itself, I lost myself, or tried to lose myself, in rea.s.suring the frightened trailmen who had never seen a city on the ground, never seen or heard of an airplane. I avoided Kyla. I didn"t want a final word, a farewell. We had had our farewells already.
Forth had done a marvelous job of having quarters ready for the trailmen, and after they were comfortably installed and rea.s.sured, I went down wearily and dressed in Jay Allison"s clothing. I looked out the window at the distant mountains and a line from the book on mountaineering, which I had bought as a youngster in an alien world, and Jay had kept as a stray fragment of personality, ran in violent conflict through my mind:
_Something hidden--go and find it_ ...
_Something lost beyond the ranges_ ...
I had just begun to live. Surely I deserved better than this, to vanish when I had just discovered life. Did the man who did not know how to live, deserve to live at all? Jay Allison--that cold man who had never looked beyond any ranges--why should I be lost in him?
Something lost beyond the ranges ... nothing would be lost but myself. I was beginning to loathe the overflown sense of duty which had brought me back here. Now, when it was too late, I was bitterly regretting ... Kyla had offered me life. Surely I would never see Kyla again.
Could I regret what I would never remember? I walked into Forth"s office as if I were going to my doom. I _was_ ...
Forth greeted me warmly.
"Sit down and tell me all about it ..." he insisted. I would rather not speak. Instead, compulsively, I made it a full report ... and curious flickers came in and out of my consciousness as I spoke. By the time I realized I was reacting to a post-hypnotic suggestion, that in fact I was going under hypnosis again, it was too late and I could only think that this was worse than death because in a way I would be alive ...
Jay Allison sat up and meticulously straightened his cuff before tightening his mouth in what was meant for a smile. "I a.s.sume, then, that the experiment was a success?"
"A complete success." Forth"s voice was somewhat harsh and annoyed, but Jay was untroubled; he had known for years that most of his subordinates and superiors disliked him, and had long ago stopped worrying about it.
"The trailmen agreed?"
"They agreed," Forth said, surprised. "You don"t remember anything at all?"
"Sc.r.a.ps. Like a nightmare." Jay Allison looked down at the back of his hand, flexing the fingers cautiously against pain, touching the partially healed red slash. Forth followed the direction of his eyes and said, not unsympathetically, "Don"t worry about your hand. I looked at it pretty carefully. You"ll have the total use of it."
Jay said rigidly, "It seems to have been a pretty severe risk to take.