“And my sister? My brother? My people?”
“Perhaps some day we will find a way to help them; some day all these mountain bandits must be wiped out, but we have neither the means nor any way.”
He dismissed them, tenderly. “Think it over. Let me do what I can for you; you certainly must not return to throw your lives after theirs. Do you think that your people really want you to share their fate now that you have escaped?”
Storn’s thoughts ran bitter counterpoint as they left Aldaran. Perhaps what Aldaran said made sense in the long run, in the history of Darkover, in the annals of a world. But he was interested in the short run, in his own people and the annals of his own time. Taking the long view inevitably meant being callous to how many people were hurt. If he had had no hope of outside help, he would gladly have sent Melitta to safety, if nothing more could be salvaged, and been glad there was a home for her here. But now that hope had been raised for more, this seemed like utter failure.
He heard, as from a distance, Desideria saying to Melitta, “Something draws me to your brother—I don’t know; he is not a man whose looks I admire, it is something beyond that—I wish I could help you. I can do much, and in the old days, the powers of the trained telepaths of Darkover could be used against intruders and invaders. But not alone.”
Melitta said, “Don’t think we are ungrateful for your guardian’s good will, Desideria. But we must return to Storn even if all we can do is to share the fate of those there. But we will not do that unless all hope is gone, even if we must rouse the peasants with their pitchforks and the forge folk of the hills!”
Desideria stopped dead in the hallway. She said, “The forge folk of the caverns in the Hellers? Do you mean the old folk who worshipped the goddess, Sharra?”
“Indeed they did. But those altars are long cold and profaned.”
“Then I can help you!” Desideria’s eyes glowed. “Do you think an altar matters? Listen, Melitta, you know, a little, what my training has been? Well, one of the—the powers we have learned to raise here is that associated with Sharra. In the old days, Sharra was a power in this world; the Comyn sealed the gates against raising that power, because of various dangers, but we have found the way, a little—but Melitta, if you can find me even fifty men who once believed in Sharra, I could—I could level the gates of Storn Castle, I could burn Brynat’s men alive about him.”
“I don’t understand,” said Storn, caught in spite of himself. “Why do you need worshippers?”
“And you a telepath yourself, I dare say, Storn! Look—the linked minds of the worshippers, in a shared belief, create a tangible force, a strength, to give power to that—that force, the power which comes through the gates of the other dimension into this world. It is the Form of Fire. I can call it up alone, but it has no power without someone to give it strength. I have the matrixes to open that gate. But with those who had once worshipped—”
Storn thought he knew what she meant. He had discovered forces which could be raised, which he could not handle alone, and with Brynat at his gates. He had thought, If I had help, someone trained in these ways—
He said, “Will Aldaran allow this?”
Desideria looked adult and self-sufficient. She said, “When anyone has my training and my strength, she does not ask for leave to do what she feels right. I have said I will help you; my guardian would not gainsay me—and I would not give him the right to do so.”
“And I thought you a child,” Storn said.
“No one can endure the training I have had and remain a child,” Desideria said. She looked into his eyes and colored, but she did not flinch from his gaze. “Some day I will read the strangeness in you, Loran of Storn. That will be for another time; now your mind is elsewhere.” Briefly she touched his hand, then colored again and turned away. “Don’t think me bold.”
Touched, Storn had no answer. Fear and uncertainty caught him again. If these people felt no horror of breaking the Darkovan League’s most solemn law, the Compact against weapons, would they have any compunctions about what he had done? He did not know whether he felt relieved or vaguely shocked at the thought that they might accept it as part of a necessity, without worrying about the dubious ethics involved.
He forced such thoughts from his mind. For the moment it was enough that Desideria thought there was a way to help. It was a desperate chance, but he was desperate enough for any gamble, whatever that might be—even Sharra.
“Come with me to the room where my sisters and I work,” she said. “We must find the proper instruments and—you may as well call them talismans, if you like. And if you, Storn, have experimented with these things, then the sight of a matrix laboratory may interest you. Come. And then we can leave within the hour, if you wish.”
She led the way along a flight of stairs and past glowing blue beacons in the hallways which Storn, although he had never seen them before, recognized. They were the force beacons, the warning signs. He had some of them in his own castle and had experimented until he had learned many of their secrets. They had given him the impregnable field which protected his body and had turned Brynat’s weapon, and the magnetic currents which guided the mechanical birds that allowed him to experience the sensation of flight. There were other things with less practical application, and he wanted to ask Desideria question after question. But he was haunted by apprehension, a sense of time running out; Melitta must have sensed it too, for she dropped back a step with unease.
He tried to smile. “Nothing. It’s a little overwhelming to learn that these—these toys with which I spent my childhood can be a science of this magnitude.”
Time is running out…
Desideria swung back a curtain, and stepped through a blue magnetic shimmer. Melitta followed. Storn, seized by indefinable reluctance, hesitated, then stepped forward.
A stinging shock ran through him, and—for an instant Dan Barron, bewildered, half-maddened, and fighting for sanity, stared around him at the weird trappings of the matrix laboratory, as if waking from a long, long nightmare.
“Storn—?” Desideria’s hand touched his. He forced himself to awareness and smiled. “Sorry. I’m not used to fields quite as strong.”
“I should have warned you. But if you could not come through the field you would not have enough knowledge to help us, in any case. Here, let me find what I need.”
She flicked a small button and motioned them to seats.
“Wait for me.”
Slowly, Storn became aware of the strange disorganizing humming. Melitta was staring at him in astonishment and dismay but it took all his strength not to dissolve beneath the strange invisible sound, not to vanish…
A telepathic damper. Barron had been aware of one, at Armida, with his developing powers, he had just been disturbed at it, but now… now…
Now there was not even time to cry out, it was vibrating through his brain—through temporal lobes and nerves, creating disruption of the nets that held him in domination, freeing—Barron! He felt himself spinning through indefinable, blue-tinged, timeless space—falling, disappearing, dying—blind, deafened, entranced… He spun down into unconsciousness, his last thought was not of Melitta left alone, nor of his victim Barron. It was Desideria’s gray eyes and the indefinable touch of her compassion and knowledge, that went down with him into the night of an unconsciousness so complete that it was like death…
Barron came to consciousness as if surfacing from a long, deep dive.
“What the bloody hell is going on here?” For a moment he had no idea whether or not he had spoken the words aloud. His head hurt and he recognized the invisible humming vibration that Valdir Alton had called a telepathic damper—that was all his world for a moment.
Slowly he found his feet and his balance. It was as if for days he had walked through a nightmare, conscious, but unable to do anything but what he did—as if some other person walked in his body and directed his actions while he watched in astonishment from somewhere, powerle
ss to intervene. He suddenly woke with the controlling power gone, yet the nightmare went on. The girl he had seen in the dream was there, staring up at him in mild concern—his sister? Damn it, no, that was the other guy. He could remember everything he had done and said, almost everything he had thought, while Storn commanded him. He had not shifted position but somehow the focus had changed. He was himself again, Dan Barron, not Storn.
He opened his mouth to raise hell, to demand explanations and give a few, to make everything very clear, when he saw Melitta looking up at him in concern and faint fright. Melitta! He hadn’t asked to get involved with her, but here she was and from what he could realize, he was her only protector. She’s been so brave; she’s come so far for help, and here it is within her reach; and what will happen if I make myself known?
He was no expert on Darkovan law and custom, but the one thing he did know from walking with Storn for seven or eight days was that, by Darkovan standards, what Storn had done was a crime. Fine—I could murder him for it, and God willing, some day I will. That’s one hell of a thing to do to a man’s mind and body! But none of it was Melitta’s fault. No. I’ll have to play the game for a while.
The silence had fasted too long. Melitta said, with growing fear in her voice, “Storn?”
He made himself smile at her and then found it didn’t take an effort. He said, trying to remember how Storn had spoken, “It’s all right, that—telepathic damper upset me a little.” And boy, was that a masterpiece of understatement!
Desideria came back to them before Melitta could answer, carrying various things wrapped in a length of silk. She said, “I must go and make arrangements for transportation and escort to take you into the hills near High Windward, to the caves where the forge folk have gone. You cannot help in this, why not go and rest? You have a long journey behind and ahead, and difficult things—” She glanced up at Barron and quickly away, and he vaguely wondered why. What’s the matter with the red-headed kid? He suddenly felt faint and swayed, and Desideria said quickly, “Go with your brother, Melitta; I have many plans to make. I will come for you at sunset.”
Too disoriented and confused to do anything else, Barron let Melitta lead him through the suddenly strange corridors to a room where he knew he had slept the night before but which he had never consciously seen before. She stood looking down at him, distressed.
“Storn, what’s happened? Are you ill? You look at me so strangely—Storn! Loran!” Her voice rose in sudden panic, and Barron put out a hand to quiet her.
“Take it easy, kid—” He realized he was speaking his own language and shifted back, with some effort into the tongue Storn and his sister spoke together. “Melitta, I’m sorry,” he said with an effort, but her eyes were fixed on him in growing horror and understanding.
“The telepathic damper,” she whispered. “Now I understand. Who are you?”
His admiration and respect for the girl suddenly grew. This must have been just about the most terrifying and disconcerting thing that had ever happened to her. After she’d been so far, and been through so much, and with help so near, to find that her brother was gone and she was alone with a stranger—a stranger who might be raving mad, or a homicidal maniac, and in any case was probably mad—and she didn’t run or scream or yell for help. She stood there white as a sheet, but she stood up to him and asked, “Who are you?”
God, what a girl!
He said, trying to match her calm, “I think your brother told you my name, but in case he didn’t, it’s Dan Barron. Dan will do, but you’d better go on calling me Storn or some of these people may get wise. You don’t want that to happen when you’ve been through so much, do you?”
She said, almost incredulous, “You mean—after what my brother’s done to you, you’ll still help me? You’ll go back with us to Storn?”
“Lady,” said Barron, grim and meaning it more than he had ever meant anything in his life, “Storn is the one place on this damn planet that I want to go more than anything else in the world. I’ve got to help you get those bandits out of your castle so that I can get to your brother—and when I get my hands on him, he’s going to wish he only had Brynat Scarface to deal with! But that’s nothing against you. So relax. I’ll help you play your game—and Storn and I can settle our private difficulties later on. Good enough?”
She smiled at him, setting her chin courageously.
“Good enough.”
* * *
XIII
« ^ »
THERE WAS an airplane.
Barron looked at it in amazement and dismay. He would have sworn that there were few surface craft on Darkover; certainly no fuel was exported from the Zone for them, and he had never known of one being sold on Darkover, except one or two in Trade City. But here it was, and obviously of Empire manufacture. When he climbed into it he realized that all the controls had been ripped out; in place of an instrument panel was one of those blue crystals. Desideria took her place before it, looking like a child, and Barron felt like saying. “Hey, are you going to fly this thing?” But he held himself back. The girl seemed to know what she was doing, and after what he had seen on Darkover, he wouldn’t put anything past them. A technology which could displace possession by another mind was worth looking into. He began to wonder if any Terran Empire man knew anything about Darkover.
Melitta was afraid to climb into the strange contrivance until Desideria comforted and reassured her; then, looking as if she were taking her life in her hands and didn’t care, she climbed in, resolved not to show her fear.
The queer craft took off in an eerie silence. Desideria put on another of the telepathic dampers inside, saying almost in apology, “I am sorry—I must control the crystal with my own strength and I dare not have random thoughts intruding.” Barron had all he could do to endure the vibrations. He was beginning to guess what they were. If telepathic power were a vibration, the damper was a scrambler to protect the user of the force from any intruding vibrations.
He found himself wondering what Storn would have thought of covering in a few hours, the terrain which he and Melitta had covered so laboriously, on foot and horseback, in several days. The thought was unwelcome in the extreme. He did not want to think about Storn’s feelings. Nevertheless, his beliefs about the backwardness of Darkover had been gravely shaken in the last few hours. Their refusal of weapons other than knife and sword now seemed an ethical point—and yet Aldaran, too, seemed to have a valid ethical point, that this kept them struggling in small wars and feuds which depended for their success on who had the stronger physical strength.
But don’t all wars depend ultimately on that? Surely you don’t believe that rightness of a cause would mean that the right side would be able to get the biggest weapons? Would the feud between Brynat and Storn be easier settled if both of them had guns?
And if this was an ethical point rather than a lack of knowledge, was it just possible that their lack of transit, manufacturing and the like might come from preference rather than lack of ability?
Damn it, why am I worrying about Darkovan ways when my own problems are so pressing?
He had deserted his work with Valdir Alton’s men at the fire station. He—or Storn in his body—had stolen a valuable riding horse. He had probably irredeemably ruined himself with the Terran authorities, who had exerted themselves to give him this job, and his career was probably at a permanent standstill. He’d be lucky not to find himself on the first ship off Darkover.
Then it struck him that probably he need not go. The Empire might not believe his story but the Altons, who were telepaths, certainly would. And Larry had given him friendship, while Valdir was interested in the field of his professional competence. Perhaps there would be work for him here. He suddenly faced the awareness that he didn’t want to leave Darkover and that he had at last become caught up in the struggles and problems of these people whose lives he had entered against his will.
I could kill Storn for what he did—but damn it, I’m
glad it happened.
But this was the briefest flash of insight, and it disappeared again, leaving him lost and bewildered. During the days as Storn he had grown used to Melitta’s companionship. Now she seemed strange and aloof and when he tried to reach out and touch her with his mind, it was an almost automatic movement and the low-keyed vibration of the telepathic damper interfered, making him feel dull, sick and miserable. He had expected to feel more at home flying than riding horseback but after a short time all he wished was that the flight would be over. Melitta would not look at him.
That was the worst of it. He longed for the flight to be over so that he could speak to her, touch her. She was the only familiar thing in this world and he ached to be near her.
Inconsistently, he was distressed when the flight ended and Desideria brought the craft expertly down in a small valley as quietly as a hovercraft. She apologized to Melitta for not coming nearer to Storn, but explained that the air currents around the peaks were violent enough to crash any small craft. Barron wondered how a girl her age knew about air currents. Oh hell, she’s evidently something special in the way of telepaths, she probably feels ’em through her skin or her balance centers or something.
Barron had no idea where they were. Since Storn had never seen the place—being blind—Storn’s memories were no good to Barron. But Melitta knew. She took charge, directing them toward a mountain village where Darkovans swarmed out, welcoming Melitta with delight, and showing Desideria a reverential awe which seemed to confuse the young girl— the first time Barron had seen Desideria taken aback—and even make her angry.