The World Wreckers (12 page)

gave it to me?"

David raised his eyes, suddenly grinning. He had the perfect opening, and he used it. "Well, for one thing

—to give you and Missy a spot of that privacy you were talking about, I should imagine."

The next minute, David found his head striking the wall. Dazed, he picked himself up, angry and

protesting—he had meant no harm, damn it; Conner might have warned him if he was angry enough for

a fight, rather than striking unaware—then, slowly and dazedly he heard Conner's cry of amazement and

contrition and discovered that the older man was helping him tenderly to his feet.

"David, I swear I didn't move! I only
thought
about punching you in the face. I realized right away that you hadn't meant any offense, only by then you were flying through the air! Good God,
what am I
—oh, God, God—" Conner was trembling, about to cry. "
I ought to be dead
…"

David felt a rushing need to reassure the man. He had suffered so much himself, only in such a different

way. "Conner—Dave!" he said, urgently, "take it easy, I'm not hurt. This is just part of whatever it is we've got."

Conner nodded, slowly. His face had the gray pallor of a black man gone bloodless and sick. He said, "I read something about poltergeists back in the hospital on Capella IX. They seem to be linked with—

well, with sexuality, disturbed sexuality, in some people. I guess we've just had a demonstration."

"Sure. Tomorrow we'll see how well you can control it," David said. "We were going to level with each other, remember. Didn't you know that you and Missy were—broadcasting it to all of us?"

"I knew while it was happening. I could feel all of you," Conner said. "It didn't seem to matter. It was the first time since the accident that I—that I hadn't been alone." He lowered his eyes. "Now, I'm embarrassed. I wasn't, then."

David said, with more gentleness than he had ever guessed that he could summon, "We may all have to

learn not to be embarrassed, then, Conner. Until we learn more of the mores of living among telepaths.

I'm damn sure of one thing, though; we're all going to have to give up a good many of our own

preconceived notions, and I don't only mean about sex. Being here has already changed us both."

The tension slackened. They were both, to some degree, barricaded against each other again. Shortly

afterward, Conner said good night and went off to his own room, and David sat, without any desire to

pick up the charts again, chewing on the Darkovan sweetmeats without really being aware that he was

doing it.

What's going to happen when he finds out Missy isn't human?

He felt desperately uneasy for Conner, without clearly knowing why. He thought, I'm changing too, I'm

learning about this thing I am.

What will it do to me?

He had fallen asleep without turning out the light, when suddenly he came awake, all his senses

screaming with violent panic.
Lights! People! Strange faces, critical eyes, they're coming to find me,
David, David, help me…

The cry had faded, he wondered if Keral had even known he made it, but he was out of his chair in a

bound, running down the corridor, impatient with the slow movement of the escalator, taking the

moving staircase down three or four paces at a time. Vaguely and in the back of his mind, as something

not very important, he realized that he had no doubt about exactly which way to go, that pinpoint shriek

of panic led him like a homing beam, although he had never been outside the building here before…

Outside it was getting dark with no sign of the sun and the night sky starless against the lights of the

spaceport.
Confusion . . . no moons… nothing to find my way…
the air was icy, wind gusting up in little ripples, cutting through David's thin smock like a knife, but he ran on, heedless. Keral's panic was

wordless now, a whirling frightening thing. David rounded a building, came out into the glare of lights

before a little plaza. There was a crowd there, murmuring, muttering; their tone: wonder, extreme

surprise, a sort of staring gawking hostile curiosity which David associated with the crowds that

gathered around freaks and extreme disasters.
Oh, God, if he's hurt
—

David shoved through the crowd, saying with the crisp authority he had learned the first week in his

hospital, "All right, let me through here—let me through, I'm a doctor, let me through—" thanking his lucky stars for the uniform he wore. In the hospital it made him anonymous, a nobody, just another

person with a right to be there; outside the hospital, though, it gave authority. They sidled back before him and David thrust through, using his elbows and broad shoulders without mercy.

He saw Keral and for a moment his heart stopped. The chieri was crouched over, huddled, arms wrapped

around his head, so pale and white that for a moment of horror David wondered if he had literally been

frightened to death. A delicate high-strung creature, unaccustomed to the society of people at all; what

had brought him out into these crowds? Then his eyelids flickered, and David went up to him and put his

hand on Keral's shoulder and said in a soft voice, "It's all right; I'll have these people out of here in a few seconds."

He turned to the crowd. "All right, just move along, there's nothing to see. Or shall I radio for

Spaceforce to come and move you on?"

Most of the crowd were Terrans and he realized that they had meant no harm, they were simply staring

idly at a strange thing. David felt suddenly ashamed and abashed at being human. Slowly, they began to

drift along, and David put his hand under Keral's elbow and raised him to his feet. He said, "They're gone, but you'd better come inside with me for a little while."

Keral's breathing was rapid, his face white. He said, "I was coming to see you, I was sure I could find my way. Only, inside the spaceport I lost my way, and they began to follow me and stare. And when I

began to run it was worse, I think some people did not know what the crowd was, they thought they

were hunting down a—a fugitive."

"Well, they are gone.'' David led him back the way he had come. His bump of direction had deserted

him now that he was no longer following the signals of Keral's panic and he had to inquire the way

twice. It was icy cold, the wind growing in intensity with every minute, and David realized he was

chilled through. The chieri reached out with a quick gesture and flipped a corner of his own long cloak

around David's shoulders.

The warmth of the HQ building closed around them and David relaxed thankfully. He felt, from Keral's

direction, a faint surge of renewed panic, and turned to him in anxious solicitude, but Keral only said

faintly, "I am not used to being within walls. Never mind, it is better than the crowds."

A picture, swift, strange and beautiful flashed in and out of his mind, multidimensional, multi-sensed:

—soft wind, blowing leaves; a thousand fragrances each known, accepted, cherished; a roof overhead

that smelled of leaves and gave softly to the wind, yet gave warm security from slashing rain; water,

splashing, softness under foot—

"Your home?"

He did not need an answer, and he felt oddly apologetic as he drew the chieri on to the first of the maze of intertwining escalators he took for granted in a large building;
Damn it
,
David
, he berated himself,
quit being romantic
.
Living in a forest may sound and smell great
,
but you're here and there's work to be
done
.

Nevertheless, the contrast nagged at him as he drew Keral into his own bleak, depersonalized quarters.

Had he really lived for years in surroundings as grim as a jail cell, absorbed in his work? He fussed

around, finding his strange guest a place to sit, and felt the shivering tension in the chieri slowly relax.

"You said you were coming to see me, Keral, when you panicked in the crowd. Not that you aren't

welcome, even at this hour. But what did you want?"

"It seemed," Keral said in that light strange voice, "that while your people learned of me, I could also learn of you, and I could do this better among you here than in isolation. I am not yet fluent enough in

your language; it is easier if I touch you—" he reached for David's hand, clasped it lightly, and the flow of images reached the Terran:

… a civilization new and strange and yet not so different from those my people knew millennia ago.

Perhaps we have been selfish, withdrawing into our forests and (knowing we die, alas, singing our

lamentation alone) waiting here and silently living in beauty and memory; perhaps those who come after

us may profit from what we are/what we know. Let us go among them and learn from them, see what

people will live in our world when we are gone…

The strange, forlorn sadness of the flow of thought brought an almost anguished feeling of loneliness to

David. Feeling that he might burst out crying if he didn't, he pulled his hands away from Keral and

swallowed hard. Keral looked at him, curious and not offended.

"Is it not mannerly, in your culture, to touch? Forgive me. I could not do it with everyone, but you are—

I
can
touch you and it does not—frighten me," he fumbled for words, and David, moved again, reached out and reclasped the thin, cool hands in his. He said softly, "Why are your people dying, Keral? Regis told me they were only a legend now."

… Infinite sadness, like a song of farewell borne from distant shores… leaves fall, buds wither unborn,
our people grow old and die with no children to renew their songs… and I, loneliest of all because I die
here in exile… hands of a stranger clasped in mine, a loving stranger but stranger still…

David:
Willing exile is exile none the less
.

… who will reconcile me to the paths I must walk alone…

David:
Mountains divide us and a world of seas . . . and we in dreams behold…

The wave crested; broke; splashed in soft surf on a silent shore of pain. David swallowed hard and their

hands fell apart. They had come briefly closer than even their growing ease with one another could

tolerate, and they drew apart again. Keral said, "I came here for that; that you could learn about my people. Many of the others are too old; they would die away from their forests. I am willing to give you

what I can; but I too am curious to know. Let me be part of your researches, David. Let me know what

you find out; share with me what you learn. I can pick up your language quickly; my people have a gift

for this."

"You certainly have," David said, suddenly struck by this; yesterday when they were introduced Keral had fumbled in speaking even a few words of Regis' rather scholarly
casta
language, and that now he was speaking in easy, fluent phrases, the
cahuenga
or lingua franca spoken all over Darkover by Terran and Darkovan alike, which David had learned by educator tapes on the ship coming here. He said, "I

have no objection; I am sure that Jason and the authorities would be happy to give you this privilege if

you want it. And if you want to stay here, I'll do what I can to help you feel less—hemmed in. Although

I have no authority on my own, and you ought to take it up with Regis, of course. If you want to know

what we're learning, you're welcome to share what I've found out myself. But will you answer a few

questions, too? You were so confused yesterday, and it was so hard to get through to you and make you

understand. For instance: how old are you?"

—
He looks about seventeen, though he must be older
—

"I am a stripling of my own people," Keral said, "almost the latest-born among them. But you would know how many sun-circlings I have lived, and I cannot tell you. I think perhaps your people count time

differently than we do. To us, many turns of the sun go by and it is as a sleep and a sleep, the beginning and ending of a song. I must try and think in different ways when I talk to your kind of people, and that is why the elders among us cannot any longer tolerate to come among you. The days and leaf fallings

seem to—to regulate your thoughts and your words and your inner processes. I was born—how can I

mark it in ways you can understand?—in the time before the great star over the polar ice shifted to its

latest place. Does that mean anything to you?"

"No," David said, "I'm no astronomer but I'll bet someone can pinpoint it in time." He felt stunned.
Are
you trying to tell me you're maybe hundreds of years old? Legends of immortal races!
"And yet, long-lived as your people are, you say your people are dying? I don't want to give you pain, Keral. But we

must know."

"We have been dying since many centuries before the Terrans came to Darkover for the first time," said the chieri. His voice was quiet and positive. "We were never a plentiful or prolific race—is this the right word?—and although during our high years we grew and multiplied as with a tree in bud, all things run

down and perish. As time meant less and less to us, we did not realize. Perhaps some change, the cooling

of the sun, made this change in our innermost cells. The times when we can bear children are spaced

apart—many, many sun-circlings apart. I think as the sun cooled they grew further apart. It often

happened that when one of our people was ripened for mating, there would be none other ready to mate

with her. And although we did not die of ourselves, we could be killed by accident, beasts, weather or

mischance. More died than were born. This process was slow, so slow that even we did not know, until