The World Wreckers (18 page)

And then Missy went mad.

She had always known, in a general way, that she was stronger than any woman. It was part of her

physical freakishness; she had never had the faintest fear of physical abuse, and had defended herself

with skill and strength from unwanted advances on various occasions in her long and rough life. Here

she had been taken off guard; but the smell of her own blood, and general panic, turned her berserk. She

came up off the floor like a spitting, enraged tiger. A blow from unbelievably strong arms knocked the

man across the room. She
reached
for him, with that inner force which had sent the furniture in David's room spinning, and he howled and clutched his groin, bawling like a wounded bull. A bench rose and

flung itself across the room, striking him in the head with a blow that would have felled an ordinary

man. But he was no ordinary man, and the sight of flying furniture only sent him further into the

berserker fury. Outside in the street, clouds of whirling dust gathered and spun and spat. Rocks hurled

themselves against the doors. Missy warded off kicks and blows, but when the officer seized the flying

bench in mid-air and struck her on the head ,with it, she collapsed and lay still.

Then there was a hammering at the door and a stern shout, and four men in the black leather of

Spaceforce kicked in the lock and took in the scene—the naked man, the unconscious and bleeding thing

that looked at first glance like a naked girl—and hauled them both off, with prompt efficiency, to the

spaceport prison and hospital.

And there they made discoveries which threw them into the same bewildered panic as the ship's officer.

The face on the visionscreen was bewildered after being passed along from official to official.

"You're Doctor Jason Allison? You're in charge of a special project in Medic, with some outworlders?"

"I'm Allison, yes."

"Well, we have something down here. Are you missing one of your people? We don't know what it is

and we can't handle it; will you please come down here and take her or him or it away before it sets the

whole goddam spaceport on fire or something?"

Jason said to himself, "Oh, oh," and wished he had a panic button to push.

He knew without asking that they'd found Missy.

My kinfolk…

Keral. Is it well with you among the aliens, Beloved?

It is not well although one among them is dear to me as born blood-kin.
And I have learned much, much of our own people and this world. But I am alone and desolate; I cannot long endure the life within

walls. And what shall I do if the Change comes upon me, or the madness of which you warned me?

There is so much strangeness that I am always in fear. Already once I have wounded and once I have

killed, both times without intention. And there is a strange one here who has put me in fear. I do not

want to die. I do not want to die…

Chapter 9

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JASON HAD brought along a sedative capable of calming down a couple of rogue elephants, but Missy,

lying numb and shocked, her face a bleached blob above the blankets wrapped confiningly around her,

made not the slightest protest. She neither spoke to him nor opened her eyes as he had her carefully

loaded on a stretcher and carried to a waiting ambulance. During the short ride back to the HQ, he sat

quietly at her side, not touching her, his face grim as he considered what the spaceport police had told

him. He had seen with his own eyes the wreckage of the cell, including the charred patch where blankets

had been set ablaze.

"I've seen an almighty damned strange batch of telepaths and psi talents on Darkover," he said to himself, grimly, "but an uncontrolled poltergeist is a new one on me and damned if I know how to

handle it. Regis is going to have to help me out on this one. It's his field of competence, after all. I'm a medic, not a warlock."

The change in Missy, even on superficial inspection, appalled him. Although the curious and compelling

beauty was still there, the fair skin seemed to have roughened, with a blotched look. Her eyes were

lusterless—shock, of course, could account for that—but the most curious change was an intangible.

Jason had been far from indifferent to the flaunting, exotic sexuality which Missy seemed to project

from every pore—and now that had vanished, without a trace.

Well, shock and a brutal beating could account for that, too. She had evidently been very thoroughly

mauled and maltreated; and evidently the doctors in the spaceport jail had been afraid to touch her.
Not
that he blamed them
.

Fortunately, Missy had never shown any hostility to him. When he had examined her before, she had

cooperated, even been—to a certain limited degree—friendly. It was David and Keral to whom she had

reacted with hostility.

He had hoped to bring her into the Medic infirmary unnoticed, but—perhaps this was something he'd

just have to get used to, working with telepaths—they were all there, waiting for him. He motioned to

the men guiding the stretcher to wait, beckoned to David—at least David was a medical colleague—and

said, in a low voice:

"You others will have to wait. She's been very badly hurt; she may have concussion, or internal injuries.

David, come with me; and the rest of you, wait here." His eyes moved quickly over their faces; Regis, strained and frightened—why? Conner, gray with anguish and despair, moved him to brief pity, and he

laid his hand on the man's shoulder. "I know how you feel," he said, "I'll let you in to see her the minute I can, believe me. She'll need someone who cares about her, after being roughed up like that."

Conner let himself be moved back, but David, tuned to sensitivity, could feel the man's helpless anger

and protest:

There's no one else to care about her
…
she needs me, to them she's just a case
…
as I was in the hospital
after the accident in space
…

and his thoughts trailing off into incoherent rage, despair and desire, so entangled that Conner himself

did not know which was which. David wondered,
how can he care so much for her?
and closed the

door, glad to shut away the dark and far too expressive face.

Missy's face on the pillow was white and bruised-looking, one eye swollen shut with great purple

bruises, her fair hair matted and tangled. David felt a choked sense of misery as he looked at her and

wondered vaguely if he were sensing the girl's own emotions; or Conner's; or empathizing that strange,

elusive and painful sense of resemblance to Keral. There would be scars on that fair and untouched face,

that cheek where a fist or some blunt instrument had ripped away skin…

He moved toward her and began to draw away the blankets.

Missy's eyes blinked open, cold and brilliant as steel. "No," she whispered, shaping her bloodied lips painfully, "don't touch me.
Don't touch me!
"

Poor kid, Jason thought, after what she's been through I don't blame her. "It's all right, Missy," he said quietly, "no one is going to hurt you, now. I've got to look at those cuts on your face, and see what other injuries you have. I think we can fix you up without too many scars. Tell me, have you any pain? Let me

see—"

He grasped the blanket firmly, trying to pry loose her fingers that huddled it round her.

The next minute, in a shower of flaming sparks, Jason flew through the air, shouting, struck the opposite wall and fell, awkwardly, landing in a collapsed heap. Missy spat out the words:

"
Don't touch me
!"

"Hey, now—" Jason protested, picking himself up in astonished consternation, "I won't hurt you."

But Missy's eyes were blank and unseeing; a metallic, cold glare. David, standing beside her bed, picked

up a whirling snowstorm of thoughts, a tornado of terror and shame too frightening to be untangled—

"Wait, Jason," he said, and bent over Missy.

"Child, it's all over; no one will hurt you. It's only the doctor, he wants to see how badly that man hurt you. Please try to tell us; did he rape you? We can't tell you how sorry we are—" David was trying,

desperately, for the first time in his medical career, to reach out through that blind barricade of terror and touch the terrified girl within. He was unconscious now of Missy's strangeness; he spoke as he would

have spoken to a frightened child. The specifically sexual content of the terror, wordless but clearly

identifiable, led David to an entirely wrong conclusion. "Missy, if you're afraid of us would you like to have one of the women here, Doctor Shield perhaps, come and be with you?"

An even more violent explosion of rage, tension and terror, like a palpable storm in the room. Missy's

eyes were a glassy glare of panic, and when David tried to touch the blankets she had hauled around her

body, his hand jumped back in a numb tingling paralysis like an electric shock.

Jason said, still trying to be reasonable, "Miss Gentry, this is ridiculous. How can we help you, or even dress those wounds of yours—look, your face is still bleeding—unless you let us?"

"It's no good to try and reason with her," David said in a low voice. "I don't think she even hears what we're saying, Jason."

The door opened and Keral said in his low, diffident voice, "Dr. Allison, I think I know what has

happened to Missy. Remember, she is one of my own people, one of my race. This is something you

cannot understand. Let me try to reach her mind…"

He looked drawn and frightened, and David could sense, like static in the room, his fear that was like

Missy's:
it is the madness of the Change
…
and if she has been reared on another world, not knowing
that this may happen, if it has come upon her unknowing
…

"Hear me," he whispered. "Be with me. Missy, I am not your enemy. I am of your own people…"

She lay back, her eyes still glazed but lax and motionless, her breath coming in a harsh and deathly

rattle. David knew that she heard Keral, but the glassy eyes did not flicker. Keral's voice trembled, and David sensed his own rigid self-control, but there was a tenderness in the tones which made both

listeners achingly aware of the strange aloneness of the chieri.

"Missy. Open your mind and heart to me. I can help you; you need not fear me, strayed nestling from

our world, little sister, little brother, little lost bird…"

Missy's staring eyes flickered with live knowledge, she drew a harsh, sobbing breath—

And then the room exploded. Keral screamed in anguish and beat wildly at the flames that burst out

under his hands; a tornado wind whirled wildly in the center of the room, tipping over the medical

trolley with its array of bandages and instruments; it fell with a noise of metal, shattering glass. David dodged flying glass fragments; Jason shouted in rage and consternation—

Keral backed away, his face white, gripping his seared hands together in voiceless agony. He whispered,

harshly, "I can't reach her, she's insane… get Desideria, she can handle Missy…"

In the corridor outside, slamming the door on the chaos of the room, they looked at each other in terror

and rising dismay. The others crowded around, with concerned questions; Jason beckoned to Desideria,

and said briefly, "How do you handle a crazy poltergeist? Regis, you're the expert; what do you do when your people go berserk?"

"I've never had to handle one before," Regis said. "David, you look after Keral, he's hurt—Desideria, can you quiet her?"

Linnea, standing quietly at the outskirts of the group, said, "If you can't alone, Grandmother, let me try—

if two Keepers cannot handle one madwoman, what are we here for?"

Jason stood aside for them to step into the room. David, drawing Keral after them—after all, this was the emergency room and this was the only place he could find bandages and medicines for the burns on

Keral's hands—watched with detached curiosity as the two women moved toward Missy. A few steps

away, they stopped, close together, clasping hands. Desideria's snow-white crown of hair and Linnea's

flaming copper one were close together, and the elusive, strong likeness between the women gave a

curious sense of power. Their two pairs of gray eyes, so like Missy's, focused like a visible beam of

light…

David bent and picked up the trolley, shoving the scattered instruments out of the way, pushed Keral

into a chair and rummaged in a cupboard for burn remedies—
thank God for Universal Medical Labels, I

couldn't cope with Darkovan script just now
, he thought at random as his eyes found the familiar flame emblem on a packet of anesthetic spray—and gently uncoiled Keral's fingers, drawing a breath of

consternation at the cruelly blistered palms. Behind him he could sense the tension in the room, as Missy struggled wordlessly, trembling, under the focused pressure of the two women . …

Desideria said, in a cold voice, "Do what you have to, Jason. She'll be quiet."

Linnea drew a deep, sobbing breath. She said, "Oh, Grandmother, no… oh, Evanda have mercy! Poor

thing…"

David drew the bandages tight on Keral's hands. He said, wetting his lips, "That will heal in a day or two, Keral. There won't be any permanent harm. Are you all right? Do you feel faint?" The chieri looked deathlike, his mouth trembling. David felt a terrifying rage against Missy, which he controlled with an

intense effort, and when Jason said, "David, if you've finished, give me a hand here," he moved toward Missy's inert body, trying for a professional calm to drop over his own fear and rage like a cloak.