The World Wreckers (24 page)

David realized that they had come a long way; Keral could touch him now, easily and without hesitation

or fear. The change must be far advanced, and he took courage from that.

There was no great strangeness and nothing repellent. At the front of the slit, retracted now like a small folded bud, the male organ, smaller now than a human baby's, although when David, telling himself that

he must somehow come to terms with the male in Keral, touched it gently, Keral murmured softly with

pleasure. Behind it, deepening in color and faintly swelling, was the female organ, and David, losing his detachment, trembled slightly as he felt the slow throb under his hand. He closed his eyes and moved

away, afraid again to hurry anything. Keral broke into violent shuddering and pulled him closer.

"I'm not sure; it's not the same—I can't stand this," he said fiercely, "not knowing, something's got to change, it's killing me—"

We should have expected this,
David thought bleakly.
Deadlock
. So far and no further, and the cultural taboos so strong neither of us can break through them. The attempt had to be made before he lost his

nerve, and yet the fear of what a premature attempt could mean held him paralyzed. He moved carefully

above Keral, and the chieri's eyes closed, as he clutched David's shoulders, still trembling. He said, "I don't know—I'm afraid—"

David himself was so frightened that it nearly unmanned him.
Oh God, why did we try, we had so

much
… He found himself sobbing, limp, lying across Keral's breast and crying helplessly. He had never known such terror. Keral was crying, too; they held each other, clinging in a sort of blind panic. David

finally managed to gasp, "What shall we do? What shall we do?"

Slowly, Keral quieted. He held David close, his lips against David's hair, and for the first time tonight, David was aware of the softness of his skin, the feminine lightness of his touch, as Keral whispered

softly in his own language, words David could not understand, although he knew them for endearments.

At last he murmured, "David, my dear, we should have expected this. We were both too—too tense, too

aware. Maybe love needs a little madness. Remember what you said about blind alleys?"

"It's hopeless, then?"

"No. No. A mistake, not a catastrophe. We were frightened, and—well, self-conscious." He raised himself and kissed David, brushing the hair out of his eyes. "Lie here close to me, David. We were both in a hurry. As if we had to make sure of each other right away."

"I'm ashamed—" David muttered.

"I was before, but it's easier for me if I know that you're frightened too," Keral said simply. "You seemed so sure of yourself, I wondered if you had any idea how hard it was for me—"

"I was pretending," David muttered against his throat, "I wanted to give you confidence, too."

Slowly they quieted, lying close together, feeling the rhythm of each other's hearts. They had been like

this before, David remembered, but not so honest with each other. Warmth and security had done their

work. David found himself erect again, throbbingly aware of Keral warm and trustful against him. Keral

smiled and pulled him close.

"Don't be afraid. We can try."

At first David could not find the entrance and Keral had to help him. He. She.
Damn, damn.
Fear again, and momentary awkwardness; a drawn breath from Keral; tension that nearly undid David again. Then

he realized that he had actually entered. He felt dizzily strange, resisting the instinct to move, and

whispered, controlling himself:

"Keral?"

"It's all right—" but the voice was a threadlike gasp.

"Not—afraid?"

"A little, but—go on, I want you to—"

It was hard and awkward, and for a moment they struggled helplessly toward each other, in a renewed

spasmodic fear and anger; and Keral sobbed again, in a last flare of panic trying to fight him away. And

then, suddenly, they found that they fitted together, and David felt a relief so enormous that he could

have burst into tears again. He rested a minute, leaning down to kiss the wet face beneath his, then

hunger and desire quickly overcame him again, surging up at the lessening of the seemingly endless

tension and fear.

They clung together, moving almost savagely, learning each other's rhythms and movements. Keral was

still sobbing, but not, now, with fear. And then, swiftly, it was over for David, in an exploding, blackout burst of light.

When he got his breath again he leaned down and kissed Keral; then, in swift compunction for his tears,

gathered him close:

"Don't, there's nothing to cry about—is there? Did I hurt you so much? I tried—"

"No, no, you didn't hurt me, I was so afraid something would go wrong again and now—now I want to

cry, to laugh, to fly…"

They fell together into silence, still aware of the soft snow whispering against the window. David had

not realized how wholly the strangeness had gone, and yet; this was still Keral. He still did not think of Keral as a woman; and yet—oh, hell! Why struggle for labels? Keral was Keral; and he loved him; and

he didn't care; and he fell asleep in Keral's arms not caring.

Chapter 14

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ON A DAY late in the winter, Jason stopped by the laboratory and said, "David? Regis Hastur just sent me a message; he wants us all to come up to the castle. He didn't say why. Will you walk there with me?"

David got his heaviest coat—a Darkovan one; the ones he had owned on other planets would have been

summerweight here—and came along. Jason asked, "How is it going?"

"Busy, as usual. I was right, by the way; all of the other telepaths in the new group have gray eyes, and all of the Comyn and Darkovans have the typical brain wave readings; not as pronounced as in the

chieri, but the same thing on a lesser scale."

Jason chuckled. "Did you ever see so many redheads?"

"No, I read an old story once—from prehistory—called
The Red-headed League,
a foolish tale about something that was a crime then; I can't remember, but one paragraph in it—I thought of it this morning:

'I never hope to see such a sight as that again. From north, south, east and west, every man who had a

shade of red in his hair had tramped in. I should not have thought there were so many in the whole

country. Every shade of red they were: straw, lemon, orange, brick, liver, clay and the real flame-haired tint.'"

"Well, you look as if you belong," Jason said, and David laughed. "Coincidence; when I was a kid on Terra, red hair wasn't associated with anything except bad temper. I had that too; that was before I

realized that everybody around me couldn't tell what I was thinking as easily as I could tell it about

them. But where in hell did you get it, Jason? You're not red-headed."

"I was as a kid, but I'd forgotten. My mother was," Jason said; "she was Darkovan, but she died before I was old enough to remember. As for being a telepath, I never suspected I was until being around all of

you I started picking things up. Where's Keral?"

They had gone down to the spaceport gates now and passed through, climbing the steep old streets

toward the old castle on the cliffs high above them. David said, "He went out for a walk in the fields; I think the streets and buildings stifle him."

"Alone?"

"No; Conner was with him, and some guards—I had work I wanted to finish."

"Keral doesn't look nearly as—well, as girlish—as Missy. I notice you still say
he
."

David shrugged. "I still think of him that way. Maybe Missy changed so much only because she was

mimicking humans; a lot of behavior we think of as sex linked is really just culture linked; I don't know."

Jason said, "I loved a Free Amazon once; in many ways it was like loving a man, and more so toward

the end than at first."

"I've heard Linnea speak of the Free Amazons but somehow I thought they only loved other women."

"Oh, no! But they do as they please, and no man holds one of them for long. Kyla stayed with me for

three years and that was a long time, for a woman with no child; then she grew weary of the city, but my

work was here and I decided to stay. I'm not sure if I was right or wrong, but I'm a doctor, and for better or worse—" Jason fell silent, and David said, "I understand."

"The work we're doing now, a reliable study of telepaths and their powers, is going to make all the

difference to Darkover," Jason said; "it's been tried before, but nothing ever came of it; the Darkovans wouldn't cooperate. Now they are doing it of their free will."

"Not entirely of their free will," David said, "but of necessity. I think seeing Keral and hearing about his people has frightened them; they see themselves. Their birth rate is falling too, you know. Appallingly.

Not one of the women here has had more than one child; and the men—" he shrugged. "A few, like

Regis, felt it their duty to make sure they had children; the others never thought of it."

Jason asked, "A case of nature breeding back to the norm?"

"I think not. It's a case of—sensitivity," David said. "Once you get habituated to that kind of contact, nothing less seems real. And there aren't so many potential mates either; marriages are made for political reasons, too, and the girls are brought up in isolation, seeing only their own blood kin. No one ever

thought of trying to breed deliberately for the telepath genes, and as a result, half of the telepath families are diluted until the gift hardly shows, and the others so inbred that some awfully freaky recessives are coming out."

"True enough," Jason said. "Well, perhaps something will come of this gathering." As he spoke, they passed under the high gates of the old castle. The guards on duty there looked faintly askance at the two Terran Medics, in their white uniforms, but let them pass, and inside the corridors, which were, like

most Darkovan buildings, of pale translucent stone with colored lights behind the panels, one of the

servants told them that the Lord Hastur had given orders to bring them to the Council Chamber.

David already knew that the orders sent out by Regis to bring every known telepath on Darkover to

Thendara had resulted in two hundred and thirty adult men and women—which on Darkover meant over

fifteen years old. About a hundred more were accounted for as unable to come because of inaccessible

weather and climate, extreme old age or illness, and a few because of advanced pregnancy. This was not

a great number for a population which numbered somewhere in the low millions—a census of Darkover

had never been made. David had heard the old estimates; in the old days, roughly one in a hundred of

the population had displayed measurable telepathic gifts.

Regis did not long leave them in doubt about why he had called them together. After rehearsing a few of

the known problems, and begging them to cooperate in the Terran-sponsored program to measure their

gifts and train those which were latent, he broke off the formal speech and stepped down from the high

platform from which he had spoken.

David had been in contact with him often enough to sense his complete dedication, but he had never

before thought of Regis as much of a leader. Always before Regis had seemed to him a quiet, rather

diffident youngster, pushed reluctantly into a position of power and not enjoying it. Regis was not

especially tall, even for a Darkovan—they were not a particularly tall race. He was about five foot nine, and although his features were fine, the snowwhite hair lending them a steel-toned distinction, he would

not of himself have drawn all eyes. But now, as he spoke, David sensed that he was drawing on some

force which seemed above and beyond his own personality.

"Our world is in the hands of wreckers," he said, "and I cannot even urge you to seek help from the Terrans. It might be better to die our own way than to live in theirs. But I do not believe these are our only alternatives. We are something quite unusual among the hundred thousands of inhabited worlds;

and we must keep what we have.

"Our traditional ways and governments have been broken up, and nothing has emerged to take their

place. The Terran Empire is all too ready to step into this vacuum.

"The Comyn and the Comyn Council, our old hierarchy, are gone. I am going to ask you all to join with me in forming a new council; a council which will not rule Darkover, but which will lead it and work to

restore it.

"For hundreds of years, those of you who, like myself, were born into telepath families and castes have had the tradition of spending your gifts for the good of our world as a whole. You have sacrificed

yourselves and lived in isolation, working with the screens and matrices to give us such small

technology as we have. And those of you born into other families and castes have been considered

outcasts, freaks, strange and uncanny, both revered and feared.

"I ask you to join together: Comyn and commoner, peasant and lord, Free Amazon and stranger, valley

man and mountain man. I ask you to spend yourselves further for our people. And for the time being, I

ask you to lend your gifts to the Terrans in return for the help we need to rebuild our world. But in return I guarantee that we will never become just another of the lockstep worlds of the Empire. Maybe we can

be the leaven in their dough. Maybe, when they find that they cannot remake us in their image, they will

find that they remake themselves more like us.

"Will you give me all your help?"

He stood silent, and for a moment there was no answer.

It was not needed. It was like a visible storm in the room, as every man and woman there rose physically