The World Wreckers (27 page)

with it won't go insane, so that in a few more generations there will be a sizable leaven of telepaths on all planets; and we will bring them here, and train them to use their powers in sanity and happiness. And in return for this we have a pledge that Darkover will remain always the world we know, and love, and

need for our continuing sanity and nourishment; never just another world in a chain of identical worlds."

David listened a moment, as if to an invisible voice; went away. Linnea, seeming to listen also, smiled

and pressed Regis' hand. "It won't be long for me, either, now," she said.

Regis came and sat beside Andrea. She had aged greatly in the long months of struggle in the woods and

mountains, working with close directions to save the ruined world; explicit instructions on how to

restore soil to life, which trees to plant for the swiftest ground cover against erosion, what to do in every niche of the complex ecology. But her lined face was peaceful and gentle, and again she looked like a

chieri, inspiring the old awe and love. He said: "What will you do now—" He hesitated, then called her by her chieri name, and she smiled:

"I await only the birth of Keral's child; then I will return to my own forest with my people, for the few last
cuere
allotted to me. But I will lay down my years content, knowing that if my own leaves fall, there will be new buds in the spring I will never see."

Regis reached out to touch her hand, and she clasped it, quietly. They sat there, looking out over the

mists on the hills.

Linnea said, "You have given so much—"

Andrea smiled. "I do not need a fortune now."

"I wish you had come back before," Regis said, wrung with honest grief.

"Perhaps it would have been too soon," Andrea's calm voice was speculative. "In any case, I knew no longer where my own world lay…"

"Those who hired you—what will they do? When Darkover does not fall ripe to their hands—"

"What can they do? To trap me, or even to claim my bond, they would have to admit, they hired me, and worldwrecking is illegal. I think they will just admit their defeat. But now the Terran Empire knows

exactly how they work; they will have a harder time wrecking other worlds."

There was a stir behind them, and Keral, pale and lovely, with David just behind, came out on the

balcony. They came straight to Andrea, and Keral turned, took a small squirming thing from David's

arms, and laid it in Andrea's.

Keral murmured, "Not for love, but because it means more to you than any other; look here and see a

world reborn."

Andrea reached out and touched Keral's soft hair. "Yes," she said in a whisper, "for love."

David drew Keral away, and they stood clasped close, looking into the green world. They were both still

bemused, not needing to look to see: still, the tiny, infinitely strange and beautiful scrap of a baby, with red-headed fuzz; the first of a second chain of telepaths with chieri blood. And it was their own stake in a newborn world. This had begun with a child in Keral's arms, the complex train of emotions and

experiences, and David thought they would always have a debt to Melora and her child. Over Keral's

shoulder he met Regis' eyes and smiled.

Andrea lay back, closing her eyes and yet seeing, without sight, a green and growing world, with life

springing up from the soil, leaves falling from the trees and returning in endless cycle, rivers, valleys, mountains, surging with life, and beyond them the endless life of the silent forests of Darkover under the moon. Far away, like a distant song, she heard the music of her people in the forests of falling leaves,

where they awaited her coming. Time would pass over them, and they would not return, but fall like

leaves; but while Darkover lived they would never wholly die, and after them the very Empire would be

seasoned with their memory, with their beauty and the eternal gift of bridging the gap between man and

mankind; the gift that was love.

She smiled with her eyes closed, feeling the strong life and already budding sensitivity of the child in her arms; hearing the distant music, which rose and fell like wind in the leaves, and faded quietly into

silence, like a falling breeze in the forest.

Not until Keral's child began to stir and fret and kick in her cold arms did any of the others realize that Andrea Closson, chieri, child of the Yellow Forest, worldwrecker and redeemer, had come home only to

die.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

There is a momentum to every operation of growth. The Terran Empire, like every process of human

endeavor, was geometric rather than linear in this progression. It began with a few isolated star systems and planets; they in turn developed, put forth colonies, and then began to burgeon, effloresce, grow in

wild and unrestrained proliferation. Within a thousand years a detached scientist might compare their

growth—from a perspective of millennia—to that of the spread of the water hyacinth on Earth in the pre-

space days; first an isolated phenomenon, then a study in wild growth, finally a menace that threatened

to encompass and crowd out everything else.

Something of the same momentum can be seen in the isolated progress of the Terran Empire on a single

planet. First a small scientific outpost, then a colony, a Trade City—

Darkover, isolated at the edge of a galaxy, with a sun so dim that its name was known only in star

catalogs, had halted in the first stages of this isolation for a hundred years.

But now—look out, Darkover! For the worldwreckers are coming.

—M. Z. B.

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