The World Wreckers (14 page)

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LINNEA, KEEPER AND
leronis
of the Arilinn Tower, had few hours of leisure and when they came

she tried to keep them inviolate. The work of a Keeper, a worker in the matrix screens which provided

such small technology as was accessible on Darkover, was arduous and brain grating. Trained since

early childhood in difficult telepathic work, like all the Keepers she shrouded herself from all casual

contacts with those who were not telepaths, conserving her energies with every means at her command.

So that when one of the few servants in the Tower brought her word that two Free Amazons from the

mountains sought to see her, she was both incredulous and offended.

"I do not see guests or travelers. I am not a freak to be seen by paying a penny. Send them on their way."

A few Years ago. she thought, no one would have dared to suggest such an insolence.

The servant seemed almost equally embarrassed: "Do you think I did not tell them that,
vai leronis?
Yet when I said as mush, and rudely too, the one said that she was from your own village, one of your own,

and that now your grandmother had gone from the mountains there was no soul within a thousand miles

who could help her. She claimed that she would wait all night and all day for an hour of your

convenience."

Linnea said, startled, "Then I suppose I must see them."
But what is a woman of my hills doing in
Arilinn, so far from the Kilghards, so far from the mountains of Storn
…

She went down the long stairs slowly, rather than exert her wearied body and brain to control the

elevator shaft. Passing through the blue force field that shielded the Keepers at work from intrusive

outside thoughts, she braced herself for an interview with outsiders, nontelepaths. It was so incredibly

difficult, after months and weeks of seeing only those who could blend into your inner moods and

senses, to mingle with and touch outsiders; minds and bodies cold, barricaded, alien…

She touched rudimentary sensitivity at once from the tall Free Amazon with braided red hair (a telepath?

neutered? Linnea, celibate by harsh necessity like all Keepers, felt the faint shock of revulsion for the sexless being) and it made her voice cold:

"What urgent necessity brings you here to the world's end, my countrywoman?"

It was the younger woman who looked up and spoke, a quietly pretty, plumpish girl wrapped in the furs

of the hill people. She said, "Lady Linnea, I knew you as a child at High Windward, I am Menella of the Naderling Forst. This is my freemate Darilyn, and we are here because—" shyness overcame her, and

she looked up in open appeal at the taller, red-haired Amazon. Darilyn said in a flat, abrupt, cold voice,

"We should not have disturbed you,
leronis,
but there was no other person who would understand or believe us. You know what I am." She raised her gray eyes briefly, almost in defiance, to Linnea's, and the quickly-barricaded touch of recognition passed between them.

Like you, I live shielded, Sorceress. Because of what I am, guarded against man's touch: vulnerable, like
all our fast-fading kind.

Linnea lowered her eyes; the condemnation in them was gone. Linnea had been born into a noble

family; had she chosen not to work in the Towers as a telepath Keeper, she could have been given in

marriage to a man of her own kind; one who could equal her own sensitivity, a fellow telepath. Darilyn,

born into a village, growing up surrounded (a freak; a throwback) by those who could neither understand

nor respect what she was, had chosen to have her womanhood destroyed by the neutering operation

rather than subject it to a man who would be, to her, only a dumb beast.

Linnea's voice was gentle as she said, "Be welcome, countrywomen. My discourtesy was born of

weariness, no more. Has refreshment been offered you? Is it well in the hills of our homeland, Menella?"

"It is as evil as can be,
vai leronis
," Menella said, "But we did not come to tell you a twice-told tale. You know that fire and hunger have ravaged us. Darilyn, tell her what you saw."

Darilyn, outwardly composed, was wretchedly nervous. She stated, "My freemate and I recently traveled with an outworld woman, not a Free Amazon, though she behaved much like one of us. She had

contracted for our service as guides and hunters through the mountains. She was strange, like a Keeper

who had lost her powers, but outworlders are all mad and we were not surprised at that. I could read her

thoughts a little; she did not trouble to hide them and so I thought she had nothing to hide." Suddenly, Darilyn began to tremble.

"She was
evil
," she said with utter conviction. "She passed the blighted forests, and she looked at them as if her own hand had set them to flaming. She looked on me, and I knew that with her will all of our

kind would die. And once I saw her from far off, burying a charm in the woods, and I knew that by her

will, the soil would be blighted and die. I know this is madness, Linnea. I learned before my breasts

grew that there were no witches and that evil will harmed no one any more than good intentions helped.

Yet I cannot help it; I know that this woman's evil will would kill our world. It is a riddle I cannot read,
vai leronis,
and none in our world can read it if a Keeper cannot."

Linnea said, "This is superstition and folly." And yet her voice weakened and died.

A plot against our world?

What had Regis said?

The work of a witch? Impossible. Yet were these girls saying, in the light of their limited understanding, a truth? Truth, or at least that they believed it implicitly, was in every line of their stubborn, boyish faces. In any case, no Darkovan would lie to a Keeper. This conviction made her voice gentle as she

said, "I do not see how what you say can be, and yet you must have seen something to make for such a belief. Have you left this woman's service?"

"Not yet, Lady. As we passed near Arilinn we told her we must pay you our respects and she thought

nothing of it."

Linnea spoke decisively. "I will look into it. You know I must have something belonging to her."

"I cut a piece from her garments without being seen," said Menella, and Linnea could have laughed at the odd contrast of superstitious fear and practicality. Everyone knew that without something belonging

to a person or at least in contact with that person, it was difficult to pick up the vibration of the person's thoughts. Yet they had thought the stranger a witch?

She dismissed further talk of the stranger, offered them refreshment, talked the amenities of their shared childhood for a further half hour before sending them away. Yet all during that time, while she listened

to the disturbing news from their homeland, a coldness was growing at her heart.

Regis Hastur had seen this.

A plot. But why? From whom? Had these girls seen to the core of it?

She must somehow find out.

But at her heart there was a single-minded hunger. Regis knew so much more about these things. Was

she only making excuses for herself to see him again? For she knew she must take this to him.

Regis
…

Linnea! My dear one, where are you (so far from me, so near)
—

At Arilinn, but I must come there, even if it means closing all the relays; it's that important.

Beloved, what is it? (You are frightened. Can I share your fears?)

Not this way, where anyone open to us can overhear.

(Not only frightened but in terror for our world and all our people.)

Linnea, I can send a Terran aircraft for you if you are not afraid to ride in it, and if you can face the
anger of the others. (I long for you here; I could see you this very night, but for myself I would never ask
it.)

I am not afraid (to see you again I would face more than anger but not for my own sake) and I must tell
you what I have learned.

Regis let the contact drop away and sighed, feeling his many fears and problems overwhelm him again

after the brief respite. He was eager to see Linnea again, but the fear he had sensed in her thoughts came near to pulling the switch on his panic. Furthermore, he was exhausted with the terrible hunger and

depletion from maintaining contact over such distances. This was something they should study in the

Terran project, he thought, the physical depletion which came after prolonged contact or contact over

longer distances. At the back of his mind, too, was another thought; direct contact all the way from

Arilinn, more than a thousand miles, would hardly be possible for most of the telepaths on this world;

Linnea must, indeed, have more extraordinary powers than he had believed. Most of the Keepers in

these days, when powers were depleted and ill-trained, would have gone through the two intermediate

relays between here and Arilinn, not even trying to come through to him in person. It was a mark of

Linnea's panic that she had attempted the long distance contact without intermediates, and a mark of her

power that she had succeeded even for these few seconds.

He knew there would be no questions asked if he requested the Terran authorities to dispatch a plane to

Arilinn; and there were not, but he worried nevertheless while he was making the arrangements. This

would mean criticism again, for himself and for Linnea; not from the Terrans (
they
were eager to put the Hasturs under obligations, damn them!) but from their own people. Damned by the one party for having

anything at all to do with the Terrans; damned by the others for not having more to do with them. Just

damned.

He had, at this minute, another appalling problem and was facing an uncomfortable interview. He shrank

from going toward the Terran HQ hospital, even though he knew that most of what he would meet there

would be good-natured. There was the problem of Missy. Where had she gone? Darkover spaceport was

a big one, the Trade City enormous; and it had closed over her head as if she had never been there at all.

He knew rationally that she would seek anonymity, not trouble, but still the fear nagged at him.

And then there was the more personal problem. He lingered in the hospital corridors, braving the curious

glances of the passing nurses and doctors who wondered (some of them; the others knew all too well)

what a man in the dress of Darkovan nobility was doing there.

He finally knocked at the door of the Project A Telepath offices, hoping it would put off the other visit a bit longer. Jason and David were both there; and Keral, who had taken to spending much of his time

around the hospital, picking up much of what they were doing; Regis had been astonished at the

swiftness with which the chieri had absorbed the technical knowledge he apparently desired.

Jason's hearty smile, friendly though it was, made Regis wince a little as the Terran said, "Regis! A pleasure to see you, though I didn't think you'd have time for us this morning! Dr. Shield told me

congratulations are in order. A fine boy, I understand, six pounds and perfectly healthy."

Regis said, "I was going to visit Melora and the child now—if she will see me. She must be very angry; she sent me no message."

"You couldn't have done anything here," David said, "why should you lose your sleep? She was perfectly well looked after; I've met Marian Shield, and she seems to be as good an O. B. as is working

on this world."

"I'm sure she was taken care of, and I'm grateful to all of you," Regis said. "But the very fact that she did not have me told—"

He caught David's eyes and saw a flash of quick understanding in them.

—A woman who loves the man who has fathered her child, wants him near her at such a time.

"I must go and see Melora, at least," Regis said. "Has there been any word of Missy?"

"Not a syllable, Regis," Jason answered. "They'll stop her if she tries to leave the planet, of course, but short of that—well, you have a damn big world out there and evidently she's used to running and hiding."

One of my people; fugitive!

Keral's thoughts were almost palpable, and Regis felt the obscure wish to offer some comfort, without

knowing how. He saw David reach out, without a word, for Keral's hand, and their clasped hands filled

him with curious half-sorrow; as if he had, somehow, lost something precious without ever realizing that

he had it until it was forever beyond his reach.

He shook his head, dismissing the thought. Absurdities! Then a flicker of comfort struck him; Linnea

would soon be here, and even though this might complicate matters still further with Melora (she was

sure to decide that Linnea was here at Regis' personal wish) he simply did not care.

Keral said unexpectedly, "I have never seen a newborn human child. May I come and see your son,

Regis?"

"Of course; I'm always glad to show off my children," Regis said. David decided to come too, and they went up through the hospital corridors, the tall slight chieri provoking curious glances; but here in the hospital HQ the curiosity was friendly; many of them had seen and spoken to Keral now, and he was

simply another alien, not an unheard-of curiosity.

Melora had been put in a private room at a corner wing with a window looking on the mountains, a room

often kept for important Darkovan guest-patients, and a Darkovan midwife and a nurse from her own

estates had been permitted to attend her. She was sitting up in a chair, wearing a long, fleecy blue robe, her cheeks faintly flushed. She was a pretty girl, auburn-haired, gray-eyed, tall and dignified; and at the moment, with her long hair braided and falling over her shoulders, she looked hardly more than a child