"I'm Allison, yes."
THE WORLD WRECKERS
"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 here 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. . . .
IX
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 braised-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 torn 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.
Jason drew away the blankets, visibly controlling a shrinking as he touched them, but this time Missy lay quiet, looking shocked and half unconscious. Jason bared the slender, rounded upper arm, slid a needle into the inert flesh. After a tense moment, Missy's eyes closed and she began to breathe in long, drowsy breaths.
Jason said to the women, "Relax; that will hold her. Thanks; she could probably have killed all three of us." He looked at them in bafflement, the conflict between medical ethics-you don't examine a patient in front of outsiders, if you can help it-and an obvious dislike of being alone with the dangerous patient, fighting a very clear-cut battle in his face.
David said, "Let them stay, Jason. They know more about telepaths-or aliens-than we do."
He watched, with a curiously detached lack of surprise, as Jason finished undressing Missy. He felt a strange and frightening pity; no wonder the change had driven her mad; her own body become an alien and terrifying thing . . . but he quenched this entirely subjective empathy (Keral! What had this done to Keral?) and tried to examine the changes with a total scientific detachment.
The breasts had definitely altered in size and contour. Not that they had ever been large, of course, not much larger than those of a girl of twelve. But still, the change was perceptible. The skin texture, although he was not sure, seemed somehow to have altered, lost its luminous quality. He handled it with some curiosity as he helped Jason cleanse the cuts and abrasions. The genital changes were somewhat more marked; he had been aware of certain minor structural anomalies before, enough to classify Missy as a slightly abnormal female; now, on first inspection she would have struck anyone as a male. A somewhat underdeveloped male, it was true, but nevertheless unquestionably male in gender. Poor kid, what a frightening thing to have happen to her! Her? By habit he was still thinking of Missy as a girl, and when he thought about Conner his face burned with vicarious shock. Here 1 am sorry -for Missy; how am I going to explain to Conner that his girl friend isn't even a girl?
'"Well, we've certainly opened one hell of a can of worms," Jason said, hours later. Missy still slept, drugged and still. David flickered the pages of the medical report in his hands. Massive hormone changes, still continuing and probably unstable, shifting back and forth between androgens and female hormones-no wonder the emotional instability had resulted! "Are all the chieri like that, I wonder? You're Keral's buddy; maybe you can get him to tell you the whole story. Didn't he say that thousands of years ago the chieri went into space, looking for some way to save their race, and then came home to die? Evidently Missy is one of them who got lost, somehow or somewhere. Probably never knew what she was-what the hell, if she was a foundling, as she said, someone decided at first look that she was a girl, and who's going to question the evidence of her own eyes? But are we* going to have to cope with something like that happening to Keral? What was that phrase he used-the madness of the change? Oh hell," he burst out, "I can't cope with it. What good is this whole project anyway?"
David, sensing a sudden despair which had nothing to do with his patient, asked quickly, "Jay, what's wrong?"
Jason shook his head. "Personal problems. I've just had word my own people are dying like flies-you didn't know- I was brought up with nonhumans myself; the trailmen. You don't realize-you haven't been on Darkover long enough -but there have been forest fires, and the people of the forests are dying. . . . What's the good of saving a project, or a few people, if this world is going down the drain?"
David felt powerless to comfort him. He said, at last, awkwardly, "I guess we just have to do what we can, Jason. I'll talk to Keral and see what I can do."
He delayed the talk until later, not knowing why It was hard to face the chieri. Night had fallen, and the view of the great spaceport towers was a twinkling glow through the rainy darkness, when he returned to his own quarters and found Keral there, silent, withdrawn and paler than ever. He hardly greeted David, and it seemed to the young doctor that the whole gestalt of friendships and rapports formed since he had come to Darkover, the first real human contacts of his life, were falling into fragments around him. Conner, sick with wretchedness over Missy-David had still shirked telling him what was wrong-Regis, withdrawn and filled with fears; Jason, cracking up with fear for his friends; a world groaning in agony as it split apart, ruined and broken . . . and his own deep empathy for Keral, now guarded and afraid. He remembered Missy's white terrified face, and it seemed to him that the echo of that terror and madness was in Keral's pale eyes; and then, with a start, he remembered that morning which now seemed far away. Had it only been a few weeks ago? He had first seen Keral in the office room downstairs and now he remembered his own original uncertainty; Keral had seemed to him first a boy, then a delicate girl, and until he had first examined him the uncertainty had remained.
"How are your hands
, Keral?"
"They're well enough. Missy?"
"Still doped. I hope she comes out of it sane. We could probably help with hormones, but I don't know."
"I feel responsible," Keral said slowly. "It was contact with me which touched this off."
"Keral, you were only trying to help her, and if she'd been sane she'd have known it."
"No. I think it was-contact with me-which made her go into the Change."
"I don't understand. . . ."
"Nor I, and I am afraid," Keral said painfully, "because it could have been myself."
David stared in wonderment but dared not interrupt, sensing that Keral's tight reticence had broken; and after a moment Keral said, still in that hard, controlled voice:
"Understand. All the long seasons of my life, I have known myself the only and last child of my folk. All the others of our race are old, old past-not past mating, but past bearing. Past-engendering. And I reared among them, young, young. . . . Now, for the first time, I am among other young people, people who are, allowing for the differences in the way we experience time, near to my own age. For the first time in my life I am among-" he stopped and choked over it, and David could only vaguely envision the tremendous emotional charge of the concept, "-among potential mates. And so I know that, at any time, I may become unstable and change, as Missy did."