The World Wreckers

  He said, stubbornly and with concealed anger, "Now maybe you'll listen, Lord Regis. If you go out again without a proper escort I swear by all of Zandru's hells that I will not be responsible; I will ask my oath back and return to Syrtis. If the Council doesn't have me flayed alive first for letting you be killed under my very eyes!"

  Regis felt weak and sick; the dead man lying in the street had no ordinary weapon but a nervegun which would have made him-no, not a corpse but a vegetable, all his neural circuits paralyzed; he might live, spoon-fed and incommunicado, forty years. He said through suddenly trembling lips, "They're getting rougher. That's the seventh assassin in eleven moons. Must I become a prisoner in the Hidden City, Dani?"

  "At least they don't send dagger men against you any more."

  "I wish they did," Regis said. "I can hold my own with any dagger man on this world; so can you." He looked at Dani sharply; "You're not hurt?"

  "A graze. My arms feel dipped in molten lead, but the nerves will heal." He brushed off Regis' concerned queries, his offers of help. "The only help I need, Lord Regis, is your promise not to walk alone in the city again."

  Regis said, "I promise." But his eyes were hard. "Where got you the weapon, Dani? A Compact-forbidden weapon? Give it to me."

  The younger man surrendered the blaster. He said, "It isn't illegal, vai dom. I went into the Terran Trade City and applied for a permit to carry it here. And when they knew whose body I guarded they gave it me with a good will-and so they should."

  Regis looked troubled. He said, "Call a guardsman to bury that," he pointed to the charred corpse of the assassin. "No point in examining the body, I'm afraid; it will be like all the others, a nameless man, no trace of his whereabouts known. But he needn't lie in the street, either."

  He stood by, distressed and aloof, while Danilo summoned a green-and-black uniformed City Guard, and gave orders. Then he turned to Danilo and his eyes were hard.

  "You know the Compact." For generations on Darkover war and combat had been unknown; mostly due to the Compact, the law forbidding any weapon which can go beyond the hand's reach of the user; a law which allowed dueling and raiding but wholly prohibited the wide spread of battle or carnage. The question, addressed to Danilo, was purely rhetorical-every six-year-old child knew of the Compact-and the youth did not answer. But even before Regis' angry gaze-and the anger of a Hastur could kill- Danilo Syrtis did not drop his eyes.

  He said, "You're alive and unharmed. That's all I care about, Lord."

  "But what, in the name of any god you like, are we living for, Dani?"

  "I, to keep you alive."

  "And what are we living about? We are living, among other things, so that the Compact be kept on Darkover and the years of chaos and cowardly killing never come back to our people!" Regis sounded half wild with rage and despair, but Danilo did not quail from his angry stare. He said, "The Compact would be much worse kept with you dead, Lord Regis. I am your most loyal-" the boy's voice suddenly shook, "you know my life is yours to keep or spend, vai dom carlo; but do you really know what would become of this world or your people with you dead?"

  "Breda;." Regis used the word which meant not only friend but sworn brother and reached out with both hands for Danilo's; a rare touch in a telepath caste. He said, "If this is true, my dearest brother, why should seven assassins want me dead?"

  He didn't expect an answer and didn't get one. Danilo said, his face drawn, "I don't think they come from our people at all."

  "Is that-" Regis pointed to where the corpse had lain, "a Terran? Not as I know them."

  "Nor I. But face facts, Lord Regis. Seven assassins to you alone; and Lord Edric dead from a strange dirk; Lord Jerome of the Elhalyns dead in his own study and no man's footprints in the snow; three of the Aillard women dead in mishandled childbirth and the midwives dying of poison before they could be questioned; and-the gods deal with me for speaking of it-your two children."

  Regis' face, hard before, was bleak now, for although he had fathered the children without any love for their mothers, as a sworn duty to his caste, he had cared deeply for the two sons found dead in their cribs-from sudden illness, they said-not three months ago. He said, and the terrible control in his voice was worse than tears, "What can I do, Dani? Must I see a murderer's hand or the hand of conspiracy in every blow of fate?"

  "It will be worse for you if you don't than if you do, Lord Regis," said Danilo, but the deep compassion in his voice belied the harshness of the words. He added, still harshly, "You've had a shock. You'd better get along home. Your mourning at Lord Edric's funeral, such mourning as anyone could summon up for such as he, won't do his memory half as much good as you guarding your life to look after his womenfolk and people!"

  Regis' mouth thinned. "I doubt if they have spare murderers in reserve on one day," was all he said. But he went with Danilo, not protesting further.

  So it was a war, then, a complex conspiracy against the telepath caste.

  But who was the enemy, and why?

  Isolated incidents like this had never been uncommon on Darkover, although it was more common for an assassin to file what was known as an intent-to-murder; this placed it nominally under the age-old duello code of Darkover and the slayer enjoyed immunity; a slaying in fair duel was no murder.

  His lip curled faintly. He had carefully avoided embroiling himself in any of the warring alignments and factions on Darkover ever since he knew that Derik Elhalyn, nearest heir to the rulership of Comyn Council, was mad and could not take office.

  Thus, no living man on Darkover could justly claim that Regis Hastur of Hastur had wronged him. Furthermore, as Danilo had reminded him, there were few who could match him in the use of any legal dueling weapons.

  Who, then? Some of their own people who wanted the Comyn, with its complex hierarchy of telepaths and psi talents, out of the way?

  Or, the Terrans?

  Well, that he could verify at once.

  Shortly after he had assumed the position as chief liaison man between the Terrans and his own people, he had come to live in a house near the edge of the Terran Zone. It was a compromise and he hated it; neither a Terran residence, which, although boxy and cramped, had at least comfort and convenience, nor a Darkovan one, with space and air and the absence of separating walls, though essentially comfortless. It was further still from anything like the feel of Castle Hastur where he had spent most of his childhood.

  He detested, with a loathing so completely culture bound that it was almost inborn, almost all of the artifacts of Terran Empire technology and using them daily was one of the most suffocating handicaps of his liaison position. Making an average visiphone call was a process made lengthier by the need for overcoming his revulsion and he made it as brief as he could.

  "Trade City Headquarters; Section Eight, Medical Research."

  When the screen had cleared he requested, "Department of Alien Anthropology," and when that went through he asked for Doctor Jason Allison, and finally the face of a young man, restrained but pleasant, took form before him.

  "Lord Regis. An unexpected pleasure. What can I do for you?"

  "Forget the formalities, for one thing," Regis said. "You've known me too long for that. But can you come and see me here?"

  He could have asked his question easily enough on the screen and been answered. But Regis was a telepath and had learned young to rely, not on the words of an answer or the face of the speaker, but on the "feel" of the answer. He did not think Jason Allison would lie to him. Insofar as he could like or trust anyone not of his own caste, he liked and trusted the Darkover-born Jason. But without lying, Jason might evade or shade the truth to avoid hurting him or talk around what he did not know.

  So when Jason had joined him there, and the first few words of formal courtesy and inquiries had passed, he looked the young Terran straight in the eye and said:

  "You've known me a long time; you know I'm no fool. Level with me, Jason; is there some sort of feeling around the
Terran Empire that telepaths are more trouble than they're worth, and that-even though the Empire may not issue a price on our heads-that no tears would be officially shed if we were picked off, one by one?"

  Jason said, "Good God, no!" but Regis did not even hear the words. What he heard was the perfectly honest shock, denial and outrage in the young Terran scientist's mind.

  Not the Terrans, then.

  He probed further, just to satisfy his own conscience.

  "Maybe something you hadn't heard about? Not your section. I know that Alien Anthropology has been trying to work with some of us."

  "Not the other sections, either," said Jason firmly. "Spaceport authority couldn't care less, of course. The science division-well, they're still exploring your various sciences and they realize that Darkover is unique, a reservoir of psi talents unequaled anywhere in the galaxy so far as we know. They'd be more likely to try to round you all up and put you in-well, not in cages, but in protective custody until they could study you to their hearts' content." He laughed.

  "Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea," Regis said without humor. "If it goes on like this, there won't be a telepath with laran power left alive on Darkover!"

  Jason's grin faded. "I heard a rumor months ago that someone had tried to assassinate you and failed," he said. "With all the duels going on, I didn't take it seriously. Was it true, then? Has there been another?"

  "You don't know, then," Regis said, and told him. Gradually the color faded from the young Terran's face. "This is frightening. I can only say that nobody official among the Terrans is doing it. And who else would have reason?"

  That, of course, was the question, Regis thought. He said, "The most powerful mind in the universe, the greatest psi talents on Darkover, are still vulnerable to knife, bullet or gun. I could name a dozen, beginning with the Keeper Cleindor; and running down to my cousin Marius Alton, two or three years ago."

  "And without the telepaths," Jason said slowly, "we have

  no key to the matrix sciences of Darkover and no hope of ever finding a key to them."

  "And also without the telepaths," Regis said, "our world and our economy falls apart. Who profits by that?"

  "I don't know. There are plenty of interests who would like to see your planet open to commercial export and import. But that battle's been going on for three or four generations, and the Terran Empire has always held that a planet has the right to decide for itself in the long run. They're not even lobbying on Darkover any more. After all, there are other planets."

  But Regis heard the unspoken part of that sentence, too; There are other planets, but not with a big spaceport and a sizable Terran Zone and colony. Darkover was a crossroad between the upper and lower Galactic Arm and had a spaceport twice as big as most planets its size, five times as big as the ordinary Class B, to handle the traffic. A pivot planet-and it was getting in the way of those who hated to see such a plum unpicked.

  Just the same, Jason said, "I don't honestly think it's anyone in the Empire or the Zone, Regis; they'd go about it differently. If you have a bulldozer, you don't need a snow shovel. This is something undercover and uncommonly nasty."

  "I'm inclined to agree. I'll have to see if there are any more straws in the wind," Regis said. "Picking off the telepaths wouldn't change our stand on the Empire. We don't want to be part of it; and we don't want to become just one more link in the chain; and we don't want your technology to swamp us. And most of the common people agree. If someone's trying to change their minds, I should be able to find it out. Meanwhile-"

  "Meanwhile, it's part of my responsibility to see that there aren't any more of you murdered. Protective custody might not work. Not with you people-" Jason smiled, adding, "You damned thick-headed isolationists of whom I happen to be one. But it would help if we had something to offer in return for the extra services it may take to keep you from disappearing."

  "I can offer one thing," Regis said grimly, "and it isn't anything we want to give. But it's for everybody's good to keep the matrix sciences from dying out just from lack of telepaths to work them. I'll give ourselves, Jason. There are telepaths out there," his gesture swept the night sky and the infinite stars. "Not so many as on Darkover, perhaps, or with so many talents. Remember; before the Ages of Chaos, we bred for laran gifts. We went too far; we're inbred. Find us some more, Jason. Find out how the Dark-over telepaths differ-if they do-from those on Terra or Vainwal or the fourteenth planet of Bibbledygook. If we can survive as a caste, or if what we have can be trained into others-well, maybe this thing can be stopped. Because if we're all that's keeping Darkover out of the stream of entropy-and whether you like it or not, the Empire is a process of entropy, and I won't argue ethics with you again-well, we've got to keep standing in that door. We had our time of Chaos," he added, "I can show you radioactive craters on the Forbidden City. What's left of us isn't primitive, Jason, or barbarian; it's what left after we've been to the limits of so-called Progress; and the few who survived it have learned what not to do with it. Find us more telepaths, Jason, and you have the word of a Hastur that you'll learn what and why we are!"

  II

  DEPARTMENT OF ALIEN ANTHROPOLOGY: COTTMAN FOUR (Darkover)

  To all Empire Medical Services on Open and Closed planets: You are directed to seek out any humans bearing telepathic or psi talents, preferably those latent and undeveloped. This offer does not extend to those who are using clairvoyant gifts for profit, as those can be simulated by advanced technology. You are empowered to offer them Class A medical contracts. . ..

  When you sweep a wide net to the ends of the known universe, some curious things are caught up in the meshes....

  Rondo was a little, wizened man of no particular age, and he was very badly scared. He could feel the fear like a cold taste in his mouth, and he tried to shut it off, knowing it interfered with the control so necessary for what he was trying to do.

  His was only one of the fifty-odd pairs of eyes following the helical path of a ball, spinning through an increasingly eccentric orbit inside the great crystal gambling machine. As it hit other randomly spinning specks of matter, the orbit altered, changed, drifted, as it spun down, down through weightlessness, to fall-to fall into one-into one of the cups-Here, here. The thing in his mind-he had no other word for the gift that had always been with him-reached out and touched, delicately, the ball. Like another fleck of drifting dust, it moved the unpredictable orbit, ever so lightly, toward the mouths of the continuously spinning row of cups at the bottom of the machine. Slower, faster-watt, wait, mine's not here yet. . . now, NOW!

  The ball spun down faster, as if magnetized; down it went, click into a cup. There was the sigh of released tension from all the fifty-odd waiting throats, mouths. Then, inarticulate, a sigh of disappointment, of frustration.

  The croupier droned, "Number eight-four-two wins, six to one."

  Rondo was shaking so hard he could hardly reach out to rake in his winnings. The eyes of the croupier belied the passionless drone. They said, "Wait, you bastard. They're coming. You've pushed your luck too far this time, you little bastard. .. ."

  This was his thought while he was droning, "Place all bets for next round. All money down," and his hand tripped the punch which sent the little ball up for another round of the long-orbit game.

  Rondo fumbled in his winnings and, as if compelled, started to shove them all toward the cup which yawned- two inches across to every eye, a waiting chasm to his- just before him. He should have quit before; he knew this and yet in the grip of the compulsion that was like a disease, he saw one cup shining, gleaming, brimming with gold that could be his. . . .

  He shoved them toward the cup, which opened up like a vast mouth in his imagination, gripped with the sight of a flow of gold. . . .

  It was a sickness. He knew it as he watched the ball spin; a sickness, perhaps born of that uncanny skill of his. Again, helplessly, now that the bets were placed, he sought the spinning ball with his eyes and berated himself in
self-castigation so rough it seemed that the men beside him in the gambling parlor must hear:

  Damn fool-no sense-take winnings and get out-they're on to you, they're on to you, take winnings and run, RUN, RUN, they're COMING, COMING NOW . . .

  But he stood quite still, paralyzed, until the hand fell on his shoulder and a quiet voice arrested the upward spin of the little gold ball, with:

  "All bets off, ladies and gentlemen. The next game will commence in three megaseconds. We have reason to believe-"

  Rondo squealed, not hearing what came next, "You say yourself your machines are cheat proof, you dirty welshers! Did anybody see me touch a finger to the machine?"

  The voice was quiet, but rang like a bell inside the gambling parlor. "No machine is proof against an esper. You've been winning too damned often." The hand on his arm tightened and Rondo went without another word. He

  knew protest was useless, and his fright ran counterpoint,