slowly: "Kyla is a guide, andindispensable. If anything happens to me, she is the only one who canlead you back. Therefore her safety is my personal affair. Understand?"
* * * * *
As we went along the trail, the vague green light disappeared. "We'reright below the Trailcity," I whispered, and pointed upward. All aroundus the Hundred Trees rose, branchless pillars so immense that four men,hands joined, could not have encircled one with their arms. Theystretched upward for some three hundred feet, before stretching outtheir interweaving branches; above that, nothing was visible butblackness.
Yet the grove was not dark, but lighted with the startlingly brilliantphosphorescence of the fungi growing on the trunks, and trimmed intobizarre ornamental shapes. In cages of transparent fibre, glowinginsects as large as a hand hummed softly and continuously.
As I watched, a trailman--quite naked except for an ornate hat and anarrow binding around the loins--descended the trunk. He went from cageto cage, feeding the glow-worms with bits of shining fungus from abasket on his arm.
I called to him in his own language, and he dropped the basket, with anexclamation, his spidery thin body braced to flee or to raise an alarm.
"But I belong to the Nest," I called to him, and gave him the names ofmy foster-parents. He came toward me, gripping my forearm with warm longfingers in a gesture of greeting.
"Jason? Yes, I hear them speak of you," he said in his gentle twitteringvoice, "you are at home. But those others--?" He gestured nervously atthe strange faces.
"My friends," I assured him, "and we come to beg the Old One for anaudience. For tonight I seek shelter with my parents, if they willreceive us."
He raised his head and called softly, and a slim child bounded down thetrunk and took the basket. The trailman said, "I am Carrho. Perhaps itwould be better if I guided you to your foster-parents, so you will notbe challenged."
I breathed more freely. I did not personally recognize Carrho, but helooked pleasantly familiar. Guided by him, we climbed one by one up thedark stairway inside the trunk, and emerged into the bright square,shaded by the topmost leaves into a delicate green twilight. I feltweary and successful.
Kendricks stepped gingerly on the swaying, jiggling floor of the square.It gave slightly at every step, and Kendricks swore morosely in alanguage that fortunately only Rafe and I understood. Curious trailmenflocked to the street and twittered welcome and surprise.
* * * * *
Rafe and Kendricks betrayed considerable contempt when I greeted myfoster-parents affectionately. They were already old, and I was saddenedto see it; their fur graying, their prehensile toes and fingers crookedwith a rheumatic complaint of some sort, their reddish eyes bleared andrheumy. They welcomed me, and made arrangements for the others in myparty to be housed in an abandoned house nearby ... they had insistedthat I, of course, must return to their roof, and Kyla, of course, hadto stay with me.
"Couldn't we camp on the ground instead?" Kendricks asked, eying theflimsy shelter with distaste.
"It would offend our hosts," I said firmly. I saw nothing wrong with it.Roofed with woven bark, carpeted with moss which was planted on thefloor, the place was abandoned, somewhat a bit musty, but weathertightand seemed comfortable to me.
The first thing to be done was to despatch a messenger to the Old One,begging the favor of an audience with him. That done, (by one of myfoster-brothers), we settled down to a meal of buds, honey, insects andbirds eggs! It tasted good to me, with the familiarity of food eaten inchildhood, but among the others, only Kyla ate with appetite and RegisHastur with interested curiosity.
* * * * *
After the demands of hospitality had been satisfied, my foster-parentsasked the names of my party, and I introduced them one by one. When Inamed Regis Hastur, it reduced them to brief silence, and then to anoutcry; gently but firmly, they insisted that their home was unworthy toshelter the son of a Hastur, and that he must be fittingly entertainedat the Royal Nest of the Old One.
There was no gracious way for Regis to protest, and when the messengerreturned, he prepared to accompany him. But before leaving, he drew measide:
"I don't much like leaving the rest of you--"
"You'll be safe enough."
"It's not that I'm worried about, Dr. Allison."
"Call me Jason," I corrected angrily. Regis said, with a littletightening of his mouth, "That's it. You'll have to be Dr. Allisontomorrow when you tell the Old One about your mission. But you have tobe the Jason he knows, too."
"So--?"
"I wish I needn't leave here. I wish you were--going to stay with themen who know you only as Jason, instead of being alone--or only withKyla."
There was something odd in his face, and I wondered at it. Could he--aHastur--be jealous of Kyla? Jealous of _me_? It had never occurred to methat he might be somehow attracted to Kyla. I tried to pass it offlightly:
"Kyla might divert me."
Regis said without emphasis, "Yet she brought Dr. Allison back oncebefore." Then, surprisingly, he laughed. "Or maybe you're right. MaybeKyla will--scare away Dr. Allison if he shows up."
* * * * *
The coals of the dying fire laid strange tints of color on Kyla's faceand shoulders and the wispy waves of her dark hair. Now that we werealone, I felt constrained.
"Can't you sleep, Jason?"
I shook my head. "Better sleep while you can." I felt that this nightof all nights I dared not close my eyes or when I woke I would havevanished into the Jay Allison I hated. For a moment I saw the room withhis eyes; to him it would not seem cosy and clean, but--habituated towhite sterile tile, Terran rooms and corridors--dirty and unsanitary asany beast's den.
Kyla said broodingly, "You're a strange man, Jason. What sort of man areyou--in Terra's world?"
I laughed, but there was no mirth in it. Suddenly I had to tell her thewhole truth:
"Kyla, the man you know as me doesn't exist. I was created for this onespecific task. Once it's finished, so am I."
She started, her eyes widening. "I've heard tales of--of the Terrans andtheir sciences--that they make men who aren't real, men of metal--notbone and flesh--"
Before the dawning of that naive horror I quickly held out my bandagedhand, took her fingers in mine and ran them over it. "Is this metal? No,no, Kyla. But the man you know as Jason--I won't be him, I'll be someonedifferent--" How could I explain a subsidiary personality to Kyla, whenI didn't understand it myself?
She kept my fingers in hers softly and said, "I saw--someoneelse--looking from your eyes at me once. A ghost."
I shook my head savagely. "To the Terrans, I'm the ghost!"
"Poor ghost," she whispered.
Her pity stung. I didn't want it.
"What I don't remember I can't regret. Probably I won't even rememberyou." But I lied. I knew that although I forgot everything else,unregretting because unremembered, I could not bear to lose this girl,that my ghost would walk restless forever if I forgot her. I lookedacross the fire at Kyla, cross-legged in the faint light--only a fewcoals in the brazier. She had removed her sexless outer clothing, andwore some clinging garment, as simple as a child's smock and curiouslyappealing. There was still a little ridge of bandage visible beneath itand a random memory, not mine, remarked in the back corners of my brainthat with the cut improperly sutured there would be a visible scar._Visible to whom?_
She reached out an appealing hand. "Jason! Jason--?"
* * * * *
My self-possession deserted me. I felt as if I stood, small and reeling,under a great empty echoing chamber which was Jay Allison's mind, andthat the roof was about to fall in on me. Kyla's image flickered in andout of focus, first infinitely gentle and appealing, then--as if seen atthe wrong end of a telescope--far away and sharply incised and as remoteand undesirable as any bug underneath a lens.
Her hands closed on my shoulder
s. I put out a groping hand to push heraway.
"Jason," she implored, "don't--go away from me like that! Talk to me,tell me!"
But her words reached me through emptiness.... I knew important thingsmight hang on tomorrow's meeting, Jason alone could come through thatmeeting, where the Terrans for some reason put him through this hell anddamnation and torture ... oh, yes ... the trailmen's fever.
Jay Allison pushed the girl's hand away and scowled savagely, trying tocollect his thoughts and concentrate them on what he must say and do, toconvince the trailmen of their duty toward the rest of the planet. As ifthey--not even human--could have a sense of duty!
With an unaccustomed surge of emotion, he wished he were with