To Save a World (22 page)
Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Tags: #Collections & Anthologies, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #General, #Science Fiction/Fantasy, #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Adventure
(In Perth’s darkened office I sat up straighter, with a flash of returning memory. Jay Allison, I judged, was several years older than I, but we had one thing in common; this cold fish of a man shared with myself that experience of marvelous years spent in an alien world!)
Jay Allison scowled, displeased. “That was years ago. I was hardly more than a baby. My father crashed on a Mapping expedition over the Hellers —God only knows what possessed him to try and take a light plane over those crosswinds. I survived the crash, by the merest chance, and lived with the Trailmen—so I’m told—until I was thirteen or fourteen. I don’t remember much about it. Children aren’t particularly observant.”
Forth leaned over the desk, staring. “You speak their language, don’t you?”
“I used to. I might remember it under hypnosis, I suppose. Why? Do you want me to translate something?”
“Not exactly. We were thinking of sending you on an expedition to the Trailmen themselves.”
(In the darkened office, watching Jay’s startled face, I thought, God, what an adventure! I wonder —I wonder if they want me to go with him?)
Forth was explaining; “It would be a difficult trek. You know what the Hellers are like. Still, you used to climb mountains, as a hobby, before you went into Medical—”
“I outgrew the childishness of hobbies many years ago, sir,” Jay said stiffly.
“We’d get you the best guides we could, Terran and Darkovan. But they couldn’t do the one thing you can do. You know the Trailmen, Jay. You might be able to persuade them to do the one thing they’ve never done before.”
“What’s that?” Jay Allison sounded suspicious.
“Come out of the mountains. Send us volunteers —blood donors—we might, if we had enough blood to work on, be able to isolate the right fraction, and synthesize it, in time to prevent the epidemic from really taking hold, Jay. It’s a tough mission and it’s dangerous as all hell, but somebody’s got to do it, and I’m afraid you’re the only qualified man.”
“I like my first suggestion better. Bomb the Trailmen—and the Hellers—right off the planet.” Jay’s face was set in lines of loathing, which he controlled after a minute, and said, “I—I didn’t mean that. Theoretically I can see the necessity, only—” he stopped and swallowed.
“Please say what you were going to say.”
“I wonder if I am as well qualified as you think? No—don’t interrupt—I find the natives of Darkover distasteful, even the humans. As for the Trailmen—”
(I was getting mad and impatient. I whispered to Forth in the darkness “Shut the goddam film off! You couldn’t send that guy on an errand like that! I’d rather—”
Forth snapped “Shut up and listen!”
I shut up.)
Jay Allison was not acting. He was pained and disgusted. Forth wouldn’t let him finish his explanation of why he had refused even to teach in the Medical College established for Darkovans by the Terran empire. He interrupted, and he sounded irritated,
“We know all that. It evidently never occurred to you, Jay, that it’s an inconvenience to us—that all this vital knowledge should lie, purely by accident, in the hands of the one man who’s too damned stubborn to use it?”
Jay didn’t move an eyelash, where I would have squirmed. “I have always been aware of that, doctor.”
Forth drew a long breath. “I’ll concede you’re not suitable at the moment, Jay. But what do you know of applied psychodynamics?”
“Very little I’m sorry to say.” Allison didn’t sound sorry, though. He sounded bored to death with the whole conversation.
“May I be blunt—and personal?”
“Please do. I’m not at all sensitive.”
“Basically, then, Doctor Allison, a person as contained and repressed as yourself usually has a clearly defined subsidiary personality. In neurotic individuals this complex of personality traits sometimes splits off, and we get a syndrome known as multiple, or alternate personality.”
“I’ve scanned a few of the classic cases. Wasn’t there a woman with four separate personalities?”
“Exactly. However, you aren’t neurotic, and ordinarily there would not be the slightest chance of your repressed alternate taking over your personality.”
“Thank you,” Jay murmured ironically, “I’d be losing sleep over that.”
“Nevertheless I presume you do have such a subsidiary personality, although he wouldn’t normally manifest. This subsidiary—let’s call him Jay—would embody all the characteristics which you repress. He would be gregarious, where you are retiring and studious; adventurous where you are cautious; talkative while you are taciturn; he would perhaps enjoy action for its own sake, while you exercise faithfully in the gymnasium only for your health’s sake; and he might even remember the Trailmen with pleasure rather than dislike.”
“In short—a blend of all the undesirable characteristics?”
“One could put it that way. Certainly, he would be a blend of all the characteristics which you, Jay, consider undesirable. But—if released by hypnotism and suggestion, he might be suitable for the job in hand.”
“But how do you know I actually have such an —alternate?”
“I don’t. But it’s a good guess. Most repressed—” Forth coughed and amended “most disciplined personalities possess such a suppressed secondary personality. Don’t you occasionally—rather rarely—find yourself doing things which are entirely out of character for you?”
I could almost feel Allison taking it in, as he confessed, “Well—yes. For instance, the other day, although I dress conservatively at all times—” he glanced at his uniform coat, “I found myself buying—” he stopped again and his face went an unlovely terra-cotta color as he finally mumbled “a flowered red sport shirt.”
Sitting in the dark I felt vaguely sorry for the poor gawk, disturbed by, ashamed of the only human impulses he ever had. On the screen Allison frowned fiercely. “A—crazy impulse.”
“You could say that, or say it was an action of the suppressed Jay. How about it, Allison? You may be the only Terran on Darkover, maybe the only human, who could get into a Trailman’s Nest without being murdered.”
“Sir—as a citizen of the Empire, I don’t have any choice, do I?”
“Jay, look,” Forth said, and I felt him trying to reach through the barricade and touch, really touch that cold, contained young man, “We couldn’t order any man to do anything like this. Aside from the ordinary dangers, it could destroy your personal balance, maybe permanently. I’m asking you to volunteer something above and beyond the call of duty. Man to man—what do you say?”
I would have been moved by his words. Even at second hand I was moved by them. Jay Allison looked at the floor and I saw him twist his long well-kept surgeon’s hands and crack the knuckles with an odd gesture. Finally he said, “I haven’t any choice either way, doctor. I’ll take the chance. I’ll go to the Trailmen.”
THE SCREEN went dark again and Forth flicked the light on. He said “Well?”
I gave it back, in his own intonation, “Well?” and was exasperated to find that I was twisting my own knuckles in the nervous gesture of Allison’s painful decision. I jerked them apart and got up.
“I suppose it didn’t work, with that cold fish, and you decided to come to me instead? Sure, I’ll go to the Trailmen for you. Not with that Allison bastard —I wouldn’t go anywhere with that guy—but I speak the Trailmen’s language, and without hypnosis, either.”
Forth was staring at me. “So you’ve remembered that?”
“Hell yes,” I said, “My Dad crashed in the Hellers, and a band of Trailmen found me, half dead. I lived there until I was about fifteen, then their Old-One decided I was too human for ’em, and they took me out through Dammerung Pass and arranged to have me brought here. Sure, it’s all coming back now. I spent five years in the Spacemen’s Orphanage, then I went to work taking Terran tourists on hunting parties and so on, because I liked being around the mountains. I—” I stopped. Forth was staring at me.
“Sit down again, won’t you? Can’t you keep still a minute?” Reluctantly, I sat down. “You think you’d like this job?”
“It would be tough,” I said, considering. “The People of the Sky—” (using the Trailmen’s name for themselves) “—don’t like outsiders, but they might be persuaded. The worst part would be getting there. The plane, or the ’copter, isn’t built that can get through the crosswinds around the Hellers, and land inside them. We’d have to go on foot, all the way from Carthon. I’d need professional climbers-mountaineers.”
“Then you don’t share Allison’s attitude?”
“Dammit, don’t insult me!” I discovered that I was on my feet again, pacing the office restlessly. Forth stared and mused aloud, “What’s personality anyway? A mask of emotions, superimposed on the body and the intellect. Change the point of view, change the emotions and desires, and even with the same body and the same past experiences, you have a new man.”
I swung around in mid-step. A new and terrible suspicion, too monstrous to name, was creeping up on me. Forth touched a button and the face of Jay Allison, immobile, appeared on the vision-screen. Forth put a mirror in my hand. He said “Jason Allison, look at yourself.”
I looked.
“No,” I said. And again, “No. No. No.”
Forth didn’t argue. He pointed, with a stubby finger. “Look—” he moved the finger as he spoke, “Height of forehead. Set of cheekbones. Your eyebrows look different, and your mouth, because the expression is different. But bone structure—the nose, the chin—”
I heard myself make a queer sound; dashed the mirror to the floor. He grabbed my forearm. “Steady, man!”
I found a scrap of my voice. It didn’t sound like Allison’s. “Then I’m—Jay? Jay Allison with amnesia?”
“Not exactly.” Forth mopped his forehead with an immaculate sleeve and it came away damp with sweat, “God, no, not Jay Allison as I know him!” He drew a long breath. “And sit down. Whoever you are, sit down!”
I sat. Gingerly. Not sure.
“But the man Jay might have been, given a different temperamental bias. I’d say—the man Jay Allison started out to be. The man herefused to be. Within his subconscious, he built up barriers against a whole series of memories, and the subliminal threshhold—”
“Doc, I don’t understand the psycho talk.”
Forth stared. “And you do remember the Trailmen’s language. I thought so. Allison’s personality is suppressed in you, as yours was in him.”
“One thing, Doc. I don’t know a thing about blood fractions or epidemics. My half of the personality didn’t study medicine.” I took up the mirror again and broodingly studied the face there. The high thin cheeks, high forehead shaded by coarse, dark hair which Jay Allison had slicked down, now heavily rumpled. I still didn’t think I looked anything like the doctor. Our voices were nothing alike either. His had been pitched rather high. My own, as nearly as I could judge, was a full octave deeper, and more resonant. Yet they issued from the same vocal chords, unless Forth were having a reasonless, macabre joke.
“Did I honest-to-God study medicine? It’s the last thing I’d think about. It’s an honest trade, I guess, but I’ve never been that intellectual.”
“You—or rather, Jay Allison is a specialist in Darkovan parasitology, as well as a very competent surgeon.” Forth was sitting with his chin in his hands, watching me intently. He scowled and said, “If anything, the physical change is more startling than the other. I wouldn’t have recognized you.”
“That tallies with me. I don’t recognize myself,” I added, “—and the queer thing is, I didn’t even like Jay Allison, to put it mildly. If he—I can’t say he, can I?”
“I don’t know why not. You’re no more Jay Allison than I am. For one thing, you’re younger. Ten years younger. I doubt if any of his friends—if he had any —would recognize you. You—it’s ridiculous to go on calling you Jay. What should I call you?”
“Why should I care? Call me Jason.”
“Suits you,” Forth said enigmatically. “Look, then, Jason. I’d like to give you a few days to readjust to your new personality, but we are really pressed for time. Can you fly to Carthon tonight? I've hand-picked a good crew for you, and sent them on ahead. You’ll meet them there.”
I stared at him. Suddenly the room oppressed me and I found it hard to breathe. I said in wonder “You were pretty sure of yourself, weren’t you?”
Forth just looked at me, for what seemed a long time. Then he said, in a very quiet voice “No. I wasn’t sure at all. But if you didn’t turn up, and I couldn’t talk Jay into it, I’d have had to try it myself.”
Jason Allison, Junior, was listed on the directory of the Terran HQ as “Suite 1214, Medical Residence Corridor.” I found the rooms without any trouble, though an elderly doctor stared at me rather curiously as I barged along the quiet hallway. The suite —bedroom, miniscule sitting-room, compact bath—depressed me: clean, closed-in and neutral as the man who owned them. I rummaged through them restlessly, trying to find some scrap of familiarity to indicate that I had lived here for the past eleven years.
Jay Allison was thirty-four years old. I had given my age, without hesitation, as twenty-two. There were no obvious blanks in my memory; from the moment Jay Allison had spoken of the Trailmen, my past had rushed back and stood, complete to yesterday’s supper (only had I eaten that supper twelve years ago?). I remembered my father, a lined, silent man who had liked to fly often, taking photograph after photograph from his plane for the meticulous work of Mapping and Exploration. He’d liked to have me fly with him and I’d flown over virtually every inch of the planet. No one else had ever dared fly over the Hellers, except the big commercial spacecraft that kept to a safe altitude. I vaguely remembered the crash and the strange hands pulling me out of the wreckage and the weeks I’d spent, broken-bodied and delirious, gently tended by one of the red-eyed, twittering women of the Trailmen. In all, I had spent eight years in the Nest, which was not a nest at all, but a vast sprawling city built in the branches of enormous trees. With the small and delicate humanoids who had been my playfellows, I had gathered the nuts and buds and trapped the small arboreal animals they used for food, taken my share at weaving clothing from the fibres of parasite plants cultivated on the stems, and in all those eight years I had set foot on the ground less than a dozen times, even though I had travelled for miles through the tree-roads high above the forest floor.