Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Darkover 06 - The World Wreckers

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THE WORLD WRECKERS - A DARKOVER NOVEL

THE WORLD WRECKERS

MARION ZIMMER BRADL EY

AUTHOR'S NOTE

There is a momentum to every operation of growth. The Terran Empire, like every process of human

endeavor, was geometric rather than linear in this progression. It began with a few isolated star

systems and planets; they in turn developed, put forth colonies, and then began to burgeon,

effloresce, grow in wild and unrestrained proliferation. Within a thousand years a detached

scientist might compare their growth -from a perspective of millennia-to that of the spread of the

water hyacinth on Earth in the pre-space days; first an isolated phenomenon, then a study in wild

growth, finally a menace that threatened to encompass and crowd out everything else.

Something of the same momentum can be seen in the isolated progress of the Terran Empire

on a single planet. First a small scientific outpost, then a colony, a Trade City-

Darkover, isolated at the edge of a galaxy, with a sun so dim that its name was known only in

star catalogs, had halted in the first stages of this isolation for a hundred years.

But now-look out, Darkover! For the worldwreckers are coming.

-M.Z.B.

A D A R K O V E R N O V E L MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY

ACE BOOKS

A Division of Charter Communications Inc.

1120 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10036

THE WORLD WRECKERS

Cover art by Kelly Freas.

Prologue:

DEDICATION: To four people who-each in his or her own way-kept my sense of wonder alive: Anne

McCaffrey, Juanita Coulson, Ursula Le Guin, and Randall Garrett

Printed in U.S.A.

WORLDWRECKERS, INC.

THEY DIDN'T CALL it that, of course. But that was what it was all the same, and the men knew it as they went

up the long series of interlocking escalators which would take them to the isolated penthouse.

There were two of them, one large and one small, and both with the sort of highly forgettable faces which

make for good policemen, detectives or secret agents. The miracles of cosmetic surgery were usually reserved to

make people striking; but an astute observer might have guessed that some such cosmetic surgery had been

used to remove every trace of individuality from the two faces. Subtly done, of course, but very completely.

They had become a part of the crowd, any crowd; and that in itself was a triumph, for they were neither light

nor dark, and would not have been noticed, in a crowd of exclusively Afro or Nordic types, as belonging obtrusively

to one or the other. If any Masai, or pygmies, had survived on Earth in this year, they would have stood out as

not being distinctly of that type; but in this era of highly interracial breeding stock, with the outer extremes of the

human phenotype gone forever, they would never be noticed.

One of the men, who used the name Stannard, and had used so many that he did not remember his original

name twice in a year, pondered on it as they stepped onto the final escalator.

Worldwreckers. He'd been almost everywhere and done almost everything on any planet which would hold him

but he'd never dealt with them before.

Everybody in the Empire knew about them. Mostly it was something you heard about underground and

wondered about vaguely, if your business didn't lead you into the tremendous ebb and flow of planetary

commerce. What was worldwrecking anyway, you might wonder, and why should anybody care to wreck a

world? It sounded like something out of special three-dim cinedrama, and it was vaguely funny. But to the people

who did come into it-like himself, Stannard reflected-it wasn't funny at all. Neither was it tragic. It was just business.

But why had they let their business be known by such a name?

He shut off the flow of curiosity-it wasn't what he was paid for-as the last escalator came to a slow halt.

There were quiet gold-colored curtains all around and an outer reception hall where a girl, almost as unobtrusive

as Stannard and his companion, examined their identity cards and let them pass through a metallic door into a

small and plain office. Whatever Stannard had expected of this secret network and semilegal business, it wasn't

that it would look like a shipping office with the kind of simple computers which kept records of traffic flow,

stored information and gave out instant library service. Nor had he really expected that the central head of this

vast network would be a woman.

A woman, quite beautiful and quite young. Or-Stannard amended his thoughts quickly-apparently young. He could

detect no scars of cosmetic surgery or molding and he was trained at spotting them, but some tautness around the

eyes betrayed that innocent youth had nothing to do with the fair-skinned, unlined face and smooth throat. Her

voice was deep and quiet.

"Mr. Stannard and Mr. Bruce. Please sit down. Your principals, as you probably know, have been in

communication with me and have paid the advance deposits which we require before negotiations can be

made final. My name is Andrea Closson, and I am fully empowered to deal with you."

They took seats and she went on, in the same quiet and dispassionate voice:

"I am prepared to make guarantees, at this point. How much have you been told about this matter of

Darkover?"

Stannard said, "We know as much, we were told, as we would need to know for this conference."

"Very well, then. You know, of course, that this is illegal. By the various treaties of the Terran Empire, any

planet has a right to a Class D trade agreement, which means, in Darkover's case-" briefly, she consulted the glass

plate atop her desk where the computer readout could be seen, a flurry of fast pale lights for trained scan

readers to instant-scan, "means construction of a large spaceport for Type Beta traffic flow, services and

concessions to cater to spaceport personnel, a Mapping and Exploring division, Medical Exchange services, and

clearly defined trade zones, with no Terran infiltration into native areas and vice versa. The Thendara Spaceport

on Darkover has been in full operation for-" again she consulted the scan reader, "seventy-eight of their years,

consisting of 389 days each. Trade is well-established in small medicinals, steel tools and similar Class D

artifacts. Under the terms of a Class D agreement there is no mechanized industry, no mining or surface

transit, and no continuous input or outflow of exportable or importable goods or services. All efforts to establish

negotiations with native Darkovan authorities with a view to opening the planet to colonization and

industrialization have failed. Am I right?"

"Not quite failed," Stannard said. "They've been ignored."

Andrea Closson shrugged that off. "Anyway they have not succeeded, so you are willing to send in our

services."

"Worldwreckers," said Bruce. It was the first time he had spoken.

"We prefer to call ourselves a planetary investment corporation," Andrea said smoothly, "although if the

undercover branches must be called into use, we cannot operate openly as such. In brief, if a planet refuses

exploitation-forgive me, I should have said profitable investment-" but the irony in her expression was apparent,

"our agents can give its economy the kind of, shall we say, nudge which will in the long run make it

worthwhile for that planet to request outside investors to come in."

"In short," Stannard said, "you wreck the economy so that the planet in question has no recourse but to

turn to the Terran Empire to pick up the pieces?"

"That's a harsh way of putting it but I suppose true in essence. And the planet in question, I'm told by the

investors, usually profits in the long run. I don't ask who it profits. That's not my business."

"It's ours," Stannard said. "Can it be done with Dark-over? And how soon? And how much?"

Andrea did not answer at once; she was pushing buttons for the desktop scan reader. She seemed to have

found something suddenly that arrested her attention, for the flickers of her eyes-they were odd eyes, Stannard

thought, a very pale, pellucid gray, a color he didn't remember seeing before-the swift flickers of a trained scan

reader, suddenly slowed down and stopped. She looked, as far as he could tell, both startled and shocked.

She said abruptly, "Have either of you gentlemen ever been to Darkover?"

Stannard shook his head. "I never go that far off my orbit."

"I have," Bruce volunteered unexpectedly. "I went there once for, well, that doesn't matter." He shivered

suddenly. "Hell of a place; I've no idea why anyone wants it opened up; they'll have to give extra pay for

volunteers. Cold as space and twice as dismal. Completely unspoiled, as tourist books say. It could use a little

spoiling."

"Well, that's what we're here for," said Andrea briskly, turning off the desktop scanner with a decisive gesture.

"Gentlemen, I am prepared to offer terms and guarantees. For the agreed upon sum," she mentioned a sum in

millicredit units, which changed so often it represented a mini-fortune or a maxifortune that week, "we are

prepared to guarantee that within three Central Record Type Empire Years, the planet now known as Darkover

will be open to Type B exploitation-to prepare it for Type A exploitation would take twenty years and would

never be profitable- with full permission to begin mining and export operations by a limited group of investors.

Half of the sum must be paid now, in legal titanium-based hard currency paid into a numbered account on

Helvetia II. The remainder will fall due within one Standard Month of the day that Dark-over is declared a

Class B Open world."

Stannard said, "What's your guarantee that our principals will pay the final installment? Not that they've

any intention of defaulting, but it takes Empire Senate action to declare a world Open. Once they've made that

legal, why can't my principals simply go in, as any other investors would?"

Andrea smiled, and the smile was so much like a steel trap that Stannard revised his opinion of her age

upward by thirty years. "The contract, which you must sign with your principals' real identities by number,

states that upon default your entire interest in the planet in question reverts to Planetary Investments Unlimited-

which, as you have pointed out, is known widely as Worldwreckers, Incorporated. Furthermore, default in this

arrangement entirely voids the secrecy clause."

They had thought of everything, Stannard realized. Because worldwrecking arrangements were illegal

everywhere, and any planetary investment unit, bent on exploitation, which hired the services of a

worldwrecker, was permanently warned off from that planet.

"We're quite legitimate on the surface," Andrea said grimly. "You have legally hired our services for public

relations and propaganda. Most of our agents, the ones everybody sees, will never be within a light-year of

Darkover itself. They'll be at Empire Center, attempting by perfectly legal means to persuade the legislators that

Darkover should be a Class B Open world. A few more will be doing the same with the Darkovan authorities."

"And the rest?"

Andrea said, "The rest are none of your business."

Stannard agreed. He didn't want to know. He had spent a lifetime doing chores of this sort for a thousand

principals and he made a good and almost luxurious living by not wanting to know.

They signed papers and produced numbered identity proxies, and then they went away again, and out of

Andrea Closson's life, and out of the story of Darkover forever. They were so forgettable that even she forgot them, as

individuals; within five seconds of the time they disappeared into her outer office.

But the minute they had gone, she pressed the scan reader button again, setting it to STOP. The words

blurred before her eyes, and the picture, in brilliant color, took form there. But she closed her lids the better to

see it inside her eyes, in memory.

High mountains, a familiar skyline, dark against the crimson sky of the lowering sun; a sun like a red and

bloody disk. Only the tall buildings of the Trade City, pictured beneath the incredibly familiar mountains and

sun, were new and surprising.

So they call it Darkover now.

A murmur of music whispered in her mind, the total recall that she had found intolerable for the first

hundred years and had done as much as she could to desensitize; now she could not remember the name of the

melody, and spent a few split seconds rummaging in a past she had deliberately put away, before emerging

with the name of the melody and the odd, dry sound of reed wood flutes:

"Weary are the hills."

Yes, that was the name. Another of those intolerable clear pictures came into her mind again, a girl in a

brief yellow runic playing on the flute; then her mouth twisted and she opened her eyes. "A girl," she said

grimly aloud.

"I wasn't even a girl then. I was-what I was is what I decided not to think about. I've been here, and a

woman, for-Evanda and Avarra! How long? It doesn't bear thinking about, how long I've been here!"

But the memory persisted, running along a track it was impossible to stop, and finally, knowing it was pure self-

indulgence, but also knowing it was the only way to put an end to this, Andrea pressed a button and pulled

the message unit toward her, speaking softly.

- "Fix me a scan-and-destruct tape on everything which has been written about Cottman's Star IV, called

Darkover, a Class D Closed world. I'll handle this one myself."

The voice on the other end of this line had been extensively trained never to sound surprised, but Andrea,

with her sudden supersensitized awareness, heard surprise anyhow:

"You are going in person? What cover?" She considered that briefly. "I will go as an animal handler,

considering the transport of small legal quantities of native fur-bearers to nearby worlds for breeding and

development there," she said at last. She had been so many things on so many worlds. She understood and

liked animals and she need never be on her guard against their intrusive thoughts.

But when the scan-and-destruct had been absorbed and discarded, when she was packed and ready to board

her transit on the first leg of the impossibly long transgalactic journey to that small planet out on the rim of

nowhere, which now bore the name of Darkover, a fear roused again in her. A fear centuries buried, rousing

deep in the curious convolutions of a brain which, living as a human, she used only fractionally.

Suppose, after all this time and all the different people I've been, once I stand again under the four

moons and the light of the bloody sun strikes me, suppose-suppose the old me, the real me, the self I was

before I was Andrea, before I was wanderer, queen, spaceman, courtesan, businesswoman, suppose the old me

came back? What then?

What then? Then at least I would die where I was born, she thought with weary resignation, and pressed her

long hands over her eyes. For the moment, if there had been anybody to see, she looked neither human nor

woman.

Narzain-ye kui, she thought in a language long dead; exiled child of the Yellow Forest, where have you

not traveled? Return once more, see what the treading feet of the long seasons have made of the world your

people could not hold, and then die here; die alone if you must, knowing that not even a memory remains of the

footsteps of your folk in the fastnesses of the Mountains of Light.... He sensed that there were footsteps behind

him again.

It was troubling. They were not the familiar steps and presence of his bodyguard Danilo. Those he heard

everywhere he went and because he loved Danilo and had taken the young man as his paxman and esquire, he

neither resented them nor changed his steps a fraction for them. Dani would not intrude on his thoughts or his

consciousness unless he wanted companionship.

Regis Hastur thought, I'm too sensitive, and tried to rune out the footsteps. They probably had nothing

to do with him; if he sensed their impact on his consciousness it was only perhaps that the owner of feet and

steps was startled to see a young Hastur of Comyn Council abroad and afoot at this early hour. He moved

along steadily, a slender man in his middle twenties, with the great personal beauty which marked all the Hasturs

and Elhalyns of the Comyn; a striking face made more noteworthy in that the page-trimmed hair above the

narrow face was not flame red, as with all the Comyn, but snow white.

If Dani had his way I'd never go out without armed escort. What kind of life is that?

Yet he knew remotely and with grief that it was true. The old days of Darkover, when the Comyn

walked unhurt through war, armed insurrection, and street riots, were gone forever. He walked now to pay his

last respects to another of his caste, dead at an assassin's hand in his thirty-seventh year; Edric Ridenow of

Serrais. I never liked Edric. But must we all die, when so many of us are dead or in exile? The houses of the

Seven Domains are laid waste. All the Altons gone; Valdir dying a hundred years past; Kennard dead on a

distant world; Marius dead in psychic battle with the forces of Sharra; Lew and his last child, Marja, in exile

on a distant world. The Hasturs, the Ridenows, the Ardais-decimated, gone. I should go too. But my people

need me here, a Hastur of Hasturs, so they will not feel wholly abandoned to the Terran Empire.

Blast fire is silent. Regis did not hear it but felt the heat, whirled, heard another cry, then silence of a shocking

kind; then someone called his name and he saw Danilo come running up to him, drawn weapon in hand. The

younger man stopped a little way off, lowering his weapon.

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!"

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,

my own damned fault ... no restraint ... no proof, no

PROOF ----

Outside the hall, the gripping hand relaxed a little, then tightened. The man towering over the little gambler

said, "We have no legal proof and there's no law against esp-ing a machine to win. If you'd been a little

cleverer-we can't touch you legally. But get the hell out, and if we catch you in here again you won't live long

enough to enjoy your winnings."

A rough hand turned his pocket inside out. "You've made enough already," the man said, "forget about

today's harvest. Now get!" A well-placed kick and Rondo stumbled out of the building into the street, under

the great, brilliant artificial moon of the pleasure planet of Keef.

He stood there, shaking like a whipped dog, numbly fingering his empty pockets. He had done it again. He

had been banned, by now, from every gambling hall on Keef, just as he'd eventually worn out his welcome

on four or five worlds just like it. Sooner or later they spotted him. It was the sickness of the compulsive

gambler that kept him going back and back, that would not let him make a small killing, normal winnings, and

get out, to play again some other day or week.

He stood under the huge fake moon, with its rose-colored light, and hated, and hated.. But mostly he

hated himself. He had done this to himself; he knew it in his saner moments. The reason why was buried

deep in a Me where the strange thing which made him able to predict, to control the fall, was also buried-

and had made him hated everywhere, even when he had used it (for a little while, long, long years ago) to

warn, to help, to heal. And now the sickness he could never control kept him going back and back, to wipe

out everything in the fever of the fall of a card, a ball.

What could he do now? Hidden in his lodgings was less than his necessary getaway money. He was stranded

here on Keef and Spaceforce at this end of the Empire was far from gentle with the indigent. On a planet of

the affluent, the stranded, sick or impoverished were herded out of sight. He could perhaps find work as a

bath attendant in the great pleasure houses euphemistically called baths; he was neither young enough nor

handsome enough for anything else there, even if the thing in his mind had allowed him to be that close to the

average pleasure seeker on such a world as this. He could keep from sickening only by using all his forces on

gambling. . ..

And now he was shut away even from that.

His jaw tightened and his face was very ugly indeed. They had thrown him out because he won too often.

Very well, let them see what they had done when they incurred his anger? The red overpowering rage of the

poorly controlled psychotic began to flow across him. No matter what had done it to him. That was ages ago

now. Now he only knew that he was barred from the one thing on the whole pleasure planet that held pleasure

for him, the fall and spin and drift of a long-orbit ball, and he hurt, and he wanted revenge.

He stood there motionless, his mind gripped on the one

thing that made sense to him; the falling ball, the falling

ball

Around him the world faltered, came to a stop. The thing in the telepath's semi-psychotic mind was

paralyzing him and paralyzing, too, the one thing which made sense. . . .

Inside the gambling parlor, seventy puzzled gamblers and a croupier and a manager stared in dismayed

incomprehension as the spinning, falling gilt fleck inside the machine hung suspended in mid-air, not moving.

After half an hour of this, as the angry patrons began to drift into the night again in quest of other

pleasures, Rondo came to himself and remembered to run. By then it was too late.

They left him finally, bloody, bleeding and more than nine-tenths dead, lying in the gutter of a darkened

alley, to be found moaning there an hour later by two Space-force men who didn't know who he was,

gave him the

benefit of the doubt, and took him to a hospital. And there he stayed for a long, long time. . . .

When the world began to go round again under him, he had two visitors.

"Darkover," Rondo said, not believing, "why in the name of all that's unholy would I want to go there? All I

know about Darkover is that it's a cold hell of a world off on the edge of the universe, and not even decently

part of the Empire. Other telepaths? Hell, it's bad enough being a freak myself. I'm supposed to like the idea

of other freaks?"

"Nevertheless, think it over," said the man beside his hospital bed. "I don't want to put pressure on you,

Mr. Rondo, but where else would you go? You certainly can't stay here. And forgive me for mentioning it, you

don't look as if you have much chance for any other employment."

He shrugged. "I'll find something," he said, and meant it. There were always suckers coming in on the big

ships. He wasn't a marked man all over the planet. He'd get a stake somehow and get away; and there were

still planets he hadn't tried.

It wasn't until the second visitor came along that he changed his mind. The plan sounded tempting enough. All

gambling machines were equipped, by the stiff Empire law which couldn't be bribed or bought off, with

tamperproof fields-but, the visitor told him beguilingly, a tamperproof field couldn't keep out esp. They'd

provide disguises, and a liberal cut of the winnings. . . .

And through their persuasions he caught the unmistakable feel of the gangster. One' such group had beaten him

within an inch of his life. Now he was supposed to get involved with another?

Rondo was a loner, had been one all his life, didn't intend to change now. Bad enough to be at the

mercy of one gang. The thought of being caught between two made even his self-destructive gambling instinct

flinch.

Anyway, even though Darkover didn't sound like his kind of place at all, they couldn't make him stay

there.

There must be a big spaceport, and where there was a spaceport there was gambling, and where there

was gambling he could make a stake-and then there was. a whole -big galaxy waiting for him again.

He called the number his first visitor had left.

Conner was ready to die.

He found himself floating again, as he had floated so many times since the accident a year ago: weightless,

sick, disoriented. Dying, and death wouldn't come. Not this again. Overdosed, I was ready to die. I thought it

would cut this off. Now here again, is this my hell?

Time disappeared, as it always did, a few minutes, an hour, fifty years, floating across the cosmos, and a

voice said clear and loud in his brain, not in words, Maybe we can help, but you must come to us. Such pain,

such terror, there is no reason. .. .

Where, where? His whole world, his whole being, one silent scream, where can I turn this off?

Darkover. Be patient, they'll find you.

Where are you who speak to me? Where is this place? Conner tried to focus in the endless spinning.

The voice drifted away. Nowhere. Not in the body. No time, no space here.

The invisible cord of contact thinned, leaving him alone in his weightless hell, and Conner screamed inside his

mind, don't go, don't go, you were with me Out There, don't ever go, don't go....

"He's coming to," remarked an all too solid voice, and Conner felt despair and loneliness and anguish all

disappear under a sudden sharply physical ache of sickness. He opened his eyes to the too brisk, all but accusing

eyes of Doctor Rimini, who made reassuring sounds which Conner disregarded, having heard them all too often

before. He listened without speaking, promised blandly not to do it again, and sank into the lifeless apathy from

which he had emerged only twice, both times for a futile attempt at suicide.

"I don't understand you," Rimini remarked. He sounded friendly and interested but Conner knew now how

empty the words were. No, Rimini didn't give a damn, although they regarded him as a stubborn and still

interesting case. Not a person, of course, with a unique and horrible way of suffering. Just a case. He

opened a crack in his mind to hear the doctor chattering on, "You displayed so much will to live after the

accident, Mr. Conner, and after surviving that ordeal it seems all wrong that you should give up now.. . ."

But what Conner heard with a shout that drowned Rimini's words were the doctor's own fear of death

which now struck Conner as a sickening, small, petty thing, and the doctor's fear of what Conner had become-

can he read my mind, does he know that I ... and the stream trailed off into a wilderness of the small

obscenities which were at least part of the reason for his will to suicide, not the doctor's alone; too many were

like him, so that Conner had found even the hospital, with its animal shudderings of minds and bodies in

agony, more endurable than the outside with men preoccupied with their own hungers and lusts and greed.

He had crawled into a hole in the hospital and pulled the hole in after him, emerging only to try dying as a

change, and never succeeding.

When Rimini had babbled himself away again, Conner lay looking at the ceiling. He felt like laughing. Not

with amusement, though.

They spoke of the will to live he had demonstrated after the accident. It had been a bad one, one of the big

ships exploding in space, and the personnel hardly having time to crowd into lifeboats; four of them, instead,

had made it into the experimental plastic emergency bubblesuits and had fallen into space in those.

The others had never been recovered. Conner wondered sometimes what had happened to them; had the life-

support system mercifully failed, so that they died quickly and sane? Had they gone mad and raved mindlessly

down to death? Were they still drifting out there in fie endless night? He quailed from the thought. His own

hell was bad enough.

The bubbles had been meant for protection for minutes, until pickup could be made by lifeboat, not for days

or weeks. The life-support system was fail-safe, and hadn't failed. It had worked too well. Conner, breathing

endlessly recycled oxygen, fed by intravenous dribbles of nutrient, had lived. And lived. And lived. Lived for

days, weeks, months, spinning endlessly in free fall in an invisible bubblefield, with nothing else between

himself and the trillions upon trillions of stars.

He had no measure of time. He had no means of knowing up from down, no means of orientation. He had

nothing to look at but distant flaming points of stars that spun and wheeled round him in his tiny days of

rotation on his own center.

Five hours in a sensory deprivation tank, back in the prehistory of psychology, had sent men insane.

Conner spent the first ten days or so-he later figured -in a desperate hope, clinging to sanity and the hope

of rescue.

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THEWORLDWRECKERS-ADARKOVERNOVELTHEWORLDWRECKERSMARIONZIMMERBRADLEYAUTHOR'SNOTEThereisamomentumtoeveryoperationofgrowth.TheTerranEmpire,likeeveryprocessofhumanendeavor,wasgeometricratherthanlinearinthisprogression.Itbeganwithafewisolatedstarsystemsandplanets;theyinturndeveloped,putforthcolonies,andth...

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Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Darkover 06 - The World Wreckers

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