Marion Zimmer Bradley - Darkover - The World Wreckers

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Marion Zimmer Bradley - [Darkover] The World Wreckers
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
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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 tradezones, 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
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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 Darkover? And how soon? And how much?"
Andrea did not answer at once; she was pushing buttons for the desk-top 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 desk-top scanner with a decisive
gesture. "Gentlemen, I am prepared to offer terms and guarantees. For the agreed upon sum," she
mentioned a sum in milli-credit units, which changed so often it represented a minifortune 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 Darkover 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
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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 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
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brief yellow tunic 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…
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Chapter 1
Contents - Prev/Next
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 tune 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!"
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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 did you get 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 to
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."
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"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 cario; but do you really know what would
become of this world or your people with you dead?"
"Bredú." 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. Dando 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
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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
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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 Cleindori and running down to my cousin Marius Alton, two or three years
ago."
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MarionZimmerBradley-[Darkover]TheWorldWreckersWORLDWRECKERS,INC.THEYDIDN'TCALLitthat,ofcourse.Butthatwaswhatitwasallthesa\me,andthemenknewitastheywentupthelongseriesofinterlockingescalatorswhichwouldtake\themtotheisolatedpenthouse.Thereweretwoofthem,onelargeandonesmall,andbothwiththesort\ofhighlyfor...

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