CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I must have slept.

I opened my eyes at last in the bare infirmary cubicle to see Callina kneeling beside me. Her soft eyes were filled with tears; she seized my hand, but did not speak. I wanted to catch her in my arms and crush her to me; but Kadarin’s words still held me, compelled with horror. For her very life, I dared not touch her.

But it would be harder than ever; I sensed, without knowing how, that some inner reserve in Callina was gone. There was no longer that chill, that conscious and wary aloofness.

“We’ve gone through it all for nothing, Callina,” I said. “Marius and Linnell are gone, we’ve let the Comyn have our lives to play with, and what have we got?”

“There may still be something to save. Darkover—”

“The hell with Darkover! Let the Terrans have it and welcome!”

Callina passed her hand briefly across my eyes. I saw, in a blur, the horrifying face I had seen once before. It vanished; I saw Dyan, and Kadarin.

“The Sword of Aldones will cancel out Sharra,” she said. “Kadarin was helping them to make plans, when he — vanished. He just wasn’t there! Like Thyra.”

That meant Sharra was free. I looked helplessly at the girl. “I’ve tried,” I told her, “but I can’t even touch the Sword of Aldones. Regis can, but he can’t use it alone. No one man can.”

Her fingers closed blindly on my good hand. “Ashara said you could use me for a focus—”

I shook my head. I couldn’t hurt Callina that way. I would literally have to tear our two minds to pieces and rebuild them into one. I’d been through it myself, I could take it. But Callina!

Her voice was soft and resolute. “It’s — well, it’s you. And I want to.”

Her bravery shamed me. Whatever happened, no woman should outdo me in courage. Suddenly, tenderly, I gave her arm a little shake. “All right, girl,” I said, “well try it. But think about it. I want you to be sure.”

“I’m sure now,” she said.

It was strange to see her there; lovely Callina, all the beauty and mystery of the comynari, star-like and remote, there in that bare white cubicle. The note of grotesquerie in these surroundings, the tumbled cot where I had slept, made it all seem more, not less strange.

She laughed, nervously; her hand in mine felt cold and fragile. Physical contact can lay the mind bare. I would have liked to hold her in my arms for this, but I did not dare. I had learned with Dio how such contact can break down barriers, but I forced the thought back. I felt curiously shy; I did not want to touch Callina’s mind with another woman in the forefront of my thoughts.

I reached for contact.

For a moment there was a frighteningly familiar resistance; like Dio, every defense of her mind went up to bar me away. This time I made it a rough shock-wave; her hand tore loose from mine and she slumped down, her arms over her head as if by this desperate hiding she could arrest the soul-stripping contact. She did not resist actively, but her passive, trembling terror was worse. It was worse than anything I had ever had to do.

A tense moment of shock, and then Callina, white and shaking, snapped the rapport, sobbing wildly. I let it break, and drew her into my arms, and gradually the weeping quieted. “I— I tried so hard—”

“I know.” She had made every effort to endure the unbearable. Perhaps no woman can endure that absolute rapport with a man. If I had kept on, forced the resistance — it hadn’t killed Marius, and Callina was Keeper, a comynara — but I simply was not capable of torturing a woman like that. It was worse than rape.

There was an alternative. It was drastic, but I was desperate. “Could you make the rapport?” I asked her. I said it easily, but inside, I was shaking. It put me wholly at her mercy; although a Keeper, she was not trained in handling that particular kind of focus.

Could I endure the forcible breaking of all my barriers? I had closed off those old areas, years ago, to save my sanity. I dropped that line of thought. I had to endure it, simply because I was stronger than she.

Her touch was uncertain, fumbling, raw — an agony. It was desperately hard to keep from flinging her out of my brain; but with grim self-command, I endured it, lowering each barrier as she touched it. How had she come to be Keeper, if she was as clumsy a telepath as this? The bridge was stronger now, but she had not made the decisive move that would snap identity and bring it to completion; and I dared not move.

But it was so close to complete that I grew tense with the unbearable need to, have it done, even if it killed us both. Force flows toward the weaker pole. I, who had chosen the passive part, was overloaded to the limit of endurance. I could neither see nor hear her now. If I made a move to end the torture, I could burn us both out. But if this did not end soon, I must risk it, even to the release of death.

Then the shock, the numbing flare of contact-Regis/

Unbelievably, for a single unendurable moment, we — I — it fused into an impossible triple rapport. The load of emotion was terrible, breaking down every barrier in each brain, and our three minds went into one great glare of force, too vast and too searingly painful to comprehend.-

Groping for sanity, I forced the rapport apart. We were three separate people again. Then, as blinding physical pain forced itself on me, Regis was incredibly there in the room with us, and he caught me as I pitched forward in a dead faint.

“Damn it, this is getting to be a habit,” I said shakily. I was lying on the bed again, Regis and Callina looking down at me anxiously. Regis pressed my hand as I sat up. “You’ve been doing all the hard work,” he said.

“What happened?”

“Don’t you know? How did I get here, anyway?” He swallowed convulsively and turned to Callina. Although we were deep in rapport, our conscious thoughts had dropped apart and I could not tell what they were thinking. But three! Even the Altons could link only two, and that with infinite danger! THREE!

Regis said, “What happened to us? I only know that something exploded in me — then it broke up, and I thought you were dead, Lew. I couldn’t think of anything but to get to you and Dio. I didn’t even know where you were, I was frantic, then all of a sudden I was here, and you pitched off the bed, and I grabbed you,” he finished blankly.

“Callina and I had tried to link minds in focus—”

“Callina?” Regis stared. Callina suddenly stood on tiptoe and put her lips lightly against his. “Regis,” she said softly, “we aren’t resentful. We can — make room for you.”

Regis put his arms around the girl and held her. “Doesn’t he know? Not even now?”

“I’ve always been barricaded,” she said.

Regis let her go, turning abruptly to me. “Now that we’re aware, and guarded, let’s set,up contact again and see what this thing is, and what kind of power we have with it. As far as I know, this is something pretty new, and almost unique.”

Callina reached out and made the linkage; this time there was no hesitation or fumbling, and I glanced at her with a surge of possessive pride. Regis, rather’red about the ears, looked round.

If you two are going to think things like that at each other, his thought twisted humorously into ours, I’d better drop out!

Then the circle of contact was complete. Yet, strangely, the personal barriers were back, intact. We could work as one, at the deep levels; but identity remained inviolate, and privacy. We were three separate personalities; only for the first fusion was there that searing down of emotions, of barricades.

Yet there was a sympathy, a togetherness that was extremely pleasant. It was as if all my Me I had been getting along with a third of my brain.