The Planet Savers Part 2

(I was getting mad and impatient. I whispered to Forth in the darkness, "Shut the d.a.m.n 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 and the film continued to repeat.)

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 d.a.m.ned 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 cla.s.sic 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 would normally never manifest. This subsidiary--let's call him Jay_{2}--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_{1}, _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 sports s.h.i.+rt."

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_{2}.

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 secondhand 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--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?"

"h.e.l.l, yes," I said, "my dad crashed in the h.e.l.lers, 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 them, and they took me out through Dammerung Pa.s.s and arranged to have me brought here. Sure, it's all coming back now. I spent five years in the s.p.a.cemen'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.

"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 h.e.l.lers 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 att.i.tude?"

"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 round in mid-step. A new and terrible suspicion, too monstrous to name, was creeping up on me. Forth touched a b.u.t.ton and the face of Jay Allison, immobile, appeared on the visionscreen. 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 bony 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 sc.r.a.p of my voice. It didn't sound like Allison's. "Then I'm--Jay_{2}? Jay Allison with amnesia?"

"Not exactly." Forth mopped his forehead with an immaculate sleeve and it came away damp with sweat, "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 he _refused_ to be. Within his subconscious, he built up barriers against a whole series of memories, and the subliminal threshold--"

"Doc, I don't understand the psycho talk."