The Colors of Space

M >> Marion Zimmer Bradley >> The Colors of Space

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Bart was still in his bunk, but beginning to fret at staying there, when
the familiar trembling of Acceleration Two started to run through the
ship. It was, by now, so familiar to him that he hardly gave it a second
thought, but Meta panicked.

"What's happening? Bart, what is it? Why are we under acceleration
again?"

"Shift to warp," he said without thinking, and her face went deathly
white. "So that's it," she whispered. "Vorongil--no wonder he wasn't
worried about what I would find out from you or what you knew." She drew
herself together in her chair, a miserable, shrunken, terrified little
figure, bravely trying to control her terror.

Then she held out her hands to Bart. "I'm--I'm ashamed," she whispered.
"When you've been so brave, I shouldn't be afraid to die."

"Meta, what's the matter? What are you afraid of?" It suddenly swept
over Bart what she meant and what she feared. "But don't you understand,
Meta?" he exclaimed, "Humans _can_ live through the warp-drive! No
drugs, no cold-sleep--Meta, I've done it dozens of times!"

_"But you're a Lhari!"_ It burst from her, uncontrollable. She stopped,
looked at him in consternation. He smiled, bitterly.

"No, Meta, they didn't do a thing to my internal organs, to my brain, to
the tissues of my body. Just a little plastic surgery on my hands, my
feet and my face. Meta, there's nothing to be afraid of--nothing," he
repeated.

She twisted her small hands together. "I'm--trying to--to believe that,"
she whispered, "but all my life I've known--"

The screaming whine in the ship gripped them with the strange, clawing
lassitude and discomfort. Bart, gasping under it, heard the girl moan,
saw her slump lax in her chair, half fainting. Her face was so deathly
white that he began seriously to be afraid she would die of her fear.
Fighting his own agonizing weakness, he pulled himself upright. He
reached the girl, dug his claws cruelly into her.

"Girl, get hold of yourself! Fight it! _Fight_ it! The more scared you
are, the worse it's going to be!"

She was rigid, trembling, in a trance of terror.

"You rotten little coward," he yelled at her, "snap out of it! Or are
all you Mentorians so gutless that you believe any half-baked folk tale
the Lhari pass off on you? You and your fine talk about earning the
star-drive! What would you do with it after you got it--if you die of
fear when you try?"

"Oh! You--!" She flung her head back, her eyes blazing with rage.
"Anything you can do, I can do, too!" He saw life flowing back into her
face, and the trembling now was with fury, not fear; she was fighting
the pain, the crawling itch in her nerve ends, the terrible sense of
draining disorganization.

Bart felt his hold on himself breaking. He whispered hoarsely, "That's
the girl--don't be scared if I--black out for a minute." He held on to
consciousness with his last courage, afraid if he fainted, the girl
would collapse again.

She reached for him, and Bart, starved for some human touch, drew her
into his arms. They clung together, and he felt her wet face against his
own, the softness of her trembling hands. She was still crying a little.
Then the blackness closed on him, as if endless, and the gray blur of
warp-drive peak blotted his brain into nothingness.

He came out of it to feel her cheek soft against his, her head
trustfully on his shoulder. He said huskily, "All right, Meta?"

"I'm fine," she murmured, shakily. He tightened his hands a little,
realizing that for the first time in months he had physically forgotten
his Lhari disguise, that Meta had given him this priceless reassurance
that he was human. But, as if suddenly aware of it again, she looked up
at him and drew hesitantly away.

"Don't--Meta, am I so horrible to you then? So--repulsive?"

"No, it's only--" she bit her lip--"it's just that the Lhari are--I
can't quite explain it."

"Different," Bart finished for her. "At first I was repelled--physically
repelled by myself, and by them. It was like living among weird animals,
and being one of the animals. And then, one day, Ringg was just another
kid. He had gray skin and long claws and white hair, just the way I once
had pinkish skin and short fingernails and reddish hair, but the
difference wasn't that I was human inside and he wasn't. If you skinned
Ringg, and skinned me, we'd be almost identical. And all of a sudden
then, Ringg and Vorongil and all the rest were men to me. Just people. I
thought you Mentorians, after living with the Lhari all these years,
would feel that."

She said in slow wonder, "We've lived and worked side by side with them
all these years, yet kept so apart! I've defended the Lhari to you, yet
it took you to explain them to me!"

His arm was still round her, her head still lying on his shoulder. Bart
was just beginning to wonder if he might kiss her when the infirmary
door opened and Ringg stood in the doorway, staring at them with
surprise, shock and revulsion. Bart realized, suddenly, how it must look
to Ringg--who certainly shared Meta's prejudice--but even as he
comprehended it, Ringg's face altered. Meta slipped from Bart's arms and
rose, but Ringg came slowly a step into the room.

"I--remembered you had a bad reaction, to warp-drive," he said. "I came
to see if you were all right. I would never have believed--but I'm
beginning to guess. There was always something about you, Bartol." He
shut the door behind him and stood against it. His voice lowered almost
to a whisper, he said, "You're not Lhari, are you?"

"Vorongil knows," Bart said.

Ringg nodded. "That day on Lharillis. The crew was talking, but only one
or two of them really _know_ what happened. There are a dozen rumors. I
wanted to see you. They said you were sick with radiation burns--"

"I was."

Ringg raised his hand, absently, to the still-puckered mark on his
cheek, saw Bart watching him and smiled.

"You're not worrying about that fight? Forget it, friend. If anything, I
admire someone who can use his claws--especially if, as I begin to
suspect, they're not his." He leaned over, his hand lightly on Bart's
shoulder. "I don't forget so easily. You saved my life, remember? And
you're a hero on the ship for warning us all. Are you really human? Why
not get rid of the disguise?"

Bart laughed wryly. "It won't come off," he said, and explained.

Ringg raised his hands to his own face curiously. "I wonder what sort of
human I'd make?" He looked at Meta's small fingers. "Not that I'd ever
have the nerve. But then, it's no surprise to anyone that you have
courage, Bartol."

"You seem to accept it--"

"It's a shock," said Ringg honestly, "it scares me a little. But I'm
remembering the friendship. That was real. As far as I'm concerned, it
still is real."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ringg was still bending over Meta's hand when Vorongil came into the
cabin. He started to speak, then noticed Ringg. "I might have known," he
growled, "if there was anything to find out, you'd find it."

"Shall I go, _rieko mori_?"

"No, stay. You'll find it out some way or other, you might as well get
it right the first time. But first of all--are you all right, Meta?"

Her chin went up, defiantly. "Yes. And why have you lied to us all these
years--all of you?"

Vorongil looked mildly startled. "It wasn't exactly a lie. Nine out of
ten Lhari captains believe it with all their heart--that humans die in
warp-drive. I wasn't sure myself until I heard the debates in Council
City, last year."

"But why?"

Vorongil sighed. His eyes rested disconcertingly on Bart. "I presume you
know human history," he said, "better than I do. The Lhari have never
had a war, in all written history. Quite frankly, you terrified us. It
was decided, on the highest summit levels, that we wouldn't give humans
too many chances to find out things we preferred to keep to ourselves.
The first few ships to carry Mentorians had carried them without
cold-sleep, but people forget easily. The truth is buried in the records
of those early voyages.

"As the Mentorians grew more important to us, we began to regret the
policy, but by that time the Mentorians themselves believed it so firmly
that when we tried the experiment of carrying them through the shift
into warp-drive, they died of fear--pure suggestion. I tried it with
you, Meta, because I knew Bart's presence would reassure you. The others
were given an inert sedative they believed to be the cold-sleep drug.
How are you feeling, Bart?"

"Fine--but wondering what's going to happen."

"You won't be hurt," Vorongil said, quickly. Then: "You don't believe
me, do you?"

"I don't, sir. David Briscoe did what I did, and he's dead. So are three
other men."

"Men do strange things from fear--men and Lhari. Your people, as I said
before, have a strange history. It scares us. Can you guarantee that
some, at least, of your people wouldn't try to come and take the
star-drive by force? We left a man on Lharillis who thought nothing of
killing twenty-four of us. I suppose the captain of the _Multiphase_,
knowing he had gravely violated Lhari laws, knowing that Briscoe's
report might touch off an intergalactic war between men and Lhari--well,
I suppose he felt that half a dozen deaths were better than half a
million. I'm not defending him. Just explaining, maybe, why he did what
he did."

Bart lowered his eyes. He had no answer to that.

"No, you won't be killed. But that's all I can guarantee. My personal
feelings have nothing to do with it. You'll have to go to Council Planet
with us, and you'll have to be psych-checked there. That is Lhari
law--and by treaty with your Federation, it is human law, too. If you
know anything dangerous to us, we have a legal right to eliminate those
memories before you can be released."

Meta smiled at him, encouragingly, but Bart shivered. That was almost
worse than the thought of death.

And the fear grew more oppressive as the ship forged onward toward the
home world of the Lhari. And it did not lessen when, after they touched
down, he was taken from the ship under guard.

He had only a glimpse, through dark glasses, of the terrible brilliance
of the Lhari sun dazzling on crystal towers, before he was hustled into
a closed surface car. It whisked him away to a building he did not see
from the outside; he was taken up by private elevator to a suite of
rooms which might--for all he could tell--have been a suite in a luxury
hotel or a lunatic asylum. The walls were translucent, the furniture
oddly colored, and so carefully padded that even a homicidal or suicidal
person could not have hurt himself or anyone else on it or with it.

Food reached him often enough so that he never got hungry, but not often
enough to keep him from being bored between meals, or from brooding. Two
enormous Lhari came in to look at him every hour or so, but either they
were deaf and dumb, did not understand his dialect of Lhari, or were
under orders not to speak to him. It was the most frustrating time of
his entire voyage.

One day it ended. A Lhari and a Mentorian came for him and took him down
elevators and up stairs, and into a quiet, neutral room where four Lhari
were gathered. They sat him in a comfortable chair, and the Mentorian
interpreter said gently, with apology:

"Bart Steele, I have been asked to say to you that you will not be
physically harmed in any way. This will be much simpler, and will have
much less injurious effect on your mind if you cooperate with us. At the
same time, I have been asked to remind you that resistance is absolutely
useless, and if you attempt it, you will only be treated with force
rather than with courtesy."

Bart sat facing them, shaking with humiliation. The thought of
resistance flashed through his mind. Maybe he should make them fight for
what they got! At least they'd see that all humans weren't like the
Mentorians, to sit quietly and let themselves be brainwashed without a
word of protest.

He started to spring up, and the hands of his guards tightened, swift
and strong, even before his muscles had fully tightened. Bart's head
dropped. Cold common sense doused over his brave thoughts. He was
uncountable millions of light-years from his own people. He was
absolutely alone. Bravery would mean nothing; submission would mean
nothing. Would he be more of a man, somehow, if he let his mind be
wrecked?

"All right," he muttered, "I won't fight."

"You show your good sense," the Mentorian said quietly. "Give me your
left arm, please--or, if you are left-handed, your right. As you
prefer."

Deftly, almost painlessly, a needle slid into his arm. _Giving in._ A
dizzying welter of thoughts spun suddenly in his mind. Briscoe. Raynor
One and Raynor Three. The net between the stars. Ringg, Vorongil, Meta,
his father....

Consciousness slid away.

Years later--he never knew whether it was memory or imagination--it
seemed to him that he could reach into that patch of gray and dreamless
time and fish out questions and answers whole, the faces of Lhari
swelling up suddenly in his eyes and shrinking back into interstellar
distance, the sting-smell of drugs, the sound of unexpected voices, odd
reflex pains, cobwebs of patchy memories that fitted nowhere else into
his life so that he supposed they must go here.

He only knew that there was a time he did not remember and then a time
when he began to think there was such a thing as memory, and then a time
when he floated without a body, and then another time when the path of
every separate nerve in his body seemed to be outlined, a shimmering web
in the gray murk. There was a mirror and a face. There were blotchy
worms of light like the star-trails of peaking warp-drive through the
viewport, colors shifting and receding, a green star, the red eye of
Antares.

Then the peak-point faded, his mind began to decelerate and angle slowly
down and down into the field of awareness, and he became fuzzily aware
that he was lying full length on a sort of couch. He shook his head
groggily. It hurt. He sat up. That hurt, too. A hand closed gently
around his elbow and he felt the cold edge of a cup against his sore
mouth.

"Take a sip of this."

The liquid felt cool on his tongue, evaporating almost before he could
swallow; the fumes seemed to mount inside the root of his nose,
expanding tremendously inside his head and brain. Abruptly his head was
clear, the last traces of gray fuzz gone.

"When you feel able," the Mentorian said courteously, "the High Council
will see you."

Bart blinked. As if exploring a sore tooth with his tongue, his mind
sought for memories, but they all seemed clear, marshaled in line. The
details, clear and unblurred, of his voyage here. His humiliation and
resentment against the Lhari. _They could have changed my thinking, my
attitudes. They could have made me admire or be loyal to the Lhari. They
didn't. I'm still me._

"I'm ready now." He got up, reeled and had to lean on the Mentorian; his
feet did not seem to touch the ground in quite the right way. After a
minute he could walk steadily, and followed the Mentorian along a
corridor. The Mentorian said into a small grille, "The Vegan Bartol,
alias Bart Steele," and after a moment a doorway opened.

Inside a room rose, high, domed, vaulted above his head, whitish
opalescent, washed with green. For a moment, while his eyes adjusted to
the light, he wondered how the Lhari saw it.

Beyond an expanse of black, glassy floor, he saw a low semicircular
table, behind which sat eight Lhari. All wore pale robes with high
collars that rose stiffly behind their domed heads; all were old, their
faces lined with many wrinkles, and seven of the eight were as bald as
the hull of the _Swiftwing_. Under their eyes he hesitated; then,
unexpectedly, pride stiffened his back.

They should have done a better job of brainwashing, if they expected him
to skulk in like a scared rabbit! He held his head high and moved across
the floor step by steady step, trying not to limp or display that he
felt tired or sore.

_You're human! Act proud of it!_

No one moved until he stood before the semicircle of ancients. Then the
youngest, the only one of the eight with some trace of feathery crest on
his high gray head, said "Captain Vorongil, you identify this person?"

"I do," Vorongil said, and Bart saw him seated before the high Council.
To Bart, the Lhari captain seemed a familiar, almost a friendly face.

"Well, Bart Steele, alias Bartol son of Berihun," said one old Lhari,
"what have you to say for yourself?"

Bart stood silent, not moving. What could he say that would not reveal
how desperately alone, how young and foolish and frightened he felt? All
his brave resolutions seemed to drain away before their old, gnomish
faces. Here he'd been thinking of himself as a brave spy, a gallant
fighter in humanity's cause and what not. Now he saw himself for what he
was; a reckless boy, meddling in affairs too big for him. He lowered his
eyes.

"We have read the transcript of your knowledge," said the old Lhari.
"There is little in it that we do not know. We are not, of course,
concerned with human conspiracies unless they endanger Lhari lives. The
Antares authorities will deal with the man Montano for an unauthorized
landing on Lharillis, in violation of Federation treaty."

He smiled, his gnome's face breaking into a million tiny cracks like a
piece of gray-glazed pottery. "Bartol, or whatever you call yourself,
you are a brave young man. I suppose you are afraid we will block your
memories, or your ability to speak of them?"

Bart nodded, gulping. Did the old Lhari read his mind?

"A year ago we might have done so. Captain Vorongil, you will be
interested to know that we have discussed this in Council, and your
recommendations have been taken. The secret that humans can endure
star-drive has outlived its usefulness. For good or ill, it is secret no
longer. We cannot possibly eliminate all the old records, or the
enterprising people who hunt them out.

"The captain who had David Briscoe killed, under the mistaken notion
that this would excuse his own negligence in letting Briscoe stow away
on his ship, is undergoing psychotherapy and may eventually recover.

"As for the rest--Bart Steele, you know nothing that is a danger to us.
You do not know the coordinates of our world, or even in which galaxy it
is located. You do not know where we secure the catalyst your people
seek. In fact, you know nothing that is not soon to become common
knowledge. In view of that, we have decided not to interfere with your
memories."

"Talk as much as you like," added another of the ancients, "and may your
memories of this voyage help in understanding between the Lhari and
other human races. Good fortune to you." And he was smiling.

"There is another side to this," said a third, more sternly and gravely.
"You have broken a treaty between Lhari and man. We have dealt with you
as the laws required; now your own people must do so. You must return
with the _Swiftwing_ to the planet where the violation originated--" he
consulted a memorandum--"Procyon Alpha. There you and the man Raynor
Three will face charges of unlawful conspiracy to board a Lhari ship, in
violation of Intergalactic Trade treaties. Captain Vorongil, will you be
responsible for him?"

_So I've lost_, Bart thought drearily. _I didn't even learn anything
important enough for them to suppress._ There was a strange wounded
pride in this; after all his trouble, he was being treated like a little
boy who has used a great deal of enterprise and intelligence to rob a
cookie cupboard, and for his pains is sent home with the stolen cookie
in his hand.

Vorongil touched his arm. "Come, Bartol," he said gently, "I'm taking
you back to the _Swiftwing_. I don't have to treat you like a prisoner,
do I?"

Numbly, Bart gave what the old Lhari asked, his word of honor not to
attempt escape (_Escape? Where to?_) or to attempt to enter the drive
chamber of the _Swiftwing_ while they were still among the Lhari worlds.

As they left the council hall, Bart, in a gesture of despair, covered
his face with his hands. As he brought them down, he found himself
staring at them, transfixed.

The fingers looked longer and thinner than he remembered them, but they
were his own hands again. The nails seemed faintly thick and ridged, and
there was still a faint grayish tinge through the pale flesh color, but
they were human hands. Unmistakably. He felt of his nose and ears, with
fumbling fingers; raised his hand and touched the very short, crisp hair
growing on his newly shaven skull.

"You fool," said Vorongil to the Mentorian, in disgust, "why didn't you
tell him what the medics had done for him? Easy, Bartol!" The old
Lhari's arm tightened around his shoulder. "I thought they'd told you.
Somebody come here and give the youngster a hand."

Later, in the small cabin (it had been Rugel's) which was to be his
prison during the return voyage of the _Swiftwing_, he had a chance to
study his familiar-strange face. He had thought that only a short
time--an hour or so--had elapsed between the time he was drugged and the
time they took him before the Council. Later, from what he learned about
the dispatch schedules of the _Swiftwing_, he realized that he had been
kept under sedation for nearly three weeks, while his face and hands
healed.

As Raynor Three had warned, the change was not altogether reversible.
Studying his face in the mirror, he could still see a hint of something
thin, strange, alien in the set of his features; the nose and chin
somewhat too pointed, elfin, to be human. His hands would always be too
long, too narrow, too supple. For the rest, he looked grim, older. He
could never go back to what he had been before he became a Lhari; it had
left its mark on him forever.

Before the _Swiftwing_ lifted, outbound, Vorongil came to his cabin.
"You've seen very little of our world," he said diffidently. "I have
permission for you to visit the city before we leave Council Spaceport."

"You think you can trust me?" Bart asked bitterly.

Vorongil said gravely, without humor, "The question does not arise. You
do not know the coordinates of this world, and have no way of finding
them. Within those limitations, you are an honored guest here, and if it
would give you any pleasure, you are welcome to see as much of Council
Planet as time permits."

It seemed, through Vorongil's kindness, that the old Lhari sensed his
bitter defeat. Nothing was to be gained by sulking in his cabin, a
prisoner. He had an opportunity which no human, except the Mentorians,
had ever had; which perhaps no human would ever have again. He might as
well take advantage of it.

Ringg and Meta both seemed startled at his new appearance, but Meta
instantly held out her hands, clasping his quickly and warmly. "Bart! I
wondered what your real face looked like. But I think I'd have known you
anyhow."

Ringg surveyed him wonderingly, shaking his head. "Say something," he
implored, "so I'll know you're Bartol."

Bart held out his arm, less gray by the day as the drug wore out of his
system. The thin line of the scar was still on it. He raised his
forefinger lightly to the fine line on Ringg's cheek. "I couldn't return
that now. So let's not get into any more fights."

Ringg laughed and gave him a rough, affectionate shove. "You're Bartol,
all right!"

Even his sense of defeat vanished in wonder as they came out into the
great spaceport. He saw, now, that the Lhari spaceports in human worlds
were built to create, for the spacemen so far from their native worlds,
some feeling of home. But everything here was so vast as to stagger the
imagination. There were miles and miles of the great ships, lying strewn
like pebbles on this monster beachhead into space, bearing the
strangeness of a million far-flung stars. He gaped like a child.

Above them, the burning brilliance of a star gave strange glow and color
to the crystal pylons. What color was the star? He turned to Meta,
irritated at his inability to be sure.

"Meta, what color is this sun? I've been all around the spectrum, and
it's not red, blue, green, orange, violet--" He broke off, realizing
what he had said and what he had seen. "An eighth color," he finished,
anticlimatically.

"You and your talk of colors," Ringg grumbled, "I wish I knew what you
Mentorians see! It's like trying to imagine seeing a smell or hearing
light!"

Meta laughed. "As far as I know, no one's named it. Sometimes we
Mentorians call it _catalyst color_. I think only Mentorians can see it
as separate color."

"So what?" Ringg said impatiently, "What are we going to do, chatter
about light waves or see the city?"

Bart acquiesced, trying to sound eager, but a wild excitement was
gusting up in him. He dutifully pretended fascination with the towers,
the many-leveled roads, the giant dams and pylons, but his thoughts were
racing.

_The eighth color!_ There can't be too many suns of this color, or
they'd have named it and known it! And telescopes can find it.

Could success be salvaged, then, at the very edge of failure? Maybe he
need not go empty-handed, empty-eyed, from the Lhari worlds! They had
dismissed him, scornfully, stolen cookie in hand--but maybe it would be
a bigger cookie than they dreamed!

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