but her eyes were dilated and eager and he knew that she was excited by the sight of the struggling men, that she would accept--passively, not caring--whichever of them now triumphed in the fight--
Then a wash of sanity came over MacAran. He tore himself free of the Captain, struggling to his feet. He said, in a low, urgent voice, "Sir, this is idiotic. If you fight it, you can get out of this. Try to fight it, try to stay sane--"
But Leicester, rolling free, came up to his feet, snarling with rage, his lips flecked with foam and his eyes unfocused and quite mad. Lowering his head, he charged full steam at MacAran; Rafe, quite cool-headed now, stepped back. He said regretfully, "I'm sorry, Captain," and a well-aimed single blow to the point of the chin connected and knocked the crazed man senseless to the floor.
He stood looking down at him, feeling rage drain out of him like running water. Then he went to Camilla and knelt beside her. She looked up at him and smiled, and suddenly, in the way he could no longer doubt, they were in contact again. He said gently, "Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant, Camilla? I would have worried, but it would have made me very happy, too."
I don't know. At first, I was afraid, I couldn't accept it; it would have changed my life too much.
But you don't mind now?
She said aloud, "Not just at this minute, I don't mind, but things are so different now. I might change again."
"Then it isn't an illusion," MacAran said, half aloud, "we are reading each other's minds."
"Of course," she said, still with that tranquil smile, "didn't you know?"
Of course, then, MacAran thought; this is why the winds bring madness.
Primitive man on Earth must have had ESP, the whole gamut of psi powers, as a reserve survival power. Not only would it account for the tenacious belief in them against only the sketchiest proof, but it would account for survival where mere sapience would not. A fragile being, primitive man could not have survived without the ability to know (with his eyesight dimmer than the birds, his hearing less than a tenth of that of any dog or carnivore,) where he could find food, water, shelter; how to avoid natural enemies. But as he evolved civilization and technology, these unused powers were lost. The man who walks little, loses the ability to run and climb; yet the muscles are there and can be developed, as every athlete and circus performer learns. The man who relies on notebooks loses the ability of the old bards, to memorize day-long epics and genealogies. But for all these millennia the old ESP powers lay dormant in his genes and chromosomes, in his brain--and some chemical in the strange wind (pollen? dust? virus?) had restimulated it.
Madness, then. Man, accustomed to using only five of his senses, bombarded by new data from the unused others, and his primitive brain also stimulated to its height, could not face it, and reacted--some by total, terrifying loss of inhibition; some with ecstasy; some with blank, blind refusal to face the truth.
If we are to survive on this world, then, we must learn to listen to it; to face it; to use it, not to fight it.
Camilla took his hand. She said aloud, in a soft voice, "Listen, Rafe. The wind is dying; it will rain, soon, and this will be over. We may change--I may change again with the wind, Rafe. Let us enjoy being together now--while I can." Her voice sounded so sad that the man, too, could have wept. Instead, he took her hand and they walked quietly out of the dome; at the door Camilla paused, slipped her hand gently free of Rafe's and went back. She bent over the Captain, slid her rolled-up windbreaker gently under his head; knelt at his side for a moment and kissed his cheek. Then she rose and came back to Rafe, clinging to him, shaking softly with unshed tears, and he led her out of the dome.
High on the slopes, mists gathered and a soft fine foggy rain began to fall. The small red-eyed furred creatures, as if waking from a long dream, stared wildly about themselves and scurried for the safety of their tree-roads and shelters of woven wood and wicker. The cavorting beasts in the valleys bellowed softly in confusion and hunger, abandoned their cavorting and stampeding and began quietly to graze along the streams again. And, as if waking from a hundred long confused nightmares, the alien men from Earth, feeling the rain on their faces, the effects of the wind receding in their minds, woke and found that in many cases, the nightmare, acted out, was dreadfully real.
Captain Leicester came up slowly to consciousness in the deserted computer dome, hearing the sounds of rain beating in the clearing outside. His jaw ached; he struggled up to his feet, feeling his face ruefully, fighting for memory out of the strange confused thoughts of the past thirty-six hours or so. His face was furred with stubble, unshaven; his uniform filthy and mussed. Memory? He shook his head, confused; it hurt, and he put his hands to his throbbing temples.
Fragments spun in his mind, half real like a long dream. Gunfire, and a fight of some sort; the sweet face of a red-headed girl, and a sharp unmistakable memory of her body, naked and welcoming--had that been real or a wild fantasy? An explosion that had rocked the clearing--the ship? His mind was still too fuzzed with dream and nightmare to know what he had done or where he had gone after that, but he remembered coming back here to find Camilla alone, of course she would protect the computer, like a mother hen her one chick, and a vague memory of a long time with Camilla, holding her hand while some curious, deep-rooted communion went on, intense and complete, achingly close, yet somehow not sexual, although there had been that too--or was that illusion, confused memory of the redheaded girl whose name he did not know--the strange songs she had sung--and another surge of fear and protectiveness, an explosion in his mind, and then black darkness and sleep.
Sanity returned, a slow rise, a receding of the nightmare. What had been happening to the ship, to the crew, to the others, in this time of madness? He didn't know. He'd better find out. He vaguely remembered that someone had been shot, before he freaked out--or was that, too, part of the long madness? He pressed the button by which he summoned the ship's Security men, but there was no response and then he realized that the lights were not working, either. So someone had gotten to the power sources, in madness. What other damage? He'd better go and find out. Meanwhile, where was Camilla?
(At this moment she slipped reluctantly away from Rafe, saying gently, "I must go and see what damage has been done in the ship, querido. The Captain, too; remember I am still part of the crew. Our time is over--at least for now. There's going to be plenty for all of us to do. I must go to him--yes, I know, but I love him too, not as I do you,but I'm learning a lot about love, my darling, and he may have been hurt.")
She walked across the clearing, through the blowing rain which was beginning to be mixed with heavy wet snow. I hope someone finds some kind of fur-bearing animals, she thought, the clothes made for Earth won't face a winter here. It was a quite routine thought at the back of her mind as she went into the darkened dome.
"Where have you been, Lieutenant?" the Captain said thickly. "I have a queer feeling I owe you some kind of apology, but I can't remember much."
She looked around the dome, quickly assessing damage. "It's foolish to call me Lieutenant here, you've called me Camilla before this--before we ever landed here."
"Where is everybody, Camilla? I suppose it's the same thing that hit you in the mountains?"
"I suppose so. I imagine before long we'll be up to our ears in the aftermath," she said with a sharp shudder. "I'm frightened, Captain--" she broke off with an odd little smile. "I don't even know your name."