In the so-called morning, his head was aching as if the back of his skull were about to split, and the wqrry had returned. There was no reason for it, except the jinx that had become such a part of him. He swallowed anodynes and fought off some of the pain, but it kept coming back, as if something were bursting inside.
He made his way up to the control room, while the feeling that he had lost grew stronger and stronger inside him. He should have remembered that the anodyne was a depressant. It wouldn’t do to go into a fit of depression now, while he was nearing home.
He opened the door to the precabin, strode through it, and into the cabin beyond. Then he stopped.
Skora sat in a seat there, staring at the great spread of stars that streaked across the ports. This time there were no pants of homespun and no scrape over the old shoulders. The beard was still there, but shortened and trimmed. It projected over the collar of a Federation Fleet uniform—and on the side of the collar was pinned the double cluster of a galaxy commander!
The old man saluted crisply, smiling in amusement at the gesture, and waited while Derek’s arm automatically returned the honor. “As you were, Captain!” Then he sobered. “As you can see, Derek, your words made an impression on me. Vanir couldn’t stand in a backwater, hoping that men would never catch up. Nor could we forget that we belonged to the race of mankind and were all brothers. Telepaths are unusually sensitive to that argument, once it’s pointed out to them. I couldn’t convince enough of our council. But after I teleported myself to Sirius and convinced your command there, it was too late for Vanir to retrench. We aren’t limited to one planet now, clinging to the memory of a decaying god. Now there are two million of us being fitted for your uniforms—enough to win your war without having to destroy the enemy we both fought once before.”
“And I suppose headquarters took one look at what you could do and made you all officers,” Derek said bitterly, remembering the years he’d spent fighting for a mere sector commander’s rating.
The pain in his head broke over him again, and he doubled over. Skora seemed not to notice.
“It wasn’t hard, Derek. They were paralyzed with fear of new weapons until they were beginning to lose the battle. Your command had its own superstitions. And reading their minds helped me to find ways of convincing them. Then, when I could, I came to take you back. I’ve been waiting here for you for hours—though not idly.”
The pain hit a sharp peak and faded somewhat. Skora was staring at him intently, and he covered the remaining pain under automatic questions. “How’s Siryl? And I suppose Kayel is happy working out more of the mathematics for you?”
“Siryl—” Skora paused and shrugged. “Kayel had her promise to marry him, of course, and is a new man. She is recovering, we hope, since he made her a metal net and told her it would keep us from reading her mind. It won’t, if we try, but she needs her little superstition, if she’s to stop hating us.”
Derek stared out at the stars rushing by, knowing he had won what he had been sent to win—and had lost the Federation. His jinx had outgrown him, and had spread to the whole race.
Now Siryl hated and feared the men of Vanir for their power to see the things which a prude must conceal within her own mind. She might get over that; perhaps she could learn to accept their power. But in time, all the women on Federation planets would have to hate the telepaths—not for themselves, but for the sake of the children who should never be born into the life that must come.
Skora had spent a few days gaining himself the coveted rank of Galaxy Commander, while Derek had never dared to hope he could rise that high in a lifetime. And Skora’s people could have everything they wanted for the asking.
Monsters were loose on the world. Until power could corrupt them, they might be kind monsters. But they were worse than any enemy defeat could have been. They would save the Federation, but after the triumph, those most fit would own it. The men who had built the star ships would never control the future—that would be left for the conquering march of the men who .had done nothing, but had simply been given a power denied to the rest of the race.
“There was an old legend,” Skora said suddenly. “About a boy who lived with some kind of animals. When men discovered him at the age of twelve, he was a savage. He was unable to talk—and nobody learned how to teach him. Yet his powers of speech were latently as good as those of any man.”
The pain had lashed out again at the man’s words. Derek let them slip over his mind without trying to understand. Skora was reading his mind, but it didn’t matter. He went on thinking, forced to recognize that he had brought total defeat to all nontelepathic men. If there had been any hope…
But the psychologists and geneticists had looked for the power of telepathy in the current race, and had found none.
Skora stirred impatiently. “Telepathy never occurred strongly in men more than once in perhaps a billion births. Even in the group at the place where god found us, only Moskez had any great power, after all the careful breeding for it. He had to teach it to the others, so that they would not be wolf-boys in the world which the explosion left them. And Lari and Ferad are having a child—who will learn, like all the rest of us, even though Ferad is its father.”
Derek groped for the hope, and then shrugged. It was a good line for the rest of the worlds. It would give them faith in their future, while Vanir replaced them. They could believe that with a little more work and time, they would slowly develop the power—and their “teachers” would find ways of convincing them they were succeeding. Maybe they needed that faith, no matter how wrong it was. They would forget the legends that spoke of a time when the strange psi factor was bred out of the, race—for the benefit of a few, as he now knew. They would pretend there was only one race, instead of the two into which it had been split.
The pain caught him again, and Skora got up sympathetically to rub the back of his neck. It helped. “Men,” the old man told him, “have been finding ways to claim they are not all one race since there first were human beings. But it’s still wrong. And science has made mistakes, while legends are only superstitions.”
The old fingers found the spot of greatest anguish and began rubbing it out. Derek looked up, grateful in spite of his bitterness against what had been done. “The advantage of being a telepath,” he admitted. “You know where the pain is. Thanks, Skora.”
It always hurts at first, Skora’s voice said softly.
His lips had been tightly shut, and he was smiling. Derek felt his body tauten, and his eyes froze on the unmoving lips, while the voice continued quietly somewhere in his mind.
It takes time, Skora’s voice went on, with a warmth that had always been lacking in it before. And it hurts. So does the loss of some of the things we believe—that we are persecuted, that we must depend on god, that incomplete knowledge and old legends can tell us everything, or that we are more than one race. Telepathy is never easy for an adult, Derek. But with it, we can unite our whole race—perhaps even the ones we call an enemy!
The pain was gone now, leaving only a strange sense of completion behind it. Derek stumbled to his feet, choking over words that would not come.
The old man caught his mind, smiling, and led him to the viewing port.
“Sector Commander Derek,” he said aloud, while the warm soft echo of the words came into the former captain’s mind, “out there is man’s kingdom. All of space! But there’s no room there for any more of the superstitions we’ve all had too long.”
Derek looked out through the ports toward the stars