Darkover Landfall

Chapter FIVE

They found Marco Zabal after a vain hour of searching and calling in the woods, laid out smooth and straight and already rigid beneath the greyish trunk of an unknown tree. The light snow had shrouded him in a pall a quarter of an inch thick, and at his side Judith Lovat knelt, so white and still beneath the drifting flakes that at first they thought in dismay that she had died too.

Then she stirred and looked up at them with dazed eyes and Heather knelt beside her, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders and trying to get her attention with soft words. She did not speak during all the time that MacLeod and Ewen were carrying Marco back to the tent, and Heather had to guide her steps as if she were drugged or in a trance.

As the small dismal procession wound through the falling snow Heather felt, or fantasied, that she could still feel their thoughts spinning in her own brain, Ewen's black despair... what kind of doctor am I, lie fooling around on the grass while my patient runs out berserk and dies…

MacLeod's curious confusion entangled in her own fantasy, an old tale of the fairy folk she had heard in childhood, the hero should never have woman or wife either of flesh and blood nor of the faery folk, and so they fashioned for him a woman made of flowers... I was the woman of flowers...

Inside the tent Ewen sank down, staring straight ahead, and did not move. But Heather, desperately anxious at Judy's continued daze, went and shook him.

"Ewen! Marco's dead, there's nothing you can do for him, but Judy's alive; come and see if you can rouse her!"

Dragging, weary, his thoughts look like a black cloud around him, Heather thought, and shook herself. Ewen bent over Judith Lovat, checking her pulse, her heartbeat. He flashed a small light in her eyes, then said quietly, "Judy, did you lay out Marco's body the way we found it?"

"No," she whispered, "not I. It was the beautiful one, the beautiful one. I thought at first it was a woman, like a bird singing, and his eyes... his eyes...

Ewen turned away in despair. "She's still delirious," he said shortly. "Fix her something to eat, Heather, and try to get it down her. We all need food--plenty of it; low blood sugar is half what's wrong with us now, I suspect."

MacLeod smiled a wry smile. "I got a contraband dose of Alpha happy-juice once," he said, "felt just about like that. What happened to us, anyhow, Ewen? You're the doctor, you tell us."

"As God is my witness, I don't know," Ewen said. "I thought at first it was the fruits, but we only began eating them afterward. And we all drank the water three days ago and no harm done. Anyway neither Judy nor Marco touched the fruit."

Heather put a bowl of hot soup into his hand, went and knelt by Judith, alternately spooning soup between her lips and trying to eat her own. MacLeod said, "I've no idea what happened first. It seemed like-I'm not sure; suddenly it was like a cold wind blowing through my bones, shaking me--shaking me open somehow. That was when I knew the fruits were good to eat and I ate one..."

"Foolhardy," said Ewen, but MacLeod, still with that openness, knew that the young doctor was only cursing his own neglect. He said, 'Why? The fruits were good, or we'd be sick now."

Heather said, hesitantly, "I can't help feeling it was something to do with the weather. Some difference."

"A psychedelic wind," jeered Ewen, "a ghostly wind that drove us all temporarily insane!"

"Stranger things have happened," Heather said, and artfully maneuvered another spoonful of soup into Judy's slack mouth. The older woman blinked dazedly and said, "Heather? How did I get here?"

"We brought you, love. You're all right now"

"Marco--I saw Marco--"

"He's dead," Ewen said gently, "he ran into the woods when we all went mad; I never saw him. He must have strained his heart I'd warned him not even to sit up."

"It was his heart, then? You're sure?"

"As sure as I can be without autopsy, yes," Ewen said.

He swallowed the last of his soup. His head was clearing, but the guilt still lay on him; he knew he would never be wholly free of it. "Look, we've got to compare notes, while it's still fresh in our minds. There must be some one common factor, something we all did. Ate or drank--"

"Or breathed," Heather said. "It had to be something in the air, Ewen. Only the three of us ate the fruits. You didn't eat anything, did you, Judy?"

"Yes, some greyish stuff on the edge of a tree--"

"But we didn't touch that," Ewen said, "only MacLeod. We three ate the fruits, but neither Marco nor Judy did. MacLeod ate some of the grey fungus but none of us did. Judy was smelling the flowers and MacLeod was handling them, but neither Heather nor I did, until afterward. The three of us were lying in the grass--" he saw Heather's face turn pink, but went on steadily, "and both of us were making love to her, and all three of us were hallucinating. If Marco got up and ran into the woods I can only assume that he must have been hallucinating too. How did it begin with you, Judy?"

She only shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I only know--the flowers were brighter, the sky seemed--seemed to break up like rainbows. Rainbows and prisms. Then I heard singing, it must have been birds, but I'm not sure. I went where the shadows were, and they were all purple, lilac-purple and blue. Then he came...

"Marco?"

She shook her head. "No. He was very tall, and had silver hair…"

Ewen said pityingly, "Judy, you were hallucinating. I thought Heather was made out of flowers."

"The four moons--I could see them even though the sky was bright," Judy said. "He didn't say anything but I could hear him thinking."

MacLeod said, "We all seem to have had that delusion. If it's a delusion."

"It's sure to be," Ewen said. "We've found no trace of any other form of intelligent life here. Forget it, Judy;" he added gently, "sleep. When we all get back to the ship--well, there will have to be some form of inquiry."

Dereliction, neglect of duty is the least it will be. Can I plead temporary insanity?

He watched Heather settle Judy down into her sleeping

bag. When the older woman finally slept he said weary, "We ought to bury Marco. I hate to do it without an autopsy, but the only alternative is to carry him back to the ship."

MacLeod said, "We're going to look awfully damned foolish going back and claiming we all went mad at once." He did not look at Heather and Ewen as he added, rather sheepishly, "I feel lice a ghastly fool--group sex never has been my kick--"

Heather said firmly, "We'll all have to forgive each other, and forget about it. It just happened, that's all. And for all we know it happened to them too-" she stopped, struck with a horrifying thought. "Imagine that sort of thing happening to two hundred people…"

"It doesn't bear thinking about," MacLeod said with a shudder.

Ewen said that mass insanity was nothing new. "Whole villages. The dancing madness in the middle ages. And attacks of ergotism--from spoiled rye made into bread."

Heather said, "I don't think whatever it was got far enough down the mountain."

"Another of your hunches, I suppose," Ewen said, but not unkindly. "At this point I suspect we're all too close to it. Let's stop theorizing without facts and wait until we have some facts."

"Does this qualify as a fact?" Judy said, sitting up suddenly. They had all thought her asleep; she fumbled in the torn neck of her blouse and drew out something wrapped in leaves.

"This--or these." She handed Ewen a small blue stone, like a star sapphire.

"Beautiful," he said slowly, "but you found it in the woods--"

"Right," she said. "I found this, too."

She stretched it out to him, and for a moment the others, crowding close, literally could not believe their eyes.

It was less than six inches long. The handle was made of something lice shaped bone, delicate but quite without ornamentation. As for the rest, there was no question what it was.

It was a small flint knife.