Free The World Wreckers by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page A

may have been this which made him, for the first time in his life, relax and accept the flow of
    sensations which came now, unstressed, across the level of his heightened perception as Jason said,
    "Didn't they tell you this, David? Come on; meet the rest of us; you're the last from offworld in this group; there may be another shipment later but this was the sum of what the Empire could find in
    nonpsychotic telepaths, Rondo—"
    The small, weathered-looking man met David's eyes with a flash of steel blue stare, then almost visibly
    shrugged. He's a straight one; no interest. David, without experience in Rondo's type of underworld, was baffled by the hostile indifference.
    The man in spaceman's uniform seemed sunk in apathy, but he got up politely enough and offered David
    a hand. "A pleasure, Dr. Hamilton. My name is David Conner."
    "Then we're namesakes," David said with a smile. His thought, quickly guarded: nonpsychotic? What's the matter with him? Conner's type was at least familiar; he was tall, thin, slightly balding, skin between brown and black, dark, gleaming eyes, now dulled with apathy and the barest pretense of civility. He
    wasn't hostile, but David felt, with a crawling of his skin, that if all of them dropped dead Conner
    wouldn't even blink. He would shrug and envy them.
    Jason led him on. "Keral."
    The tall boy/girl, almost two or three inches taller than David himself, turned with a swift grace. David met a fluid impact of clear eyes, deep as running water, and a light, lovely, girlish voice which
    murmured in a soft unaccented tone: "You have done us a kindness to come here, David Hamilton."
    Who and what —!
    Jason murmured in his ear, "A chieri; a Darkovan tribe; most of us didn't believe they existed until he came and asked to join us."
    "He—?"
    Jason caught his confusion. Then and later David was to wonder, never to know or prove but to suspect,
    whether Jason Allison, perhaps without knowing it himself, was near enough a telepath to pick up
    thoughts. "He or she, you mean? I don't know either; you can't exactly ask an I.B.—pardon me; Empire Medic slang for Intelligent Being, sapient nonhuman—what sex he, she or it is. Not when you're unsure how they'll react. Maybe Regis knows."
    David's eyes went back to the chieri, and Keral looked up again and for the first time smiled, a lovely
    thing that transfigured the fair, frightened face. It was a gleam of brightness which made the chieri like a light in the room and David wondered how the others could take their eyes off her—him? Damn!
    Conner looked up and came after them. He chuckled low-voiced in David's ear, "After you've been on a dozen planets and seen a dozen cultures you get used to that. You haven't lived until you've made
    attempts to pick up what you thought was a charming girl and had a nasty surprise or two when you
    found the delightful creature was one of the local swordsmen. Cultures are peculiar things."
    David shared the laughter and felt a little relieved. Conner's psychotic apathy wasn't a constant thing
    then, for at this moment the spaceman seemed normal and good natured.
    Conner went on, still in that friendly intimate tone, "Never made a mistake about this one, though. Missy
    —?"
    The sullen-faced girl looked up at David with deliberate and practiced charm. She had thick, light hair,
    gathered into an elaborate coiffure, and David thought her dress, for anyone who had been warned of the
    icy and stormy Darkovan climate, was courting death from exposure; but as Conner had said, cultures on
    different planets set impregnable standards for feminine behavior, and there was evidently some reason
    for this one to flaunt her femaleness in this exact way. She smiled with that quick-eyed radiance and
    murmured, "Hello, David."
    "Which David?" Conner demanded; and David Hamilton thought swiftly, he's jealous, as the girl Missy murmured, "Why, both of you, of course." She held David's hand an extra moment, but the hand was cool and