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Updated: June 1, 2025
Only his eyes appeared to still hold the strength that had once bested every man on the planet to win the annual games. Brion turned away from their burning stare, sorry now he had insulted the man without good reason. He was too sick, though, to bother about apologizing. Ihjel didn't care either.
"Going to do what!" Lea gasped. "Destroy them? Wipe out this fascinating genetic pool? Why? "Because they are so incredibly loathsome, that's why!" Ihjel said. "These aboriginal hotheads have managed to lay their hands on some primitive cobalt bombs. They want to light the fuse and drop these bombs on Nyjord, the next planet. Nothing said or done can convince them differently.
We are going to what is undoubtedly the most interesting planet an exobiologist ever conceived of, but we need a man who can take orders and not faint when it gets too hot." Brion was lost. Ihjel had done all the navigating and Brion had no idea how to begin a search like this. "Oh, no you don't," Lea said. "You don't get rid of me that easily.
"I'm not infectious, nor ill with anything more than extreme fatigue. I want to see that man. At once." The guard took a deep breath, and made a quick decision. "He is on the way up now," he said, and rung off. "What did you do to me?" Brion asked as soon as Ihjel had entered and they were alone. "You won't deny that you have put alien thoughts in my head?" "No, I won't deny it.
As the flow of sensation died away, Brion realized he was sprawled back weakly on his pillows, soaked with sweat, washed with the memory of the raw emotion. Across from him Ihjel sat with his face bowed in his hands. When he lifted his head Brion saw within his eyes a shadow of the blackness he had just experienced. "Death," Brion said. "That terrible feeling of death.
When he cracked the outer port the puff of air struck them like the exhaust from a furnace, dry and hot as a tongue of flame. Brion heard Lea's gasp in the darkness. She stumbled down the ramp and he followed her slowly, careful of the weight of packs and equipment he carried. The sand, still hot from the day, burned through his boots. Ihjel came last, the remote-control unit in his hand.
"Have a beer." "No, thank you. I'm afraid it would dissolve the last shreds of tissue and my kidneys would float completely away. On Earth we never " "Get Professor Morees' luggage for her," Ihjel interrupted. "Vion's coming, there's his signal. I'm sending this ship up before any of the locals spot it."
Do you ever think of all the people who suffered and died in misery and superstition while civilization was clicking forward one more slow notch?" "Of course I don't think about them," Brion retorted. "Why should I? I can't change the past." "But you can change the future!" Ihjel said. "You owe something to the suffering ancestors who got you where you are today.
Brion had an arm around him, holding him up, walking towards the rushing handlers. Then Irolg was gone and he waved off his own men, walking slowly by himself. Except that something was wrong and it was like walking through warm glue. Walking on his knees. No, not walking, falling. At last. He was able to let go and fall. Ihjel gave the doctors exactly one day before he went to the hospital.
It wasn't just the people of Dis who would die. It was something more personal." "Myself," Ihjel said, and behind this simple word were the repeated echoes of night that Brion had been made aware of with his newly recognized ability. "My own death, not too far away. This is the wonderfully terrible price you must pay for your talent. Angst is an inescapable part of empathy.
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