To Save a World (Darkover Omnibus #7) - Couverture souple

Bradley, Marion Zimmer

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0756402506 ISBN 13 : 9780756402501

Editeur : DAW, 2004

Synopsis

Book by Bradley Marion Zimmer

A propos du livre

Extrait :

The Critics Hail Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover Novels:

“A rich and highly colored tale of politics and magic, courage and pressure . . . Topflight adventure in every way!”

—Lester Del Rey in Analog (for The Heritage of Hastur)

“May well be [Bradley’s] masterpiece.”

—New York Newsday (for The Heritage of Hastur)

“Literate and exciting.”

—New York Times Book Review (for City of Sorcery)

“Suspenseful, powerfully written, and deeply moving.”

—Library Journal (for Stormqueen!)

“A warm, shrewd portrait of women from different backgrounds working together under adverse conditions.”

—Publishers Weekly (for City of Sorcery)

“I don’t think any series novels have succeeded for me the way Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels did.”

—Locus (general)

“Delightful . . . a fascinating world and a great read.”

—Locus (for Exile’s Song)

“Darkover is the essence, the quintessence, my most personal and best-loved work.”

—Marion Zimmer Bradley

MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY from DAW Books:

SWORD AND SORCERESS I–XXI

THE NOVELS OF DARKOVER

EXILE’S SONG

THE SHADOW MATRIX

TRAITOR’S SUN

The Clingfire Trilogy (With Deborah J. Ross)

THE FALL OF NESKAYA

ZANDRU’S FORGE

A FLAME IN HALI

Special omnibus editions:

HERITAGE AND EXILE

The Heritage of Hastur | Sharra’s Exile

THE AGES OF CHAOS

Stormqueen! | Hawkmistress!

THE SAGA OF THE RENUNCIATES

The Shattered Chain | Thendara House City of Sorcery

THE FORBIDDEN CIRCLE

The Spell Sword | The Forbidden Tower

A WORLD DIVIDED

The Bloody Sun | The Winds of Darkover Star of Danger

DARKOVER: FIRST CONTACT

Darkover Landfall | The Forbidden Tower

TO SAVE A WORLD

The World Wreckers | The Planet Savers | The Waterfall

TO SAVE
A WORLD

THE PLANET SAVERS

THE WORLD WRECKERS

THE WATERFALL

Marion Zimmer Bradley

The World Wreckers

To four people who—

each in his or her own way—

kept my sense of wonder alive:

Anne McCaffrey

Juanita Coulson

Ursula LeGuin

and

Randall Garrett

The Planet Savers

is dedicated to Paul Zimmer

AUTHOR’S NOTE

There is a momentum to every operation of growth. The Terran Empire, like every process of human endeavor, was geometric rather than linear in this progression. It began with a few isolated star systems and planets; they in turn developed, put forth colonies, and then began to burgeon, effloresce, grow in wild and unrestrained proliferation. Within a thousand years a detached scientist might compare their growth—from a perspective of millennia—to that of the spread of the water hyacinth on Earth in the pre-space days; first an isolated phenomenon, then a study in wild growth, finally a menace that threatened to encompass and crowd out everything else.

Something of the same momentum can be seen in the isolated progress of the Terran Empire on a single planet. First a small scientific outpost, then a colony, a Trade City—

Darkover, isolated at the edge of a galaxy, with a sun so dim that its name was known only in star catalogs, had halted in the first stages of this isolation for a hundred years.

But now—look out, Darkover! For the worldwreckers are coming.

—M.Z.B.

THE PLANET
SAVERS

CHAPTER ONE

By the time I got myself all the way awake I thought I was alone. I was lying on a leather couch in a bare white room with huge windows, alternate glass-brick and clear glass. Beyond the clear windows was a view of snow-peaked mountains which turned to pale shadows in the glass-brick.

Habit and memory fitted names to all these. The large office, the orange flare of the great sun, the names of the dimming mountains. But beyond a polished glass desk, a man sat watching me. And I had never seen the man before.

He was chubby, and not young, and had ginger-colored eyebrows and a fringe of ginger-colored hair around the edges of a forehead which was otherwise quite pink and bald. He was wearing a white uniform coat, and the intertwined caduceus on the pocket and on the sleeve proclaimed him a member of the Medical Service attached to the Civilian HQ of the Terran Trade City.

I didn’t stop to make all these evaluations consciously, of course. They were just part of my world when I woke up and found it taking shape around me. The familiar mountains, the familiar sun, the strange man. But he spoke to me in a friendly way, as if it were an ordinary thing to find a perfect stranger sprawled out taking a siesta in here.

“Could I trouble you to tell me your name?”

That was reasonable enough. If I found somebody making himself at home in my office—if I had an office—I’d ask him his name, too. I started to swing my legs to the floor, and had to stop and steady myself with one hand while the room drifted in giddy circles around me.

“I wouldn’t try to sit up just yet,” he remarked, while the floor calmed down again. Then he repeated, politely but insistently, “Your name?”

“Oh, yes. My name.” It was—I fumbled through layers of what felt like gray fuzz, trying to lay my tongue on the most familiar of all sounds, my own name. It was—why, it was—I said, on a high rising note, “This is damn silly,” and swallowed. And swallowed again. Hard.

“Calm down,” the chubby man said soothingly. That was easier said than done. I stared at him in growing panic and demanded, “But, but, have I had amnesia or something?”

“Or something.”

“What’s my name?”

“Now, now, take it easy! I’m sure you’ll remember it soon enough. You can answer other questions, I’m sure. How old are you?”

I answered eagerly and quickly, “Twenty-two.”

The chubby man scribbled something on a card. “Interesting. In-ter-est-ing. Do you know where we are?”

I looked around the office. “In the Terran Headquarters. From your uniform, I’d say we were on Floor 8—Medical.”

He nodded and scribbled again, pursing his lips. “Can you—uh—tell me what planet we are on?”

I had to laugh. “Darkover,” I chuckled, “I hope! And if you want the names of the moons, or the date of the founding of the Trade City, or something—”

He gave in, laughing with me. “Remember where you were born?”

“On Samarra. I came here when I was three years old—my father was in Mapping and Exploring—” I stopped short, in shock. “He’s dead!”

“Can you tell me your father’s name?”

“Same as mine. Jay—Jason—” the flash of memory closed down in the middle of a word. It had been a good try, but it hadn’t quite worked. The doctor said soothingly, “We’re doing very well.”

“You haven’t told me anything,” I accused. “Who are you? Why are you asking me all these questions?”

He pointed to a sign on his desk. I scowled and spelled out the letters. “Randall—Forth—Director—Department—” and Dr. Forth made a note. I said aloud, “It is—Doctor Forth, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you know?”

I looked down at myself, and shook my head. “Maybe I’m Doctor Forth,” I said, noticing for the first time that I was also wearing a white coat with the caduceus emblem of Medical. But it had the wrong feel, as if I were dressed in somebody else’s clothes. I was no doctor, was I? I pushed back one sleeve slightly, exposing a long, triangular scar under the cuff. Dr. Forth—by now I was sure he was Dr. Forth—followed the direction of my eyes.

“Where did you get the scar?”

“Knife fight. One of the bands of those-who-may-not-enter-cities caught us on the slopes, and we—” the memory thinned out again, and I said despairingly, “It’s all confused! What’s the matter? Why am I up on Medical? Have I had an accident? Amnesia?”

“Not exactly, I’ll explain.”

I got up and walked to the window, unsteadily because my feet wanted to walk slowly while I felt like bursting through some invisible net and striding there at one bound. Once I got to the window the room stayed put while I gulped down great breaths of warm sweetish air. I said, “I could use a drink.”

“Good idea. Though I don’t usually recommend it.” Forth reached into a drawer for a flat bottle; poured tea-colored liquid into a throwaway cup. After a minute he poured more for himself. “Here. And sit down, man. You make me nervous, hovering like that.”

I didn’t sit down. I strode to the door and flung it open. Forth’s voice was low and unhurried.

“What’s the matter? You can go out, if you want to, but won’t you sit down and talk to me for a minute? Anyway, where do you want to go?”

The question made me uncomfortable. I took a couple of long breaths and came back into the room. Forth said, “Drink this,” and I poured it down. He refilled the cup unasked, and I swallowed that too and felt the hard lump in my middle began to loosen up and dissolve.

Forth said, “Claustrophobia too. Typical,” and scribbled on the card some more. I was getting tired of that performance. I turned on him to tell him so, then suddenly felt amused—or maybe it was the liquor working in me. He seemed such a funny little man, shutting himself up inside an office like this and talking about claustrophobia and watching me as if I were a big bug. I tossed the cup into a disposal.

“Isn’t it about time for a few of those explanations?”

“If you think you can take it. How do you feel now?”

“Fine.” I sat down on the couch again, leaning back and stretching out my long legs comfortably. “What did you put in that drink?”

He chuckled. “Trade secret. Now, the easiest way to explain would be to let you watch a film we made yesterday.”

“To watch—” I stopped. “It’s your time we’re wasting.”

He punched a button on the desk, spoke into a mouthpiece. “Surveillance? Give us a monitor on—” he spoke a string of incomprehensible numbers, while I lounged at ease on the couch. Forth waited for an answer, then touched another button and steel louvers closed noiselessly over the windows, blacking them out. The darkness felt oddly more normal than the light, and I leaned back and watched the flickers clear as one wall of the office became a large vision-screen. Forth came and sat beside me on the leather couch, but in the picture Forth was there, sitting at his desk, watching another man, a stranger, walk into the office.

Like Forth, the newcomer wore a white coat with the caduceus emblems. I disliked the man on sight. He was tall and lean and composed, with a dour face set in thin lines. I guessed that he was somewhere in his thirties. Dr. Forth-in-the-film said, “Sit back, doctor,” and I drew a long breath, overwhelmed by a curious sensation.

I have been here before. I have seen this happen before.

(And curiously formless I felt. I sat and watched, and I knew I was watching, and sitting. But it was in that dreamlike fashion, where the dreamer at once watches his visions and participates in them . . .)

“Sit down, doctor,” Forth said. “Did you bring in the reports?”

Jay Allison carefully took the indicated seat, poised nervously on the edge of the chair. He sat very straight, leaning forward only a little to hand a thick folder of papers across the desk. Forth took it, but didn’t open it. “What do you think, Dr. Allison?”

“There is no possible room for doubt.” Jay Allison spoke precisely, in a rather high-pitched and emphatic tone. “It follows the statistical pattern for all recorded attacks of forty-eight-year fever—by the way, sir, haven’t we any better name than that for this particular disease? The term ‘forty-eight-year fever’ connotes a fever of forty-eight years’ duration, rather than a pandemic recurring every forty-eight years.”

“A fever that lasted forty-eight years would be quite a fever,” Dr. Forth said with a grim smile. “Nevertheless that’s the only name we have so far. Name it and you can have it. Allison’s disease?”

Jay Allison greeted this pleasantry with a repressive frown. “As I understand it, the disease cycle seems to be connected somehow with the once-every-forty-eight-years’ conjunction of the four moons, which explains why the Darkovans are so superstitious about it. The moons have remarkably eccentric orbits—I don’t know anything about that part, I’m quoting Dr. Moore. If there’s an animal vector to the disease, we’ve never discovered it. The pattern runs like this; a few cases in the mountain districts, the next month a hundred-odd cases all over this part of the planet. Then it skips exactly three months without increase. The next upswing puts the number of the reported case in the thousands, and three months after that, it reaches real pandemic proportions and decimates the entire human population of Darkover.”

“That’s about it,” Forth admitted. They bent together over the folder, Jay Allison drawing back slightly to avoid touching the other man.

Forth said, “We Terrans have had a Trade compact on Darkover for a hundred and fifty-two years. The first outbreak of this forty-eight-year fever killed all but a dozen men out of three hundred. The Darkovans were worse off than we were. The last outbreak wasn’t as bad, but it was bad enough, I’ve heard. It had an eighty-seven percent mortality—for humans, that is. I understand the trailmen don’t die of it.”

“The Darkovans call it the trailmen’s fever, Dr. Forth, because the trailmen are virtually immune to it. It remains in their midst as a mild ailment taken by children. When it breaks out into a virulent form every forty-eight years, most of the trailmen are already immune. I took the disease myself as a child—maybe you heard?”

Forth nodded. “You may be the only Terran ever to contract the disease and survive.”

“The trailmen incubate the disease,” Jay Allison said. “I should think the logical thing would be to drop a couple of hydrogen bombs on the trail cities—and wipe it out for good and all.”

(Sitting on the sofa in Forth’s dark office, I stiffened with such fury that he shook my shoulder and muttered “Easy, there, man!”)

Dr. Forth, on the screen, looked annoyed, and Jay Allison said, with a grimace of distaste, “I didn’t mean that literally. But the Trailmen are not human. It wouldn’t be genocide, just an exterminator’s job. A public health measure.”

Forth looked shocked as he realized that the younger man meant what he was saying. He said, “Galactic Center would have to rule on whether they’re dumb animals or intelligent nonhumans, and whether they’re entitled to the status of a civilization. All precedent on Darkover is toward recognizing them as men—and good God, Jay, you’d probably be called as a witness for the defense! How can you say they’re not human after your experience with them? Anyway, by the time their status was finally decided, half of the recognizable humans on Darkover would be dead. We need a better solution than that.”

He pushed his chair...

Présentation de l'éditeur :

An omnibus volume of two of Marion Zimmer Bradley's classic, long-unavailable Darkover novels, including the first Darkover novel ever written!

To Save a World includes The World Wreckers and the Planet Savers, plus the short story "The Waterfall."

The Planet Savers:

Originally published in Amazing Stories in December 1958, The Planet Savers was the very firs Darkover novel to see print. It was here readers were first introduced to the now legendary world of Cottman IV, at a time when the Terrans are desperately seeking a cure to a disease of epidemic proportions that threatens the lives of Terrans and Darkovans alike.
 
For every forty-eight years, Trailmen’s fever, a childhood illness among this native and venerable race, becomes pandemic, decimating the human population of this rustic planet. Now, one brave Terran doctor must join a Darkovan expedition into the wild mountainous terrain of the Trailmen in a desperate attempt to create a vaccine and eradicate this terrible plague once and for all.
 
The World Wreckers:

Planetary Investments Unlimited—that was the company’s official name, but unofficially it was known as Worldwreckers, Inc. For a fee, its agent would infiltrate any world unwilling to give up its independence, and do enough damage that the natives would be forced to allow Terran investors to step in and salvage their planet. And now, once again, its agents were at work.
 
In the 78 years since the planet Cottman IV—called Darkover by its natives—was rediscovered by the Terran Empire, all efforts to colonize and industrialize this exotic world had failed.
 
And the person in charge of Worldwreckers, Inc.—a centuries-old being who appeared to be a woman—had decided to take on this particular assignment herself. After all, she had special insight into this world, for long ago—lifetimes ago—she had called Darkover home....

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: DAW
• Date d'édition: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0756402506
• ISBN 13: 9780756402501
• Reliure: Poche
• Nombre de pages: 416