Public-domain ebook
The Planet Savers
Language: en524 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Science Fiction·Science Fiction by Women·Science-Fiction & Fantasy
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #31619.
About this book
The opening of The Planet Savers drops the reader straight into a bewildering wake‑up scene on the Terran Trade City of Darkover. A nameless protagonist finds himself on a leather couch in a stark white office, surrounded by glass‑brick windows that frame snow‑capped mountains, and is immediately interrogated by a chubby, ginger‑eyebrowed doctor in a white uniform marked with the caduceus. The narrative quickly establishes a puzzle of identity, names, scars, and memories flicker in and out as the narrator struggles to recall his own past, his father’s death, and the purpose of his presence in the medical department. The dialogue is brisk, the setting vivid, and the mystery deepens when the doctor offers a drink that seems to loosen the narrator’s panic, hinting at a larger crisis involving a recurring “48‑year fever” that threatens the colony.
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s prose reflects the mid‑century science‑fiction style of the 1960s, blending crisp, clinical dialogue with a slightly dream‑like interior monologue. The voice is observant yet uneasy, capturing the disorientation of amnesia against a backdrop of interplanetary politics and exotic disease control. Readers who enjoy tightly plotted speculative mysteries, especially those set on the richly imagined world of Darkover, will find the novel’s blend of medical intrigue, cultural tension, and subtle telepathic undercurrents compelling. Fans of character‑driven SF where the environment and the protagonist’s fragmented memory drive the story forward will appreciate the atmospheric opening and the promise of deeper conspiracies to unravel.
The opening · free to read
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 bare 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."
"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 begin 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. I rose in sudden panic, then relaxed as the room went dark. 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 visionscreen. 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 down, Doctor," and I drew a long breath, overwhelmed by a curious, certain 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....)
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 48-year fever ... by the way, sir, haven't we any better name than that for this particular disease? The term '48-year fever' connotes a fever of 48 years duration, rather than a pandemic recurring every 48 years."
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