Slowly she nodded. Then she gazed at him with concern again.
“Jim—” she said unexpectedly. “What did you do? I mean, besides bullfighting, when you were back on your own world among your own people?”
“I was an anthropologist,” he told her. “Bullfighting was—a late avocation with me.”
She frowned puzzledly. For to his knowledge, the word did not exist in the Empire tongue, and so he had simply translated it literally from the Latin root—“man-science.”
“I studied the primitive background of man,” said Jim. “Particularly the roots of culture—all cultures—in the basic nature of humankind.”
He could almost see the lightning search she was making through that massive High-born memory of hers. Her face lit up.
“Oh, you mean— anthropology!” She gave him the Empire word he had needed. Then her face softened, and she touched his arm. “Jim! Poor Jim—no wonder!”
Once again—as he so often found it necessary to do—he had to restrain the impulse to smile at her. He had thought of himself in many terms during his lifetime so far. But to date he had never had occasion to think of himself as “poor”—in any sense of the word.
“No wonder?” he echoed.
“I mean, no wonder you always seem so cold and distant to anyone High-born,” she said. “Oh, I don’t mean me! I mean the others. But, no wonder you’re that way. Finding out about us and the Empire put an end to everything you’d studied, didn’t it? You had to face the fact that you weren’t evolved from the ape-men and prehumans of your own world. It meant all the work you’d ever done had to be thrown out.”
“Not exactly,” said Jim.
“Jim, let me tell you something,” she said, “the same thing happened to us, you know. I mean us—the High-born. Some thousands of years ago the early High-born used to think that they were evolved from the prehumans on this one Throne World. But finally they had to admit that not even that was true. The animal forms were too much the same on all the worlds like this one that our people settled. Finally, even we had to face the fact that all these worlds had evidently been stocked with the common ancestors of their present flora and fauna by some intelligent race that existed even long before our time. And the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the ancestors with which this world was stocked were probably a strain pointing toward a superior type of premen then were planted elsewhere. So, you see, we had to face the fact that we weren’t the first thinking beings in the universe, too.”
This time Jim let himself smile.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Whatever shock there was to me on learning the Empire existed has evaporated by this time.”
She was, he thought, reassured.
The party celebrating Slothiel’s sponsorhip of him for adoption, it turned out, was to be held in just under three weeks. Jim spent the time learning Starkien ways and warfare from Adok, putting in the few nominal appearances that duty required of him with that military caste and studying in the Files section to which Adok had introduced him underground.
In between times, he moved about the servants’ areas underground, observing any hand signal that was made and committing it to memory. In his spare time he tried to catalog and arrange these signals into some kind of coherent form that would allow him to begin to interpret them.
Two things were in his favor. In the first place, as an anthropologist, he was aware that any sign language derived from primitive, common basics in human nature. As one of the early explorers had said about his experiences in that regard while living with the North American Eskimo, you did not need anyone to teach you the basic signs of communication. You already knew them. The threatening gesture; the come-here gesture; the I-am-hungry gestures, such as pointing to the mouth and then rubbing the stomach—all these, and a large handful more, came instinctively to the mind of any man trying to communicate by hand or body movements.
In the second place, a language mainly of hand signals was necessarily limited. The messages conveyed by such a language necessarily had to depend a great deal upon the context in which the gestures were made. Therefore, the same signal was bound to reappear frequently before any observer watching over a period of time.
Jim therefore assumed success. And, in fact, it was only a little more than two weeks before he identified the recognition signal—that hand movement that was equivalent to a greeting and a recognition signal among users of the Silent Language. It consisted of nothing more than the tapping of the right thumbtip against the side of the adjacent forefinger. From that point on, the various signals began to reveal their meaning to him rapidly.
His search in the Files to discover whether an expedition from the Throne World—or, for that matter, from one of the then-existing Colony Worlds—had set out in the direction of the solar system containing Earth was meeting with no similar success. Perhaps records of such an expedition were there in the Files. Perhaps they were not. The point was, the records that Jim himself had to examine to eliminate all the possibilities were too multitudinous. The job was equivalent, in fact, to his reading through the entire contents of a small public library.
“And besides,” said Adok when Jim finally one day mentioned this problem to the Starkien, “you have to remember that you could go all through the records you’re permitted to see and still not know of such an expedition, even if record of it was there.”
They had been strolling through the underground park. Jim stopped suddenly and turned to face Adok, who automatically stopped also and turned to face Jim.
“What’s this?” demanded Jim. “You said something about my being permitted to see only part of the records?”
“Forgive me, Jim,” said Adok. “I don’t know, of course, if any of the records of such trips are secret. But the point is, how can you be sure some are not? And further, how can you be sure that if some are secret, the one you’re looking for is not among them?”
“I can’t. Naturally,” said Jim. “What bothers me is that I never stopped to think that any of the history of this planet might not be fully available.” He thought for a second. “Who gets to see secret information in the Files, anyway?”
“Why,” answered Adok with the faint note of surprise in his voice that was the ultimate in his reaction that way, “all the High-born see all the information, of course. In fact, since you are as free to move around above ground as below, all you need to do is to go to one of the learning centers for the High-born children—”
He broke off suddenly.
“No,” he said in a lower tone of voice. “I was forgetting. You can go to one of the learning centers, of course. But it won’t do you any good.”
“You mean the High-born won’t let me use the learning center?” asked Jim. He was watching Adok closely. Nothing on the Throne World could be taken for granted, even the transparent honesty in someone like Adok. If Adok was going to tell him that there was some kind of a rule against his using the learning center, it would be only the second outright prohibition he had encountered above ground on this singularly prohibitionless planet. The first, of course, being the rule against anyone approaching the Emperor without being directly summoned. But Adok was shaking his head.
“No,” Adok said. “I don’t think anyone would stop you. It’s just that you wouldn’t be able to use the reading machines above ground. You see, they’re set for use by the young High-born, and they read too fast for the ordinary men to follow.”
“You’ve seen me read,” said Jim. “They read faster than that?”
“Much faster,” said Adok. He shook his head again. “Much, much faster.”
“That’s all right,” said Jim. “Take me to one of these learning centers.”
Adok did not shrug—in fact, it was a question whether his shoulders were not too heavily muscled for such a gesture, even if his nature permitted it. Instantly they were above ground in a large structure like an enormous loggia—or rather, like one of the Grecian temples, consisting of roof and p
illars and floor, but without any obvious outside walls. Through the nearby pillars green lawn and blue sky showed. About on the floor, scattered at intervals, seated or curled up on hassocks, were children obviously of the High-born, and of all ages. Each of them was gazing at a screen that floated at an angle in the air before them, and moved about to stay before them as they altered position on the hassock, always maintaining roughly the same forty-five-degree reading angle Jim had found in the carrels of the Files below ground.
None of the children, even the few who paused to glance at Jim and Adok, paid more than a second’s attention to the newcomers. Clearly, Jim decided, the fact that neither he nor Adok was a High-born rendered them for practical purposes invisible, unless needed, by these High-born children.
Jim moved over to stand closely behind one of them—a boy as tall as Jim himself, though extremely thin of limb and with the face of a ten- or twelve-year-old. The same running line of symbols to which Jim had grown accustomed below ground was running in front of the youngster. Jim looked at that line.
It was blurring by at a tremendous rate. Jim frowned, staring at it, trying to match his perception to its movement, to change it from a streak of spiky, wavy blackness to readable symbols.
Astonishingly, he could not.
He felt a sudden shock through him internally of something very like anger. He had never yet found anything that anyone else could do that he was not capable of matching within the limits of his own physical resources. Moreover, he was perfectly sure that the problem was not with his vision. His eyes should be as capable of resolving the blurred line into symbols as any High-born eye. The problem was in his brain, which was refusing to accept the readable information at the rate at which it was being offered.
He made a grim internal effort. Around him, glimpses of sunlight and lawn, pillars, ceiling, floor—even the boy himself, unheedingly reading—were blanked out. Jim’s concentration focused down upon the line of reading—the line alone. The pressure of his efforts to resolve it was like a cord twisted tight around the temples of his head. Tighter, and tighter…
Almost, for a second, he made it. For a second it seemed as if the line was beginning to break apart into readable symbols, and he gathered that the text had something to do with the organization of the Starkiens themselves. Then his efforts broke—out of sheer physical inability of his body to sustain it any longer. He swayed a little, and vision of the rest of the universe, including pillars, walls, and ceiling, opened out about him once more.
He was suddenly aware that the boy on the hassock had noticed him finally. The High-born child had stopped reading and was staring at Jim himself with a plain expression of astonishment.
“Who are you—?” the boy began in a reedy voice. But Jim, without answering, touched Adok on the arm and translated them both back to Jim’s quarters before the question could be completed.
Back in the familiar room, Jim breathed deeply for a second and then sat down on one of the hassocks. He motioned Adok to sit down likewise, and the Starkien obeyed. After a moment Jim’s deep breathing slowed, and he smiled slightly. He looked across at Adok.
“You don’t say, ‘I told you so!’ ” said Jim.
Adok shook his head in a gesture that clearly conveyed that it was not his place to say such things.
“Well, you were right,” said Jim. He became thoughtful. “But not for the reasons you think. What stopped me just then was the fact that I hadn’t been born to this language of yours. If that writing had been in my own native tongue, I could’ve read it.”
He turned his head abruptly away from Adok and spoke to the empty air.
“Ro?” he asked.
He and Adok both waited. But there was no answer, and Ro did not materialize. This was not surprising. Ro was a High-born and had her own occupations and duties, unlike Adok, whose single duty was to await, and wait upon, Jim’s call.
Jim shifted himself to Ro’s apartment, found it empty, and left a note asking her to contact him as soon as she came in. It was about two and a half hours later that she suddenly appeared beside Adok and him in the main room of Jim’s quarters.
“It’s going to be a big party,” she said without preamble. “Everybody’s going to be there. They’ll have to use the Great Gathering Room. The word must’ve gotten out somehow that there’s something special about this celebration—” She broke off suddenly. “I’m forgetting. You wanted to see me about something, Jim?”
“Oh,” said Jim, “could you get one of those reading screens from the learning centers set up in your apartment?”
“Why—of course!” said Ro. “Do you want to use one, Jim? Why don’t I just have one set up for you here?”
Jim shook his head.
“I’d rather not have it generally known that I was using it,” Jim said. “I take it that it isn’t too unusual a thing for someone like you to want one where she lives?”
“Not unusual. No…” said Ro. “And of course if you want it that way, that’s the way I can do it. But what’s this all about?”
Jim told her about his attempt to try to read at the same speed as that of the young High-born he had stood behind in the learning center.
“You think study will speed up your reading comprehension?” asked Ro. She frowned. “Maybe you shouldn’t get your hopes too high—”
“I won’t,” said Jim.
Within a few hours the screen was set up, floating in a corner of one of the less-used rooms of Ro’s apartment. From then on, Jim spent the time he had spent in the Files underground in Ro’s apartment room instead.
He had made only slight progress, however, within the next week. He gave it up entirely and spent the last few days before the party lounging around the underground servants’ area with Adok, observing the Silent Language in use about him. He had become fluent in understanding it now, but, wearyingly, most of what he absorbed was the hand-signaled equivalent of gossip. Nonetheless, gossip could be useful if properly sifted and interpreted.
Jim returned from the last of these expeditions just an hour or so before the party, to find Lorava waiting for him in the main room of his quarters.
“Vhotan wants to see you,” said Lorava abruptly as Jim appeared.
No more notice than that. Jim found himself standing beside Lorava in a room he had not been in before. Adok was on the other side of him, so evidently the invitation had included the Starkien as well.
Vhotan was seated on a hassock before a flat surface suspended in midair with its top covered with what looked like several different studs of various shapes and colors. He was turning or depressing these studs in what appeared to be a random pattern, but with a seriousness and intensity that suggested his actions were far from unimportant. Nonetheless, he broke off at the sight of them, rose from his hassock, and came over to face Jim.
“I’ll call for you a little later, Lorava!” he said.
The thin young High-born vanished.
“Wolfling,” said Vhotan to Jim, his yellowish brows drawing together, “the Emperor is going to attend this party of yours.”
“I don’t believe it’s my party,” answered Jim. “I think it’s Slothiel’s party.”
Vhotan brushed the objection aside with a short wave of one long hand.
“You’re the reason for it,” he said. “And you’re the reason for the Emperor being at it. He wants to talk to you again.”
“Naturally,” said Jim. “I can come anytime the Emperor wants to summon me. It needn’t be at the party.”
“He’s at his best in public!” said Vhotan sharply. “Never mind that. The point is, at the party the Emperor will want to talk to you. He’ll take you off to one side and undoubtedly ask you a lot of questions.”
Vhotan hesitated.
“I’ll be glad to answer any of the Emperor’s questions,” said Jim.
“Yes… you do exactly that,” said Vhotan gruffly. “Whatever questions he asks you, answer them fully. You understand? He’s the Emperor, and
even if he doesn’t seem to be paying you complete attention, I want you to go right on answering until he asks you another question or tells you to stop. Do you understand?”
“Fully,” said Jim. His eyes met the lemon-yellow eyes of the older, High-born man.
“Yes. Well,” said Vhotan, turning abruptly, walking back to his console of studs, and sitting down before it once again.
“That’s all. You can go back to your quarters now.”
His fingers began to move over the studs. Jim touched Adok on the arm and shifted back to the main room of his own apartment.
“What do you make of that?” he asked Adok.
“Make of it?” Adok repeated slowly.
“Yes,” said Jim. He eyed the Starkien keenly. “Didn’t you think that some of what he said was a little strange?”
Adok’s face was completely without expression.
“Nothing dealing with the Emperor can be strange,” he said. His voice was strangely remote. “The High-born Vhotan told you to answer fully to the questions of the Emperor. That is all. There could not be any more than that.”
“Yes,” said Jim. “Adok, you’ve been lent to me to be my substitute. But you still belong to the Emperor, don’t you?”
“As I told you, Jim,” said Adok, still in the same expressionless, remote voice. “All Starkiens always belong to the Emperor, no matter where they are or what they’re doing.”
“I remember,” said Jim.
He turned away and went to get out of the Starkien straps and belts he had been wearing, into the white costume like that of all the male High-born, but without insignia, which he had chosen to wear for the occasion.
He was barely dressed when Ro appeared. In fact, she materialized so suspiciously close upon the end of his dressing that once more he wondered whether he was not under surveillance—by others as well as Ro—more than he thought. But he had no chance to speculate upon this now.
“Here,” she said a little breathlessly, “put this on.”
He saw she was holding out to him what seemed to be something like a narrow band of white satin. When he hesitated, she picked up his left arm and wrapped it around his wrist, without waiting for his approval.
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