The Longest Way Home

by Robert Silverberg

  “You should rest again now,” the woman said, and they all went out of the room.

  He wandered off into a dreamless dozing reverie. Later, he could not possibly have said how much later, the boy or young man who had been in his room before came in with a bowl of the stuff they had been cooking and a plate of a grayish mashed vegetable, and Joseph tried without success to eat some. “I’ll leave it in case you want it,” the boy said. Again Joseph was alone.

  Some time later he awoke with a full bladder, stumbled out of bed in the darkness with no good idea of where he ought to go, and tripped over some small piece of furniture, sending himself sprawling with a crash into something else, a little bedside table on which they had left a pitcher of water for him. The pitcher, landing on what seemed to be a stone floor, made a sound as it broke that he was certain would wake the whole household, but no one came. Joseph crouched where he had fallen, trembling, dizzy. After a few moments he rose unsteadily and tiptoed out into the hall. Because they had left him naked below the waist, and he did not want to reveal his emaciated thighs and belly to anyone he might encounter out there, especially not the girl, he took the coverlet from his bed and wrapped it around his hips. In the hallway there was just enough moonlight coming in so that he could see other bedrooms, and hear the sound of snoring coming from one or two of them. But he could not find anything that might be a lavatory.

  He needed very badly to go by this time. A door presented itself that turned out to be the main door of the house, and he went outside, into the yard, moving steadily but with an invalid’s slow, cautious pace. All was silent out there. The whole village seemed to be asleep. The night was warm, the air very still. The two smaller moons were in the sky. A big brown dog lay curled up against the picket fence. It opened one yellow eye and made a soft, short growling sound, but did not otherwise react to Joseph’s presence. He walked past it, following along the line of the fence until he judged he was sufficiently far from the house, and opened the coverlet and urinated against a bush. Because all of his bodily functions had become so deranged, it took him an incredibly long time to do it, what seemed like hours. How strange, he thought, to be standing here like this in the yard of a Folkish house, peeing outdoors by moonlight, peeing slowly and endlessly the way an old man does. But all of this is a dream, is it not? It must be. It must.

  He found his way back to his own bedroom without incident and dropped at once into deep sleep, the first really sound sleep he had had in more weeks than he could remember. When he awoke, it was long after daylight: floods of golden sunshine were pouring into the room. Someone had come in while he slept, picked up the overturned table, removed the fragments of the broken pitcher. The bowl of stew and the plate of mashed vegetables were still sitting on the cupboard where the boy who had brought them had left them. A stab of hunger pierced through him suddenly and he sprang from the bed, or tried to, but dizziness instantly overcame him and he had to sit again, trembling a little, racked by little shuddering spasms. When the shuddering stopped he got up again, very carefully this time, slowly crossed the room, ate a few spoonfuls of the vegetables, sipped at the stew. He was not as hungry as he had thought he was. Still, he was able to keep the food down, and after a little while he managed to eat some more of it.

  They had put out clothing for him, good honest Folkish dress—brown cotton leggings, a singlet of gray wool, a leather vest, a pair of open sandals. Nothing fit him very well: the leggings were too short, the singlet too tight, the vest too loose across the shoulders, the sandals too small. Probably most or all of these things belonged to the boy of the house. But wearing them, ill-fitting or not, was better than going about naked, or wrapping himself in his bedsheet, or trying to get back into his filthy Indigene robes.

  The woman who had cared for him last night came into the room. He saw that she was forty or so, plump, with weary dark-shadowed eyes but a warm, ingratiating smile. The girl and the young man who had been in the room last night were with her again. “I am Saban,” the woman said. “My daughter Thayle. Velk, my son.” Velk appeared to be eighteen or twenty, short, strongly built, dull-eyed, probably not terribly bright. Thayle did not seem as pretty as she had last night, now that Joseph could see the Folkish stockiness of her frame, but she looked sweet and cheerful and Joseph liked her smooth clear skin and the bright sheen of her yellow hair. He doubted that she was any older than sixteen, perhaps even a year or two younger; but it was very hard to tell. The Folk always looked older than they really were to him, because they tended to be so sturdily built, so deep-chested and thick-shouldered. Saban indicated a third person standing in a diffident slouch farther back in the room and said, “That is my man, Simthot.” About fifty, shorter even than his son, a burly man with powerful arms and shoulders, deeply tanned skin, the creases of a lifetime of hard work furrowing his expressionless face. “You are a guest in our house as long as you need to stay,” said Saban, and Simthot nodded emphatically. He appeared to be accustomed to letting his wife do the talking for him.

  “I feel much better this morning,” Joseph told her. “It was good to sleep in a comfortable bed again, and to be able to eat a little food. I thank you for all your kindnesses.”

  Was that too formal, too Master-like? Even though he spoke in Folkish, he was afraid of betraying his aristocratic origins by expressing himself too well. He wondered if a Folkish boy of fifteen or sixteen would ever be as articulate as that.

  But Saban showed no sign of suspicion. She told him only that she was pleased that the night’s rest had done him good, and warned him not to try to recover too quickly. The town governor, she said, would come here later in the day to speak with him. Meanwhile, she suggested, he ought to get back into bed.

  That seemed wise to him. He no longer felt as though he were on the brink of death, but he knew he had a long way to go before he had some semblance of vigor again.

  Thayle brought him tea with honey in it, and stood by his bedside while he drank it. When he was done Joseph asked her for more of the bread she had given him the night before, and she brought that too, and watched him in a kind of placid satisfaction as he nibbled at it. Like her mother, she appeared to be taking an almost maternal interest in his welfare.

  He needed to urinate again, and perhaps even to move his bowels, something he had not succeeded in doing in many days. But he still did not know where to go. Though Joseph would not have hesitated to ask a servant for the location of the nearest privy, if he were a guest in some Great House, he felt oddly inhibited about asking the girl. He was not even sure of the word for it in Folkish; that was part of the problem. But he knew he was being ridiculous. After a time he said, feeling heat rise to his cheeks, “Thayle, I have to—if you would please show me—”

  She understood immediately, of course. He would not let her help him rise from the bed, though there was a bad moment of vertigo when he did, and he refused her arm as they went from the room. The lavatory was at the back of the house. Because he knew she was waiting for him outside to guide him back to his room, he tried to be as quick about things as he could, but his body was still not functioning normally, and he could not look her in the eye when he finally emerged a long time afterward. All she said was, “Would you like to go outside for some fresh air and sunshine?”

  “I’d like that very much, yes,” he told her.

  They emerged into the kitchen-garden. The warm sunlight felt good against his face. She stood very close beside him, as though afraid he might be too weak to stand on his own for long. The firm curve of her breast was pressing into his side. Joseph was surprised to observe how much he liked that. He was actually beginning to find her attractive despite or perhaps even because of her Folkish look, which was somewhat unsettling, though in an interesting way. I suppose I have been away from my own people too long, he thought.

  He guessed that it was probably about noon. Very few townsfolk were around, just some very small children playing in the dust and a few old people busy on the por
ches of their houses. The rest were working in the fields, Joseph assumed, or accompanying their herds through the pastures. A peaceful scene. The dog that had been sleeping out here last night was still curled up on the ground, and again it gave him a quick one-eyed inspection and a soft little growl before subsiding into sleep. It was not easy to believe that elsewhere on Homeworld a bloody war was going on, estates being pillaged and burned, people driven into exile.

  “What is this village called?” Joseph asked, after a little while.

  “It’s a town, not a village,” Thayle said.

  Evidently that was an important distinction. “This town, then.”

  “You don’t know? Its name is Eysar Haven.”

  “Ah. Eysar Haven.”

  “Originally it was called something else, though that was so long ago that nobody remembers what. But then the name was changed to Eysar Haven, because he actually came here once, you know.”

  “He? Eysar, you mean?”

  “Yes, of course, Eysar. Who else? He was really here. Some people don’t even believe that Eysar truly existed, that he’s just a myth, but it isn’t so. He was here. He stayed for weeks and weeks, while he was making the Crossing. We know that to be a fact. And after he left the town was named for him. It’s wonderful to think that we walk on the very same ground that Eysar’s feet once touched, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It certainly is,” said Joseph carefully.

  He felt that he was in dangerous territory here. There was a note of reverence and awe in Thayle’s voice. Eysar must be some great Folkish hero, whose name was known to one and all in the Folkish world. But Joseph had never heard of him. He stayed for weeks and weeks, while he was making the Crossing. What could that mean? A Master’s education did not include a great deal of Folkish history, nor Folkish mythology, for that matter. For all Joseph knew, Eysar had been a great Folkish king in the days before the Conquest, or the leader of the first Folkish expedition to land on Homeworld, or perhaps some sort of charismatic wonderworking religious leader. The thought that the Folk once had had great kings of their own, or glorious heroes, or revered religious leaders, and that they still cherished the memory of those great men, was a little startling to him, simply because it had never occurred to him before. And certainly it would not do at all for Thayle to find out that he had no knowledge of who this Eysar was, or the Crossing, or, for that matter, of any significant datum of Folkish life or culture.

  He searched for a way to change the subject. But Thayle did the job for him.

  “And where is it you come from?” she asked. “Ludbrek House, you said. Where is that?”

  “Up in the north. On the other side of the mountains.”

  “That far? You’ve come a very great distance, then. It’s hard to believe anyone could travel as far as that on foot. No wonder you suffered so much. —That’s a strange name for a town, Ludbrek House.”

  “That’s not the town name. It’s the name of the Great House that ruled the district.”

  “A Master-house?” Thayle said. “Is that what you mean?”

  She spoke as though the system of Great Houses with satellite towns of Folk around them was nearly as unfamiliar to her as the deeds of Eysar were to him.

  “A Master-house, yes,” he said. “We all belonged to Ludbrek House, many hundreds of us. But then the rebels burned it and I ran away. You don’t belong to any House here, then, is that right?”

  “Of course not. You are among cuylings here. You mean you didn’t realize that?”

  “Yes—yes, of course, I don’t know what I could have been thinking—”

  Cuylings.

  That word was new to him also. It must refer to free Folk, Folk who had managed to stay clear of the rule of the Masters, holding themselves somehow apart from the dominant economic structure of the world. Again Joseph saw how little he knew of these people, and what risks that posed for him. If he allowed this conversation to go on much longer she was bound to find out that he was an impostor. He needed to interrupt it.

  He shook his head as though trying to clear it of cobwebs, and swayed, and gave a deliberate little lurch that sent him stumbling into her. As he came up against her he began to let himself fall, but she caught him easily—he was so light, so flimsy—and held him, her arm encircling his rib-cage, until he had found his footing again. “Sorry,” Joseph muttered. “Very dizzy, all of a sudden—”

  “Maybe we should go inside,” she said.

  “Yes. Yes. I guess I’m not strong enough yet to spend this much time on my feet.”

  He leaned on her shamelessly as they returned to the house. She would be more likely to overlook his little lapses of knowledge if she could ascribe them to his general state of debilitation and exhaustion. He clambered gladly into his bed. When she asked him if he wanted anything to eat, Joseph told her that he did, and she brought him some of last night’s stew, which he ate with steadily increasing enthusiasm. Then he told her that he wanted to sleep for a while, and she went away.

  But he was wide awake. He lay there thinking over their conversation—Eysar, cuylings, the Crossing—and remembering, also, the interesting sensations that the pressure of Thayle’s breast against his side had evoked in him. He enjoyed her company. And she seemed eager to make herself responsible for his welfare. Joseph saw that it would be only too easy to give himself away, though. There were only great gulfs of ignorance in his mind where the most elementary facts of Folkish life and history ought to be.

  Stappin, the town governor, came to Joseph late that afternoon. Joseph was still in bed, sitting up staring idly at nothing at all, wishing he dared to take one of his books from his pack and read it, when the intense little man with the astonishingly broad shoulders and the bullet-shaped head entered his room. Joseph was instantly ill at ease. If he had come so close to revealing the truth about himself to Thayle in the course of the most casual sort of conversation, what chance did he have of concealing it from this hard-eyed, ruthless-looking man, who plainly had come here for the purpose of interrogating him? And what would happen to him, he wondered, once Stappin discovered his secret?

  The governor had been doing a little research, too. He wasted no time on pleasantries. And he let it be known right away that he had his suspicions about Joseph’s story. “Ludbrek House, that is where you came from, is what you told us yesterday. How can that be? There are people here who have heard of that place. They tell me that Ludbrek House is such a very great distance from here. Beyond the mountains, it is.”

  “Yes,” Joseph said impassively. He met the stony little eyes with an even stare. I am Joseph Master Keilloran, he told himself, and this man, formidable as he is, is only the governor of a Folkish town. With a little care he would get through this. “On the other side, in High Manza.”

  With a little care, yes.

  But he had let the words “High Manza” slip out without thinking. He regretted that at once. Did the Folk, he wondered, really use that term for the northern third of the continent, or was that in fact purely a Master designation?

  With his very first statement he had quite possibly placed himself in peril. He saw that he must be more sparing in his replies. The less he said, the less likely was it that he would stumble into some blunder that would disclose the truth about himself. It had been a mistake to remind himself a moment ago that he was Joseph Master Keilloran: right now he was Waerna of Ludbrek House, and he must be Waerna down to his fingertips.

  But Stappin did not seem to be bothered by the phrase itself, only by the improbability of the journey. All he said was, “That is many hundreds of miles. It was winter. It rains up there in the winter, and sometimes there is snow, also. There is little to eat. No one could survive such a journey.”

  Joseph indicated his emaciated form, his wild tangled beard. “You can see that I very nearly did not.”

  “No. You could not have survived, not on your own. Someone must have helped you. Who was that?”

  “Why, it was the Indigen
es,” Joseph said. “I thought you knew that!”

  Stappin appeared genuinely startled. “They would not have done that. The Indigenes are concerned only with the Indigenes. They will have nothing to do with anyone else.”

  “But they did,” Joseph said. “They did! Look, look there—” He indicated the ragged Indigene robes that he had been wearing when he arrived in Eysar Haven. Saban or Thayle had washed them and stacked them, neatly folded, in a corner of the room. “That cloth—it is Indigene weave. Look at it, Governor Stappin! Touch it! Can it be anything other but Indigene weave? And that fur mantle next to it. They gave it to me. They took me in, they fed me, they moved me from village to village.”

  Stappin spent some time digesting that. It was impossible to tell what was going on behind those cold, hard eyes.

  Then, unexpectedly, he said, “Why is it you speak so strangely?”

  Joseph compelled himself to meet the governor’s gaze steadily, unflinchingly. “What do you find strange about my speech, Governor Stappin?”

  “It is not like ours. Your tone of voice. The way you put your words together.”

  Calm, he thought. Stay calm. “I am of Ludbrek House in High Manza, and this is the way we speak there. Perhaps a little of the Masters’ way of speaking has come into our speech and changed it. I could not say.”

  “Yes. Yes. I forget: you are stendlings, there.”

  Another new word. From the context Joseph guessed it was the antithesis of “cuyling,” and meant—what? Serf? Slave? Vassal? Something on that order.

  He simply shrugged. He was not going to get into a discussion of a word whose meaning was uncertain to him.

  “And how came it to pass,” Stappin said, and there was still an ugly little suspicious edge to his voice, “that you and the Indigenes became such great friends?”

  “The uprising happened,” Joseph said. “That was the first thing.”

  He studied Stappin carefully. By now Joseph had concluded that these cuyling Folk of Eysar Haven not only had taken no part in the rebellion, but that they must know very little about it. Stappin did not question his use of the term. He did not react to it in any way. He remained standing as he was, motionless beside Joseph’s bed, legs far apart, hands balled into fists and pressing against his hips, waiting.