Gordon R. Dickson (10 page)

“Thank you again,” Jim said. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I’m due for an exercise session with the Starkien who’s my substitute.” He looked over at Ro. “Ro?”

“Good to have seen you again, Jim,” said Galyan slowly in a tone of voice almost matching the amused drawl of Slothiel. Clearly, whatever he had hoped to gain from bringing Jim and Wyk Ben face to face, he had gained. But there was no point in trying to pursue the matter, here and now, any further. Jim turned to Ro and held out his hand. She took it, and immediately they were back in his room.

“What was all that about?” asked Jim.

Ro shook her head puzzledly.

“I don’t know,” she said not happily. “And when anything happens on the Throne World that you don’t understand, it’s a danger signal. I’ll try to find out, Jim—I’ll see you later.”

Hastily she disappeared.

Left by himself, Jim ran over the meeting with Wyk Ben in his mind. It struck him that things were in danger of happening so fast that they might get ahead of him. He spoke out loud to the empty room.

“Adok!”

It took possibly three seconds—no more—and then the figure of the Starkien appeared before him.

“How are you feeling?” asked Adok. “Do you need—”

“Nothing,” said Jim brusquely. “Adok, are there any library facilities down in the servant’s area, underground?”

“Library? …” For a moment Adok’s face squeezed faintly, in what Jim was beginning to understand was an expression of extreme puzzlement. Then it cleared. “Oh, of course, you mean a learning center. Yes, I’ll take you to one, Jim. I’ve never been there myself, but I know about where it is.”

Adok ventured to touch Jim on the arm, and they were in the underground park Jim had passed through with Adok before. Adok hesitated, then turned left and began to walk off toward a side Street.

“This way, I think,” he said. Jim followed him, and they left the park, going down the Street until they came to a flight of what looked like wide stone steps leading up to a tall open portal in a wall of polished brown stone.

There were a few people coming and going through the portal, up and down the steps—all of them servants rather than Starkiens. Jim watched these, as he had watched all the servants they had passed on the way here, with a close attention. Now, going up the steps, his concentration was rewarded. Coming out of the portal as he and Adok started up the steps was a yellowish-skinned, black-eyed man like Melness. As he started down the steps, his eyes went to one of the servants entering—one of the short brown men with long, straight hair. The brown man ran the heel of his hand, in apparently an idle gesture, across his waist just at belt level. In response, without breaking stride, the yellow-skinned man who looked like Melness reached casually across with his right hand to lay two fingers momentarily against the biceps of his left arm, before dropping the arm once more to his side.

Without another gesture—in fact, without looking at each other after that—the two passed, going opposite ways on the steps.

“Did you see that?” Jim asked in a low voice to Adok as they entered the portal. “Those gestures? What were they all about?”

For an unusually long moment Adok did not answer, so that Jim turned to glance at him as they walked. Adok’s face, insofar as Jim could read it, was serious.

“It’s strange,” said the Starkien, almost to himself. “There has been more of it lately.”

He lifted his eyes to Jim.

“It’s their Silent Language.”

“What did they say, then?” asked Jim. Adok shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “It’s an old language—the Highborn first learned of it after the first Servant’s Revolt, thousands of years ago. The servants have always used it. But we Starkiens are shut out from it. That’s because we’re always loyal to the Emperor.”

“I see,” said Jim. He became thoughtful.

They passed down a wide hallway of the same polished brown stone and into a large interior room which seemed brown stone and into a large interior room which seemed to be filled with rank on rank of whirling, glowing globes of light—like small suns. They spun—if that indeed was what they were doing—too fast for the eye to follow their rotation. But they were obviously in constant movement.

Adok halted. He gestured at the miniature suns.

“This is one of the Files,” he said. “Which one, I don’t know, because they’re designed to feed not to us here but to the learning centers for the young Highborn above ground. But off to the right here there’re carrels, where you can tap the information stored, not only here, but in Files all over the Throne World.”

He led Jim off to the right and out of the room with the miniature suns into a long, narrow corridor with a series of open doorways running down its right side. Adok led him down the corridor and into one of the doorways.

Within was a small room—the first unoccupied one they had passed—fitted with a chair and a sort of desk or table, with a raised surface, sloping upward at an angle of about forty-five degrees to the horizontal.

Jim sat down in front of the raised surface, which seemed perfectly blank except for a pair of small black studs, or buttons, near the bottom. Adok reached over and touched one of the buttons, however, and immediately the sloping surface resolved itself into a white screen, with one word, in the sort of shorthand figures that were the Imperial language, glowing blackly in the center of it. The word was “ready.”

“Speak to it,” said Adok.

“I’d like to examine whatever records there are of Empire expeditions,” said Jim slowly to the screen, “with a view to finding any that went out past—” and he gave the Imperial name for Alpha Centauri.

The squiggles that stood for the Imperial word “ready” vanished from the screen. Its place was taken by a line of writing moving from left to right at a slow pace.

Jim sat, reading. It appeared that the retrieval system of the File was not equipped to hunt down the information he wanted directly. It could only supply him with a vast quantity of information about past expeditions in general out in the direction in which Alpha Centauri lay from the Throne World. Apparently Jim’s task would require his searching all the relevant records of expeditions in that general direction in order to find the one which had gone on to Earth—if indeed any expedition ever had. It was not a task to be done at one sitting, Jim saw. It would take hours, days, perhaps even weeks.

“Is there any way to speed this up?” he asked, looking up at Adok. Adok reached over to the second stud and turned it. The line of type moving across the screen began to move more rapidly. Adok’s hand fell away, and Jim raised his own. He continued to increase the speed of the line until the stud stopped, evidently having reached its highest rate. Adok made a small sound, like a badly stifled grunt of surprise.

“What?” demanded Jim, not lifting his eyes from the swiftly sliding line of information.

“You read,” said Adok, “almost like a Highborn.”

Jim did not bother to answer that. He remained fixed before the screen, hardly conscious that time was sliding by, until, with the ending of one set of records and the beginning of the next, there was a momentary interruption in which he became conscious of the fact that he had very nearly stiffened in position, after sitting without moving for so long.

He straightened up, shut off the machine for a moment, and looked about him. Abruptly, he saw Adok, still standing beside him. Evidently the Starkien had not moved either.

“Have you been waiting there all this time?” asked Jim. “How long have I been reading?”

“Some little time,” said Adok without apparent emotion. He gave Jim a period in Empire time units that was the equivalent of a little over four hours.

Jim shook his head and got to his feet. Then, remembering, he sat down before the screen again and turned it on. He asked for information on the Silent Language.

The screen responded—not with one Silent Language, but with fifty-two of them. Apparently there had been fifty-two recorded “revolts” by the servants of the Throne World. Jim made a mental note to look up these revolts next time he was here. Apparently, after each revolt the Highborn had investigated and translated the secrets of the current Silent Language; but by the time the next revolt took place, some hundreds or thousands of years later, an entirely new language had grown up.

They were not so much languages, in fact, as sets of signals—like the signals passed back and forth between the pitcher and the catcher in a baseball game, or between the players in the game and the coaches on the sideline. Rubbing one’s fingers together, or scratching one’s chin, was clearly and visibly a signal—or a part of the current Silent Language. The question lay not in seeing the signal but in interpreting it. The question was what it meant this particular time.

Jim skimmed the information of the Silent Languages, shut off the machine, and got to his feet. He and Adok left the Files, and with Jim leading, they walked out of the place, down the steps, and back into the community area near the park.

They strolled about its streets, shops, and places of entertainment for nearly an hour, while Jim kept his eyes quietly alert for any more signals in the current Silent Language.

He saw many, none of which made sense according to any of the earlier fifty-two versions of the language. Nonetheless, he carefully stored up in his memory each signal as he saw it, and the conditions under which it was used. After a certain time of this, he left Adok and returned to his own room.

He had hardly been back five minutes when Ro appeared, accompanied by Slothiel. Jim made a mental note to ask Ro what kind of warning system alerted her that he was back in his quarters, and also how such a warning system could be screened out or turned off.

But as he rose to face the two of them now, he mentally filed that thought also, at the sight of the faint worry on the face of Ro and the look of rather grim humor on Slothiel’s face.

“I take it something’s happened?” Jim asked.

“You take it correctly,” answered Slothiel. “Your adoption is being approved, and Galyan has just now suggested to me that I give a large party for you to celebrate. I didn’t realize he was that much a friend of yours. Now, why do you suppose he’d do something like that?”

“If you give such a party,” said Jim, “will the Emperor attend?”

“The Emperor and Vhotan,” answered Slothiel. “Yes, almost certainly they’ll both be there. Why?”

“Because,” said Jim, “that’s why Galyan suggested you give the party.”

Slothiel frowned. It was a slightly haughty frown, with the faint implication that a member of the lesser races should not make statements to a Highborn that a Highborn could not fully understand.

“Why do you say that?” asked Slothiel.

“Because Melness is a very clever man,” said Jim.

Slothiel’s tall body stiffened.

“All right, Wolfling!” he snapped. “We’ve had enough question-and-answer games!”

“Jim—” began Ro warningly.

“I’m sorry,” said Jim, looking steadily at the taller man. “The explanation doesn’t concern me—it concerns the Emperor. So I’m not going to give it to you. And you’re not going to force me to give it. In the first place, you can’t. And in the second place, it would be impolitic of you to try, since you’re the one who’s sponsoring me for adoption.”

Slothiel stood perfectly still.

“Believe me,” said Jim, this time persuasively, “if I was free to answer you, I would. Let me make you a promise. If by the time the party is over you haven’t had an assurance either from the Emperor or from Vhotan that I had good reason not to tell you, then I’ll answer any question you have about the whole thing. All right?”

For a long second longer Slothiel remained rigid, his eyes burning down at Jim. Then, abruptly, the tension leaked out of him, and he smiled his old, lazy smile.

“You know, you have me there, Jim,” he drawled. “I can hardly forcibly question the very lesser human I’m sponsoring for adoption, can I? Particularly since it would be impossible to keep the fact quiet. You’ll make a good man at wagering for points, if by some freak chance you ever should happen to get adopted, Jim. All right, keep your secret—for now.”

He disappeared.

“Jim,” said Ro, “I worry about you.”

For some reason, the words rang with unusual importance in his mind. He looked about at her sharply and saw why they had. She was looking at him with concern, but it was a different sort of concern from that which she lavished on all her pets and which she had heretofore lavished on him. And the tone of her voice had conveyed a difference to match.

He was suddenly, unexpectedly, and deeply touched. No one, man or woman, had worried about him for a very very long time.

“Can’t you at least tell me why you say Galyan’s suggesting the party because Melness is a very clever man?” Ro asked. “It sounds as if you’re saying that there’s some connection between Galyan and Melness. But that can’t be between a Highborn and one of the lesser races.”

“How about you and me,” said Jim, remembering that new note in her voice.

She blushed, but this, as he had come to learn, did not mean as much with her as it might have with another woman.

“I’m different!” she said. “But Galyan isn’t. He’s one of the highest of Highborn. Not just by birth—by attitude, too.”

“But he’s always made it a point to make a good deal of use of men of the lesser races.”

“That’s true… .” She became thoughtful. Then she looked back up at him. “But you still haven’t explained… .”

“There’s nothing much to explain,” said Jim, “except for that part that I say is really a matter belonging to the Emperor rather than to me. I said what I did about Melness being a clever man because men can make mistakes out of their own cleverness, as well as out of foolishness. They can try too hard to cover something up. In Melness’ case, when Adok first took me to meet him, Melness went to a great deal of trouble to make it look as if he resented my being placed under his responsibility.”

Ro frowned.

“But why should he resent …”

“There could be a number of reasons, of course,” said Jim. “For one—and the easiest answer—the fact that he resented a Wolfling like myself being sponsored for adoption when a man like him stands no chance of such sponsorship, just because he is so useful in his capacity as a servant. But, by the same token, Melness should have been too clever to let me know that resentment, particularly when there was a possibility that I might end up as a Highborn myself, in a position to resent him in return.”