Gordon R. Dickson (4 page)

The powerful-looking man sat down again without a word and returned to his map study.

“Reas,” said Galyan, waving a hand at him, and looking down at Jim, “is what you might call my bodyguard. Although I don’t need a bodyguard—no more than any of the Highborn do. Does that surprise you?”

“I don’t know enough about it to be either surprised or not surprised,” answered Jim.

Galyan nodded, surprisingly, as if in approval.

“No, of course you don’t,” he said. He sat down on a handy cushion and reached out a long arm.

“Let me see that tool of yours,” he said. “The one you used to hurt Mekon.”

Jim drew the knife and passed it over, hilt first. Galyan accepted it gingerly, holding it between a thumb and two opposing fingers. He held it up in the air before his eyes and tenderly touched its point and edges with the long forefinger of his left hand. Then he handed it back to Jim.

“I suppose you could kill an ordinary man with something like that,” he said.

“Yes,” said Jim.

“Very interesting,” said Galyan. He sat for a moment, as if caught up in his own thoughts. Then his eyes focused on Jim once more. “You realize, I suppose, that you aren’t allowed to go around damaging the Highborn with tools like that?”

Jim said nothing. In the face of his silence, Galyan smiled, almost as he had smiled at Slothiel—a little enigmatically, a little cruelly.

“You’re very interesting, Wolfling,” he said slowly. “Very interesting indeed. You don’t seem to realize that you exist like an insect in the palm of any one of us who are Highborn. Now, someone like Mekon would have closed his hand and crushed the life out of you long before this. In fact, that is just what he was about to do when Afuan and I stopped him. But I’m not the sort of Highborn that Mekon is. In fact, I am like no other Highborn you will meet—except the Emperor; and, since we’re first cousins, that’s not surprising. So I’m not going to close my hand on you, Wolfling. I’m going to reason with you—as if you were Highborn yourself.”

“Thank you,” said Jim.

“You do not thank me, Wolfling,” said Galyan softly. “You do not thank me, or curse me, or plead with me, or praise me. You do nothing where I am concerned—but listen. And answer when you are questioned. Now, to begin with. How did you get into that room with Mekon, Trahey, and Slothiel?”

Jim told him briefly and emotionlessly.

“I see,” said Galyan. He clasped his long hands around one knee and leaned back a little on his cushion, looking at a slight slant up into Jim’s face. “So you trusted to the fact that the Princess intended to show you off to the Emperor, and that for that reason no one else would dare harm you. Even if such a faith were justified, Wolfling, you showed a rather remarkable control of your nerves to stand absolutely still while that beast jumped at your face.”

He paused, as if to give Jim a chance to say something. When Jim did not, he murmured, almost deprecatingly, “You have my leave to speak.”

“What would you like me to speak about?” asked Jim.

Galyan’s lemon-yellow eyes glowed almost like a cat’s eyes in the dark.

“Yes,” he murmured, drawing the s sound out slowly, “you are most unusual—even for a Wolfling. Though I haven’t actually met that many Wolflings, so that I don’t consider myself much of a judge. You’re fairly good-sized for someone not Highborn. Tell me, the rest of your people aren’t as big as you, are they?”

“On the average, no,” said Jim.

“Then there’re bigger males among you?”

“Yes,” said Jim, without expanding on the subject.

“As large as the Highborn?” asked Galyan. “Are there any as tall as myself?”

“Yes,” said Jim.

“But not many,” said Galyan, his eyes glowing. “In fact, they’re rare. Isn’t that so?”

“That’s right,” said Jim.

“In fact,” said Galyan, nursing his knee, “to be truthful about it, you might say that they are practically in the case of freaks—aren’t they?”

“You might say that,” said Jim.

“Yes, I thought we’d get at the truth,” said Galyan. “You see, Wolfling, we of the Highborn are not freaks. We’re a true aristocracy—an aristocracy of not merely inherited power superior to anything else owned by the various races of man. We’re superior physically, mentally, and emotionally. This is a fact that you will not have grasped yet; and normally the practice would have been to let you discover it the hard way on your own. However, I’ve taken an interest in you… .”

He turned to Reas.

“Bring me a couple of rods,” he said.

The heavy-boned bodyguard got up from his map, went across the room, and came back holding a pair of short black rods like the one Jim had seen at Ro’s belt and like the two which Mekon had produced after Jim had used the knife on him. Another black rod, just like the two in Reas’ hands, Jim noticed, was stuck through loops in the ropelike belt that encircled Reas’ thick waist.

“Thank you, Reas,” said Galyan, accepting the two rods. He turned to Jim. “I told you that you won’t find other Highborn like me. I’m remarkably free of prejudice toward the lesser races of man—not out of any sentimentality, but out of practicality. But I would like to show you something.”

He turned his head and beckoned to one of the small, brown-skinned men with the brown hair hanging straight down his back. The man got up and came over to stand beside Reas, and Galyan handed him one of the two black rods. The man stuck it through the belt around his own waist.

“Reas, as I said,” said Galyan to Jim, “is not only trained but actually bred to be a bodyguard. Now, observe how he handles his rod, compared to his opponent here.”

Galyan turned to Reas and the other man, who were now facing each other at a distance of about four feet.

“I will clap my hands twice,” said Galyan to them. “The first clap commences the draw—only, Reas will not be allowed to draw until the second clap. Observe, Wolfling!”

Galyan lifted his hands and clapped them softly together twice, the second clap following about a half-second behind the first. At the sound of the first clap, the small brown man snatched the rod from his belt and was just bringing its far end up to point at Reas when the second clap sounded and Reas drew his own rod swiftly and smoothly.

Just then, something in appearance like a cross between the flame of a welding torch and the arc of a static-electricity charge crackled from the end of the rod held by the smaller man. It was aimed directly at the chest of Reas, but it never reached its target. Even as it burst from the end of the rod, Reas’ rod was already in position, and a counterdischarge met and deflected the discharge from the smaller man’s rod, so that both charges went upward.

“Very good,” said Galyan. The discharge from both rods ceased, and both men lowered their rods and turned to face the Highborn. Galyan reached out and took the rod from the small brown man and dismissed him with a wave back to his work.

“Now, watch closely, Wolfling,” said Galyan. He slid the black rod he held into a pair of loops on his own belt; and as if in response to an unseen signal, the bodyguard, Reas, did the same with his rod.

“Now, as I say—observe, Wolfling,” said Galyan softly. “Reas can draw at any time he wishes.”

Reas stepped forward until he was less than an arm’s length from the seated Highborn. For a moment he stood completely motionless; then he looked off into a corner of the room; and at the same moment his hand flashed toward his belt.

There was a sudden sharp click! Galyan’s arm was extended, and the rod in his hand was holding Reas’ rod in half-drawn position from its belt loops. Galyan chuckled softly and released the pressure he was putting against the other rod. He handed his rod back to Reas, who took them away across the room.

“You see?” said Galyan, turning to Jim. “Any Highborn has faster reflexes than any single human of any of the other races of man. Let alone wild men like yourselves. That was why in going after rods as Mekon did, he was intending to force you into a duel that you had no chance whatsoever of winning. As I say, we are true aristocracy. Not only are my reflexes faster than those of Reas, but my memory is better, my intelligence is greater, my discernment and perceptions are sharper than those of any other human beings—yes, even among the Highborn themselves. But, in spite of that, I employ more of the low-born than any of my fellow Highborn. I have many things for them to do, and I keep them busy at it. Do you wonder why I do this, when I myself could do any of these things better, by and for myself?”

“I’d assume,” said Jim, “for the simple reason that you can’t be in two places at once.”

Galyan’s eyes glowed with a new intensity.

“What a brilliant Wolfling it is!” he said. “Yes, other men are useful to me, even though they are inferior. And it strikes me, just now, that maybe you and the little tool of yours with which you damaged Mekon might one day be useful to me, too. Are you surprised to hear that?”

“Not after you spent this much time on me,” said Jim.

Galyan rocked himself softly on his cushion, holding to his knee.

“Better and better,” he murmured. “This Wolfling has a brain—raw gray matter, of course. But a brain, nonetheless. I wasn’t wrong. Yes, I may have a use for you, Wolfling—and do you know why you’ll be useful to me when the time comes?”

“You must plan to pay me, some way or another,” said Jim.

“Exactly,” said Galyan. “We Highborn do not show our age, so I’ll tell you right now, Wolfling, that while I’m by no means into middle age, as we know lifetimes, still, I’m not a raw youngster anymore. And I’ve learned how to get members of the lesser human races to work for me. I give them whatever they most want by way of reward and payment.”

He paused. Jim waited.

“Well, Wolfling,” said Galyan after a minute, “what is it you want most? If you were not a wild man, I wouldn’t have to ask you. But I don’t know Wolflings well enough to know what they want. What do they want most?”

“Freedom,” said Jim.

Galyan smiled.

“Of course,” he said. “What all wild beasts want—or think they want. Freedom. And in your case, freedom means the right to come and go, doesn’t it?”

“That’s the base of it,” said Jim.

“Particularly the right to go, I should think,” murmured Galyan. “No doubt you never stopped to think of it, Wolfling, but it is simple fact that once you have been taken in by us to the Throne World, you would have no way of ever going back to the place where we first found you. Did you realize that? That, once you joined us on this trip to the Throne World, you would never be able to go home again?”

Jim stared down at him.

“No,” he said, “I hadn’t planned never to go home again.”

“Well, that’s your situation,” said Galyan. He lifted a slim forefinger. “Unless you turn out to be useful to me. I might see to it that you got home again.”

He let go of his knee and rose suddenly to his feet, towering over Jim.

“I’ll send you back to Ro now,” he said. “Carry that thought I’ve just given you away with you. Your only hope of ever seeing the world from which you came again is if in some way you please me.”

The Highborn made no further movement, but abruptly Jim found himself back in the glass-walled room with the other pets. Ro was crouched at one end, weeping over the body of one of the feline creatures. It was not the one who had been among the pets, because this one now stood, whining anxiously, just out of reach of the tearful girl. It was another one that lay dead—and it looked rather as if it had been cut almost in half by a thunderbolt.

Jim went to the girl. She was not aware of his presence until he had reached down and put his arms around her. She looked up, startled and suddenly stiff; but then, when she saw who it was, she clung to him.

“You’re all right. At least, you’re all right …” she managed to get out.

“Where did this come from?” asked Jim, pointing down at the dead feline.

The question triggered off a new burst of emotion. But gradually the story began to come out. She had raised this feline, as she had raised the other one that was one of the pets. This feline had been given to Mekon by Afuan some time back, and Mekon had taught it to attack on command.

“But it was all right when I saw it last,” said Jim. “How did this happen to it?”

She drew back a little from him and stared at him, shakily and with surprise.

“Didn’t you hear?” she asked. “Afuan left it up to Galyan to fine Mekon for what he’d done. And Galyan decided that the fine would be …” She choked and could not go on, pointing at the animal.

“It’s a strange sort of fine,” he said slowly.

“Strange?” She looked up at him puzzledly. “But it’s just the sort of fine that Galyan would exact. He’s a demon, Jim. Where somebody else, operating on the Princess’ orders, might have fined Mekon one of his favorite servants, or something else he valued, Galyan chose this poor animal instead—because along with losing it, of course, Mekon’s going to lose a point. Oh, not a Lifetime Point. Galyan’s too clever to be that hard on someone like Mekon. But it’ll be at least a One-Year Point. And Mekon has enough points against him already, Lifetime and otherwise, so that he can seriously worry from time to time about some kind of an accident that might bring him up to the level of banishment.”

“Banishment?” asked Jim.

“Why, of course. Banishment from the Throne World—” Ro caught herself suddenly, and wiped her eyes. She stood up straight and looked down at the body of the dead animal at her feet. Immediately it vanished.

“I keep forgetting you don’t understand things,” she said, turning to Jim. “There’s so much I’m going to have to teach you. All the Highborn play points. It’s one game that even the Emperor can’t overrule; and too many points means you have to leave the Throne World forever. But I’ll explain it all to you a little later. Right now I’d better begin teaching you how to move from room to room—”

But Ro’s words had woken a new train of thought in Jim’s mind.

“Just a second,” he said. “Tell me something, Ro. If I wanted to step back into the city right now on an errand before the ship leaves, could I do it?”

“Oh!” she shook her head sadly at him. “I thought you at least knew that. The ship left that outworld world we were on some time ago. We’ll be at the Throne World in three ship’s-days.”