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"Nephew," he said, "you can't possibly let this wild man get away with
something like this. Break protocol once, and you set a precedent for a
thousand repetitions of the same thing!"
"Now, now, Vhotan," said the Emperor, turning his smile appeasingly on the
older High-born. "How many Wolflings have we on our Throne World who don't yet
know the palace rules? No, I invited him here. If I remember, I even said I
might find him interesting to talk to; and now, I believe I might."
He stepped aside, and folded himself up, sitting down on one of the large
hassocklike pillows that played the role of furniture for the High-born.
"Sit down, Wolfling," he said. "You too, Uncle and you, Lorava " He glanced
aside at the third High-born, a slim, younger male who had just come up.
"Let's all sit down here together and have a chat with the Wolfling. Where do
you come from, Wolfling? Out toward galaxy's-edge of our Empire, isn't it?"
"Yes, Oran," Jim answered. He had already seated himself; and reluctantly
Vhotan was lowering himself to a hassock beside the Emperor. The young
High-born called Lorava took two hasty strides up to them and also sat down on
a nearby pillow.
"A lost colony. A lost world," mused the Emperor, almost to himself, "filled
with wild men and no doubt wilder beasts?"
He looked at Jim for an answer.
"Yes," said Jim, "we still have a good number of wild beasts although that
number's been reduced, in the last few hundred years particularly. Man has a
tendency to crowd out the wild animals."
"Man has a tendency to crowd out even man, sometimes," said the Emperor. For
a moment a little shadow seemed to pass behind his eyes, as if he remembered
some private sadness of his own. Jim watched him with careful interest. It was
hard to believe that this man before him was the same one he had seen drooling
and making incoherent sounds in the arena.
"But the men there and the women. Are they all like you?" the Emperor said,
returning the focus of his eyes to Jim.
"Each one of us is different, Oran," said Jim.
The Emperor laughed.
"Of course!" he said. "And no doubt, being healthy wild men, you prize the
difference, instead of trying to fit yourselves all into one common mold. Like
we superior beings, we High-born of the Throne World!" His humor calmed
slightly. "How did we happen to find your world, after having lost it so many
centuries or thousands of years ago?"
"The Empire didn't find us," said Jim. "We found an outlying world of the
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Empire."
There was a second's silence in the room, broken by a sudden half-snort,
half-bray of laughter from the youngster Lorava.
"He's lying!" Lorava sputtered. "They found us? If they could find us, how
did they ever get lost in the first place?"
"Quiet!" snapped Vhotan at Lorava. He turned back to Jim. His face and the
face of the Emperor were serious. "Are you telling us that your people, after
forgetting about the Empire, and the falling back into complete savagery,
turned around and developed civilization all over again including a means of
space travel?"
"Yes," said Jim economically.
Vhotan stared hard into Jim's eyes for a long second, and then turned to the
Emperor.
"It might be worth checking, Nephew," he said.
"Worth checking. Yes . . ." murmured the Emperor. But his thoughts seemed to
have wandered. He was no longer gazing at Jim, but off across the room at
nothing in particular; and a look of gentle melancholy had taken possession of
his face. Vhotan glanced at him and then got to his feet. The older High-born
stepped over to Jim, tapped him on the shoulder with a long forefinger, and
beckoned for him to rise.
Jim got to his feet. Behind the still-seated, still abstractedly gazing
Emperor, Lorava also rose to his feet. Vhotan led them both quietly to a far
end of the room, then turned to Lorava.
"I'll call you back later, Lorava," he said brusquely.
Lorava nodded and disappeared. Vhotan turned back to Jim.
"We've had an application from Slothiel to sponsor you for adoption," Vhotan
said quickly. "Also, you were brought here by the Princess Afuan; and I
understand you had some contact with Galyan. Are all of those things correct?"
"They are," said Jim.
"I see. . . ." Vhotan stood for a second, his eyes hooded thoughtfully. Then
his gaze sharpened once more upon Jim. "Did any of those three suggest that
you come here just now?"
"No," answered Jim. He smiled slightly at the tall, wide-shouldered old man
towering massively over him. "Coming here was my own idea in response to the
Emperor's invitation. I only mentioned it to two other people. Slothiel and
Ro."
"Ro?" Vhotan frowned. "Oh, that little girl, the throw-back in Afuan's
household. You're sureshe didn't suggest your coming here?"
"Perfectly sure. She tried to stop me," said Jim. "And as for Slothiel when I
told him I was coming, he laughed."
"Laughed?" Vhotan echoed the word, then grunted. "Look at my eyes, Wolfling!"
Jim fastened his own gaze on the two lemon-yellow eyes under the slightly
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yellowish tufts of eyebrows. As he gazed, the eyes seemed to increase in
brilliance and swim before him in the old man's face, until they threatened to
merge.
"How many eyes do I have?" he heard Vhotan's voice rumbling.
Two eyes swam together, like two yellowish-green suns, burning before him.
They tried to become one. Jim felt a pressure upon him like that of the
hypnotic influence Afuan had tried to bring to bear on him before the
bullfight. He stiffened internally, and the eyes separated.
"Two," he said.
"You're wrong, Wolfling," said Vhotan. "I have one eye. One eye only!"
"No," said Jim. The two eyes remained separate. "I see two."
Vhotan grunted again. Abruptly his gaze ceased burning down upon Jim, and the
hypnotic pressure relaxed. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]