Gordon R. Dickson (7 page)

“Thank you,” he said, and smiled over his shoulder at her as the jacket came off. She went on helping him, her eyes fixed on the floor; but a dark flush stained her downcast features.

“I still think it’s terrible!” she muttered to the floor. “But I didn’t realize—” Suddenly she lifted her face to him, paling again. “I really didn’t realize, Jim. That animal was trying to kill you.”

“Yes,” said Jim, feeling once more the secret, internal touch of shame that came to him whenever he remembered how his bullfighting was rigged, rather than honest. “That’s the way it is.”

“Anyway,” said Ro in very nearly a grim tone of voice, “if we’re lucky, you won’t ever have to do it again. It’s a stroke of luck, to start off with, the Emperor being interested in you. And—guess what?”

She stopped assisting him, and he stood there, half-undressed, staring quizzically down at her.

“What?” he asked.

“I’ve found a sponsor for you!” she burst out excitedly. “Slothiel! He liked you when you didn’t flinch—that first time he saw you. And he’s willing to have you numbered among his acquaintances. Do you know what that means?”

She stopped and waited for his answer. He shook his head. What she was talking about now was something she had not gone into aboard the ship.

“It means you’re not really in the servant class from now on!” she burst out. “I’d hoped to get someone to sponsor you—but not this soon. And I didn’t want to raise your hopes by mentioning it. But Slothiel actually came to me!”

“He did?” Jim frowned internally, although he was careful to keep his physical brow smooth for Ro’s benefit. He wondered if Slothiel had anything to do with Afuan’s visit to him earlier—or what Galyan had said to him aboard the ship. He found himself on the verge of asking Ro this, and then he changed his mind. Afuan’s visit, and the reaction she had tried to provoke in him, he found, was not something he wanted to tell Ro about—at least, not just yet.

He came out of his thoughts abruptly, to realize that Ro was still busily undressing him, with no apparent self-consciousness about the matter. He had no great self-consciousness about it himself. But Ro’s attitude struck him just then as being a little too zealously proprietary, like that of an owner lovingly grooming a pet horse or dog for show purposes. Besides, Jim had needed assistance, not complete care and handling.

“That’s fine,” he said, moving out of her grasp. “I can handle the rest of it myself.”

He picked up his Black Watch kilt from the hassock on which he had dropped it when he had hastily started to dress for the bullring. He put it on, together with a short-sleeved green shirt. Ro watched him with fond pride.

“Tell me more about this sponsorship business,” said Jim, “sponsorship for what?”

“Why,” said Ro, opening her eyes wide, “for adoption by the Throne World, of course! Don’t you remember? I told you that still, occasionally, a few rare people of unusual abilities or talents are allowed to move from one of the Colony Worlds to the Throne World and join the Highborn. Though, of course, they aren’t really Highborn themselves; the best they can hope for is that their great-grandchildren will become true Highborn. Well, that whole process is called adoption by the Throne World. And adoption proceedings start by someone among the Highborn being willing to act as sponsor to whomever wants to be adopted.”

“You’re thinking of getting me adopted as a Highborn?” asked Jim, smiling a little.

“Of course not!” Ro literally hugged herself with glee. “But, once you’ve been sponsored, the adoption proceedings have been started. And you’re protected by the Emperor’s authority as a provisional Highborn, until he gets around to either accepting you or refusing you. And the thing is, nobody ever gets refused, once he’s been sponsored, unless he’s done something so bad that there’s no alternative but to get him off the Throne World. Once Slothiel sponsors you, none of the Highborn can do anything to you the way they can to a servant. I mean, your life’s protected. None of the Highborn—not even Afuan or Galyan—can simply act against you. They have to complain about you to the Emperor.”

“I see,” said Jim thoughtfully. “Should I mention that Slothiel is going to do this when I talk to the Emperor?”

“Talk to the Emperor?” Ro stared at him and then burst out laughing. But she stopped quickly and put an apologetic hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. But the chances are you’ll spend your whole life here and never talk to the Emperor.”

“The chances are wrong, then,” said Jim, “because after the bullfight the Emperor asked me to come and see him as soon as I’d had a chance to rest a bit.”

Ro stared at him. Then slowly she shook her head.

“You don’t understand, Jim,” she said sympathetically. “He just said that. Nobody goes to see the Emperor. The only time they see him is when he has them brought to him. If you’re going to see the Emperor, you’ll suddenly find yourself brought into his presence. Until then, you just have to wait.”

Jim frowned.

“I’m sorry, Jim,” she said. “You didn’t know it, but the Emperor often says things like that. But then, something else comes up and he forgets all about it. Or else he just says it without meaning it, just because it’s something to say. Like paying a compliment.”

Jim smiled slowly, and Ro’s face paled again.

“Don’t look like that!” she said, catching hold of his arm again. “No one should look savage like that.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jim. He erased the grin. “But I’m afraid you’re wrong. I’m going to see the Emperor. Where would he be?”

“Why, in Vhotan’s office, this time of day—” She broke off suddenly, staring at him. “Jim, you mean it! Don’t you understand? You can’t go there—”

“Just show me the way,” said Jim.

“I won’t!” she said. “He’d order his Starkiens to kill you! Maybe they’d even kill you without waiting to be ordered.”

“Oh? And why would the Starkiens want to kill our wild man?” broke in Slothiel’s voice unexpectedly. They turned to discover that the tall Highborn had just materialized in the room with them. Ro wheeled upon him as if he were the cause of her argument with Jim.

“After the bullfight the Emperor told Jim to rest awhile, then come and see him!” said Ro. “Now Jim wants me to tell him how to get to the Emperor! I told him I won’t do it!”

Slothiel broke out laughing.

“Go to the Emperor!” he echoed. “Well, why don’t you tell him? If you won’t, I will.”

“You!” flared Ro. “And you were the one who said you’d sponsor him!”

“True,” drawled Slothiel, “and I will—because I admire the man and because I’ll enjoy the look on Galyan’s face when he hears about it. But if—what did you say his name is—Jim is bound and determined to get himself killed before the sponsorship can be arranged, who am I to interfere with his fate?”

He looked at Jim over the head of Ro, who had pushed herself between them.

“You really want to go?” Slothiel said.

Jim smiled again, grimly.

“I’m a Wolfling,” he said. “I don’t know any better.”

“Right,” said Slothiel, ignoring Ro’s frantic attempts to silence him by her voice and her hand over his mouth. “Hang on. I’ll send you there. For all the Emperor and Vhotan will know, you found the way yourself.”

Immediately, Jim was in a different room. It was a very large circular room with some sort of transparent ceiling showing a cloud-flecked sky above—or was the sky with its clouds merely an illusion overhead? Jim had no time to decide which, because his attention was all taken up by the reaction of the half-dozen people already in the room, who had just caught sight of him.

Of the half-dozen men in the room, one was the Emperor. He had checked himself in mid-sentence on seeing Jim appear; and he stood half-turned from the older, powerfully bodied Highborn who had sat at his right during the bullfight. Standing back a little way from these two, with his back to Jim, and just now turning to see what had interrupted the Emperor, was a male Highborn whom Jim did not recognize. The other three men in the room were heavily muscled, gray-skinned, bald-headed individuals like the one Galyan had referred to as his bodyguard. These wore leather loin straps, with a black rod thrust through loops in the belt around their waist, and about the rest of their body and limbs were metallic-looking bands, which, however, seemed to fit and cling to position on them more like bands of thick elastic cloth than metal. At the sight of Jim, they had immediately drawn their rods and were aiming them at him when a sharp, single word from the Emperor stopped them.

“No!” said the Emperor. “It’s—” He seemed to peer at Jim without recognition for a second; then a broad smile spread across his face. “Why, it’s the Wolfling!”

“Exactly!” snapped the older Highborn. “And what’s he doing here? Nephew, you’d better—”

“Why,” interrupted the Emperor, striding toward Jim, still smiling broadly at him, “I invited him here. Don’t you remember, Vhotan? I issued the invitation after the bullfight.”

Already the Emperor’s tall body was between Jim and the three thick-bodied, armed bodyguards. He stopped one of his own long paces away from Jim and stood smiling down at him.

“Naturally,” the Emperor said, “you came as soon as you could, didn’t you, Wolfling? So as not to offend us by keeping us waiting?”

“Yes, Oran,” answered Jim.

But now the older man, called Vhotan, who was apparently the Emperor’s uncle, had come up to stand beside his nephew. His lemon-yellow eyes under their yellowish tufts of eyebrows glared down at Jim.

“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 Highborn. “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 Highborn.

“Sit down, Wolfling,” he said. “You too, Uncle—and you, Lorava—” He glanced aside at the third Highborn, 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 Highborn 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 Highborn 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 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 Highborn 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 throwback in Afuan’s household. You’re sure she didn’t suggest your coming here?”