"We will get out of here," Manyface told himself solemnly, "when we have finished. Pettyman Castor! Do you want to enter the university?"
"Oh, do I!"
"That means yes, too," said the second voice disagreeably, and Manyface's own overrode it again:
"Do you know what courses you want to take?"
"Not really," Castor confessed. "I mean, after all, the semester has been running for weeks now. I'm not sure which ones will still admit me—"
Manyface looked surprised with all his faces. "Admit you?" he said uncertainly, as though testing whether the words had any meaning in that context. "Of course they'll admit you!" He gestured at the screen. "Display the curriculum lists," he ordered. "Pick what you want, and I will put my chop on your application—no, no more discussion, boy! Do it. Then go to my house and make dinner. It has been too long since I have had a home-cooked meal! And I want something special tonight—let me see, I think some fried fish—no, not fish, too much oil in the water—STEAK, PLEASE—no, shrimp—no, damn it, remember the oil—Oh, hell," shouted Manyface furiously, over the noise of his own skullmates, "cook anything you can! But do it well and serve it hot! Now get on with it!"
So Castor prepared for himself a dream menu of all the hands-on and advanced courses his village screens had been unable to supply. He munched his way through the various classes with delight—astrogation, solar ballistics, space medicine—everywhere he was welcome, and the instructors unfailingly made sure he caught up quickly with the classes. Castor was awed. To him the concept of "high party official" had been one of those abstractions that you knew people thought about. But he had never before seen the power one such (or, in Many-face's case, perhaps several such) could display.
And Manyface's status was very high indeed. He was a powerful figure even at Home, when he chose to visit the old Han cities of Beijing or Guangzhou. In the Chinese society of North America, where Home was only an ideal, he was at least first among equals.
After the first day of school, Castor was addicted. He decided that no price was too high to pay for these joys! After his first full day as Manyface's houseboy, however, he began to think that some prices were at least extravagant. For one thing, he had not expected that he would be required to sleep at Manyface's house. That was not bad. The room given him was large, comfortable, even luxurious. All it lacked was the presence of Tsoong Delilah. Castor had rapidly become accustomed to that most appreciative of bedmates, was jolted to find his sleeping arrangements had been altered without consulting him, was startled to learn (from Manyface's secretary) that the change was at Inspector Tsoong Delilah's own request. It had to be some sort of feminine tact, he decided. No doubt she was giving him the opportunity to find some younger woman to relate to among the female students at the university. No matter. That he would straighten out when the time was ripe—when the question arose—when his glands recovered from their exercise in her busy bed.
There was also the question of Manyface himself. Or themself.
It was not that any one portion of Manyface's collective personality was unduly abrasive—well, not intolerably so, anyway. It was just that they were eleven individuals. With eleven different sets of habits and preferences and interests and dislikes. Usually it was Professor Fung who did the talking, as "chairman" of the committee that lived inside his skull. But that was only custom when there was no serious competition; what Manyface's secretary had told Castor was true. There was no "real" Manyface. When one of the others had some special interest in talking to Castor—when, one might say, the chair of some subcommittee needed to discuss a matter of particular interest—the other voices gave it freedom to speak. Sometimes for minutes on end. "It's quite difficult, yes," said Potter Alicia, through lips of the old man. "But we rub along somehow together. We have no choice, after all. Hsang is always complaining that we never play golf. Shum gives us the most trouble, I think—I do not!—oh, be still, Shum. I'm not criticizing you, I'm only saying that you have very strong sexual drives. There's not much we can do for either Hsang or Shum, actually. Shum least of all—not counting that the idea of physical intimacy with a woman quite disgusts me—" A warning grimace of the lips as Shum gathered himself to rebut made her change the subject—"anyway, we do the best we can to humor each other. It makes for peace inside the skull. Tell me, are you going to see my daughter soon?"
Castor cleared his throat. "I'm really very busy here," he temporized. He had said, or as much as said, that he and her daughter were divorced. If his putative mother-in-law had trouble remembering that, it was certainly not his business to remind her. It was a good time to change the subject. "As to dinner," he said, "I think we're all agreed on chicken, is that right? And with it rice?"
"Rice with onions, correct—no, plain—WHAT RICE? PILAF!—plain rice—I think," said Potter Alicia's thoughtful, ladylike voice, "that you should cook what you like, dear Castor, and we'll eat it anyway."
It was all a dream for Castor. Acceptance to the university! No need ever to go back to rot in the damned rice paddies! A skilled new mistress—temporarily unavailable, yes, but sure to be restored to him before long. It even occurred to him now and then to miss his wife. (But she had left him, after all. There was no need to feel guilt, and thus no obligation to miss her.)
And most delightful of all was the chance to look out into space through his new classes—not as a stubborn student at the end of a computer tie line on a collective farm, but as a regular member, indeed a privileged member, of the academic community.
And there was news. His astrogation class was full of it. First, the Party had ordered a speedup in the desultory space program. The instructor was as thrilled as Castor to be able to tell the class the news. He displayed the dozen or so rockets that had been designed long since, some of them even built; but there had been no muscle behind the program. Now the tempo was picking up. Why? asked the class, and the instructor gave them an opaque look. "It is the wisdom of the Party cadres that must answer such questions," he said. "At certain times it is necessary to wait and regroup, at others to move ahead."
And now was a time to move ahead.
Castor said boldly, "Has this anything to do with the new spaceship that has been discovered?"
The instructor hesitated, looked around the class for support, finally dared a "Perhaps."
"And have any of the messages from the spaceship been translated?"
To that not even a perhaps; the instructor took refuge in indignation. "Pettyman Castor! If such information were available, do you not know that the high Party officials would let us know at once? Think rightly, Pettyman Castor!"
But he had not said the message had not been translated. Nor did he pretend that the spacecraft was some burned-out hulk left over from either the Russians or the Americans.
That night in his room at Manyface's house he slaved the screen in his room to Manyface's own and systematically searched the files for further information on the spacecraft. There was none. So there was a secret, that was clear; but he was not going to find out what that secret was. And that, too, was clear.
As, bored, he snapped the screen off it suddenly blinked into his attention signaclass="underline" Someone was calling him. When he opened the circuit he discovered it was Manyface's secretary. Her expression was frosty. "Orders," she said. "You are to report to her apartment for duty."
Though Castor knew it was not decorous, he couldn't help himself. He laughed out loud. "Duty, she said? Oh, to be sure! I know that duty well."