Thorby ducked his head and pressed his palms together. "I am honored. My name is Thorby, son of Baslim."
"The pleasure is mine, Thorby. Call me 'Margaret.' My title doesn't count here anyhow, since it is not a ship's title. Do you know what an anthropologist is?"
"Uh, I am sorry, ma'am -- Margaret."
"It's simpler than it sounds. An anthropologist is a scientist who studies how people live together."
Thorby looked doubtful. "This is a science?"
"Sometimes I wonder. Actually, Thorby, it is a complicated study, because the patterns that men work out to live together seem unlimited. There are only six things that all men have in common with all other men and not with animals -- three of them part of our physical makeup, the way our bodies work, and three of them are learned. Everything else that a man does, or believes, all his customs and economic practices, vary enormously. Anthropologists study those variables. Do you understand variable'?"
"Uh," Thorby said doubtfully, "the x in an equation?"
"Correct!" she agreed with delight. "We study the x's in the human equations. That's what I'm doing. I'm studying the way the Free Traders live. They have worked out possibly the oddest solutions to the difficult problem of how to be human and survive of any society in history. They are unique." She moved restlessly. "Thorby, would you mind if I sat in a chair? I don't bend as well as I used to."
Thorby blushed. "Ma'am... I have none. I am dis --"
"There's one right behind you. And another behind me." She stood up and touched the wall. A panel slid aside; an upholstered armchair unfolded from the space disclosed.
Seeing his face she said, "Didn't they show you?" and did the same on the other wall; another chair sprang out.
Thorby sat down cautiously, then let his weight relax into cushions as the chair felt him out and adjusted itself to him. A big grin spread over his face. "Gosh!"
"Do you know how to open your work table?"
"Table?"
"Good heavens, didn't they show you anything?"
"Well... there was a bed in here once. But I've lost it."
Doctor Mader muttered something, then said, "I might have known it. Thorby, I admire these Traders. I even like them. But they can be the most stiff-necked, self-centered, contrary, self-righteous, uncooperative -- but I should not criticize our hosts. Here." She reached out both hands, touched two spots on the wall and the disappearing bed swung down. With the chairs open, there remained hardly room for one person to stand. "I'd better close it. You saw what I did?"
"Let me try."
She showed Thorby other built-in facilities of what had seemed to be a bare celclass="underline" two chairs, a bed, clothes cupboards. Thorby learned that he owned, or at least had, two more work suits, two pairs of soft ship's shoes, and minor items, some of which were strange, bookshelf and spool racks (empty, except for the Laws of Sisu), a drinking fountain, a bed reading light, an intercom, a clock, a mirror, a room thermostat, and gadgets which were useless to him as his background included no need. "What's that?" he asked at last.
"That? Probably the microphone to the Chief Officer's cabin. Or it may be a dummy with the real one hidden. But don't worry; almost no one in this ship speaks System English and she isn't one of the few. They talk their 'secret language' -- only it isn't secret; it's just Finnish. Each Trader ship has its own language -- one of the Terran tongues. And the culture has an over-all 'secret' language which is merely degenerate Church Latin -- and at that they don't use it; 'Free Ships' talk to each other in Interlingua."
Thorby was only half listening. He had been excessively cheered by her company and now, in contrast, he was brooding over his treatment from others. "Margaret... why won't they speak to people?"
"Eh?"
"You're the first person who's spoken to me!"
"Oh." She looked distressed. "I should have realized it. You've been ignored."
"Well... they feed me."
"But they don't talk with you. Oh, you poor dear! Thorby, they don't speak to you because you are not 'people.' Nor am I."
"They don't talk to you either?"
"They do now. But it took direct orders from the Chief Officer and much patience on my part." She frowned. "Thorby, every excessively clannish culture -- and I know of none more clannish than this -- every such culture has the same key word in its language... and the word is 'people' however they say it. It means themselves. 'Me and my wife, son John and his wife, us four and no more' -- cutting off their group from all others and denying that others are even human. Have you heard the word 'fraki' yet?"
"Yes. I don't know what it means."
"A fraki is just a harmless, rather repulsive little animal. But when they say it, it means 'stranger.' "
"Uh, well, I guess I am a stranger."
"Yes, but it also means you can never be anything else. It means that you and I are subhuman breeds outside the law -- their law."
Thorby looked bleak. "Does that mean I have to stay in this room and never, ever talk to anybody?"
"Goodness! I don't know. I'll talk to you --"
"Thanks!"
"Let me see what I can find out. They're not cruel; they're just pig-headed and provincial. The fact that you have feelings never occurs to them. Ill talk to the Captain; I have an appointment with him as soon as the ship goes irrational." She glanced at her anklet. "Heavens, look at the time! I came here to talk about Jubbul and we haven't said a word about it. May I come back and discuss it with you?"
"I wish you would." "Good. Jubbul is a well-analyzed culture, but I don't think any student has ever had opportunity to examine it from the perspective you had. I was delighted when I heard that you were a professed mendicant."
"Excuse me?"
"A beggar. Investigators who have been allowed to live there have all been guests of the upper classes. That forces them to see... well, the way slaves live for example, from the outside, not the inside. You see?"
"I guess so." Thorby added, "If you want to know about slaves, I was one."
"You were?"
"I'm a freedman. Uh, I should have told you," he added uncomfortably, afraid that his new-found friend would scorn him, now that she knew his class.
"No reason to, but I'm overjoyed that you mentioned it Thorby, you're a treasure trove! Look, dear, I've got to run; I'm late now. But may I come back soon?"
"Huh? Why, surely, Margaret." He added honestly, "I really don't have much else to do."
Thorby slept in his wonderful new bed that night. He was left alone the next morning but he was not bored, as he had so many toys to play with. He opened things out and caused them to fold up again, delighted at how each gadget folded in on itself to occupy minimum space. He concluded that it must be witchcraft Baslim had taught him that magic and witchcraft were nonsense but the teaching had not fully stuck -- Pop had known everything but just the same, how could you fly in the face of experience? Jubbul had plenty of witches and if they weren't practicing magic, what were they doing?
He had just opened his bed for the sixth time when he was almost shocked out of the shoes he had dared to try on by an unholy racket. It was the ship's alarm, calling all hands to General Quarters, and it was merely a drill, but Thorby did not know that. When he reswallowed his heart, he opened the door and looked out. People were running at breakneck speed.
Shortly the corridors were empty. He went back into his bunkie, waited and tried to understand. Presently his sharp ears detected the absence of the soft sigh of the ventilation system. But there was nothing he could do about it. He should have mustered in the innermost compartment, along with children and other noncombatants, but he did not know.