Bull-necked Mr. Baldwin appeared for feedings, but he did not eat with them. The feedings were shift-change time, and he spent them in harangues and threats.
Barker sucked up to Baldwin disgustingly, earning the hatred of all the other "units." But they knew next to nothing, and what he desperately needed was information. All they knew was that they had been taken aboard—a year ago? Six years ago? A month ago? They could only guess.
It was impossible to keep track of time within the changeless walls of the room. Some of them had been taken directly aboard. Some had been conveyed in a large craft with many others and then put aboard.
Some had served in other vessels, with propulsion rooms that were larger or smaller, and then put aboard. They had been told at one time or another that they were in the A'rkhov-Yar fleet, and disputed feebly about the meaning and pronunciation. It was more of a rumor than a fact.
Barker picked a thread from his tie each day to mark the days, and sucked up to Baldwin.
Baldwin liked to be liked, and pitied himself. "You think," he asked plaintively, "I'm inhuman? You think I want to drive the units like I do?
I'm as friendly as the next guy, but it's dog eat dog, isn't it? If I wasn't driving I'd be in a chair getting driven, wouldn't I?"
"I can see that, Mr. Baldwin. And it takes character to be a leader like you are."
"You're Goddamned right it does. And if the truth was known, I'm the best friend you people have. If it wasn't me it'd be somebody else who'd be worse. Lakhrut said to me once that I'm too easy on the units and I stood right up to him and said there wasn't any sense to wearing them out and not having any drive when the going gets hot."
"I think it's amazing, Mr. Baldwin, the way you picked up the language.
That takes brains."
Baldwin beamed modestly. "Oh, it ain't too hard. For instance—"
INSTRUCTION BEGAN. It was not too hard, because Baldwin's vocabulary consisted of perhaps four hundred words, all severely restricted to his duties. The language was uninflected; it could have been an old and stable speech. The grammar was merely the word-order of logic: subject, verb, object. Outstandingly, it was a gutteral speech. There were remnants of "tonality" in it. Apparently it had once been a sung language like Chinese, but had evolved even out of that characteristic. Phonemes that once had been low-toned were now sounded back in the throat; formerly high-toned phonemes, were now forward in the throat. That sort of thing he had picked up from "Oliver."
Barker hinted delicately at it, and Baldwin slammed a figurative door in his face. "I don't know," he growled. "I don't go asking smart questions.
You better not either."
Four more threads were snapped from the fringe of Barker's tie before Baldwin came back, hungry for flattery. Barker was on shift, his head aching with the pointless, endless, unspeakably dull act of concentration when the big man shook his shoulder and growled: "You can lay off. Seven, eight—it don't matter. The others can work harder."
He slobbered thanks.
"Ah, that's all right. I got a good side to me too, see? I said to Lakhrut once—"
And so on, while the other units glared.
"Mr. Baldwin, this word khesor, does it mean the whole propulsion setup or the energy that makes it work? You say, `Lakhrut a'g khesor-takh'
for `Lakhrut is the boss of propulsion,' right?"
Baldwin's contempt was kindly. "For a smart man you can ask some Goddamned stupid questions. What difference does it make?" He turned to inspect the globes for a moment and snarl at Ginny Stoss:
"What's the matter with you? You want the Pain again? Give!"
Her lips moved in her endless mutter and her globe flared bright.
The bull-necked man said confidingly: "Of course I wouldn't really give her the Pain again. But you have to scare them a little from time to time."
"Of course, Mr. Baldwin. You certainly know psychology." One of these days I'm going to murder you, you bastard.
"Sure; it's the only way. Now, you know what ga'lt means?"
"No, Mr. Baldwin."
The bull-necked pusher was triumphant. "There is no word for it in English. It's something they can do and we can't. They can look right into your head if they want to. `Lakhrut ga'lt takh-lyurBaldwin' means
'Lakhrut looks right into underchief Baldwin's head and reads his mind.' "
"Do they do it all the time?"
"No. I think it's something they learn. I don't think all of them can do it either—or maybe not all of them learn to do it. I got a theory that Lakhrut's a ga'lt specialist."
"Why, Mr. Baldwin?"
Baldwin grinned. "To screen out troublemakers. No hard feelings, Oliver, but do you notice what a gutless bunch of people you got here?
Not a rebel in a carload. Chicken-livered. Don't take it personal—either you got it or you don't."
"But you, Mr. Baldwin—why didn't the screening stop you?"
"I got a theory about that. I figure he let me through on purpose because they needed a hard guy to do just what I'm doing. After I got broke in on the globes it wasn't hardly any time at all before I got to be takh-lyur."
You're wrong, you bastard. You're the yellowest coward aboard.
"That must be it, Mr. Baldwin. They know a leader when they see one."
FOUR THREADS LATER he knew that he had acquired all of the language Baldwin had to give him. During his sleep period he went to old Stoss' chair. Stoss was on rest. He was saying vaguely to a gray-haired woman in the chair in front of his: "Boston, Atlanta, Kansas City—all the prominent cities of the nation, my dear lady. I went in with a deck of cards and came out of each with a diamond ring and a well-filled wallet. My hands were sure, my voice was friendly—"
"Atlanta," the woman sighed. "The Mathematics Teachers Association met there in '87, or was it '88? I remember gardens with old brick walls
—or was that Charleston? Yes, I think it was Charleston."
"—In one memorable session of stud behind locked doors in the old Muehlbach Hotel I was high on the third card with the Jack of clubs and the ten of diamonds, with the ace of clubs for my hole-card. Well, madam—"
"—We had terrible trouble in the school one year with the boys and girls gambling in the reactor room, and worse if you can believe it. The reactor man was their 'look-out,' so to speak, so naturally we tried to have him discharged. But the union wouldn't let—"
"—Well, madam, there was seven hundred-odd dollars in the pot—"
"Mr. Stoss," Barker said.
The old man studied him coolly for a moment and then said: "I don't believe I care to talk to you, sir. As I was saying, ma'am, there was—"
"I'm going to kill Baldwin," Barker told him.
He was instantly alert, and instantly scared. "But the danger," he whispered. "Won't they take it out on all of us? And he's a big brute—"
"So maybe he'll kill me. But I'm going to try. I want you to go to the latrine when Baldwin shows up next. Don't quite go in. Watch the corridor. If there's anybody coming, lift your hand. I'll only need a few seconds. Either way, it'll be finished by then."
"The danger," whispered Stoss. His eyes wandered to his daughter's chair. She was asleep. And her lips still moved in her endless muttering.
"All right," the old man said at last. "I'll help you."
"Can you imagine that?" the woman said, still amazed after all these years. "The man was caught in flagrente delicto, so to speak, and the union wouldn't let the principal discharge him without a full public hearing, and naturally the publicity would have been most distasteful so we were forced to—"
Barker padded back to his chair, a gaunt man in stinking rags, wild-haired and sporting a beard in which gray hairs were beginning to appear.
There had to be a lookout. Three times since takeoff Lakhrut had appeared in the doorway for a moment to stare at the units. Twice other people had actually come into the room with Baldwin to probe through the tangle of machinery down the center aisle with long, slender instruments.