“Thanks, pop,” he said lightly. “Usually I expect better accommodations in my hotels, but I won’t kick. See that the bellhop comes when I ring, will you? I hate having to wait.”
The old man looked at him without a trace of comprehension or anything else but worship in his eyes.
“Kejwa emeredis calowa Kejwa,” he said.
Crayden watched him depart, and sat for a while on the big stone at the entrance to his hut. From time to time little groups of children would approach timidly and stare at him and back away, and occasionally one of the blue-skinned women would come by. There hadn’t been any women on Kandoris. Crayden rubbed his chin. Even a blue-skinned one would do right now, he thought. Yes, even she would be welcome.
He stared at the bare hut, with its low bed. The only other things in it were the thought-converter and the rescue-beam radiator. He hefted the compact rescue-beam radiator in his hand.
I’d better get rid of this, he thought. One of the natives might accidentally turn it on and call down the patrol.
He walked to the stream, held the radiator reflectively for a moment, and then pitched it into the water.
“Good riddance,” he said. His last link with Kandoris and the worlds of the galaxy was gone. They couldn’t find him unless he tipped them off by using the rescue-beam radiator, which would attract any patrol ship within a dozen light-years. And the radiator was under the flowing waters of the stream.
When he returned to his hut he looked at the remaining piece of equipment, the thought-converter. “I’ll really be able to make this town jump once I can talk to them,” he said. “Women, food, fancy furniture—I’ll just have to ask for them, and they’ll jump. They wouldn’t want their Kejwa to be displeased.”
The thought-converter didn’t seem to be too badly damaged. A few delicate wires had come out of their sockets, that was all. He tried to put them back, but his fingers were too thick and clumsy, and he had to give up.
He realized he hadn’t slept in almost three days. He put the converter in his prison shirt, wrapping it carefully to protect it from the moisture of the ground, and curled up on the bed of grass. It wasn’t much better than lying on the ground, but he was too tired to notice.
For the next three days he did nothing but sit on the stone outside the hut and toy with the thought-converter while the natives brought him food three times a day. He didn’t recognize any of the delicacies they brought—something which looked like a black apple and tasted like a red one, another something which looked like nothing he’d ever seen on Earth and tasted like a shot of bourbon filtered through a banana, and plenty of fresh, red meat, almost raw despite the perfunctory roasting they gave it.
Crayden felt his frame expanding, and, though he had no mirror, he knew the prison-planet pallor had left his face. This planet was agreeing with him, all right. Being Kejwa was a grand life. He’d never had it so good.
When he got tired of sitting around being worshipped, he decided to survey the area. He was curious about this world—his world—and he wanted to know all about it.
All the huts were something like his, only smaller, and the ones near the stream seemed to belong to the more important people of the tribe. The huts were arranged in a roughly semi-circular fashion, with the community fire at the entrance to the semicircle. All around was the thick forest—Nature’s fortress.
Crayden wandered off toward the forest, hoping to see some of the native wild-life in action, but was surprised to find himself confronted by a little ring of blue-skins.
“Kejwa,” they murmured, pointing to the forest. “Nek nek konna je Kejwa.”
“‘My country, ’tis of thee,’” he replied gravely, and continued to move toward the forest.
They became more insistent. Two of the biggest stood in front of him and barred his way. “Nek nek konna je Kejwa,” they repeated more loudly.
Obviously they didn’t want him straying. So his powers were limited after all. He frowned. “If that’s the way you want it, I’ll give in. Never argue with the boys in blue, the saying goes.” But he was angry all the same.
Every night they danced in front of his hut, and every day they let him sit there while they came by and bowed and mumbled “Kejwa.” But Crayden was getting restless.
They treated him as a king, or as a god, and he took full advantage of the privilege the way he did everything else—but he was required to stay in the vicinity. The constant worship was starting to bore him, and the steady diet of rich food combined with lack of exercise had put a definite bulge around his stomach. He felt like a prize bull being groomed for the cattle show, and he didn’t like it. He decided the quickest way to fix things was to repair the thought-converter and talk to them.
But he couldn’t do it himself. The repairs involved nothing more complex than putting three wires back in place, but he couldn’t fit his fingers through the opening to do it. He tried improvising tweezers out of two twigs, but that didn’t do it. He needed someone with small fingers—a child, perhaps. Or a woman.
A woman. Here was where his Kejwahood was going to come in handy.
One night as the tribe was gathered outside his hut he raised the thought-converter high over his head as a sign for silence. “Hold everything!” he thundered. “As your Kejwa, I declare this morsel strikes my fancy.”
He pointed at a girl whom he’d noticed before—she seemed to be about seventeen or eighteen by Earthly standards and she wore her loincloth with the dignity of a matron displaying a mink. Some large precious-looking stone was strung on a necklace that dangled down between her breasts.
She was the best of the lot. Crayden pointed to her, then to his hut—an unmistakable gesture.
The girl flashed a glance at the old man. He nodded benignly, stroked his great beard, and smiled as she stepped forward shyly and stood before Crayden.
“You’ll do,” he said approvingly. “A dish fit for a Kejwa.” He waved dismissal to the tribespeople and took her inside the hut.
During the night he looked out the open entrance and saw a knot of tribespeople staring in with evident curiosity, but he didn’t let that disturb him.
She seemed happy with the arrangement, and so did he. The blue skin didn’t trouble him at all. He had come to think of himself as the white-skinned freak among the normal people. It had been three long years on Kandoris since Crayden had had a woman, but he hadn’t forgotten anything. And this one knew all the tricks.
The people began to bring him dead animals—strange-looking beasts, resembling Earthly ones but with differences—and left them at his door, as sacrifices. One morning there was a squirrel with horns, the next a fox with a prehensile tail.
Whenever he walked through the village, they followed him, always at a respectful distance, and soft cries of “Kejwa” drifted through the air. His woman—he named her Winnie, after a girl he’d known on Venus—was getting the same treatment. She had become someone important now that she belonged to the Kejwa.
He spent a full day trying to get her to fix the thought-converter. Her fingers were slim and tapering, and would fit into the opening easily. But it wasn’t simple to convey what he wanted her to do. After hours of gesturing and indicating what he wanted, she still couldn’t grasp it. Laboriously he went through it again. She looked up at him imploringly, and seemed ready to burst into tears.
“Look, Winnie. For the last time. Just pick up these little wires and put them in here.” He showed her. “If you only understood English—”