He bowed once more and marched for the door. Beran watched him approach with thumping heart. He passed an arm's length away; Beran could feel the air of his passage. With the utmost difficulty, he prevented himself from hiding his face in his hands. Palafox's head did not turn; he left the room without slackening his stride.
On the day following, the class with great jubilation departed the dormitory and rode the air-bus to the terminal. Among them, concealed by his identity with the others, was Beran.
The class entered the terminal, filed toward the check-off desk. The line moved forward; his mates spoke their names, turned in their pass-books, received passage vouchers, departed through the gate into the waiting lighter. Beran came to the desk. "Ercole Paraio," he said huskily, putting his pass-book down.
"Ercole Paraio." The clerk checked off the name, pushed across a voucher.
Beran took the voucher with trembling fingers, moved forward, walked as fast as he dared to the gate. He looked neither right nor left, afraid to meet the sardonic gaze of Lord Palafox.
He passed through the gate, into the lighter. Presently the port closed, the lighter rose from the rock-melt flat, swung to the blast of the wind. Up and away from Breakness, up to the orbiting ship. And finally Beran dared hope that his plan of a year's duration, his scheme to escape Breakness, might succeed.
The linguists transferred into the ship, the lighter fell away. A pulse, a thud--the voyage had begun.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SMALL WHITE sun dwindled, became a single glitter in the myriad; the ship floated in black space, imperceptibly shifting through the stars of the cluster.
At last yellow Auriol grew bright, tended by blue-green Pao. Beran could not leave the bulls-eye. He watched the world expand, lurch from a disk to a sphere. He traced the configuration of the eight continents, put names to a hundred islands, located the great cities. Nine years had passed--almost half of his life; he could not hope to find Pao the world of his recollections.
What if his absence from Breakness Institute had been detected, what if Palafox had communicated with Bustamonte? It was an apprehension that Beran had toyed with all during the voyage. If it were accurate, then awaiting the ship would be a squad of Mamarone, and Beran's homecoming would be a glimpse or two of the countryside, a lift, a thrust, the rushing air with cloud and sky whirling above, the wet impact, the deepening blue of ocean water as he sank to his death.
The idea seemed not only logical but likely. The lighter drew alongside; Beran went aboard. The other linguists broke into an old Paonese chant, waggishly rendered into Pastiche.
The lighter eased down upon the field; the exit ports opened. The others tumbled happily forth; Beran pulled himself to his feet, warily followed. There was no one at hand but the usual attendants. He drew a great breath, looked all around the field. The time was early afternoon; fleecy clouds floated in a sky which was the very essence of blue. The sun fell warm on his face. Beran felt an almost religious happiness. He would never leave Pao again, in life or in death; if subaqueation awaited him, he preferred it to life on Breakness.
The linguists marched off the field, into the shabby old terminal. There was no one to meet them, a fact which only Beran, accustomed to the automatic efficiency of Breakness, found extraordinary. Looking around the faces of his fellows, he thought, I am changed. Palafox did his worst upon me. I love Pao, but I am no longer Paonese. I am tainted with the flavor of Breakness; I can never be truly and wholly a part of this world again--or of any other world. I am dispossessed, eclectic; I am Pastiche.
Beran separated himself from the others, went to the portal, looked down the tree-shaded boulevard toward Eiljanre. He could step forth, lose himself in a moment.
But where would he go? If he appeared at the palace, he would receive the shortest of shrift. Beran had no wish to farm, to fish, to carry loads. Thoughtfully he turned back, rejoined the linguists.
The official welcoming committee arrived; one of the dignitaries performed a congratulatory declamation, and the linguists made formal appreciation. They were then ushered aboard a bus and taken to one of the rambling Eiljanre inns.
Beran, scanning the streets, was puzzled; he saw only the usual Paonese ease. Naturally, this was Eiljanre, not the resettled areas of Shraimand and Vidamand--but surely the sheer reflection of Bustamonte's tyranny must leave a mark! Yet...the faces along the avenue were placid.
The bus entered the Cantatrino, a great park with three artificial mountains and a lake, the memorial of an ancient Panarch for his dead daughter, the fabulous Can. The bus passed a moss-draped arch, where the park authority had arranged a floral portrait of Panarch Bustamonte. Someone had expressed his feelings with a handful of black slime. A small sign--but it revealed much, for the Paonese seldom made political judgments.
Ercole Paraio was assigned to the Progress School at Cloeopter, on the shores of Zelambre Bay, at the north of Vidamand. This was the area designated by Bustamonte to be the manufacturing and industrial center for all Pao. The school was located in an ancient stone monastery, built by the first settlers to a purpose long forgotten.
In the great cool halls, full of green leaf-filtered sunlight, children of all ages lived to the sound of the Technicant language, and were instructed according to a special doctrine of causality in the use of power machinery, mathematics, elementary science, engineering and manufacturing processes. The classes were conducted in well-equipped rooms and work-shops; although the students were quartered in hastily erected dormitories of poles and canvas to either side of the monastery. Girls and boys alike wore maroon coveralls and cloth caps, studied and worked with adult intensity. After hours there were no restraints upon their activities so long as they remained on school grounds.
The students were fed, clothed, housed and furnished only with the essentials. If they desired luxuries, play equipment, special tools, private rooms, these could be earned by producing articles for use elsewhere in Pao, and almost all of the students' spare time was devoted to small industrial ventures. They produced toys, pottery, simple electrical devices, aluminum ingots reduced from nearby ore, and even periodicals printed in Technicant. A group of eight-year students had joined in a more elaborate project, a plant to extract minerals from the ocean, and to this end spent all their funds for the necessary equipment.
The instructors were for the most part young Breakness dons. From the first, Beran was perplexed by a quality he was unable to locate, let alone identify; only after he had lived at Cloeopter two months did the source of the oddness come to him. It lay in the similarity which linked these Breakness dons. Once Beran had come this far, total enlightenment followed. These youths were all sons of Palafox. By all tradition they should be engrossed in their most intensive studies at the Institute, preparing themselves for the Authority, earning modifications. Beran found the entire situation mysterious.
His own duties were simple enough, and in terms of Paonese culture, highly rewarding. The director of the school, an appointee of Bustamonte's, in theory, controlled the scope and policy of the school, but his responsibility was only nominal. Beran served as his interpreter, translating into Technicant such remarks that the director saw fit to make. For this service he was housed in a handsome cottage of cobbles and hand-hewn timber, a former farmhouse, paid a good salary and allowed a special uniform of gray-green with black and white trim.