The horses came back again, some of them riderless, running with their necks outstretched, with the reins flying in the wind, with foam dashing from their mouths.
One man sagged in the saddle and fell off, but his foot caught in the stirrup and his horse, shying, dragged him sideways.
Up on top of the hill the Saxon square was cheering and through the settling dust he saw the heap of bodies that lay outside the shield wall.
Let me out of here! Bishop was screaming to himself. How do I get out of here! Let me out—
He was out, back in the room again, with its single chair and the four blank walls.
He sat there quietly and he thought: There was no Taillefer.
No one who rode and sang and tossed the sword in the air.
The tale of Taillefer was no more than the imagination of some copyist who had improved upon the tale to while away his time.
But men had died. They had run down the hill, staggering with their wounds, and died. They had fallen from their horses and been dragged to death by their frightened mounts. They had come crawling down the hill, with minutes left of life and with a whimper in their throats.
He stood up and his hands were shaking. He walked unsteadily into the next room.
“You are going to bed, sir?” asked the cabinet.
“I think I will,” said Bishop.
“Very good, then, sir. I’ll lock up and put out.”
“That’s very good of you.”
“Routine, sir,” said the cabinet. “Is there anything you wish?”
“Not a thing,” said Bishop. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said the cabinet.
In the morning he went to the employment agency which he found in one corner of the hotel lobby.
There was no one around but a Kimonian girl, a tall, statuesque blonde, but with a grace to put to shame the most petite of humans. A woman, Bishop thought, jerked out of some classic Grecian myth, a blonde goddess come to life and beauty. She didn’t wear the flowing Grecian robe, but she could have. She wore, truth to tell, but little, and was all the better for it.
“You are new,” she said.
He nodded.
“Wait, I know,” she said. She looked at him. “Selden Bishop, age twenty-nine Earth years, I.Q., 160.”
“Yes, ma’m,” he said.
She made him feel as if he should bow and scrape.
“Business administration, I understand,” she said.
He nodded bleakly.
“Please sit down, Mr. Bishop, and we will talk this over.”
He sat down and he was thinking: It isn’t right for a beautiful girl to be so big and husky. Nor so competent.
“You’d like to get started doing something,” said the girl.
“That’s the thought I had.”
“You specialized in business administration. I’m afraid there aren’t many openings in that particular field.”
“I wouldn’t expect too much to start with,” Bishop told her with what he felt was a becoming modesty and a realistic outlook. “Almost anything at all, until I can prove my value.”
“You’d have to start at the very bottom. And it would take years of training. Not in method only, but in attitude and philosophy.”
“I wouldn’t—”
He hesitated. He had meant to say that he wouldn’t mind. But he would mind. He would mind a lot.
“But I spent years,” he said. “I know—”
“Kimonian business?”
“Is it so much different?”
“You know all about contracts, I suppose.”
“Certainly I do.”
“There is no such thing as a contract on all of Kimon.”
“But—”
“There is no need of any.”
“Integrity?”
“That, and other things as well.”
“Other things?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“It would be useless, Mr. Bishop. New concepts entirely so far as you’re concerned. Of behavior. Of motives. On Earth, profit is the motive—”
“Isn’t it here?”
“In part. A very small part.”
“The other motives—”
“Cultural development for one. Can you imagine an urge to cultural development as powerful as the profit motive?”
Bishop was honest about it. “No, I can’t,” he said.
“Here,” she said, “it is the more powerful of the two. But that’s not all. Money is another thing. We have no actual money. No coin that changes hands.”
“But there is money. Credit notes.”
“For the convenience of your race alone,” she said. “We created your money values and your evidence of wealth so that we could hire your services and pay you—and I might add that we pay you well. We have gone through all the motions. The currency that we create is as valid as anywhere else in the galaxy. It’s backed by deposits in Earth’s banks and it is legal tender so far as you’re concerned. But Kimonians themselves do not employ money.”
Bishop floundered. “I can’t understand,” he said.
“Of course you can’t,” she said. “It’s an entirely new departure for you. Your culture is so constituted that there must be a certain physical assurance of each person’s wealth and worth. Here we do not need that physical assurance. Here each person carries in his head the simple bookkeeping of his worth and debts. It is there for him to know. It is there for his friends and business associates to see at any time they wish.”
“It isn’t business, then,” said Bishop. “Not business as I think of it.”
“Exactly,” said the girl.
“But I am trained for business, I spent—”
“Years and years of study. But on Earth’s methods of business, not on Kimon’s.”
“But there are businessmen here. Hundreds of them.”
“Are there?” she asked.
She was smiling at him. Not a superior smile, nor a taunting one—just smiling at him.
“What you need,” she said, “is contact with Kimonians. A chance to get to know your way around. An opportunity to appreciate our point of view and get the hang of how we do things.”
“That sounds all right,” said Bishop. “How do I go about it?”
“There have been instances,” said the girl, “when Earth people sold their services as companions.”
“I don’t think I’d care much for that. It sounds…well, like baby sitting or reading to old ladies or…”
“Can you play an instrument or sing?”
Bishop shook his head.
“Paint? Draw? Dance?”
He couldn’t do any of them.
“Box, perhaps,” she said. “Physical combat. That is popular at times, if it’s not overdone.”
“You mean prize fighting?”
“I think that is one way you describe it.”
“No, I can’t,” said Bishop.
“That doesn’t leave much,” she said as she picked up some papers.
“Transportation?” he asked.
“Transportation is a personal matter.”
And of course it was, he told himself. With telekinesis you could transport yourself or anything you might have a mind to move—without mechanical aid.
“Communications,” he said weakly. “I suppose that is the same?”
She nodded.
With telepathy, it would be.