“If you give such a party,” said Jim, “will the Emperor attend?”
“The Emperor and Vhotan,” answered Slothiel. “Yes, almost certainly they’ll both be there. Why?”
“Because,” said Jim, “that’s why Galyan suggested you give the party.”
Slothiel frowned. It was a slightly haughty frown, with the faint implication that a member of the lesser races should not make statements to a High-born that a High-born could not fully understand.
“Why do you say that?” asked Slothiel.
“Because Melness is a very clever man,” said Jim.
Chapter 7
Slothiel’s tall body stiffened.
“All right, Wolfling!” he snapped. “We’ve had enough question-and-answer games!”
“Jim—” began Ro warningly.
“I’m sorry,” said Jim, looking steadily at the taller man. “The explanation doesn’t concern me—it concerns the Emperor. So I’m not going to give it to you. And you’re not going to force me to give it. In the first place, you can’t. And in the second place, it would be impolitic of you to try, since you’re the one who’s sponsoring me for adoption.”
Slothiel stood perfectly still.
“Believe me,” said Jim, this time persuasively, “if I was free to answer you, I would. Let me make you a promise. If by the time the party is over you haven’t had an assurance either from the Emperor or from Vhotan that I had good reason not to tell you, then I’ll answer any question you have about the whole thing. All right?”
For a long second longer Slothiel remained rigid, his eyes burning down at Jim. Then, abruptly, the tension leaked out of him, and he smiled his old, lazy smile.
“You know, you have me there, Jim,” he drawled. “I can hardly forcibly question the very lesser human I’m sponsoring for adoption, can I? Particularly since it would be impossible to keep the fact quiet. You’ll make a good man at wagering for points, if by some freak chance you ever should happen to get adopted, Jim. All right, keep your secret—for now.”
He disappeared.
“Jim,” said Ro, “I worry about you.”
For some reason, the words rang with unusual importance in his mind. He looked about at her sharply and saw why they had. She was looking at him with concern, but it was a different sort of concern from that which she lavished on all her pets and which she had heretofore lavished on him. And the tone of her voice had conveyed a difference to match.
He was suddenly, unexpectedly, and deeply touched. No one, man or woman, had worried about him for a very very long time.
“Can’t you at least tell me why you say Galyan’s suggesting the party because Melness is a very clever man?” Ro asked. “It sounds as if you’re saying that there’s some connection between Galyan and Melness. But that can’t be between a High-born and one of the lesser races.”
“How about you and me,” said Jim, remembering that new note in her voice.
She blushed, but this, as he had come to learn, did not mean as much with her as it might have with another woman.
“I’m different!” she said. “But Galyan isn’t. He’s one of the highest of High-born. Not just by birth—by attitude, too.”
“But he’s always made it a point to make a good deal of use of men of the lesser races.”
“That’s true…” She became thoughtful. Then she looked back up at him. “But you still haven’t explained…”
“There’s nothing much to explain,” said Jim, “except for that part that I say is really a matter belonging to the Emperor rather than to me. I said what I did about Melness being a clever man because men can make mistakes out of their own cleverness, as well as out of foolishness. They can try too hard to cover something up. In Melness’ case, when Adok first took me to meet him, Melness went to a great deal of trouble to make it look as if he resented my being placed under his responsibility.”
Ro frowned.
“But why should he resent…”
“There could be a number of reasons, of course,” said Jim. “For one—and the easiest answer—the fact that he resented a Wolfling like myself being sponsored for adoption when a man like him stands no chance of such sponsorship, just because he is so useful in his capacity as a servant. But, by the same token, Melness should have been too clever to let me know that resentment, particularly when there was a possibility that I might end up as a High-born myself, in a position to resent him in return.”
“Then why did he do it?” asked Ro.
“Possibly because he thought I might be a spy sent by the High-born to investigate the world of servants,” said Jim, “and he wanted to set up a reason for harassing or observing me while I was underground that would not lead me to suspect that he suspected I was a spy.”
“But what would you be spying on him for?” asked Ro.
“That, I don’t know yet,” said Jim.
“But you think it has something to do with the Emperor and with Galyan. Why?” Ro said.
Jim smiled down at her.
“You want to know too much too quickly,” he said. “In fact, you want to know more than I know yet. You see why I didn’t want to get into questions and answers on this with Slothiel?”
Slowly she nodded. Then she gazed at him with concern again.
“Jim—” she said unexpectedly. “What did you do? I mean, besides bullfighting, when you were back on your own world among your own people?”
“I was an anthropologist,” he told her. “Bullfighting was—a late avocation with me.”
She frowned puzzledly. For to his knowledge, the word did not exist in the Empire tongue, and so he had simply translated it literally from the Latin root—“man-science.”
“I studied the primitive background of man,” said Jim. “Particularly the roots of culture—all cultures—in the basic nature of humankind.”
He could almost see the lightning search she was making through that massive High-born memory of hers. Her face lit up.
“Oh, you mean— anthropology!” She gave him the Empire word he had needed. Then her face softened, and she touched his arm. “Jim! Poor Jim—no wonder!”
Once again—as he so often found it necessary to do—he had to restrain the impulse to smile at her. He had thought of himself in many terms during his lifetime so far. But to date he had never had occasion to think of himself as “poor”—in any sense of the word.
“No wonder?” he echoed.
“I mean, no wonder you always seem so cold and distant to anyone High-born,” she said. “Oh, I don’t mean me! I mean the others. But, no wonder you’re that way. Finding out about us and the Empire put an end to everything you’d studied, didn’t it? You had to face the fact that you weren’t evolved from the ape-men and prehumans of your own world. It meant all the work you’d ever done had to be thrown out.”
“Not exactly,” said Jim.
“Jim, let me tell you something,” she said, “the same thing happened to us, you know. I mean us—the High-born. Some thousands of years ago the early High-born used to think that they were evolved from the prehumans on this one Throne World. But finally they had to admit that not even that was true. The animal forms were too much the same on all the worlds like this one that our people settled. Finally, even we had to face the fact that all these worlds had evidently been stocked with the common ancestors of their present flora and fauna by some intelligent race that existed even long before our time. And the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the ancestors with which this world was stocked were probably a strain pointing toward a superior type of premen then were planted elsewhere. So, you see, we had to face the fact that we weren’t the first thinking beings in the universe, too.”