Almost, for a second, he made it. For a second it seemed as if the line was beginning to break apart into readable symbols, and he gathered that the text had something to do with the organization of the Starkiens themselves. Then his efforts broke—out of sheer physical inability of his body to sustain it any longer. He swayed a little, and vision of the rest of the universe, including pillars, walls, and ceiling, opened out about him once more.
He was suddenly aware that the boy on the hassock had noticed him finally. The High-born child had stopped reading and was staring at Jim himself with a plain expression of astonishment.
“Who are you—?” the boy began in a reedy voice. But Jim, without answering, touched Adok on the arm and translated them both back to Jim’s quarters before the question could be completed.
Back in the familiar room, Jim breathed deeply for a second and then sat down on one of the hassocks. He motioned Adok to sit down likewise, and the Starkien obeyed. After a moment Jim’s deep breathing slowed, and he smiled slightly. He looked across at Adok.
“You don’t say, ‘I told you so!’ ” said Jim.
Adok shook his head in a gesture that clearly conveyed that it was not his place to say such things.
“Well, you were right,” said Jim. He became thoughtful. “But not for the reasons you think. What stopped me just then was the fact that I hadn’t been born to this language of yours. If that writing had been in my own native tongue, I could’ve read it.”
He turned his head abruptly away from Adok and spoke to the empty air.
“Ro?” he asked.
He and Adok both waited. But there was no answer, and Ro did not materialize. This was not surprising. Ro was a High-born and had her own occupations and duties, unlike Adok, whose single duty was to await, and wait upon, Jim’s call.
Jim shifted himself to Ro’s apartment, found it empty, and left a note asking her to contact him as soon as she came in. It was about two and a half hours later that she suddenly appeared beside Adok and him in the main room of Jim’s quarters.
“It’s going to be a big party,” she said without preamble. “Everybody’s going to be there. They’ll have to use the Great Gathering Room. The word must’ve gotten out somehow that there’s something special about this celebration—” She broke off suddenly. “I’m forgetting. You wanted to see me about something, Jim?”
“Oh,” said Jim, “could you get one of those reading screens from the learning centers set up in your apartment?”
“Why—of course!” said Ro. “Do you want to use one, Jim? Why don’t I just have one set up for you here?”
Jim shook his head.
“I’d rather not have it generally known that I was using it,” Jim said. “I take it that it isn’t too unusual a thing for someone like you to want one where she lives?”
“Not unusual. No…” said Ro. “And of course if you want it that way, that’s the way I can do it. But what’s this all about?”
Jim told her about his attempt to try to read at the same speed as that of the young High-born he had stood behind in the learning center.
“You think study will speed up your reading comprehension?” asked Ro. She frowned. “Maybe you shouldn’t get your hopes too high—”
“I won’t,” said Jim.
Within a few hours the screen was set up, floating in a corner of one of the less-used rooms of Ro’s apartment. From then on, Jim spent the time he had spent in the Files underground in Ro’s apartment room instead.
He had made only slight progress, however, within the next week. He gave it up entirely and spent the last few days before the party lounging around the underground servants’ area with Adok, observing the Silent Language in use about him. He had become fluent in understanding it now, but, wearyingly, most of what he absorbed was the hand-signaled equivalent of gossip. Nonetheless, gossip could be useful if properly sifted and interpreted.
Jim returned from the last of these expeditions just an hour or so before the party, to find Lorava waiting for him in the main room of his quarters.
“Vhotan wants to see you,” said Lorava abruptly as Jim appeared.
No more notice than that. Jim found himself standing beside Lorava in a room he had not been in before. Adok was on the other side of him, so evidently the invitation had included the Starkien as well.
Vhotan was seated on a hassock before a flat surface suspended in midair with its top covered with what looked like several different studs of various shapes and colors. He was turning or depressing these studs in what appeared to be a random pattern, but with a seriousness and intensity that suggested his actions were far from unimportant. Nonetheless, he broke off at the sight of them, rose from his hassock, and came over to face Jim.
“I’ll call for you a little later, Lorava!” he said.
The thin young High-born vanished.
“Wolfling,” said Vhotan to Jim, his yellowish brows drawing together, “the Emperor is going to attend this party of yours.”
“I don’t believe it’s my party,” answered Jim. “I think it’s Slothiel’s party.”
Vhotan brushed the objection aside with a short wave of one long hand.
“You’re the reason for it,” he said. “And you’re the reason for the Emperor being at it. He wants to talk to you again.”
“Naturally,” said Jim. “I can come anytime the Emperor wants to summon me. It needn’t be at the party.”
“He’s at his best in public!” said Vhotan sharply. “Never mind that. The point is, at the party the Emperor will want to talk to you. He’ll take you off to one side and undoubtedly ask you a lot of questions.”
Vhotan hesitated.
“I’ll be glad to answer any of the Emperor’s questions,” said Jim.
“Yes… you do exactly that,” said Vhotan gruffly. “Whatever questions he asks you, answer them fully. You understand? He’s the Emperor, and even if he doesn’t seem to be paying you complete attention, I want you to go right on answering until he asks you another question or tells you to stop. Do you understand?”
“Fully,” said Jim. His eyes met the lemon-yellow eyes of the older, High-born man.
“Yes. Well,” said Vhotan, turning abruptly, walking back to his console of studs, and sitting down before it once again.
“That’s all. You can go back to your quarters now.”
His fingers began to move over the studs. Jim touched Adok on the arm and shifted back to the main room of his own apartment.
“What do you make of that?” he asked Adok.
“Make of it?” Adok repeated slowly.
“Yes,” said Jim. He eyed the Starkien keenly. “Didn’t you think that some of what he said was a little strange?”
Adok’s face was completely without expression.
“Nothing dealing with the Emperor can be strange,” he said. His voice was strangely remote. “The High-born Vhotan told you to answer fully to the questions of the Emperor. That is all. There could not be any more than that.”
“Yes,” said Jim. “Adok, you’ve been lent to me to be my substitute. But you still belong to the Emperor, don’t you?”
“As I told you, Jim,” said Adok, still in the same expressionless, remote voice. “All Starkiens always belong to the Emperor, no matter where they are or what they’re doing.”
“I remember,” said Jim.
He turned away and went to get out of the Starkien straps and belts he had been wearing, into the white costume like that of all the male High-born, but without insignia, which he had chosen to wear for the occasion.
He was barely dressed when Ro appeared. In fact, she materialized so suspiciously close upon the end of his dressing that once more he wondered whether he was not under surveillance—by others as well as Ro—more than he thought. But he had no chance to speculate upon this now.