“I don’t know, Oran,” answered Jim.
“Neither do I, Jim,” said the Emperor. “That’s what makes it so strange. Three times I’ve seen it now, and always in a doorway ahead of me, as if it was barring my path. You know, Jim… sometimes I’m just like all the rest of the High-born. But there are other times in which my mind becomes very clear… and I see things, and understand them, much better than any of these around us. That’s why I know you’re different, Jim. When I first saw you after the bullfight, I was looking at you… and all of a sudden it was as if you were at the other end of the telescope—very small, but very sharp. And I saw many very small, very sharp details about you that none of the rest of us had seen. You can be a High-born or not, Jim. Just as you like. Because it doesn’t matter… I saw that in you. It doesn’t matter.”
The Emperor’s voice stopped. But he continued to urge Jim on, pacing blindly alongside him.
“That’s the way it is with me, Jim…” he began again after a moment. “Sometimes I see things small and clear. Then I realize that I’m half a step beyond the rest of the High-born. And it’s strange—I’m what we’ve been working for down all these generations—that one step further on. But it’s a step that we aren’t built to take, Jim… do you understand me?”
“I think so, Oran,” answered Jim.
“…But at other times,” went on the Emperor. Jim could not tell whether Oran had noted his answer or not. “… But at other times, things only start to get sharp and clear—and when I try to look more closely, they go very fuzzy, and out of focus, and large. And I lose that sense of extra, inner sharp sight that I had to begin with. Then I have bad dreams for a while— dreams, awake and asleep. It’s in dreams like that, that I’ve seen the Blue Beast, three times now…”
The Emperor’s voice trailed off again, and Jim thought that they had come merely to another temporary pause in the conversation. But abruptly the Emperor’s hand fell from his shoulder.
Jim stopped and turned. He found Oran looking down at him, smiling, clear-eyed and cheerful.
“Well, I mustn’t keep you, Jim,” said Oran in a thoroughly normal, conversational voice. “This will be your first party—and after all, you’re practically the guest of honor. Why don’t you circulate and meet people. I’ve got to go find Vhotan. He worries too much when I’m away from him.”
The Emperor vanished. Jim stood still, and the cleared circle of floor began to fill in around him, as those on the outskirts drifted inward, and new arrivals began to appear. He looked about for Ro but could not see her.
“Adok!” he said in a low voice.
The Starkien appeared beside him.
“Forgive me, Jim,” said Adok. “I didn’t know that the Emperor was through talking to you. I found the servant you sent me to find.”
“Take me where I can see him but he can’t see me,” said Jim.
Abruptly they were in a narrow, shadowy place between two pillars, looking toward a further area where a cluster of close pillars enclosed a small open space, where a large number of trays loaded with food and drink stood neatly racked in the empty air, one above another. Standing amidst these trays was a servant, one of the short brown men with the long hair. Jim and Adok stood behind him, and looking past him, they could see out to where another servant was circulating within view with a tray of food.
“Good,” said Jim.
He memorized the location and shifted both himself and Adok back to where he had been standing when the Emperor had left him.
“Adok,” he said softly, “I’m going to try to stay continuously within sight of the Emperor. I’d like you to stay within sight of me, but not exactly with me. Keep your eyes on me, and when I disappear, I want you to go to Vhotan, who’ll be with the Emperor, and tell him I want him to be a witness to something. Then bring him to the place where that servant is. You understand?”
“Yes, Jim,” said Adok unemotionally.
“Now,” said Jim. “How do I find the Emperor?”
“I can take you to him,” said Adok. “All Starkiens can always find the Emperor, at any time. It’s in case one of us should be needed.”
They were suddenly elsewhere in the Great Gathering Room. Jim looked about and from a distance of a couple of dozen feet saw the Emperor—this time without a circle of privacy around him, talking and laughing with several other High-born. Vhotan, his yellowish brows knitted, was at the younger man’s elbow.
Jim looked around him again and discovered Adok looking at him from perhaps twenty feet away. Jim nodded and drifted off at an angle that would keep him moving through the crowd, but at about always the same distance from the Emperor.
Twice the Emperor shifted position suddenly. Twice Jim found himself shifted by Adok to a new position within sight of the High-born ruler. Surprisingly, through all this, none of the High-born around Jim paid particular attention to him. They seemed to have no eagerness to see the Wolfling in whose honor the party was being given, and if their eyes rested on him unknowingly, they evidently took him for simply one more of the servants.
Time stretched out. Nearly an hour had gone by, and Jim was almost beginning to doubt his earlier certainties, when abruptly he saw what he had been waiting for.
At first glance, it was nothing much. The Emperor was half-turned away from Jim, and all that betrayed his change in condition was a slight stiffening of his tall figure. He had become somewhat immobile, somewhat rigid.
Jim hastily took two steps to the left so that he could catch sight of the man’s face. Oran was staring through and past the other High-born man he had been talking to. His gaze was fixed; his smile was fixed; and as at the bullfight, there was a little trickle of moisture shining at the corner of his mouth.
None of those around him appeared to be in the least aware of this. But Jim wasted no time watching them. Instead, he turned to look about for servants. He had made less than a half-turn before he saw the first man, a thin black-haired member of the lesser races, carrying a silver tray of what looked like small cakes.
The man was not moving. He was stopped, still, as frozen in position as the Emperor.
Jim hastily completed his turn. He saw three more servants, all of them rigid, all of them unmoving as statues. Even as he looked, the High-born around them began to take notice of this strange lack of activity in their midst. But Jim did not wait to see how their reaction would develop. Instantly he transferred himself to the shadowy area behind the servant with the trays—to that place where Adok had earlier taken him.
The man with the trays was standing, looking. But he was not rigid—as was the servant who could be seen a couple of dozen yards beyond him, surrounded by High-born.
Jim bent nearly double and ran forward swiftly and silently behind the trays until he came up with the servant who was looking out. At once he caught the man from behind with both hands. One hand taking him at the top and back of the neck just under the overhang of the skull, the other hand caught hold of the left armpit from behind, with the thumb resting over a pressure point just to the left of the shoulderblade.
“Move,” whispered Jim swiftly, “and I’ll break your neck.”
The man stiffened. But he made no sound, and he did not move.
“Now,” whispered Jim again. “Do exactly as I tell you—”
He paused to glance around behind him. There, in the shadows, he saw the stocky form of Adok, and with Adok a towering High-born shape that would be Vhotan. Jim turned back to the servant.