Wolfling

Chapter 5

Jim stood still. There was nothing to give him a clue as to how he should react. The rest of the High-born in the Imperial box—in fact, all the High-born within view—seemed deliberately to be paying no attention at all to whatever fit or stroke had suddenly taken the Emperor. Plainly, Jim judged that he would be expected to ignore it also. Afuan and all the others in the royal box merely sat as if the Emperor was in fact engaged in a private conversation with Jim. In fact, so persuasive and so massive was the reaction, which was no reaction, that it had something of the same hypnotic compulsion that Afuan had used earlier, except that in this case it seemed determined to convince not only Jim but also themselves that what was happening to the Emperor was not happening.

Then, suddenly, it was all over.

The saliva vanished from the Emperor’s jaw as if an invisible hand had wiped it away. His smile firmed, his eyes focused.

“…Moreover, we are exceedingly interested to know more about you,” the Emperor was suddenly saying, as if continuing a conversation that had been going on for some time. “You are the first Wolfling we have seen in many years here at our court. After you have rested, you must come to see us, and we’ll have a talk.”

The Emperor’s smile was open, frank, and charming. His voice was friendly, his eyes intelligent.

“Thank you, Oran,” replied Jim. He had been instructed by Ro that the Emperor was always referred to as “the Emperor” in every way except direct address; when one was speaking to him directly, one always called him simply by his first name—Oran.

“You’re entirely welcome,” said the Emperor, smiling cheerfully. He vanished, and a second later all the seats in the stands were empty of High-born.

Jim visualized his own quarters and was instantly back in them. Thoughtfully, he began to remove his costume. He was struggling out of the tight jacket when he suddenly felt himself assisted from behind, and looking around, saw Ro helping him.

“Thank you,” he said, and smiled over his shoulder at her as the jacket came off. She went on helping him, her eyes fixed on the floor; but a dark flush stained her downcast features.

“I still think it’s terrible!” she muttered to the floor. “But I didn’t realize—” Suddenly she lifted her face to him, paling again. “I really didn’t realize, Jim. That animal was trying to kill you.”

“Yes,” said Jim, feeling once more the secret, internal touch of shame that came to him whenever he remembered how his bullfighting was rigged, rather than honest. “That’s the way it is.”

“Anyway,” said Ro in very nearly a grim tone of voice, “if we’re lucky, you won’t ever have to do it again. It’s a stroke of luck, to start off with, the Emperor being interested in you. And—guess what?”

She stopped assisting him, and he stood there, half-undressed, staring quizzically down at her.

“What?” he asked.

“I’ve found a sponsor for you!” she burst out excitedly. “Slothiel! He liked you when you didn’t flinch—that first time he saw you. And he’s willing to have you numbered among his acquaintances. Do you know what that means?”

She stopped and waited for his answer. He shook his head. What she was talking about now was something she had not gone into aboard the ship.

“It means you’re not really in the servant class from now on!” she burst out. “I’d hoped to get someone to sponsor you—but not this soon. And I didn’t want to raise your hopes by mentioning it. But Slothiel actually came to me!”

“He did?” Jim frowned internally, although he was careful to keep his physical brow smooth for Ro’s benefit. He wondered if Slothiel had anything to do with Afuan’s visit to him earlier—or what Galyan had said to him aboard the ship. He found himself on the verge of asking Ro this, and then he changed his mind. Afuan’s visit, and the reaction she had tried to provoke in him, he found, was not something he wanted to tell Ro about—at least, not just yet.

He came out of his thoughts abruptly, to realize that Ro was still busily undressing him, with no apparent self-consciousness about the matter. He had no great self-consciousness about it himself. But Ro’s attitude struck him just then as being a little too zealously proprietary, like that of an owner lovingly grooming a pet horse or dog for show purposes. Besides, Jim had needed assistance, not complete care and handling.

“That’s fine,” he said, moving out of her grasp. “I can handle the rest of it myself.”

He picked up his Black Watch kilt from the hassock on which he had dropped it when he had hastily started to dress for the bullring. He put it on, together with a short-sleeved green shirt. Ro watched him with fond pride.

“Tell me more about this sponsorship business,” said Jim, “sponsorship for what?”

“Why,” said Ro, opening her eyes wide, “for adoption by the Throne World, of course! Don’t you remember? I told you that still, occasionally, a few rare people of unusual abilities or talents are allowed to move from one of the Colony Worlds to the Throne World and join the High-born. Though, of course, they aren’t really High-born themselves; the best they can hope for is that their great-grandchildren will become true High-born. Well, that whole process is called adoption by the Throne World. And adoption proceedings start by someone among the High-born being willing to act as sponsor to whomever wants to be adopted.”

“You’re thinking of getting me adopted as a High-born?” asked Jim, smiling a little.

“Of course not!” Ro literally hugged herself with glee. “But, once you’ve been sponsored, the adoption proceedings have been started. And you’re protected by the Emperor’s authority as a provisional High-born, until he gets around to either accepting you or refusing you. And the thing is, nobody ever gets refused, once he’s been sponsored, unless he’s done something so bad that there’s no alternative but to get him off the Throne World. Once Slothiel sponsors you, none of the High-born can do anything to you the way they can to a servant. I mean, your life’s protected. None of the High-born—not even Afuan or Galyan—can simply act against you. They have to complain about you to the Emperor.”

“I see,” said Jim thoughtfully. “Should I mention that Slothiel is going to do this when I talk to the Emperor?”

“Talk to the Emperor?” Ro stared at him and then burst out laughing. But she stopped quickly and put an apologetic hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. But the chances are you’ll spend your whole life here and never talk to the Emperor.”

“The chances are wrong, then,” said Jim, “because after the bullfight the Emperor asked me to come and see him as soon as I’d had a chance to rest a bit.”

Ro stared at him. Then slowly she shook her head.

“You don’t understand, Jim,” she said sympathetically. “He just said that. Nobody goes to see the Emperor. The only time they see him is when he has them brought to him. If you’re going to see the Emperor, you’ll suddenly find yourself brought into his presence. Until then, you just have to wait.”

Jim frowned.

“I’m sorry, Jim,” she said. “You didn’t know it, but the Emperor often says things like that. But then, something else comes up and he forgets all about it. Or else he just says it without meaning it, just because it’s something to say. Like paying a compliment.”

Jim smiled slowly, and Ro’s face paled again.

“Don’t look like that!” she said, catching hold of his arm again. “No one should look savage like that.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jim. He erased the grin. “But I’m afraid you’re wrong. I’m going to see the Emperor. Where would he be?”

“Why, in Vhotan’s office, this time of day—” She broke off suddenly, staring at him. “Jim, you mean it! Don’t you understand? You can’t go there—”

“Just show me the way,” said Jim.

“I won’t!” she said. “He’d order his Starkiens to kill you! Maybe they’d even kill you without waiting to be ordered.”

“Oh? And why would the Starkiens want to kill our wild man?” broke in Slothiel’s voice unexpectedly. They turned to discover that the tall High-born had just materialized in the room with them. Ro wheeled upon him as if he were the cause of her argument with Jim.

“After the bullfight the Emperor told Jim to rest awhile, then come and see him!” said Ro. “Now Jim wants me to tell him how to get to the Emperor! I told him I won’t do it!”

Slothiel broke out laughing.

“Go to the Emperor!” he echoed. “Well, why don’t you tell him? If you won’t, I will.”

“You!” flared Ro. “And you were the one who said you’d sponsor him!”

“True,” drawled Slothiel, “and I will—because I admire the man and because I’ll enjoy the look on Galyan’s face when he hears about it. But if—what did you say his name is—Jim is bound and determined to get himself killed before the sponsorship can be arranged, who am I to interfere with his fate?”

He looked at Jim over the head of Ro, who had pushed herself between them.

“You really want to go?” Slothiel said.

Jim smiled again, grimly.

“I’m a Wolfling,” he said. “I don’t know any better.”

“Right,” said Slothiel, ignoring Ro’s frantic attempts to silence him by her voice and her hand over his mouth. “Hang on. I’ll send you there. For all the Emperor and Vhotan will know, you found the way yourself.”

Immediately, Jim was in a different room. It was a very large circular room with some sort of transparent ceiling showing a cloud-flecked sky above—or was the sky with its clouds merely an illusion overhead? Jim had no time to decide which, because his attention was all taken up by the reaction of the half-dozen people already in the room, who had just caught sight of him.

Of the half-dozen men in the room, one was the Emperor. He had checked himself in mid-sentence on seeing Jim appear; and he stood half-turned from the older, powerfully bodied High-born who had sat at his right during the bullfight. Standing back a little way from these two, with his back to Jim, and just now turning to see what had interrupted the Emperor, was a male Highborn whom Jim did not recognize. The other three men in the room were heavily muscled, gray-skinned, bald-headed individuals like the one Galyan had referred to as his bodyguard. These wore leather loin straps, with a black rod thrust through loops in the belt around their waist, and about the rest of their body and limbs were metallic-looking bands, which, however, seemed to fit and cling to position on them more like bands of thick elastic cloth than metal. At the sight of Jim, they had immediately drawn their rods and were aiming them at him when a sharp, single word from the Emperor stopped them.

“No!” said the Emperor. “It’s—” He seemed to peer at Jim without recognition for a second; then a broad smile spread across his face. “Why, it’s the Wolfling!”

“Exactly!” snapped the older High-born. “And what’s he doing here? Nephew, you’d better—”

“Why,” interrupted the Emperor, striding toward Jim, still smiling broadly at him, “I invited him here. Don’t you remember, Vhotan? I issued the invitation after the bullfight.”

Already the Emperor’s tall body was between Jim and the three thick-bodied, armed bodyguards. He stopped one of his own long paces away from Jim and stood smiling down at him.

“Naturally,” the Emperor said, “you came as soon as you could, didn’t you, Wolfling? So as not to offend us by keeping us waiting?”

“Yes, Oran,” answered Jim.

But now the older man, called Vhotan, who was apparently the Emperor’s uncle, had come up to stand beside his nephew. His lemon-yellow eyes under their yellowish tufts of eyebrows glared down at Jim.

“Nephew,” he said, “you can’t possibly let this wild man get away with something like this. Break protocol once, and you set a precedent for a thousand repetitions of the same thing!”

“Now, now, Vhotan,” said the Emperor, turning his smile appeasingly on the older High-born. “How many Wolflings have we on our Throne World who don’t yet know the palace rules? No, I invited him here. If I remember, I even said I might find him interesting to talk to; and now, I believe I might.”

He stepped aside, and folded himself up, sitting down on one of the large hassocklike pillows that played the role of furniture for the High-born.

“Sit down, Wolfling,” he said. “You too, Uncle—and you, Lorava—” He glanced aside at the third High-born, a slim, younger male who had just come up. “Let’s all sit down here together and have a chat with the Wolfling. Where do you come from, Wolfling? Out toward galaxy’s-edge of our Empire, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Oran,” Jim answered. He had already seated himself; and reluctantly Vhotan was lowering himself to a hassock beside the Emperor. The young High-born called Lorava took two hasty strides up to them and also sat down on a nearby pillow.

“A lost colony. A lost world,” mused the Emperor, almost to himself, “filled with wild men—and no doubt wilder beasts?”

He looked at Jim for an answer.

“Yes,” said Jim, “we still have a good number of wild beasts—although that number’s been reduced, in the last few hundred years particularly. Man has a tendency to crowd out the wild animals.”

“Man has a tendency to crowd out even man, sometimes,” said the Emperor. For a moment a little shadow seemed to pass behind his eyes, as if he remembered some private sadness of his own. Jim watched him with careful interest. It was hard to believe that this man before him was the same one he had seen drooling and making incoherent sounds in the arena.

“But the men there—and the women. Are they all like you?” the Emperor said, returning the focus of his eyes to Jim.

“Each one of us is different, Oran,” said Jim.

The Emperor laughed.

“Of course!” he said. “And no doubt, being healthy wild men, you prize the difference, instead of trying to fit yourselves all into one common mold. Like we superior beings, we High-born of the Throne World!” His humor calmed slightly. “How did we happen to find your world, after having lost it so many centuries—or thousands of years—ago?”

“The Empire didn’t find us,” said Jim. “We found an outlying world of the Empire.”

There was a second’s silence in the room, broken by a sudden half-snort, half-bray of laughter from the youngster Lorava.

“He’s lying!” Lorava sputtered. “They found us? If they could find us, how did they ever get lost in the first place?”

“Quiet!” snapped Vhotan at Lorava. He turned back to Jim. His face and the face of the Emperor were serious. “Are you telling us that your people, after forgetting about the Empire, and the falling back into complete savagery, turned around and developed civilization all over again—including a means of space travel?”

“Yes,” said Jim economically.

Vhotan stared hard into Jim’s eyes for a long second, and then turned to the Emperor.

“It might be worth checking, Nephew,” he said.

“Worth checking. Yes…” murmured the Emperor. But his thoughts seemed to have wandered. He was no longer gazing at Jim, but off across the room at nothing in particular; and a look of gentle melancholy had taken possession of his face. Vhotan glanced at him and then got to his feet. The older High-born stepped over to Jim, tapped him on the shoulder with a long forefinger, and beckoned for him to rise.

Jim got to his feet. Behind the still-seated, still abstractedly gazing Emperor, Lorava also rose to his feet. Vhotan led them both quietly to a far end of the room, then turned to Lorava.

“I’ll call you back later, Lorava,” he said brusquely.

Lorava nodded and disappeared. Vhotan turned back to Jim.

“We’ve had an application from Slothiel to sponsor you for adoption,” Vhotan said quickly. “Also, you were brought here by the Princess Afuan; and I understand you had some contact with Galyan. Are all of those things correct?”

“They are,” said Jim.

“I see…” Vhotan stood for a second, his eyes hooded thoughtfully. Then his gaze sharpened once more upon Jim. “Did any of those three suggest that you come here just now?”

“No,” answered Jim. He smiled slightly at the tall, wide-shouldered old man towering massively over him. “Coming here was my own idea—in response to the Emperor’s invitation. I only mentioned it to two other people. Slothiel and Ro.”

“Ro?” Vhotan frowned. “Oh, that little girl, the throw-back in Afuan’s household. You’re sure she didn’t suggest your coming here?”

“Perfectly sure. She tried to stop me,” said Jim. “And as for Slothiel—when I told him I was coming, he laughed.”

“Laughed?” Vhotan echoed the word, then grunted. “Look at my eyes, Wolfling!”

Jim fastened his own gaze on the two lemon-yellow eyes under the slightly yellowish tufts of eyebrows. As he gazed, the eyes seemed to increase in brilliance and swim before him in the old man’s face, until they threatened to merge.

“How many eyes do I have?” he heard Vhotan’s voice rumbling.

Two eyes swam together, like two yellowish-green suns, burning before him. They tried to become one. Jim felt a pressure upon him like that of the hypnotic influence Afuan had tried to bring to bear on him before the bullfight. He stiffened internally, and the eyes separated.

“Two,” he said.

“You’re wrong, Wolfling,” said Vhotan. “I have one eye. One eye only!”

“No,” said Jim. The two eyes remained separate. “I see two.”

Vhotan grunted again. Abruptly his gaze ceased burning down upon Jim, and the hypnotic pressure relaxed.

“Well, I see I’m not going to find out that way,” said Vhotan, almost to himself. His gaze sharpened upon Jim again, but in an ordinary rather than a hypnotic fashion. “But I suppose you understand that I can easily find out if you’ve been telling the truth or not.”

“I assumed you could,” said Jim.

“Yes…” Vhotan became thoughtful again. “There’s a good deal more here than surface indication implies… Let’s see, the Emperor can act on Slothiel’s application for sponsorship, of course. But I think you’ll need more than that. Let’s see…”

Vhotan turned his head abruptly to the right and spoke to empty air.

“Lorava!”

The thin young High-born appeared.

“The Emperor is appointing this Wolfling to an Award Commission as unit officer in the Starkiens. See to the details and his assignment to a section of the palace guard… And send Melness to me.”

Lorava disappeared again. About three seconds later another, smaller man materialized where he had stood.

He was a slim, wiry man in typical white tunic and kilt with close-cropped reddish hair and a skin that would almost have matched the color of Jim’s own if there had not been a sort of sallow, yellowish tinge to it. His face was small and sharp-featured, and the pupils of his eyes were literally black. He was clearly not one of the High-born but there was an air of assurance and authority about him which transcended that even of the armed bodyguards called Starkiens.

“Melness,” said Vhotan, “this man is a Wolfling—the one that just put on the spectacle in the arena a few hours ago.”

Melness nodded. His black eyes flickered from Vhotan to Jim, and back to the tall old High-born once more.

“The Emperor is appointing him to an Award Commission in the Starkiens of the palace guard. I’ve told Lorava to take care of the assignment but I’d like you to see to it that his duties are made as nominal as possible.”

“Yes, Vhotan,” answered Melness. His voice was a hard-edged, masculine tenor. “I’ll take care of it—and him.”

He vanished, in his turn. Vhotan looked once more at Jim.

“Melness is majordomo of the palace,” Vhotan said. “In fact, he’s in charge, at least in theory, of all those not High-born on the Throne World. If you have any difficulties, see him. Now, you can return to your own quarters. And don’t come here again unless you’re sent for!”

Jim visualized the room where he had left Ro and Slothiel. He felt the slight feather touch on his mind, and at once he was back there.

Both of them, he saw, were still there. Ro rushed at him the minute she saw him and threw her arms around him. Slothiel laughed.

“So you came back,” said the languid High-born. “I had a hunch you would. In fact, I offered to bet on the point with Ro here—but she’s not the betting kind. What happened to you?”

“I’ve been given an Award Commission in the Starkiens,” said Jim calmly. His eyes met Slothiel’s. “And Vhotan tells me that the Emperor will act promptly upon your offer to sponsor me.”

Ro let go of him and stepped backward, staring up at him in astonishment. Slothiel condescended to raise his eyebrows in surprise.

“Jim!” said Ro in a wondering tone. “What—what did happen?”

Briefly Jim told them. When he was done, Slothiel whistled admiringly and cheerfully.

“Excuse me,” he said. “This looks like a good chance to clean up on a few small bets before the rest of the Throne World hears about your promotions.”

He disappeared. Ro, however, had not moved. Looking down at her, Jim saw that her face was tightened by lines of worry.

“Jim,” she said hesitantly, “Vhotan did ask exactly that about me, did he?… About whether I might’ve suggested that you go to the Emperor that way? And he asked that after he remembered that I was in Afuan’s household?”

“That’s right,” said Jim. He smiled a little bleakly. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

Ro shivered suddenly.

“No, it isn’t!” she said tensely but in a low voice. “It’s frightening! I knew I could teach you things and help you survive here in the ordinary way. But if things are going on in which others of the High-born want to use you…” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes were dark with unhappiness.

Jim considered her in silence for a moment. Then he spoke.

“Ro,” he said, slowly, “tell me. Is the Emperor ill?”

She looked up at him in astonishment.

“Ill?… You mean, sick?” she said. Then, suddenly, she laughed. “Jim, none of the High-born are ever sick—least of all the Emperor.”

“There’s something wrong with him,” said Jim. “And it can’t be much of a secret if it happens the way it happened in the arena after the bullfight. Did you see how he changed when he started to speak to me after the bull was dead?”

“Changed?” She literally stared at him. “Changed? In what way?”

Jim told her.

“…You didn’t see how he looked, or hear the sounds he made?” asked Jim. “Of course not—come to think of it, you probably weren’t sitting that close.”

“But, Jim!” She put her hand on his arm in that familiar, persuasive gesture of hers. “Every seat in the arena there has its own focusing equipment. Why, when you were fighting with that animal”—she shuddered briefly, in passing, then hurried on—“I could see you from as closely as I wanted, as if I were standing as close to you as I am now. When you turned toward the Imperial box, I was still focused right in on you. I saw the Emperor speak to you, and if he’d done anything out of the ordinary, I’d have noticed it too!”

He stared at her.

“You didn’t see what I saw?” he said after a second.

She continued to meet his eyes in a pattern of honesty; but with a sudden sensitivity inside himself, he seemed to feel that, within, she was somehow refusing to meet his eye—without being really aware of this herself.

“No,” she said. “I saw him speak to you and heard him invite you to visit him after you’d had a chance to rest. Nothing more than that.”

She continued to stand, gazing up into his eyes in that pattern of exterior honesty, with the inner aversion of her gaze unknown to her but evident to him. The seconds stretched out, and he suddenly realized that she was fixed. She was incapable of breaking the near-trance of this moment. He would have to be the one to interrupt it.

He turned his head away from her and was just in time to see the gray-skinned, bald-headed figure of a Starkien appear in the room about five feet away from them.

Jim stiffened, staring at him.

“Who are you?” Jim demanded.

“My name is Adok I,” responded the newcomer. “But I am you.”