“I’m sorry, my lady, but that information is
not in any of the household records. Shall I ask the mother
ship?”
“No, don’t bother, it doesn’t matter,” she
said.
Rawl, his curiosity piqued and disappointed
in his companion’s lack of interest, closed his eyes and put
through his own call internally. He learned that Geste had been
born in Three Rivers, on Achernar IV, which seemed very appropriate
for a prankster; that said, he declined the automatic tell-me-more
before it went any further. He was not particularly interested in
any of the details of Geste’s past just now. He opened his eyes
again without having missed a word of the conversation.
“The housekeeper should have asked Mother
without waiting for orders,” Sheila was saying. “I think the
programming must have deteriorated pretty badly. I’ve been putting
off re-doing it for sixty or seventy years now, but I think it’s
about due.”
“Sometimes I hate roughing it here, with
these inadequate machines Aulden brought along—I mean, they
work
, but they aren’t exactly state of the art, are they?”
She waved at the flutterbugs, the light show, the stone-floored,
wooden-beamed room. “But then I remember what it was like back home
and decide that it’s worth a little inconvenience to have the elbow
room,” Sunlight said. She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder what the poor
machine does with itself when you’re not here, don’t you?” she
asked. “Do you leave it awake?”
“I let it decide for itself, of course, and
I honestly don’t know what it did this year.”
Rawl already knew that the housekeeper had
remained awake, fussily removing every fleck of dust or trace of
wear, shooing away every form of wildlife from the larger bacteria
up to fair-sized goats, always without harming them. He knew
because he had stopped by to visit with the machine once or twice.
He suspected that Sheila knew as much, but neither of them
mentioned it. Sunlight, he knew, already considered the wanderers,
especially Geste and himself, to be crazy, and would be even more
firmly convinced of it if she knew he took pleasure in visiting a
mere machine. She thought it was quite bad enough that he spent so
much time with the first-wave colonists—the natives, as Sheila
insisted on calling them, a name that was at least preferable to
“primitives” or “savages,” terms some of the other recent arrivals
used.
Not, he admitted to himself, that their
arrival was all that recent any more. They had been on this planet,
listed in the ancient records under the curious name Denner’s
Wreck, for roughly four centuries by local time, four and a half by
Terran standards.
He finished his drink and sat down, trusting
the housekeeper to make sure that a good chair, customized to his
particular proportions, was waiting beneath him.
The housekeeper did not fail him. It was not
that
badly deteriorated.
“Who else are you expecting?” Lady Sunlight
asked.
“Oh, I’m not really sure,” Sheila replied.
“I’ve told Mother that I’m having my annual autumn housewarming,
and I expect Grey to put in his usual appearance and spend the
entire time talking about horses and pseudoequines and so forth,
and Brenner will probably show up and argue the whole time, and the
Skyler may come if I can convince her it won’t be too crowded—the
usual people. I haven’t bothered with actual invitations in almost
a century, you know, I just wait to see who turns up. I’m sure that
Geste will come by eventually, when he stops teasing the natives
long enough to notice what time of year it is.”
“Is that what he’s doing?” Rawl asked.
“Probably,” Sheila replied. “You know what
he’s like.”
Rawl nodded agreement, disturbing the
creature on his shoulder so that it flapped awkwardly upward and
set out to find a better perch. “At least he has the grace to try
and make amends when he’s through abusing them. He doesn’t treat
them like just more machines or creatures.”
Lady Sunlight sniffed derisively.
“You think I’m over-protective of them?”
Rawl asked. He knew perfectly well what Lady Sunlight thought, and
for that matter what each of the others in their group thought, but
he asked in the interests of provoking discussion, in hopes of
deepening his insight.
“I think you’re too
concerned
with
them,” Lady Sunlight said. “I won’t say they don’t need protection
from themselves, but it isn’t any of our business, is it? There’s
no need for us to involve ourselves with them at all.”
“That’s what you said when we landed,” Rawl
remarked mildly. “You haven’t changed your mind?”
“No; why should I?”
“You’ve had four hundred years to observe
them now.”
Lady Sunlight looked at him in genuine
surprise. “
Observe
them? Why in the universe would I do
that? I’ve done all I can to
avoid
them! Just today, before
I left to come here, I had one of those stupid robots chase one of
the natives away, because he was spying on me. They’re just a
nuisance, Rawl; I leave them alone, and all I ask in exchange is
that they leave me alone.”
“They’re people,” he reminded her.
“Oh, yes, well, I suppose so, but they
aren’t anyone I care about. I don’t even know why we all insist on
speaking their language all the time!”
“Well, we have to, now,” Sheila pointed out,
“because a lot of the machines and creatures don’t understand
anything else.”
“And whose idea was
that
?” Lady
Sunlight said, glaring at Rawl.
“Aulden’s,” he replied mildly. “He was all
for sharing our technology, even more than Imp and Geste and I
were.”
“Giving them anything isn’t our business,”
Lady Sunlight insisted. “That’s the job of a cultural analysis
team. We’re just tourists. I said then, and I still say now, that
they’re none of our business, and that’s the way the vote has
always gone.”
“The majority is not necessarily right,”
Rawl muttered. Lady Sunlight did not hear him.
“It’s not as if we expected to find them,”
she was saying. “When we came here looking for a lost colony we
never expected to actually
find
it! I thought we might find
some interesting ruins or antiques, an abandoned settlement, or
maybe even a little civilization out of the mainstream, but I
never
thought we’d find short-lived primitives!”
There was that word again, and Rawl shut up,
rather than risk a messy argument over it. He reminded himself that
he had picked the quarrel himself, in the interests of livening up
the conversation.
He resolved to keep his mouth shut
henceforth—at least for a few days. Maybe only the fourteen-hour
local days, but a few days.
“I mean, really,” Lady Sunlight was
continuing, “how can they go on like that, century after century,
living their pointless little lives, farming their crops and
killing animals to eat and never getting anywhere? I know they had
to start practically from nothing, but they’ve been here for
thousands of years now, and there isn’t a city on the planet, and
they don’t know the first thing about building any kind of machine,
let alone engineering themselves useful plants or animals or even
bacteria. How can they have lived like this for so long without
dying out? It’s a mystery to me, I’ll tell you that!”
How, Rawl wondered, could anyone live as
long as Lady Sunlight had, and remain so ignorant? History held
hundreds of examples of stable agrarian societies, on dozens of
planets.
He had resolved on silence, however, and
silent he remained as he gestured to the floater for another drink.
He noticed that his companion creature had found itself a place
atop a wooden beam overhead, and he amused himself for a moment by
looking at the room through its eyes. The entertainment system had
given up on any attempt to coordinate its images with the
independently-minded flutterbugs, so the low music was now only
sound, and the view unimpeded.
“Excuse me, my lady,” the housekeeper said,
slipping into a break in the conversation and fading the music
still further, “but you have a call from Brenner of the
Mountains.”
“Brenner? Put him through,” Sheila said,
brightening. Rawl guessed that she, too, found Lady Sunlight’s
attitudes somewhat irritating, and welcomed the distraction.
Immediately, Brenner’s image appeared before
them, black-bearded and frowning; he had not bothered with
full-figure transmission, so his head and leather-clad shoulders
floated in the air unsupported.
“Hello, Sheila,” he said. “I’m calling to
let you know that I may not be able to come to your open house this
season.”
“No? But why
not
?”
“Oh, well, it seems that Thaddeus is upset
about something; I don’t have the faintest idea what the hell he
thinks I did this time, and the idiot won’t tell me, so I couldn’t
apologize even if I wanted to. Whatever it is, he’s shooting at me,
and using some fairly serious stuff, too. I don’t think it would be
a good idea to leave home right now. He might slip something in
somewhere, or try to pick me off while I’m travelling.” He
shrugged. “I’m sorry, but it’s really not my fault.”
Intrigued, Rawl shifted his vision back
where it belonged and brushed away his new drink.
“He’s shooting at you?” Sheila asked.
“Well, yes, but...”
“He can’t do that!” Lady Sunlight
exclaimed.
Rawl rose and stepped into Brenner’s field
of vision. “Brenner, I know you don’t think much of me,” he said,
“but I’ve made a hobby of settling disputes, if you’d like my help
in this one.”
“Rawl? Well, I’ll be damned, I haven’t seen
you lately!”
“I’ve been around.”
“I’m sure you have. No, I don’t need any
help, thanks.”
“Brenner, wait,” Sheila said. “Thaddeus
hasn’t got any business to be shooting at you, no matter what you
did. The party hasn’t started yet; we’re coming down to give you a
hand, all three of us. All right?”
Brenner’s mouth twisted slightly, as if he
were not sure whether or not to permit himself a smile. “Well, I
won’t stop you,” he said. “But Thaddeus might.”
Rawl thought he heard relief in Brenner’s
tone. He ran the recorded words through an emotional analysis in
his internal computers, and concluded that yes, Brenner was
relieved. He was far too proud to ask for help, or to admit even to
himself that he might need it, but he was worried.
Thaddeus, Rawl thought, must be making a
serious attack indeed, to worry Brenner, master of the impregnable
High Castle.
“We’ll be there in an hour,” Sheila
said.
Lady Sunlight started to protest, but Sheila
waved her to silence, out of Brenner’s sight.
“I’ll see you then,” Brenner said. His image
flicked out.
“But, Sheila...” Sunlight began, obviously
distressed.
“We
have
to go, Sunlight,” Sheila
said. “If Thaddeus is causing trouble—well, you know what he’s
like. He’s dangerous. He might really hurt someone. Besides, I told
Brenner we’d come, and I won’t go back on my word.”
Sunlight hesitated, mouth set, and then
yielded abruptly. “Oh, all right,” she said. “But I don’t like that
castle of his, and I don’t like Thaddeus much, either.”
“I don’t think
anybody
likes
Thaddeus,” Rawl remarked.
“I have the airskiff I used to bring my
things from Summer House up on the next level,” Sheila said. “We’ll
take that.” She rose smoothly and led the way to the lifter.
Rawl followed calmly, his creature
fluttering back down to his shoulder and his floater returning to
visibility, while Lady Sunlight came more reluctantly, her creature
in her hand.
The music faded gracefully into silence.
“Goodbye,” the housekeeper said behind them,
as brightly-colored flutterbugs danced wild airborne dances in the
empty lounge. “I’ll keep the place warm for you.”
“
...when they returned to their village they told
their friends and families what had befallen them, and poured forth
glowing praise of Isabelle’s hearth and hospitality. They spoke at
length of her kindness and generosity, how she had taken them in
from the storm and met their every need, even before they could
ask. They described the fine foods they had eaten, and the exotic
beverages they had drunk. They showed the magical cloaks she had
given them that were so thin that they could easily be folded up
and put in one’s pocket, but which would keep out even the coldest
wind.
“
And most of the people of the village marvelled,
and remarked on how fortunate the travelers had been, and then
thought no more about it.
“
But a handful of greedy villagers, upon hearing
these stories, resolved to see these wonders for themselves, and
bring back some of these heavenly foods, and magic capes, and other
prizes, that they might sell them and become rich. ‘Why should
these fools have such good fortune,’ they said, ‘when clever and
worthy men such as ourselves do not?’
“
So they set out into the northern hills,
following the tales they had heard, and at length they came to the
gates of Isabelle’s demesne.
“
There they did not wait for an invitation, but
pounded loudly upon the delicate carvings, demanding entrance. And
a voice called out, ‘What do you want?’
“
Their spokesman replied, ‘We have come for
dinner and a night’s lodging!’
‘“
This is not an inn,’ the voice replied, ‘but
you may come in and warm yourselves at my hearth.’ And the gates
swung open, and a great wind pulled them forward and deposited them
at the door of the house.
“
They wasted no time, but hurried inside, boots
still caked with snow and mud, coats dripping, pulling sacks from
their shirts to carry off whatever they were given. They did not
look at the statues, or at the paintings, or at the fountains. They
did not pause to warm themselves before the fire. They ran straight
to the great table.