“I wish you would.” “Good. Jubbul is a well-analyzed culture, but I don’t think any student has ever had opportunity to examine it from the perspective you had. I was delighted when I heard that you were a professed mendicant.”
“Excuse me?”
“A beggar. Investigators who have been allowed to live there have all been guests of the upper classes. That forces them to see . . . well, the way slaves live for example, from the outside, not the inside. You see?”
“I guess so.” Thorby added, “If you want to know about slaves, I was one.”
“You were?”
“I’m a freedman. Uh, I should have told you,” he added uncomfortably, afraid that his new-found friend would scorn him, now that she knew his class.
“No reason to, but I’m overjoyed that you mentioned it Thorby, you’re a treasure trove! Look, dear, I’ve got to run; I’m late now. But may I come back soon?”
“Huh? Why, surely, Margaret.” He added honestly, “I really don’t have much else to do.”
Thorby slept in his wonderful new bed that night. He was left alone the next morning but he was not bored, as he had so many toys to play with. He opened things out and caused them to fold up again, delighted at how each gadget folded in on itself to occupy minimum space. He concluded that it must be witchcraft Baslim had taught him that magic and witchcraft were nonsense but the teaching had not fully stuck — Pop had known everything but just the same, how could you fly in the face of experience? Jubbul had plenty of witches and if they weren’t practicing magic, what were they doing?
He had just opened his bed for the sixth time when he was almost shocked out of the shoes he had dared to try on by an unholy racket. It was the ship’s alarm, calling all hands to General Quarters, and it was merely a drill, but Thorby did not know that. When he reswallowed his heart, he opened the door and looked out. People were running at breakneck speed.
Shortly the corridors were empty. He went back into his bunkie, waited and tried to understand. Presently his sharp ears detected the absence of the soft sigh of the ventilation system. But there was nothing he could do about it. He should have mustered in the innermost compartment, along with children and other noncombatants, but he did not know.
So he waited.
The alarm rang again, in conjunction with a horn signal, and again there were running people in the passageways. Again it was repeated, until the crew had run through General Quarters, Hull Broach, Power Failure, Air Hazard, Radiation Hazard, and so forth — all the general drills of a taut ship. Once the lights went out and once for frightening moments Thorby experienced the bewildering sensation of free fall as the ship’s artificial field cutoff.
After a long time of such inexplicable buffoonery he heard the soothing strains of recall and the ventilation system whispered back to normal. No one bothered to look for him; the old woman who mustered nonparticipants hadn’t noticed the absence of the fraki although she had counted the animal pets aboard.
Immediately thereafter Thorby was dragged up to see the Chief Officer.
A man opened his door, grabbed his shoulder and marched him away. Thorby put up with it for a short distance, then he rebelled; he had his bellyful of such treatment.
The gutter fighting he had learned in order to survive in Jubbulpore was lacking in rules. Unfortunately this man had learned in a school equally cold-blooded but more scientific; Thorby got in one swipe, then found himself pinned against the bulkhead with his left wrist in danger of breaking. “Cut out the nonsense!”
“Quit pushing me around!”
“I said, ‘Cut out the nonsense.’ You’re going up to see the Chief Officer. Don’t give me trouble, Fraki, or III stuff your head in your mouth.”
“I want to see Captain Krausa!”
The man relaxed the pressure and said, “You’ll see him. But the Chief Officer has ordered you to report . . . and she can’t be kept waiting. So will you go quietly? Or shall I carry you there in pieces?”