“Sure. I don’t know nothing, I ain’t seen nothing, I ain’t heard nothing.” With frank simplicity he added, “I never did know much.”
“Good. You’ve never laid eyes on Joe-Jim, you’ve never heard of the stars. You’re just my messenger, a knife I took along to help me. Now here’s what you are to tell him.” He gave Alan the message for Narby, couched in simple but provocative terms, then made sure that Alan had it all straight. “All right, on your way! Good eating.”
Alan slapped the grip of his knife, answered, “Good eating!” and sped away.
It is not possible for a peasant to burst precipitously into the presence of the Captain’s Executive; Alan found that out. He was halted by the master-at-arms on watch outside Narby’s suite, cuffed around a bit for his insistence on entering, referred to a boredly unsympathetic clerk who took his name and told him to return to his village and wait to be summoned. He held his ground and insisted that he had a message of immediate importance from the Chief Engineer to Commander Narby. The clerk looked up again. “Give me the writing.”
“There is no writing.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. There is always a writing. Regulations.”
“He had no time to make a writing. He gave me a word message.”
“What is it?”
Alan shook his head. “It is private, for Commander Narby only. I have orders.”
The clerk looked his exasperation.
But, being only a probationer, he forewent the satisfaction of direct and immediate disciplining of the recalcitrant churl in favor of the safer course of passing the buck higher up.
The chief clerk was brief. “Give me the message.”
Alan braced himself and spoke to a scientist in a fashion be had never used in his life, even to one as junior, as this passed clerk. “Sir, all I ask is for you to tell Commrnder Narby that I have a message for him from Chief Engineer Ertz. If the message is not delivered, I won’t be the one to go to the Converter! But I don’t dare give the message to anyone else.”
The under official pulled at his lip, and decided to take a chance on disturbing his superior.
Alan delivered his message to Narby in a low voice in order that the orderly standing just outside the door might not overhear. Narby stared at him. “Ertz wants me to come along with you up to mutie country?”
“Not all the way up to mutie country, sir. To a point in between, where Hugh Hoyland can meet you.”
Narby exhaled noisily. “It’s preposterous. I’ll send a squad of knives up to fetch him down to me.”
Alan delivered the balance of his message. This time he carefully raised his voice to ensure that the orderly, and, if possible, others might hear his words. “Ertz said to tell you that if you were afraid to go, just to forget the whole matter. He will take it up with the Council himself.”
Alan owed his continued existence thereafter to the fact that Narby was the sort of man who lived by shrewdness rather than by direct force. Narby’s knife was at his belt; Alan was painfully aware that he had been required to deposit his own with the master-at-arms.
Narby controlled his expression. He was too intelligent to attribute the insult to the oaf before him, though he promised himself to give said oaf a little special attention at a more convenient time. Pique, curiosity, and potential loss of face all entered into his decision. “I’m coming with you,” he said savagely. “I want to ask him if you got his message straight.”
Narby considered having a major guard called out to accompany him, but he discarded the idea. Not only would it make the affair extremely public before he had an opportunity to judge its political aspects, but also it would cost him almost as much face as simply refusing to go. But he inquired nervously of Alan as Alan retrieved his weapon from the master-at-arms, “You’re a good knife?”
“None better,” Alan agreed cheerfully.
Narby hoped that the man was not simply boasting. Muties! Narby wished that he himself had found more time lately for practice in the manly arts.