I never saw Hywel Jern lose his temper, but his cold displeasure was not to be courted. It was not so much that I feared such censure as that I was really fascinated and interested in what he had to teach. Before I was out of childhood I was allowed to judge the pledges in the shop. And whenever one of the gem merchants who visited my father from time to time came, I was displayed as a star pupil.
So through the years our house became one divided, my mother, Faskel, and Darina on one side, my father and I on the other. And our contact – or mine – with other children of the port was limited, my father drawing me more and more into the shop to learn his old trade of valuing. Some strange and beautiful things passed through our hands in those days. Part were sold openly, others remained in his lockboxes, to be offered in private transactions, and of those I did not see all.
There were things from alien ruins and tombs, made before the time that our species burst into space; there were pieces looted from empires which had vanished into the dust of history so long past that even their planets had been buried. And there were others new from the workshops of the inner systems, where all the creative art of a jeweler is unleashed to catch the eye of a Veep with a bottomless purse.
My father liked the old pieces the most. Sometimes he would hold a necklet, or a bracelet (which by its form had never been meant to encircle a human wrist) and speculate about who had worn it and the civilization from which it had come. And he demanded of those who brought him such trinkets as clear a history of their discovery as he could obtain, putting on tapes all he could learn.
I think that these tapes in themselves might have proven a rich treasure house for seekers of strange knowledge, and I have wondered since if Faskel ever suspected their worth and used them so. Perhaps he did, for in some ways he proved to be more shrewd than my father.
In one of our round-table meetings after an evening meal my father produced such an alien curiosity. He did not pass it from hand to hand as was his wont, but laid it on the wellpolished board of dead-black creel wood and sat staring at it as if he were one of the fakirs from the dry lands seeking to read a housewife’s future in a polished seed pod.
It was a ring, or at least it followed that form. But the band must have been made for a finger close to the size of two of ours laid together. The metal was dull, pitted, as if from great age.
Its claw setting held a stone bigger than my thumbnail, in proper proportion to the band. And it was as dull and unappealing as the metal, colorless, no sparkle or hint of life in it. Also, the longer one studied it, the more the idea grew in mind that this was the corpse of something which might have once had life and beauty but was long since dead. I had, at that first viewing, a disinclination to touch it, though I was always avid to examine these bits and pieces my father used for our instruction.
“Out of another tomb? I wish you would not bring these corpse ornaments to the table!” My mother spoke more sharply than was usual. At that time it struck me odd that she, whom I thought immune to imaginative fancies, had also so quickly associated the ring with death.
My father did not raise his eyes from the ring. Rather he spoke to Faskel in the voice he used when he would be answered, and at once.
“What make you of this?”
My brother put out his hand as if to touch the ring and then jerked it back again. “A ring – too large to wear. Maybe a temple offering.”
To that my father made no comment. Instead he said to Darina:
“And you see what?”
“It is cold- so cold-‘ My sister’s thin voice trailed off, and then she pushed away from the table. “I do not like it.”
“And you?” My father turned to me at last.
Temple offering it might have been, fashioned larger than life to fit on the finger of some god or goddess. I had seen such things pass through my father’s hands before. And some of them had had that about them which gave one a queasy feeling upon touching. But if any god had worn this- No, I did not believe it had been made for such a purpose. Darina was also right. It evoked a sensation of cold, as well as of death. However, the more I studied it, the more it fascinated me. I wanted to touch, yet I feared. And it seemed to me that my feeling reflected something about the ring which made it more than any other gem I had seen, though it was now but age-pitted metal set with a lifeless stone.
“I do not know – save that it is – or was – a thing of power!” And my certainty of that fact was such that I spoke more loudly than I had meant to, so my final word rang through the room.
“Where did it come from?” Faskel asked quickly, hunching forward again and putting out his hand as if to lay it over ring and stone, though his fingers only hovered above it. In that moment I had the thought that he who did take it firmly would be following the custom of gem dealers: to close hand about a jewel was to accept an offered bargain. But if that were so, Faskel did not quite dare to accept such ‘a challenge, for he drew back his hand a second time.
“From space,” my father returned.
There are gems out of space – primitive peoples pay high sums to own them. What forms them we are not quite sure even yet. The accepted theory is that they are produced when bits of meteor of the proper metallic composition pass through the blaze of a planet’s atmosphere. It was the fad for a while to make space Captains’ rings out of these tektites. I have seen several such, centuries old, which must have been worn by the first space venturers. But this gem, if gem it really was, bore no resemblance to those, for it was not dark green, black, or brown, but a colorless crystal, dulled as if sand had pitted the surface deeply.
“It does not look like a tektite- I ventured.
My father shook his head. “It was not formed in space, not that I know of – it was found there.” He leaned back in his chair and took up his cup of folgar tea, sipping absent-mindedly as he continued to stare at the ring. “A curious tale-“
“We expect Councilor Sands and his lady-“ my mother interrupted abruptly, as if she knew the tale and wanted not to hear it again. “The hour grows late.” She started to gather our cups, then raised her hands to clap for Staffla, our serving maid.
“A curious tale,” my father repeated as if he had not heard her at all. And such was his hold over his household that she did not summon Staffla, but sat, moving a little uneasily, plainly unhappy.
“But a true one – of that I am sure,” my father continued. “This was brought in today by the first officer of the Astra. They had a grid failure in mid-passage and had to come out of hyper for repairs. Their luck continued bad, for they had a holing from a meteor pebble. It was necessary then to patch the hull as well.” He was telling this badly, not as he usually spun such stories, but more as one who would keep strictly to facts, and those were meager. “Kjor was doing the patch job when he saw it- a floater – He beamed out on his stay line and brought it in – a body in a suit. Not”- my father hesitated- “of any species he knew. And it had been there a long time. It wore this over its suit glove.” He pointed to the ring.
Over the glove of a space suit-the strangeness of that indeed made one wonder. The gloves are supple enough; they have to be if a man wears them in outer space for ship repair, or while exploring a planet deadly to his species. But why would anyone want to wear an ornament over such a glove? I must have asked that aloud for my father answered:
“Why indeed? Certainly not for any reason of show. Therefore – this had importance, vast importance to him who wore it. Enough that I would like to know it better.”