“There are tests,” Faskel observed.
“This is a gem stone, unknown to me, and twelve on the Mobs scale-“
“A diamond is ten-“
“And a Javsite eleven,” my father returned. “Heretofore that was the measuring rod. This is something beyond our present knowledge.”
“The Institute-“ began my mother, but my father put out his hand and cupped the ring in it, hiding it from sight. So hidden, he restored it to a small bag and slipped that into his inner tunic pocket.
“This is not to be spoken of!” he ordered sharply. And from that moment on we would not speak of it as he well knew. He had trained us very well. But neither did he send it to the Institute, nor, I was sure, did he seek any other official information concerning it. But that he studied and tested it by all methods known, and they were not a few, that I also learned.
I became used to seeing him in his small laboratory, at his desk, the ring on a square of black cloth before him, staring down at it as if by the very strength of his will he would extract its secret. If it had ever had any beauty, time and the drift through space had destroyed that, and what was left was an enigma but no blazing treasure.
The mystery haunted me also, and from time to time my father would speak of various theories he had formed concerning it. He was firmly convinced that it was not meant to be an ornament, but that it had served its wearer in some manner. And he kept its possession a secret.
From the day my father had taken over the shop, he had set into its walls various hiding places. And later, upon enlarging the rooms, he had built in more such pockets. The majority of these were known to the whole family, and would answer to hand pressure from any of us. But there were a few he showed only to me. And one of these, in the laboratory, held the ring. My father altered the seal there to answer only to our two thumbs, and he had me seal and unseal it several times before he was satisfied.
Then he waved me to sit down opposite him.
“Vondar Ustle arrives tomorrow,” he began abruptly. “He will bring an apprentice warrant with him. When he leaves, you go with him-“
I could not believe my hearing. As eldest son, apprenticeship, save to my father, was not for me. If anyone went to serve another master it would be Faskel. But before I could raise a question, my father went on with as much explanation as I was ever to get from him.
“Vondar is a master gemologist, though he chooses to travel rather than set up an establishment on any one planet. There is no better teacher in the galaxy. I have good reason to be sure of that. Listen well, Murdoc – this shop is not for you. You have a talent, and a man who does not develop his talent is a man who ever eats dry oat-cake while before him sits a rich meat dish, a man who chooses a zircon when he need only reach out his hand to pick up a diamond. Leave this shop to Faskel-“
“But he-“
My father smiled thinly. “No, he is not one who has a great eye for what is to be seen, beyond a fat purse and the value in credits. A shopkeeper is a shopkeeper, and you are not meant for such. I have waited a long time for a man such as Ustle, one on whom I can depend to be the teacher you must have. In my day I was known as a master at valuing, but I served in murky ways. You must walk free of such ties, and you can gain such freedom only by cutting loose now from the very name you carry on Angkor. Also- you must see more than one world, walk other planets, if you are to be all that you can be. It is known that planetary magnetic fields can influence human behavior, some ebb and flow in them producing changes in the brain. Alertness and sensibility are stimulated by these changes; memory can be fostered the brighter, ideas incited. I want what you can learn from Ustle during the next five planet years.”
“Something to do with the space stone-?”
He nodded. “I can no longer go seeking knowledge, but you who have a mind like unto mine are not rooted. Before I die I want to know what that ring holds, and what it did or can do for the man who wears it!”
Once more he got up and brought out the ring bag, removed the band with its dull stone, and turned it about in his fingers.
There was an old superstition once believed in by our species,” he said slowly, “that we left impressions of ourselves on material things we had owned, providing those objects were closely tied into our destinies. Here-“ Of a sudden he tossed the ring at me. I was unprepared, but I caught it, almost on reflex, out of the air. For all the months we had had it under this roof, that was the first time I had held it.
The metal was cold, with a gritty surface. And it seemed to me, as it rested in my palm, the cold grew stronger, so that my skin tingled with it. But I lifted it to eye level and peered at the stone. The clouded surface was as gritty as the band. If it had ever held fire in its heart, that was long since quenched or clouded over. I wondered briefly if it could be detached from that rough setting and recut, to regain the life it had lost. But knew also that my father would never attempt to do that. Nor, I decided, could I. As it was, the mystery was all. It was not the ring itself but what lay behind it that was of importance. And now my father’s plans for me also made sense – I would be the seeker for a solution to our mystery.
So I became Ustle’s apprentice. And my father proved right; such an instructor is seldom found. My master might have made several fortunes had he wished to root on one of the luxury worlds, set up as a designer and merchant. But to him the quest for the perfect stone was far more meaningful than selling it. He did design – usually during our voyages his mind and his fingers were busy, turning out patterns which other, less talented men were eager to buy when he wanted to offer them. But his passion was exploration of the secrets of new-found worlds, doing his own bargaining with natives for uncut stones not far from where they were first unearthed.
He laughed at the frauds he uncovered – the lesser stones soaked in herbs or chemicals to make them more resemble the precious, the gems treated by heat to change their color. He taught me odd ways to impress native sellers so that they respected one’s wisdom and brought out the better rather than the worse. Such things as that a human hair stretched across real jade will not burn, even though you set match to it.
Planet time is reckoned in years, space time less easily. A man who makes many voyages does not age as quickly as the earthbound. I do not know how old Vondar was, but if he were judged by his store of knowledge, he must have outstripped my father. We went far from Angkor, but in time we returned to it. Only I had no crumb, not even infinitesimally small, to offer my father on the history of the space ring.
I had not been more than a day under our own roof when I knew that all was not well there. Faskel was older. When I looked upon him and then upon my own face in my mother’s well-polished mirror, I would have said he was the elder by birth. Also he was more assertive, taking over the role of my father’s assistant, making decisions even within my father’s hearing. And Hywel Jern did not lift even an eyebrow in correction of his presumption.
My sister was married. Her dowry had been enough to bring her the son of a Councilor, to my mother’s great content. Though she had vanished from the house as if she had never lived, “my daughter, the Councilor’s son’s lady” was so ever on my mother’s lips as to make of my sister a haunting ghost.
Of this household I was no longer a well-fitting part. Though Faskel masked for the most part his displeasure at my return, he became more and more officious in conducting the business when I was present though I did nothing to confirm his suspicions that I had returned to supersede him. Once I had thought the shop all important, but off world so many doors had opened to me that now it seemed a very dull way to spend one’s days, and I wondered that my father could have chosen it.