"Oh!" Mijok's black lips smiled. "It is, Doc. I forget our eyes are
better at distance. You didn't see the letters? Black on silver,
reaching halfway up the body of the ship. J-E-N-S-E-N."
"So?" In Wright's face was a sudden blaze of belief.
Spearman stared. He said, "Quite an imagination. Glad it was you who
made it up, and not one of the men who knew the real Jensen--a name
that ought not to be taken in vain."
"I have good eyes," said Mijok gently. "I made up nothing."
Spearman's eyebrows lifted, a fury of mimic politeness. He stepped
around the group as if they were not rocks but dangerous animals. He
passed down the street in long strides, not looking back even for his
sons. Paul stupidly watched him go, saw him reach the turning by the
meat-slave stockade and break into a loping run. Stout Muson muttered,
"So changed! What sickness could make such a change?"
Wright said, "It is not likely to pass. In the old days of Earth they
sometimes ruled nations. Or they were put away in institutions,
usually after others had been injured. Or they were fanatics of one
sort and another, ridden by the devil of one idea. My profession
learned a little about them--never enough. The law met them more often
and learned less." He watched Paul, perhaps needing contact with a
Charin mind, since the innocence of the others gave them no frame of
reference. "I dare say Ed is paranoid only on the one point,
technically: all his troubles are caused by me and my--what did he
say?--conspiracy. A means to help him believe that only he is right
and virtuous and the universe wrong.... It is not so much a sickness,
Muson, as the sum of years of mental bad habits. Vanity and dislike of
one's own kind make most of the seed, and this is the fruit."
Elis said, "We can overtake him. Six of us giants--we can carry you,
overtake him in a walk, if you think best."
"Yes." Wright watched the empty street and Spearman's palace that
already seemed haunted and forlorn. "I believe there's no need for
haste. Twenty miles...." The Vestoian pygmies were not returning; the
street was a desolation of rubbish and loneliness with the dull smell
of neglect. One of Spearman's boys was whimpering; the other watched
the place where his father had disappeared, a tension in his small
face, without forgiveness. Wright said, "Who's John and who's David?"