"Different rate of digestion on Earth," Kard suggested.
"Don't be foolish. Earthsmith's in no hurry to attend his first class,
so he's loafing. Right, Earthsmith?"
Smith mumbled something about unfamiliar food under his breath, and
Jorak said, "Well, no matter. We'll give you another moment or two,
Earthsmith. Then we'll have to be going. We all three have transtellar
history, you know."
Smith knew it all too well. Gyra and Bortinot and Shilon were so many
names to him and he silently cursed Earth's provincial histories. For
those here at the school, the three names and a hundred others might be
magical stepping stones to the culture, the lore, the history of a
galaxy--but all Smith knew now was that Jorak came from Gyra, and so
some of Gyra's people at least must be purple, that Geria came from
Bortinot where the women were D and the men were R and where the women
looked like those of Earth, that Kard, finally, came from a place that
bore the name Shilon, where some of the men at least were orange. But
Shilon could have been anyplace from the hub to the fringe, Gyra might
swim dizzily out near Ophiuchus or it might be the new culture name for
one of Earth's near neighbors. And Bortinot--he wished he knew more
about Bortinot.
* * * * *
The instructor of transtellar history was a little fat man with a round
gold face and green eyes that blinked too much. He wore the tight black
uniform of the instructor and his green armband proclaimed his subject
to be history. He smiled too much, too vacantly, as if he had been
practicing it a long time and now forgot what it really meant.
"Greetings!" he cried jovially, after everyone had been seated on the
long low benches around the room. "I bring you history. No one is to
talk unless I tell him to. Everyone is to listen unless I tell him not
to. Clear?" He smiled.
No one said anything.
"Excellent. History encompasses thousands of years and countless cubic
parsecs. Only the big things count. We will forget the little things.
Little things belong to little people and we of the school are the elite
of a transtellar culture. Questions?"
There were none.
"Good, because I have some. What would you say was the first event of
importance? Luog of Panden, talk."