"I would have specified had I meant otherwise. Yes, ever. Talk, Luog of
Panden."
"Well--"
"Halt a moment, please. Who thinks the question is a relative one which
cannot properly be answered? I clair it is Brandog of Hulpin."
An albino woman three seats down from Smith flushed. "I am sorry," she
said.
"Who told you to talk now? This is not Hulpin, Brandog. The course is
intensive. You must concentrate. Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.
No extraneous thoughts." The instructor smiled. "Luog of Panden, talk."
Smith felt the little beads of sweat forming on his forehead. The
instructor could read minds--and how many of these others could? They
just sat there as if it were the most natural thing in the world....
Only Brandog of Hulpin seemed ruffled, and it would be many moments
before her albino skin looked again like soft alabaster. But no one
seemed to notice. Luog was saying, "--exodus from the prehistoric Sirian
worlds to the first culture in the Denebian system, the Var one. More
than ten thousand Vars ago."
"Satisfactory for a Receptive, Luog of Panden," the instructor smiled.
"The Dominants would go back a bit further and talk of the Sirian wars,
but that much is a matter of opinion, since the wars are largely
mythical, anyway. And so we have set the stage for history. We have--"
* * * * *
Smith wanted to get up indignantly and tell the instructor, tell them
all, what the most glorious epochs of history really were. You would
find it in the museums of earth, on the plaques and in the statues and
on the old old records of Earth. There was a lot Smith wanted to tell
them because there was so much only he could tell them, so much they had
forgotten.
But he merely sat and stared politely at the black-uniformed instructor.
You don't show yourself as a provincial--what was the word?--rube, not
when your culture, while temporarily the oldest, is in a lot of ways the
most neophite of them all.
You just sat and stared, looking interested.