"No trouble at all. I don't say I'd save you out from under the claws
of something or other at the risk of my own skin, Trehearne, but since
this was a simple task, think nothing of it. I was just lucky to find
you. And next time don't stray so far away." He grinned and shoved
Trehearne forward. "You aren't finished yet. You still have to explain
to the Old Man why you lost your sack."
"Oh God," Trehearne muttered. But he didn't turn back. If the Skipper
wanted that sack he could go and look for it. For the time being,
Trehearne was through.
The _Saarga_ creaked and groaned and lurched her way deeper and deeper
into the Cluster, touching like a tramp freighter at this port and
that one, wherever there was trading to do and cargo to be had. Only
her ports were planets, and her seas were the nighted gulfs between
them. The memory of what had happened on the world of the variable star
faded out of Trehearne's conscious mind, though he sometimes started
awake in his bunk with the ghastly feeling of suffocation strong on him
from a dream. But the succession of places and peoples, ever-shifting,
ever-new, gave him too much to think about to waste his time brooding
over something that was over and done. Insensibly, through habit and
association, he was losing all sense of personal strangeness, becoming
as thoroughly a Vardda as though he had been born on Llyrdis. Some of
the first fine childlike glow of wonder wore off. It began to seem the
most natural thing in life to go between the stars as between islands.
The interest remained, but the feeling of awe departed.
They touched at systems that had a high degree of civilization, where
Trehearne first saw the Vardda factories, vast walled compounds held
under treaty, and crammed with warehouses full of goods from all over
the galaxy. The system of the compound, the separate landing field, and
the Vardda factory were universal wherever there was trade enough to
warrant them, even on barbarian planets. "That's where the fortunes are
made," Yann told him, and grinned. "I know. A few years in a factory,
and you can retire."
Trehearne made a mental note of that, though he had no wish to be a
factor. The _Saarga_ moved on. They traded with scaly humanoids under
the glare of a blue-white sun. They stripped the worlds of a red
giant, leaving cheap gilded trinkets in exchange for rare radioactive
minerals, and the small wild people felt themselves enriched. Trehearne
had been amazed at the persistent recurrence of the humanoid form even
when the root-stock from which a particular race had evolved was not
even remotely human, and Yann had explained to him what every Vardda
school-child was taught in General Biology, that the development of
the humanoid form (i.e., possessing a recognizable head, carried in
a vertical or erect posture, two lower limbs used for purposes of
locomotion, and two upper limbs used for manual tasks) rested simply
upon the necessity of a species that intended to progress beyond the
animal level of intelligence to evolve hands, or a workable substitute,
and free them for use.
But human or humanoid, furred, scaled, feathered, or normally
integumented, of whatever color or size or state of social development,
one thing was common to all the races of all the worlds. They hated the
Vardda. It was a hatred based purely on envy, and Trehearne became
so used to it that he hardly thought about it any more, except to
notice its variation according to cultures--the aboriginals who mixed
with it a worshipful, superstitious fear of the Vardda starlords, the
barbarians who would have killed them except that they were greedy for
the luxuries of trade, the civilized folk who treated them with cold
respect and ate their hearts out with jealous longing. The only thing
that really bothered Trehearne was the children, especially the young
boys, who followed the Vardda up and down the streets and as near as
they were allowed to the ship, asking over and over the same eternal
question--"What is it like to fly among the stars?"
He had almost forgotten Earth. And then they swung in toward the world
of a yellow sun, a green world that tore his heart quite suddenly with
a rush of memories. He stared out the port at distant fields and trees,
and at a city that might have been an Earthly city, shorn of its dirt
and slums and spreading along the bank of a mighty river, and he was
astonished that he could still feel homesick.
Yann looked at him sourly. He was brushing and sprucing up his uniform,
and Rohan and Perri were brushing theirs, and none of them looked happy.
"Looks pretty, doesn't it?" said Yann.
Trehearne nodded. He was looking at the river and thinking of the
Mississippi. His mind was a long way off.
"Well, it is pretty," Yann muttered. "The climate's fine, the people
are civilized, the women are handsome, and I'll bet even the food is
good. But we're not allowed to enjoy them. We aren't even--"
The buzzing signal of the ship's intercom interrupted him, and the
captain's face appeared on the small tele-screen.
"This is a warning, and a reminder. Here is where we do our trading
with our hats in our hands and a humble look. Have you got that, all
of you? You are to remain within the trading compound. You are not to
fraternize with the natives. You are to show all deference to such
members of the Hedarin as you may have contact with. And you are _not_,
under any circumstances, to take offence at anything that may be said
by them. In other words, keep your mouths shut until you're forced to
open them, and then sing small. Those are orders, and I'll discipline
any man that breaks them!"
The screen went dark. Trehearne looked at the others. "What kind of a
place is this?"
"You heard the Old Man. It's a place where the Vardda apologize for
living."
"Who are the Hedarin?"
"The lawgivers. The wise men. The speakers of the last word."
Young Perri gave his shoulders an expressive twist. "Creepy beggars,"
he said. "They're parapsychs."