If I were young and good-looking, I would certainly do the same. Still, Castor, I wonder."
"What do you wonder, old man?"
"I wonder what happened to the boy who spent all his time with the teaching screens and the young man who was so thrilled to be admitted to the university."
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"I am talking about the acquisition of knowledge, Castor. The library has knowledge for you, and knowledge is the thing that makes the difference between you and that dumb erk who is trying to get something out of your pocket—do you have food there, Castor?" The President impatiently shoved the creature away. "I thought I saw in you a person who wished to know everything there was to know, Castor, a true scholar, a person who knows that knowledge gives guidance and is worth having for its own sake." And inside his head Potter Alicia was whispering, He does, he does, and Hsang-the-psychologist warned, You're laying it on too thick! But Manyface was in charge of the committee. He climbed regretfully out of the blood-warm water, wiping his feet on the mossy bank. As he slipped the sandals back on, one hand on Castor's shoulder for support, he said, "Knowledge is power, Castor."
"Oh," said Castor, lost in his thoughts, "I guess so."
They started back toward the crystalline and colorful city in silence. Even the dumb erks were almost silent as they followed.
As they reached the first outbuilding Castor said, "Where is this library?"
"Ask any erk, Castor," Manyface said cheerfully. "Ask them to show you the war records of the past eight thousand years."
Part V
I
CASTOR sat in the open shed with the damp World air soaking the part out of his hair. Pieces of erk weaponry were in his hands, and along the long trestle table next to him were Jupiter and Miranda and five gunnery sisters. They were all learning the field-stripping and reassembly of erk hand weapons. The erks didn't specially want them to do that; it was a notion of the Yankees; the Original Landers had mostly been through military training and, as they had had to field-strip weapons, felt that all those who followed should do the same. Castor thought it was silly. "You don't have enough experience to judge," judged Miranda. "If you don't know how the parts go together, how can you know what may go wrong?
Or what allowances to make if the guidance systems can't reach a solution? Or if they're confused by countermea-sures from the enemy?"
"I can't," said Castor, "so I'll just throw the gun away. I'm never going to be in hand-to-hand combat anyway."
"You don't know that," Miranda said. "At most you just hope that. And anyway, pay attention to what you're doing!"
Castor shrugged. This should have been a fun session for him, who had never been allowed weapons before.
The library had spoiled that.
It was really too annoying of that old freak Manyface to have given him that hint. Manyface had been right. Any erk was glad to show him where to find the library. Manyface was right again; what it held was scary.
If only Manyface had kept his mouth shut, thought Castor, he could have been really enjoying this arms lesson. He fumbled with the springs and catches of one of the projectile weapons, aware of Miranda's eyes disapprovingly on him. He offered her a tentative grin. "I think there have been too many wars," he said, and a spring slipped out of his fingers and spanged halfway across the room.
"Oh, Castor," she said furiously, "are you trying to make us late for the War Council?"
"Of course not, Miranda, only—"
"Then please try to keep your mind on what you're doing! Now, what was that about wars?"
"I was just thinking," he said, accepting the spring from a dumb erk who had leaped from under the bench to retrieve it.
"You said there had been so many wars."
He nodded.
"So what does that mean?" she demanded. "Some wars are necessary, you know."
"Oh, of course," he agreed. But were they? Was war ever a good thing, really? He thought back over Earth history; so many centuries, so many bloodbaths of battle. So many millions who had died horribly, in trench or airplane or nuked city or sunk ship. Of course, that was all a long time ago, and every one of those people, of course, would have been dead by now anyway. He tried to take comfort in that thought. There wasn't much comfort to be had. Their terror and pain had been real, and time did not change that. Wars killed people.
And was there anything, really, that made it worthwhile to start all that terror and pain over again? "You know," he said, leaning conversationally across to Miranda at the next bench, "there's a lot of erk history that's really interesting. You ought to take a look in the library sometime."
She said forcefully, "And you, Castor, ought to pay attention to what you're doing! If you ever tried to fire that rifle with the escapement in that way you'd blow your silly head off—and damn well deserve it."
"I was only saying—" he began, but she cut him off.
"I give up. You'll never make a soldier, Castor, and you make a damn poor excuse for a President right now. Come on, put it back together right—then we've got a meeting of the War Council. Try to pay attention there, will you?"
"I always pay attention," he protested.
"Then," she said grimly, "heaven help us all." She raised her own rifle to the sky, aimed, snapped off an imaginary round, and set it down. "Oh, hell," she said, "give me your weapon and I'll fix it for you. I certainly hope you never have to fire it in actual combat!"
Castor handed it over. "So do I," he said.
The War Council was chaired either by Big Polly or by one of the leading erks, A-Belinka or Jutch. There was no particular rotation order; it mostly depended on which one got to the meeting first and took the chair, or perch, at the head of the big oval table. It had never occurred to any of them to let Castor assume the chair, but then it had never occurred to Castor, either.
If you made allowance for the fact that erks were intrinsically comic rather than dignified, then it was in some ways an impressive scene. The table was huge and gleaming. There were carafes of honeyberry wine, none of your cheap everyday stuff, at every place. Over the head of the table was an immense new portrait of Pettyman Castor. The erk artist had put him in robes of office like a Supreme Court judge, but that was all right; that was artistic license, and besides it gave dignity to the twenty-two-year-old face. The erk artist had also made him subtly older, so the face was not twenty-two anymore; it was, actually, the face Castor might have a couple of dozen years in the future, if he led quite a dissolute and troubled life in between.
The erk artist had done one more thing for his art, and that was to subtly elongate the neck and to broaden and shorten the arms. It was Castor's picture, all right, but it was the picture of Castor as he might have been if he had been part Living God.
As a matter of feet, the likeness did not please Castor at all. He stared up at it from his place at the foot of the table (he had decided not to point out that he belonged at the head, since of course the erks couldn't be expected to get everything right). He thought that if he was going to grow into the person he saw there, he'd rather not grow at all.
But he couldn't help growing.
No one can. No one is ever ready to grow up. No one is ever ready for anything, but the time comes when the anythings become real and then they have to be dealt with, ready or not.
Castor's realities were coming up on him now.