He was slim, delicate, fragile-looking. It seemed to Ewing that a good gust of wind would smash him to splinters. He was no more than five feet tall, pale, waxy skinned, with large serious eyes and thin, indecisive lips. His domed skull was naked and faintly glossy. At regular intervals on its skin, jeweled pendants had been surgically attached; they jiggled as he moved.
With prim fastidiousness he made his way across the room toward Ewing.
“I hope I’m not intruding on your privacy,” he said in a hesitant half-whisper.
“No. Not at all. Won’t you be seated?”
“I would prefer to stand,” the Earther replied. “It is our custom.”
“Very well.”
Ewing felt a curious inner revulsion as he stared at the grotesque little Earther. On Corwin, anyone dressed in such clownish garb would meet with derision.
The Earther smiled timidly. “I am called Scholar Myreck,” he said finally. “And you are Baird Ewing, of the colony-world Corwin.”
“That’s right.”
“It was my great fortune to meet you at the spaceport terminal building earlier today. Apparently I created a bad first impression—one of frivolity, perhaps, or even of oppressive irresponsibility. For this I wish to beg your pardon, Colonist Ewing. I would have had the opportunity then, but for that Sirian ape who seized your attention before I could speak.”
Somewhat to his surprise Ewing noticed that the little Earther was speaking with barely a trace of what he had come to regard as the Earther accent. He frowned; what did the foppish little man want?
“On the contrary, Scholar Myreck, no apologies should be needed. I don’t judge a man by my first impression of him—especially on a world where I’m a stranger to the customs and way of life.”
“An excellent philosophy!” Sadness crossed Myreck’s mild face for a moment. “But you look tense, Colonist Ewing. Might I have the privilege of relaxing you?”
“Relaxing me?”
“Minor neural adjustments; a technique we practice with some skill here. May I?”
Doubtfully Ewing said, “Just what does it involve, actually?”
“A moment’s physical contact, nothing more.” Myreck smiled imploringly. “It pains me to see a man so tense. It causes me actual physical pain.”
“You’ve aroused my curiosity,” Ewing said. “Go ahead—relax me.”
Myreck glided forward and put his hands gently round Ewing’s neck. The Corwinite stiffened in immediate alarm. “Gently,” Myreck sang. “Let the muscles relax. Don’t fight me. Relax.”
His thin, childlike fingers dug in without warning, pinching sharply at the base of Ewing’s skull. Ewing felt a quick, fierce burst of light, a jarring disruption of sense-perception, for no more than a fifteenth of a second. Then, suddenly, he felt the tension drain away from him. His deltoids and trapezoids eased so abruptly that he thought his back and shoulders had been removed. His neck, chronically stiff, loosened. The stress patterns developed during a year in stasis-sleep were shaken off.
“That’s quite a trick,” he said finally.
“We manipulate the neural nexus at the point where the medulla and the spinal column become one. In the hands of an amateur it can be fatal.” Myreck smiled. “In the hands of a professional such as myself it can also be fatal—but only when the operator so intends.”
Ewing moistened his lips. He said, “May I ask a personal question, Scholar Myreck?”
“Of course.”
“The clothes you wear—the ornamentation—are these things widespread on Earth, or is it just some fad that you’re following?”
Myreck knotted his waxy fingers together thoughtfully. “They are, shall we say, cultural manifestations. I find it hard to explain. People of my personality type and inclinations dress this way; others dress differently, as the mood strikes them. My appearance indicates that I am a Collegiate Fellow.”
“Scholar is your title, then?”
“Yes. And also my given name. I am a member of the College of Abstract Science of the City of Valloin.”
“I’ll have to plead ignorance,” Ewing said. “I don’t know anything about your College.”
“Understandable. We do not seek publicity.” Myreck’s eyes fastened doggedly on Ewing’s for a moment. “That Sirian who took you away from us—may I ask his name?”
“Rollun Firnik,” Ewing said.
“A particularly dangerous one; I know him by reputation. Well, to the point at last, Colonist Ewing. Would you care to address a convocation of the College of Abstract Science some time early next week?”
“I? I’m no academician, Scholar. I wouldn’t know what to talk about.”
“You come from a colony, one that none of us knows anything about. You offer an invaluable fund of experience and information.”
“But I’m a stranger in the city,” Ewing objected. “I wouldn’t know how to get to you.”
“We will arrange for your transportation. The meeting is Fournight of next week. Will you come?”
Ewing considered it for a moment. It was as good an opportunity as any to begin studying the Terrestrial culture at close range. He would need as broad and as deep a fund of knowledge as possible in order to apply the leverage that would ultimately preserve his home world from destruction by the alien marauders.
He looked up. “All right. Fournight of next week it is, then.”
“We will be very grateful, Colonist Ewing.
Myreck bowed. He backed toward the door, smiling and nodding, and paused just before pushing the opener stud. “Stay well,” he said. “You have our extreme gratitude. We will see you on Fournight.”
The door slid closed behind him.
Ewing shrugged; then, remembering the reels he had requested from the hotel library, he returned his attention to the viewer.
He read for nearly an hour, skimming; his reading pace was an accelerated one, thanks to his mnemonic training at the great University of Corwin. His mind efficiently organized the material as fast as his eyes scanned it, marshaling the facts into near, well-drilled columns. By the end of the hour, he had more than a fair idea of the shape of Terrestrial history in the thirteen hundred years since the first successful interstellar flight.
There had been an immediate explosive outward push to the stars. Sirius had been the first to be colonized, in 2573: sixty-two brave men and women. The other colonies had followed fast, frantically. The overcrowded Earth was shipping her sons and daughters to the stars in wholesale batches.
All through the second half of the Third Millennium the prevailing historical tone was one of frenzied excitement. The annals listed colony after colony.
The sky was full of worlds. The seventeen planet system of Aldebaran yielded eight Earth-type planets suitable for colonization. The double system of Albireo had four. Ewing passed hastily over the name-weighted pages, seeing with a little quiver of recognition the name of Blade Corwin, who seeded a colony on Epsilon Ursae Majoris XII in the year 2856.
Outward. By the opening of the thirtieth century, said the book, human life had been planted on more than a thousand worlds of the universe.
The great outward push was over. On Earth, the long-overdue establishment of population controls had ended forever the threat of overexpansion, and with it some of the impetus for colonization died. Earth’s population stabilized itself at an unvarying five and a half billion; three centuries before, nearly eleven billion had jostled for room on the crowded little planet.
With population stabilization came cultural stabilization, the end of the flamboyant pioneer personality, the development of a new kind of Earthman who lacked the drive and intense ambition of his ancestors. The colonies had skimmed off the men with outward drive; the ones who remained on Earth gave rise to a culture of esthetes, of debaters and musicians and mathematicians. A subclass of menials at first sprang up to insure the continued maintenance of the machinery of civilization, but even these became unnecessary with the development of ambulatory robots.