Hour of the Gremlins

by Gordon R. Dickson

  At first sight, except for the appearance of the High-born and the size of it all, the gathering looked ordinary enough. But as he gazed, Jim became aware that not only High-born individuals themselves, but the servants, were appearing and disappearing continuously all over the place. For a moment, even to Jim, the size and movement of the crowd was slightly dizzying.

  Then he did what he had always done when faced with a situation that threatened a temporary mental or emotional overload. He filed what he could not handle in the back of his mind and concentrated on what he could.

  "Adok," he said, turning to the Starkien, "I want you to circulate. Try to locate for me a particular servant. I don't know what he'll look like, but he'll be a little different from all the rest, in that he will, first, have a fixed position in the room someplace; second, it will be a fairly secluded position, from which only one other servant in the hall at any time will be able to see him. He may be watched by any number of other servants in succession, but there will never be more than one watching him at a time, and he will always be under surveillance by the other servant observing him at the time. Will you get busy about that right away?"

  "Yes, Jim," said Adok. He vanished.

  "Why did you ask him to do that?" asked Ro in a low, puzzled voice, pressing close to him.

  "I'll tell you later," said Jim.

  He saw by her attitude that she would like to ask him more questions, in spite of this answer of his. She might indeed have done so, but at that moment Vhotan and the Emperor appeared beside them.

  "There he is—my Wolfling!" said the Emperor cheerfully. "Come and talk to me, Wolfling!"

  Instantly, with his words, Ro vanished. Also, all the other High-born nearby began to disappear, until Jim, Vhotan, and the Emperor were surrounded by an open space perhaps fifty feet in diameter, within which they could talk in casual tones without anyone else being near enough to overhear. The Emperor turned his gaze on the older High-born.

  "Go on," he said, "enjoy yourself for once, Vhotan. I'll be all right."

  Vhotan hesitated a moment, then winked out of sight.

  The Emperor turned back to Jim.

  "I like you—what is your name, Wolfling?" he asked.

  "Jim, Oran," answered Jim.

  "I like you, Jim." The Emperor leaned down, stooping a little from his more than seven feet of height, and laid a long hand on Jim's shoulder, resting part of his weight on Jim like a tired man. Slowly he began to pace idly up and down. Jim kept level with him, held by the shoulder.

  "It's a wild world you come from, Jim?" Oran asked.

  "Up until about half a century ago," said Jim. "Very wild."

  They had gone perhaps half a dozen steps in one direction. The Emperor turned them about, and they began to pace back again. All the while they talked, they continued this movement—half a dozen paces one way, half a dozen paces back again, turn and return.

  "You mean, in only fifty years you people tamed this world of yours?" asked the Emperor.

  "No, Oran," said Jim. "We tamed the world sometime before that. It's just that fifty years ago we finally succeeded in taming ourselves."

  Oran nodded, his gaze not on Jim, but fixed on the floor a little ahead of them as they moved.

  "Yes, that's the human part of it. The self-taming is always the hardest," he said, almost as if to himself. "You know, my cousin Galyan, looking at you, would think immediately, what marvelous servants these people would make. And perhaps he's right. Perhaps he's right . . . but"—they turned about at the end of one of their short distances of pacing, and the Emperor for a moment looked from the floor up and over at Jim with a friendly smile—"I don't think so. We've had too many servants."

  The smile faded. For a moment they paced in silence.

  "You have your own language?" murmured the Emperor in Jim's ear, once more gazing at the floor as they went. "Your own art and music and history and legend?"

  "Yes, Oran," said Jim.

  "Then you deserve better than to be servants. At least"—once more the Emperor flashed one of his quick, brief, friendly smiles at Jim before returning his eyes to the floor ahead of them—"I know that you, at least, deserve better. You know, I shouldn't be surprised if someday I really do approve your adoption, so that you become technically one of us."

  Jim said nothing. After a second, and after they had completed another turn, the Emperor looked sideways at him.

  "Would you like that, Jim?" Oran said.

  "I don't know yet, Oran," said Jim.

  "An honest answer . . ." murmured the Emperor. "An honest answer . . . You know how they tell us, Jim, in probability, all events must sooner or later occur?"

  "In probability?" Jim asked. But the Emperor went on as if he had not heard.

  "Somewhere," said the Emperor, "there must be a probability in which you, Jim, were the Emperor, and all the people of your world were High-born. And I was a Wolfling, who was brought there to show off some barbaric skill to you and your court. . . ."

  The grip on Jim's shoulder had tightened. Glancing up and sideways, Jim saw that the Emperor's eyes had become abstracted and seemingly out of focus. Though he continued to push Jim forward with his grip on Jim's shoulder, it was now as if he were blind and letting Jim find the path for him, so that he followed Jim, instead of leading him, as he had at the beginning of their pacing.

  "Have you ever heard of a Blue Beast, Jim?" he murmured.

  "No, Oran," said Jim.

  "No. . . ." muttered the Emperor. "No, and neither have I. Also, I looked through all our records of all the human legends on all the worlds—and nowhere was there a Blue Beast. If there never was such a thing as a Blue Beast, why should I see one, Jim?"

  The grip on Jim's shoulder was like a vise now. Still, the Emperor's voice was murmurous and soft, almost idle, as if he were daydreaming out loud. To any of the High-born watching from the edges of the circle surrounding them, it must look as if the two of them were in perfectly sensible, though low-voiced conversation.

  "I don't know, Oran," answered Jim.

  "Neither do I, Jim," said the Emperor. "That's what makes it so strange. Three times I've seen it now, and always in a doorway ahead of me, as if it was barring my path. You know, Jim . . . sometimes I'm just like all the rest of the High-born. But there are other times in which my mind becomes very clear . . . and I see things, and understand them, much better than any of these around us. That's why I know you're different, Jim. When I first saw you after the bullfight, I was looking at you . . . and all of a sudden it was as if you were at the other end of the telescope—very small, but very sharp. And I saw many very small, very sharp details about you that none of the rest of us had seen. You can be a High-born or not, Jim. Just as you like. Because it doesn't matter . . . I saw that in you. It doesn't matter."

  The Emperor's voice stopped. But he continued to urge Jim on, pacing blindly alongside him.

  "That's the way it is with me, Jim . . ." he began again after a moment. "Sometimes I see things small and clear. Then I realize that I'm half a step beyond the rest of the High-born. And it's strange—I'm what we've been working for down all these generations—that one step further on. But it's a step that we aren't built to take, Jim . . . do you understand me?"

  "I think so, Oran," answered Jim.

  " . . . But at other times," went on the Emperor. Jim could not tell whether Oran had noted his answer or not. " . . . But at other times, things only start to get sharp and clear—and when I try to look more closely, they go very fuzzy, and out of focus, and large. And I lose that sense of extra, inner sharp sight that I had to begin with. Then I have bad dreams for a while— dreams, awake and asleep. It's in dreams like that, that I've seen the Blue Beast, three times now. . . ."

  The Emperor's voice trailed off again, and Jim thought that they had come merely to another temporary pause in the conversation. But abruptly the Emperor's hand fell from his shoulder.

  Jim stopped and turned. He found Oran looking down
at him, smiling, clear-eyed and cheerful.

  "Well, I mustn't keep you, Jim," said Oran in a thoroughly normal, conversational voice. "This will be your first party—and after all, you're practically the guest of honor. Why don't you circulate and meet people. I've got to go find Vhotan. He worries too much when I'm away from him."

  The Emperor vanished. Jim stood still, and the cleared circle of floor began to fill in around him, as those on the outskirts drifted inward, and new arrivals began to appear. He looked about for Ro but could not see her.

  "Adok!" he said in a low voice.

  The Starkien appeared beside him.

  "Forgive me, Jim," said Adok. "I didn't know that the Emperor was through talking to you. I found the servant you sent me to find."

  "Take me where I can see him but he can't see me," said Jim.

  Abruptly they were in a narrow, shadowy place between two pillars, looking toward a further area where a cluster of close pillars enclosed a small open space, where a large number of trays loaded with food and drink stood neatly racked in the empty air, one above another. Standing amidst these trays was a servant, one of the short brown men with the long hair. Jim and Adok stood behind him, and looking past him, they could see out to where another servant was circulating within view with a tray of food.

  "Good," said Jim.

  He memorized the location and shifted both himself and Adok back to where he had been standing when the Emperor had left him.

  "Adok," he said softly, "I'm going to try to stay continuously within sight of the Emperor. I'd like you to stay within sight of me, but not exactly with me. Keep your eyes on me, and when I disappear, I want you to go to Vhotan, who'll be with the Emperor, and tell him I want him to be a witness to something. Then bring him to the place where that servant is. You understand?"

  "Yes, Jim," said Adok unemotionally.

  "Now," said Jim. "How do I find the Emperor?"

  "I can take you to him," said Adok. "All Starkiens can always find the Emperor, at any time. It's in case one of us should be needed."

  They were suddenly elsewhere in the Great Gathering Room. Jim looked about and from a distance of a couple of dozen feet saw the Emperor—this time without a circle of privacy around him, talking and laughing with several other High-born. Vhotan, his yellowish brows knitted, was at the younger man's elbow.

  Jim looked around him again and discovered Adok looking at him from perhaps twenty feet away. Jim nodded and drifted off at an angle that would keep him moving through the crowd, but at about always the same distance from the Emperor.

  Twice the Emperor shifted position suddenly. Twice Jim found himself shifted by Adok to a new position within sight of the High-born ruler. Surprisingly, through all this, none of the High-born around Jim paid particular attention to him. They seemed to have no eagerness to see the Wolfling in whose honor the party was being given, and if their eyes rested on him unknowingly, they evidently took him for simply one more of the servants.

  Time stretched out. Nearly an hour had gone by, and Jim was almost beginning to doubt his earlier certainties, when abruptly he saw what he had been waiting for.

  At first glance, it was nothing much. The Emperor was half-turned away from Jim, and all that betrayed his change in condition was a slight stiffening of his tall figure. He had become somewhat immobile, somewhat rigid.

  Jim hastily took two steps to the left so that he could catch sight of the man's face. Oran was staring through and past the other High-born man he had been talking to. His gaze was fixed; his smile was fixed; and as at the bullfight, there was a little trickle of moisture shining at the corner of his mouth.

  None of those around him appeared to be in the least aware of this. But Jim wasted no time watching them. Instead, he turned to look about for servants. He had made less than a half-turn before he saw the first man, a thin black-haired member of the lesser races, carrying a silver tray of what looked like small cakes.

  The man was not moving. He was stopped, still, as frozen in position as the Emperor.

  Jim hastily completed his turn. He saw three more servants, all of them rigid, all of them unmoving as statues. Even as he looked, the High-born around them began to take notice of this strange lack of activity in their midst. But Jim did not wait to see how their reaction would develop. Instantly he transferred himself to the shadowy area behind the servant with the trays—to that place where Adok had earlier taken him.

  The man with the trays was standing, looking. But he was not rigid—as was the servant who could be seen a couple of dozen yards beyond him, surrounded by High-born.

  Jim bent nearly double and ran forward swiftly and silently behind the trays until he came up with the servant who was looking out. At once he caught the man from behind with both hands. One hand taking him at the top and back of the neck just under the overhang of the skull, the other hand caught hold of the left armpit from behind, with the thumb resting over a pressure point just to the left of the shoulderblade.

  "Move," whispered Jim swiftly, "and I'll break your neck."

  The man stiffened. But he made no sound, and he did not move.

  "Now," whispered Jim again. "Do exactly as I tell you—"

  He paused to glance around behind him. There, in the shadows, he saw the stocky form of Adok, and with Adok a towering High-born shape that would be Vhotan. Jim turned back to the servant.

  "Put the two first fingers of your right hand across the biceps of your left arm," Jim whispered to the man.

  The other did not move. Still keeping himself crouched low and hidden behind the servant's form, Jim pushed his thumb in again against the pressure point.

  For a long moment the man resisted. Then, jerkily, almost like a robot, he moved his right hand up, up, and laid the forefingers of it, extended in V form, across the biceps of his left arm.

  Outside, the immobile servant in sight suddenly began to move, as if nothing had happened, trailed by a small cloud of puzzled and interested High-born. Jim quickly clapped a hand over the mouth of the man he was holding, and half-lifted, half-dragged him back into the shadows.

  Vhotan and Adok came forward to face down at the man.

  "Now—" began Vhotan grimly. But at that moment the servant made an odd, small noise and suddenly slumped, heavy in Jim's grasp.

  "Yes," said Vhotan, as if Jim's laying the man down had been a comment in words, "whoever planned this wouldn't have taken any chances on leaving him alive for us to question. Even the brain structure will be destroyed, no doubt."

  He raised his eyes and looked across the dead body to Jim. His High-born mind had plainly already deduced much of what Jim had brought him here to see. But Vhotan's eyes retained a bit of their chill, nonetheless.

  "Do you know who's behind all this?" he asked Jim.

  Jim shook his head.

  "But you clearly expected it to happen," said Vhotan. "You expected it enough to send your Starkien to bring me here. Why me?"

  Jim looked unstaringly at him.

  "Because I decided you were the one man among the High-born who had to admit to yourself, consciously, that the Emperor's mind is not all it should be—or perhaps," said Jim, for a second remembering their talk, his and the Emperor's, as they walked up and down the polished floor, "his mind is a little too much more than it should be."

  A faint click seemed to come from the throat of Vhotan. It was several long seconds before he said anything; and when he did speak, it was on another topic.

  "How did you find out about this—this, that the servants had planned?" Vhotan asked.

  "I didn't find out, to the point where I was absolutely sure it would happen," said Jim. "But I taught myself the Silent Language of the servants underground and learned that something was in the wind. Putting that together with this party, and the Emperor's known frailty, gave me an idea of what to look for. So when I got here, I sent Adok around to look for it; and when he found it, I acted as you've just seen."

  Vhotan had stiffened again
at the coupling of the words "Emperor" and "frailty." But he relaxed as Jim finished talking, and nodded.

  "You've done a good job, Wolfling," he said; and the words were plain enough, even though the tone was grudging. "From this point on, I'll handle it. But we'd better get you off the Throne World for a while, sponsored for adoption or not sponsored for adoption."

  He stood and thought for a second.

  "I think the Emperor will promote you," he said finally. "As a rank more commensurate with your effective High-born status as someone sponsored for adoption, he'll promote you to a Starkien Commander of Ten-units and send you off on some military-police job on one of the Colony Worlds."

  He turned away from Jim, Adok, and the dead servant, as if about to disappear. Then, apparently changing his mind, he swung back to look at Jim again.

  "What's your name?" he said sharply.

  "Jim," answered Jim.

  "Jim. Well, you did a good job, Jim," said Vhotan grimly. "The Emperor appreciates it. And—so do I."

  With that, he did disappear.

  Chapter 8

  The planet Athiya to which Jim was sent with his Ten-units of Starkien, Adok, and Harn II—who was the Ten-units' original commander but now acting-adjutant to Jim—was one of the many worlds populated by the small brown men with long, straight hair hanging down their back. The Governor, a burly little chestnut of a man, avoided all references to the uprising, to put down which he had asked the High-born to send him Starkien help. He insisted that they go through a large and formal welcoming ceremony, during which he avoided all references to the uprising and any questions about it made to him by Jim.

  However, explanations could not be put off forever. Jim, Harn II, Adok, and the Governor all ended up at last in the Governor's private office of the capital city of Athiya. The Governor attempted to fuss around getting them hassocks and refreshments, but Jim cut him short.