Free A Larger Universe by James L Gillaspy Page B

but do I look like a farmer?"
    "No, but you don't look like someone who could help me
either, whatever the lords think."
    "If I can't, will they send me home?"
    Valin laughed.  "You've got a funny mouth to go with
that funny body.  You'll go home when the lords are done with us, and that's
never.
    "This crowd will have their fill of looking at you
soon, and we'll be able to get out of here."
     
    #   #   #
     
    Valin worked in a room more than big enough for ten ordinary-appearing
desks.  Nine of the desks formed the shape of a horseshoe with one end open. 
The tenth desk was against another wall.  Other than the entrance, the room had
two doors, one on each side of the horseshoe and next to a number of partially
filled bookcases.  The door on the left had a picture and the lords' word for
book.  The door on the right had a picture of a cog and the lords' word for
machinery.  Eight men sat around the horseshoe, leaving the desk at the top
empty.
    "That's your desk against the wall.  Now, we'll look at
what you'll be doing," Valin said as he led the way through the door with
the picture of a book.
    The room inside would have looked like the computer section
of a large bookstore if there had been more than one copy of each title.  Tommy
walked from shelf to shelf, reading the bindings.  He saw books on computer
hardware, computer operating systems, computer languages, web development,
databases, programming algorithms, logic, and any number of topics Tommy had
never heard of, except that, when he looked inside, each one related to
computers.  The shelves contained hundreds of books.  He picked a book with
CICS in the title.  What's that?   And another, thin, book about the
proper way to crimp the ends of computer cables.  And another about UML. 
Except for the book about crimping the ends of cables, every book he took
contained at least two hundred pages.  Some of them were over 600 pages.
    Tommy turned from the shelves.  "You expect me to
translate all of these to the lords' language?  If I worked for two hundred
years, I wouldn't be able to do that."
     

Valin
     
    The strange Earthling made Valin apprehensive.  He looked
nothing at all like the small boy Valin had seen in the transmission from
Earth. 
    Valin had worked many years to reach his position as a
senior master, and now his position and his life were at the mercy of a lord's
whims and the unproven abilities of this alleged child.  The priest, Forset,
with his impractical station, may not have known of Valin, but the reverse had
not been true.  For many months he had been in contact with the first Jack
concerning Tommy.  He also found an interested helper in the fourth Forset, who
was eager to report Tommy's progress in learning the lords' language.
    The first Jack's initial communications indicated that the
child was a weakling and would not live to begin his classes with Forset.  That
had its own dangers.  Lord Ull expected the books to be translated, and Valin's
team had made little progress.
    After a time, the reports from the first Jack became
contradictory, as if Jack didn't want to believe what he was seeing.  And now
this strangest tale of all, coming from the fourth Forset, of Tommy lifting the
side of a barn and running down a giant bird.  None of this made sense, though
the creature standing in front of him seemed strong enough to perform such
tasks.
    After almost three years of attempting to translate the
books without this boy's help, Valin's life depended on Tommy’s doing as Lord
Ull expected.  Valin’s role in bringing Tommy here would make that certain.  He
must focus his attention on that.  Somewhere in the bulky body in front of him
must be a mind that could help them do the job Lord Ull had given him. 
     
     

Chapter Five:  Everything is
Relative
     
    "You do have a funny mouth,” Valin said, his expression
hardening.  “Either that or you think the lords are idiots, and that's not a
safe thing to