Free Gordon R. Dickson by Wolfling Page B

isn’t it?”
    Ro shivered suddenly.
    “No, it isn’t!” she said tensely but in a low voice. “It’s frightening! I knew I could teach you things and help you survive here in the ordinary way. But if things are going on in which others of the Highborn want to use you… .” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes were dark with unhappiness.
    Jim considered her in silence for a moment. Then he spoke.
    “Ro,” he said, slowly, “tell me. Is the Emperor ill?”
    She looked up at him in astonishment.
    “Ill? … You mean, sick?” she said. Then, suddenly, she laughed. “Jim, none of the Highborn are ever sick—least of all the Emperor.”
    “There’s something wrong with him,” said Jim. “And it can’t be much of a secret if it happens the way it happened in the arena after the bullfight. Did you see how he changed when he started to speak to me after the bull was dead?”
    “Changed?” She literally stared at him. “Changed? In what way?”
    Jim told her.
    ” … You didn’t see how he looked, or hear the sounds he made?” asked Jim. “Of course not—come to think of it, you probably weren’t sitting that close.”
    “But, Jim!” She put her hand on his arm in that familiar, persuasive gesture of hers. “Every seat in the arena there has its own focusing equipment. Why, when you were fighting with that animal”—she shuddered briefly, in passing, then hurried on—“I could see you from as closely as I wanted, as if I were standing as close to you as I am now. When you turned toward the Imperial box, I was still focused right in on you. I saw the Emperor speak to you, and if he’d done anything out of the ordinary, I’d have noticed it too!”
    He stared at her.
    “You didn’t see what I saw?” he said after a second.
    She continued to meet his eyes in a pattern of honesty; but with a sudden sensitivity inside himself, he seemed to feel that, within, she was somehow refusing to meet his eye—without being really aware of this herself.
    “No,” she said. “I saw him speak to you and heard him invite you to visit him after you’d had a chance to rest. Nothing more than that.”
    She continued to stand, gazing up into his eyes in that pattern of exterior honesty, with the inner aversion of her gaze unknown to her but evident to him. The seconds stretched out, and he suddenly realized that she was fixed. She was incapable of breaking the near-trance of this moment. He would have to be the one to interrupt it.
    He turned his head away from her and was just in time to see the gray-skinned, bald-headed figure of a Starkien appear in the room about five feet away from them.
    Jim stiffened, staring at him.
    “Who are you?” Jim demanded.
    “My name is Adok I,” responded the newcomer. “But I am you.”

Chapter 6
    Jim frowned sharply at the man, who, however, showed no reaction to his frown at all.
    “You’re me?” Jim echoed. “I don’t understand.”
    “Why, Jim!” broke in Ro. “He’s your substitute, of course. You can’t actually be a Starkien yourself. Any more than a—” She fumbled for a parallel and gave it up. “Well, look at him. And look at yourself!” she finished.
    “The Highborn is quite right,” said Adok I. He had a deep, flat, emotionless voice. “Award Commissions are usually given to those who are not Starkien by birth and training. In such cases a substitute is always provided.”
    “A substitute is, is he?” said Jim. “In that case, what do they call you officially, in the records?”
    “Officially, as I said, I’m you,” answered Adok I.
    “Officially, my name is James Keil. I am a Wolfling from a world that calls itself”—the Starkien’s tongue stumbled a little with the pronunciation of the unknown word—“Earth.”
    “I thought you told me that you were Adok I,” Jim said. The extreme seriousness of the Starkien was tempting him to smile, but an instinct kept the smile hidden within him and off his face.
    “Unofficially, to you, Jim,” said