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Updated: May 10, 2025
There was a sudden wrenching twist as if two solid surfaces had slammed them from front and back, and a third force had thrust them sideways. They opened their eyes in the wooden house of Venor, in the village of the Idealists. "We owe you apologies," said Venor. "We hope you are not harmed in any way." Cameron stared around uncertainly. Joyce clutched his hand. "How did we ?" Cameron stammered.
Cameron exhaled with relief that it was not one of the other sarghs in the household. Sal Karone eyed them impassively as he wheeled in and arranged the food on the table by a window. Cameron watched, estimating his chances. "Your Chief, Venor, was very kind to us yesterday," he said quietly. "Our biggest regret in leaving is that our conversation with him must go unfinished." Sal Karone paused.
"This tells us nothing of how you were able to make a creative people out of a race of pirate marauders," said Cameron. "I gave you the key," said Venor. "It was one used long ago by your own people before it was abandoned. "How was the savage wolf tamed to become the loyal, friendly dog? Did ancient man try to exterminate the wolves that came to his caves and carried off his young?
We would master the Universe he restrained a smile. "You cannot believe this," said Venor, "because you have never understood the mark of the servant or the mark of the master. How often is there difficulty in distinguishing one from the other!" And how often do the illusions of the mind ease the privations of the body, Cameron thought. So that was the source of the Idealist serenity.
"Nonsense," he said. "There's no use trying to read great profundity in the words of an old patriarch of the woods. He's nothing except what he appears to be." The Markovians talked easily of Venor and the rest of the Ids. "We have tried to get him to join us in the city," said Marthasa as the meal began, "but he won't hear of it.
Somehow it seemed impossible to regard Venor as merely a specimen for sociological research. The Chief of the Idealists reached out of his unreal world and made his contact with the Terrans a personal thing almost as if he had spent all his life waiting for their coming. There was a sense of intimacy against which Cameron rebelled, and yet it was not an unpleasant thing.
"There is often greatest wisdom in the least spectacular," said Cameron, trying to sound like a sage. "Sal Karone was kind enough to invite us to your center and said there was much you could show us." "The things of the soul are not possible to show," said Venor gently. "We wish there were time that we might teach you some of the great things our people have learned in their long wanderings.
And a few of us, united in the effort, can touch those in distant galaxies. "What culture would you have us acquire, that we do not have?" Venor finished. Without answer, Cameron arose and strode slowly to the window, his back to the room. He looked out upon the rude wooden huts and the towering forest beyond. He tried to tell himself it was all a lie. Such things couldn't be.
What else could you want, with the whole Universe in the palm of your hand? He turned sharply. "You tricked us into betraying ourselves to Marthasa, and you said that you planned it this way when you first heard of our coming. But you have not yet said why. Why did you want us to see what you had done?" "You needed to have evidence from the Markovians themselves," said Venor.
He knew he was straining to believe things he wanted to believe, yet it seemed as if this were almost the very thing Venor had tried to convey the day before but had left unspoken. There was only one possibility of establishing contact, however, and that was through Sal Karone. A remote chance indeed, Cameron thought, in view of the relationship between the Markovian and his sargh.
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