Robert Silverberg - The Longest Way Home

He found his way back to his own bedroom without incident and dropped at once into deep sleep, the first really sound sleep he had had in more weeks than he could remember. When he awoke, it was long after daylight: floods of golden sunshine were pouring into the room. Someone had come in while he slept, picked up the overturned table, removed the fragments of the broken pitcher. The bowl of stew and the plate of mashed vegetables were still sitting on the cupboard where the boy who had brought them had left them. A stab of hunger pierced through him suddenly and he sprang from the bed, or tried to, but dizziness instantly overcame him and he had to sit again, trembling a little, racked by little shuddering spasms. When the shuddering stopped he got up again, very carefully this time, slowly crossed the room, ate a few spoonfuls of the vegetables, sipped at the stew. He was not as hungry as he had thought he was. Still, he was able to keep the food down, and after a little while he managed to eat some more of it.

They had put out clothing for him, good honest Folkish dress—brown cotton leggings, a singlet of gray wool, a leather vest, a pair of open sandals. Nothing fit him very well: the leggings were too short, the singlet too tight, the vest too loose across the shoulders, the sandals too small. Probably most or all of these things belonged to the boy of the house. But wearing them, ill-fitting or not, was better than going about naked, or wrapping himself in his bedsheet, or trying to get back into his filthy Indigene robes.

The woman who had cared for him last night came into the room. He saw that she was forty or so, plump, with weary dark-shadowed eyes but a warm, ingratiating smile. The girl and the young man who had been in the room last night were with her again. “I am Saban,” the woman said. “My daughter Thayle. Velk, my son.” Velk appeared to be eighteen or twenty, short, strongly built, dull-eyed, probably not terribly bright. Thayle did not seem as pretty as she had last night, now that Joseph could see the Folkish stockiness of her frame, but she looked sweet and cheerful and Joseph liked her smooth clear skin and the bright sheen of her yellow hair. He doubted that she was any older than sixteen, perhaps even a year or two younger; but it was very hard to tell. The Folk always looked older than they really were to him, because they tended to be so sturdily built, so deep-chested and thick-shouldered. Saban indicated a third person standing in a diffident slouch farther back in the room and said, “That is my man, Simthot.” About fifty, shorter even than his son, a burly man with powerful arms and shoulders, deeply tanned skin, the creases of a lifetime of hard work furrowing his expressionless face. “You are a guest in our house as long as you need to stay,” said Saban, and Simthot nodded emphatically. He appeared to be accustomed to letting his wife do the talking for him.

“I feel much better this morning,” Joseph told her. “It was good to sleep in a comfortable bed again, and to be able to eat a little food. I thank you for all your kindnesses.”

Was that too formal, too Master-like? Even though he spoke in Folkish, he was afraid of betraying his aristocratic origins by expressing himself too well. He wondered if a Folkish boy of fifteen or sixteen would ever be as articulate as that.

But Saban showed no sign of suspicion. She told him only that she was pleased that the night’s rest had done him good, and warned him not to try to recover too quickly. The town governor, she said, would come here later in the day to speak with him. Meanwhile, she suggested, he ought to get back into bed.

That seemed wise to him. He no longer felt as though he were on the brink of death, but he knew he had a long way to go before he had some semblance of vigor again.

Thayle brought him tea with honey in it, and stood by his bedside while he drank it. When he was done Joseph asked her for more of the bread she had given him the night before, and she brought that too, and watched him in a kind of placid satisfaction as he nibbled at it. Like her mother, she appeared to be taking an almost maternal interest in his welfare.

He needed to urinate again, and perhaps even to move his bowels, something he had not succeeded in doing in many days. But he still did not know where to go. Though Joseph would not have hesitated to ask a servant for the location of the nearest privy, if he were a guest in some Great House, he felt oddly inhibited about asking the girl. He was not even sure of the word for it in Folkish; that was part of the problem. But he knew he was being ridiculous. After a time he said, feeling heat rise to his cheeks, “Thayle, I have to—if you would please show me—”

She understood immediately, of course. He would not let her help him rise from the bed, though there was a bad moment of vertigo when he did, and he refused her arm as they went from the room. The lavatory was at the back of the house. Because he knew she was waiting for him outside to guide him back to his room, he tried to be as quick about things as he could, but his body was still not functioning normally, and he could not look her in the eye when he finally emerged a long time afterward. All she said was, “Would you like to go outside for some fresh air and sunshine?”

“I’d like that very much, yes,” he told her.

They emerged into the kitchen-garden. The warm sunlight felt good against his face. She stood very close beside him, as though afraid he might be too weak to stand on his own for long. The firm curve of her breast was pressing into his side. Joseph was surprised to observe how much he liked that. He was actually beginning to find her attractive despite or perhaps even because of her Folkish look, which was somewhat unsettling, though in an interesting way. I suppose I have been away from my own people too long, he thought.

He guessed that it was probably about noon. Very few townsfolk were around, just some very small children playing in the dust and a few old people busy on the porches of their houses. The rest were working in the fields, Joseph assumed, or accompanying their herds through the pastures. A peaceful scene. The dog that had been sleeping out here last night was still curled up on the ground, and again it gave him a quick one-eyed inspection and a soft little growl before subsiding into sleep. It was not easy to believe that elsewhere on Homeworld a bloody war was going on, estates being pillaged and burned, people driven into exile.

“What is this village called?” Joseph asked, after a little while.

“It’s a town, not a village,” Thayle said.

Evidently that was an important distinction. “This town , then.”

“You don’t know? Its name is Eysar Haven.”

“Ah. Eysar Haven.”

“Originally it was called something else, though that was so long ago that nobody remembers what. But then the name was changed to Eysar Haven, because he actually came here once, you know.”

“He? Eysar, you mean?”

“Yes, of course, Eysar. Who else? He was really here. Some people don’t even believe that Eysar truly existed, that he’s just a myth, but it isn’t so. He was here. He stayed for weeks and weeks, while he was making the Crossing. We know that to be a fact. And after he left the town was named for him. It’s wonderful to think that we walk on the very same ground that Eysar’s feet once touched, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It certainly is,” said Joseph carefully.

He felt that he was in dangerous territory here. There was a note of reverence and awe in Thayle’s voice. Eysar must be some great Folkish hero, whose name was known to one and all in the Folkish world. But Joseph had never heard of him. He stayed for weeks and weeks, while he was making the Crossing . What could that mean? A Master’s education did not include a great deal of Folkish history, nor Folkish mythology, for that matter. For all Joseph knew, Eysar had been a great Folkish king in the days before the Conquest, or the leader of the first Folkish expedition to land on Homeworld, or perhaps some sort of charismatic wonderworking religious leader. The thought that the Folk once had had great kings of their own, or glorious heroes, or revered religious leaders, and that they still cherished the memory of those great men, was a little startling to him, simply because it had never occurred to him before. And certainly it would not do at all for Thayle to find out that he had no knowledge of who this Eysar was, or the Crossing, or, for that matter, of any significant datum of Folkish life or culture.