Earthsmith Part 2

Had he known it, Jorak would have used the word rube, but what about Geria?

The green number on the white door was painted sharply--4027. "Here's my room," Smith said. He tried an indifferent wave, but it hardly worked, and he began to blush again.

Geria skipped lightly down the hall, and he couldn't see her face to tell if she were smiling. He shrugged, opened the door.

"Earthsmith! Oh, no ... I come half way across the galaxy to get here, so what are the odds against any particular room mate? Huge, that's what. But I got me--h.e.l.lo, Earthsmith."

It was the purple man, Jorak. He had just recently greased his shock of bright green hair, and he had turned away from the mirror when Smith opened the door. Now he turned back to the tinted gla.s.s and held his head at various angles.

"Well, can you change rooms if you want to?" Smith asked pleasantly.

"You're not going to chase me out of my own room, Earthsmith. You can change if you'd like. Not me."

"All right if you want me to I'll change."

"If I want you to! Don't pa.s.s the blame to me, Earthsmith. I didn't say a thing about changing, not me. Don't you think I'm good enough for you?"

"I don't care one way or the other," Smith said. "I suggested you change because I thought you'd be happier that way. Look, I'll mind my own business and pretend you are not even here. How's that?"

"Pretend I'm not here? Like cepheid you will. If you want to be ornery, Smith, or Earthsmith, or whatever your name is, I'll give you plenty to be ornery about. I'm a dominant, you know, so just watch out."

"I'll change if that will make you happy." Smith didn't want any trouble. He still felt more than a little strange and out of place here, and a fight with Jorak wouldn't help matters. Briefly, he wondered what sort of psi-powers Jorak possessed.

The purple man stood up. "What kind of a slap in the face is that? We haven't even started courses or anything. You think I'd need you to help me with my work or something?"

"No, I'm quite sure you wouldn't. But I'll change my room, anyway. I'll probably get in your way--"

"Well, _I_ wouldn't get into _your_ hair, satellite-head! If you think you're going to leave here and say I started a fight or something.... My father made quite a record for himself here at the school, and I'll have to beat it, of course."

"Of course," Smith agreed, but he did not really know why.

"Are you implying anyone, just anyone, could top my father's record, Earthsmith? Not a man from Gyra ever did it, and intellectually Gyra is top planet in its own sector. Not a woman from Bortinot came close, but then, you probably don't even know where Bortinot is."

Smith said no, he didn't, but he had just met a woman from Bortinot.

Perhaps if he changed the subject....

Jorak ran his fingers up along each side of his shock of hair. They came away greasy green. "Exquisite, those women of Bortinot. But then, you probably wouldn't appreciate them, eh, Earthsmith?"

Smith said that he could appreciate them very well indeed, especially since, except for a few minor structural differences, they looked like women of Earth. It was a mistake, and the muscles in Jorak's cheeks began to twitch.

"I say they look exquisite, you say they look like women of Earth. Which is it, Earthsmith? Not both, surely--a contradiction in terms. I believe you're trying to provoke me."

Smith sighed. He wanted no trouble--they had spent a year with him on Earth, indoctrinating that. He was to be a paragon at the school, as Earth's first student there, he had to be a paragon--even if he turned out to be more awkward in this situation than the farmer on Earth everyone had called Rube.

"I think I will go to sleep," Smith said.

"Why, don't you men of Earth ever eat, Smith?"

Smith said yes, they ate, but he wasn't very hungry now. As a matter of fact, he was ravenously hungry, but he did not relish the idea of going to some public eating place either with Jorak or alone. His heart began to beat a little faster when he thought that he might meet Geria if he did, but then he felt the heat rise up his neck and into his cheeks.

He'd hardly know what to say to her, and besides, he knew there was something he should remember but couldn't quite. No, he'd skip dinner this first day at the school.

Now he watched Jorak open the door and step into the hallway, and for a moment he heard gay voices and the shuffling of many feet, and Jorak's voice louder than the rest: "Kard of Shilon! How long has it been? I can remember that day near Raginsdild...."

Smith turned to the window, and for a long time he sat watching the fat red sun.

He got up early and he showered, and then he heard a clicking sound. Two cards had been deposited in a tray from a slot in the wall. At the top of one were the words "Jorak of Gyra," and Smith's name and planet were printed on the other. He picked it up and began to read, and then Jorak sat up and took the other card.

"Programs," said Jorak. "Everyone takes transtellar history, of course, and a section or two in the humanities. My electives are Wortan fighting and dream-empathy."

Smith smiled. "Me too--same program. I suppose we'll be in cla.s.s together, Jorak."

"Rather stupid," the purple man observed. "They've given you a dominant's program. But then, I remember you questioned your receptive cla.s.sification, and the registrar's known to do this on occasion, just to put you in your place. You'll be in Garlonian dancing in a few days, Earthsmith."

"Well, I sure hope not. I didn't come here to learn how to dance--"

"Hah! So what? If you're an R you'll learn how to dance and like it.

Cook, too. There's no such thing as a misfit at the school, not permanently. They'll find you out soon enough, Earthsmith. Hmmm, wait till Kard of Shilon finds out what they've put in Wortan. Kard's top man in his sector, and it's just possible they'll pair you off with him.

"Well, you going to eat this morning? I'd hate to see you in Wortan without a good meal in you. But I suppose it really wouldn't help, anyway. Coming, Earthsmith?"

There weren't any people out in the hall this early, and Smith breathed more easily when they moved in a direction opposite that of Geria's room. Soon they had descended a score of levels, and the moving ramp became more crowded. Smith tried to ignore the eager hum of conversation, but it was all around him. He realized he should be feeling that way too. But you couldn't drum up a student's eager appet.i.te within yourself, not when you didn't feel that way, not when your entire planet waited to see how you made out here and you felt unsure of yourself, even in such simple things as eating.

That part of it at least turned out better than Smith had hoped. There were eggs, and while he was sure he would not recognize the fowl if he saw it, he could at least order his over-light and get something familiar. And there were long strips of fatty meat which almost could have been bacon, except Smith was sure the pig wouldn't be a pig at all.

And Smith was lost in the hordes of white men, green men, purple, orange and brown, and no one paid him too much attention. Jorak busied himself remembering old times with a gruff burly orange man named Kard, whose planet was Shilon, and Smith ate in silence. Once he thought he saw Geria far off at another table, but it could have been his imagination, and when he looked again she was gone.

Home, Smith always had been a quick eater, but now he found himself pawing at his food. Soon the great dining room began to clear. Jorak and Kard leaned back in their chairs, watching Smith.

Jorak yawned. "How long does it take you to breakfast?"

"Different rate of digestion on Earth," Kard suggested.

"Don't be foolish. Earthsmith's in no hurry to attend his first cla.s.s, so he's loafing. Right, Earthsmith?"

Smith mumbled something about unfamiliar food under his breath, and Jorak said, "Well, no matter. We'll give you another moment or two, Earthsmith. Then we'll have to be going. We all three have transtellar history, you know."

Smith knew it all too well. Gyra and Bortinot and Shilon were so many names to him and he silently cursed Earth's provincial histories. For those here at the school, the three names and a hundred others might be magical stepping stones to the culture, the lore, the history of a galaxy--but all Smith knew now was that Jorak came from Gyra, and so some of Gyra's people at least must be purple, that Geria came from Bortinot where the women were D and the men were R and where the women looked like those of Earth, that Kard, finally, came from a place that bore the name Shilon, where some of the men at least were orange. But Shilon could have been anyplace from the hub to the fringe, Gyra might swim dizzily out near Ophiuchus or it might be the new culture name for one of Earth's near neighbors. And Bortinot--he wished he knew more about Bortinot.

The instructor of transtellar history was a little fat man with a round gold face and green eyes that blinked too much. He wore the tight black uniform of the instructor and his green armband proclaimed his subject to be history. He smiled too much, too vacantly, as if he had been practicing it a long time and now forgot what it really meant.

"Greetings!" he cried jovially, after everyone had been seated on the long low benches around the room. "I bring you history. No one is to talk unless I tell him to. Everyone is to listen unless I tell him not to. Clear?" He smiled.