'Other ships,' Barker corrected him, 'will pursue and fail to overtake us. I doubt very much that slave ships can overtake a ship driven by free men and women going home.'
'We will attack openly for this insolence,' snorted Gori. 'Do you think you can stand against a battle fleet? We will destroy your cities until you've had enough, and then use you as the slaves you are.'
'I'm sure you'll try,' said Barker. 'However, all I ask is a couple of weeks for a few first-rate Ph.D.'s to go over this ship and its armaments. I believe you'll find you have a first-rate war on your hands, gentlemen.
We don't steal; we learn.
'And now, if you please, start figuring that course. You're working for us now.'
THE WORDS OF GURU
Yesterday, when I was going to meet Guru in the woods a man stopped me and said: 'Child, what are you doing out at one in the morning?
Does your mother know where you are? How old are you, walking around this late?'
I looked at him, and saw that he was white-haired, so I laughed. Old men never see; in fact men hardly see at all. Sometimes young women see part, but men rarely ever see at all. 'I'm twelve on my next birthday,' I said. And then, because I would not let him live to tell people, I said, 'and I'm out this late to see Guru.'
'Guru?' he asked. 'Who is Guru? Some foreigner, I suppose? Bad business mixing with foreigners, young fellow. Who is Guru?'
So I told him who Guru was, and just as he began talking about cheap magazines and fairy tales I said one of the words that Guru taught me and he stopped talking. Because he was an old man and his joints were stiff he didn't crumple up but fell in one piece, hitting his head on the stone. Then I went on.
Even though I'm going to be only twelve on my next birthday I know many things that old people don't. And I remember things that other boys can't. I remember being born out of darkness, and I remember the noises that people made about me. Then when I was two months old I began to understand that the noises meant things like the things that were going on inside my head. I found out that I could make the noises too, and everybody was very much surprised. 'Talking!' they said, again and again. 'And so very young! Clara, what do you make of it?' Clara was my mother.
And Clara would say: 'I'm sure I don't know. There never was any genius in my family, and I'm sure there was none in Joe's.' Joe was my father.
Once Clara showed me a man I had never seen before, and told me that he was a reporter—that he wrote things in newspapers. The reporter tried to talk to me as if I were an ordinary baby; I didn't even answer him, but just kept looking at him until his eyes fell and he went away.
Later Clara scolded me and read me a little piece in the reporter's newspaper that was supposed to be funny —about the reporter asking me very complicated questions and me answering with baby noises. It was not true, of course. I didn't say a word to the reporter, and he didn't ask me even one of the questions.
I heard her read the little piece, but while I listened I was watching the slug crawling on the wall. When Clara was finished I asked her: 'What is that grey thing?'
She looked where I pointed, but couldn't see it. 'What grey thing, Peter?' she asked. I had her call me by my whole name, Peter, in-stead of anything silly like Petey. 'What grey thing?'
'It's as big as your hand, Clara, but soft. I don't think it has any bones at all. It's crawling up, but I don't see any face on the top-wards side. And there aren't any legs.'
I think she was worried, but she tried to baby me by putting her hand on the wall and trying to find out where it was. I called out whether she was right or left of the thing. Finally she put her hand right through the slug. And then I realized that she really couldn't see it, and didn't believe it was there. I stopped talking about it then and only asked her a few days later: 'Clara, what do you call a thing which one person can see and another person can't?'
'An illusion, Peter,' she said. 'If that's what you mean.' I said nothing, but let her put me to bed as usual, but when she turned out the light and went away I waited a little while and then called out softly.
'Illusion! Illusion!'
At once Guru came for the first time. He bowed, the way he al-ways has since, and said: 'I have been waiting.' 'I didn't know that was the way to call you,' I said.
'Whenever you want me I will be ready. I will teach you, Peter—if you want to learn. Do you know what I will teach you?'
'If you will teach me about the grey thing on the wall,' I said, 'I will listen. And if you will teach me about real things and unreal things I will listen.'
'These things,' he said thoughtfully, 'very few wish to learn. And there are some things that nobody ever wished to learn. And there are some things that I will not teach.'
Then I said: 'The things nobody has ever wished to learn I will learn.
And I will even learn the things you do not wish to teach.'
He smiled mockingly. 'A master has come,' he said, half-laughing. 'A master of Guru.'
That was how I learned his name. And that night he taught me a word which would do little things, like spoiling food.
From that day to the time I saw him last night he has not changed at all, though now I am as tall as he is. His skin is still as dry and shiny as ever it was, and his face is still bony, crowned by a head of very coarse, black hair.
When I was ten years old I went to bed one night only long enough to make Joe and Clara suppose I was fast asleep. I left in my place something which appears when you say one of the words of Guru and went down the drainpipe outside my window. It always was easy to climb down and up, ever since I was eight years old.
I met Guru in Inwood Hill Park. 'You're late,' he said.
'Not too late,' I answered. 'I know it's never too late for one of these things.'
'How do you know?' he asked sharply. 'This is your first.'
'And maybe my last,' I replied. 'I don't like the idea of it. If I have nothing more to learn from my second than my first I shan't go to another.'
'You don't know,' he said. 'You don't know what it's like—the voices, and the bodies slick with unguent, leaping flames; mind-filling ritual!
You can have no idea at all until you've taken part.'
'We'll see,' I said. 'Can we leave from here?'
'Yes,' he said. Then he taught me the word I would need to know, and we both said it together.
The place we were in next was lit with red lights, and I think that the walls were of rock. Though of course there was no real seeing there, and so the lights only seemed to be red, and it was not real rock.
As we were going to the fire one of them stopped us. 'Who's with you?'
she asked, calling Guru by another name. I did not know that he was also the person bearing that name, for it was a very powerful one.
He cast a hasty, sidewise glance at me and then said: 'This is Peter of whom I have often told you.'
She looked at me then and smiled, stretching out her oily arms. 'Ah,'
she said, softly, like the cats when they talk at night to me. 'Ah, this is Peter. Will you come to me when I call you, Peter? And sometimes call for me—in the dark—when you are alone?'
'Don't do that!' said Guru, angrily pushing past her. 'He's very young—
you might spoil him for his work.'
She screeched at our backs: 'Guru and his pupil—fine pair! Boy, he's no more real than I am—you're the only real thing here!'
'Don't listen to her,' said Guru. 'She's wild and raving. They're always tight-strung when this time comes around.'
