Heinlein, Robert A Citizen of the Galaxy

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a slaver and threw him into the first nightmare he had had in years.
Then his tired, fume-sodden brain took a long time struggling up out of the horror.
At last he was awake, aware of his surrounding, and concluded that he was aboard the Sisu and safe.
He felt a glow of relief and gathering excitement that he was traveling, going somewhere. His grief over
Baslim was pushed aside by strangeness and change. He looked around.
The compartment was a cube, only a foot or so higher and wider than his own height. He was resting
on a shelf that filled half the room and under him was a mattress strangely and delightfully soft, of material
warm and springy and smooth. He stretched and yawned in surprised wonder that traders lived in such
luxury. Then he swung his feet over and stood up.
The bunk swung noiselessly up and fitted itself into the bulkhead. Thorby could not puzzle out how to
open it again. Presently he gave up. He did not want a bed then; he did want to look around.
When he woke the ceiling was glowing faintly. When he stood up it glowed brightly and remained so.
But the light did not show where the door was. There were vertical metal panels on three sides, any of
which might have been a door, save that none displayed thumb slot, hinge, or other familiar mark.
He considered the possibility that he had been locked in, but was not troubled. Living in a cave,
working in the Plaza, he was afflicted neither with claustrophobia nor agoraphobia; he simply wanted to
find the door and was annoyed that he could not recognize it. If it were locked, he did not think that
Captain Krausa would let it stay locked unduly long. But he could not find it.
He did find a pair of shorts and a singlet, on the deck. When he woke he had been bare, the way he
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usually slept He picked up these garments, touched them timidly, wondered at their magnificence. He
recognized them as being the sort of thing most spacemen wore and for a moment let himself be dazzled
at the thought of wearing such luxuries. But his mind shied away from such impudence.
Then he recalled Captain Krausa's distaste at his coming aboard in the clothes he normally wore --
why, the Captain had even intended to take him to a tailoring shop in Joy Street which catered to
spacemen! He had said so.
Thorby concluded that these clothes must be for him. For him! His breech clout was missing and the
Captain certainly had not intended him to appear in the Sisu naked. Thorby was not troubled by
modesty; the taboo was spotty on Jubbul and applied more to the upper classes. Nevertheless clothes
were worn.
Marveling at his own daring, Thorby tried them on. He got the shorts on backwards, figured out his
mistake, and put them on properly. He got the pullover shirt on backwards, too, but the error was not as
glaring; he left it that way, thinking that he had It right Then he wished mightily that he could see himself.
Both garments were of simple cut, undecorated light green, and fashioned of strong, cheap material;
they were working clothes from the ship's slop chest, a type of garment much used by both sexes on
many planets through many centuries. Yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as Thorby! He
smoothed the cloth against his skin and wanted someone to see him in his finery. He set about finding the
door with renewed eagerness.
It found him. While running his hands over the panels on one bulkhead he became aware of a breeze,
turned and found that one panel had disappeared. The door let out into a passageway.
A young man dressed much as Thorby was (Thorby was overjoyed to find that he had dressed
properly for the occasion) was walking down the curved corridor toward Thorby. Thorby stepped out
and spoke a greeting in Sargonese trade talk.
The man's eyes flicked toward Thorby, then he marched on past as if no one was there. Thorby
blinked, puzzled and a little hurt. Then he called out to the receding back in Interlingua.
No answer and the man disappeared before he could try other languages.
Thorby shrugged and let it roll off; a beggar does not gain by being touchy. He set out to explore.
In twenty minutes he discovered many things. First, the Sisu was much larger than he had imagined. He
had never before seen a starship close up, other than from the doubtful vantage of a slaver's hold. Ships
in the distance, sitting on the field of Jubbul's port, had seemed large but not this enormous. Second, he
was surprised to find so many people. He understood that the Sargon's freighters operating among the
Nine Worlds were usually worked by crews of six or seven. But in his first few minutes he encountered
several times that number of both sexes and all ages.
Third, he became dismally aware that he was being snubbed. People did not look at him, nor did they
answer when he spoke; they walked right through him if he did not jump. The nearest he accomplished to
social relations was with a female child, a toddler who regarded him with steady, grave eyes in answer to
his overtures -- until snatched up by a woman who did not even glance at Thorby.
Thorby recognized the treatment; it was the way a noble treated one of Thorby's caste. A noble could
not see him, he did not exist -- even a noble giving alms usually did so by handing it through a slave.
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Thorby had not been hurt by such treatment on Jubbul; that was natural, that was the way things had
always been. It had made him neither lonely nor depressed; he had had plenty of warm company in his
misery and had not known that it was misery.
But had he known ahead of time that the entire ship's company of the Sisu would behave like nobles
he would never have shipped in her, snoopies or not. But he had not expected such treatment. Captain
Krausa, once Baslim's message had been delivered, had been friendly and gruffly paternal; Thorby had
expected the crew of the Sisu to reflect the attitude of her master.
He wandered the steel corridors, feeling like a ghost among living, and at last decided sadly to go back
to the cubicle in which he had awakened. Then he discovered that he was lost. He retraced what he
thought was the route -- and in fact was; Baslim's renshawing had not been wasted -- but all he found
was a featureless tunnel. So he set out again, uncomfortably aware that whether he found his own room
or not, he must soon find where they hid the washroom, even if he had to grab someone and shake him.
He blundered into a place where he was greeted by squeals of female indignation; he retreated hastily
and heard a door slam behind him.
Shortly thereafter he was overtaken by a hurrying man who spoke to him, in Interlingua: "What the
dickens are you doing wandering around and butting into things?"
Thorby felt a wave of relief. The grimmest place in the world, lonelier than being alone, is Coventry,
and even a reprimand is better than being ignored. "I'm lost," he said meekly.
"Why didn't you stay where you were?"
"I didn't know I was supposed to -- I'm sorry, noble sir -- and there wasn't any washroom." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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