Fletcher Pratt (16 page)

A
high
narrow panel revealed a row of little pulltabs with letters on them. I pulled at one and a thin sheet of metal attached to a spool somewhere came running out. It was covered with Murasheman characters arranged in columns, and as the first character of each word appeared the same, I guessed it was a directory of some kind.

By this time I was learning how things worked on Murashema, and anxious to try the device out I looked for the inevitable studs. I found seven of them at one side of the directory rolls, each marked with a character or two. Working on the analogy of our own telephones, I turned them all in succession, some to one point and some to another.

The result was not long in arriving. The panel of the directory slid to with a click, another and larger one opened. On the metal screen appeared the picture of a room similar to my own living room. At the moment it was vacant, but as I looked, the door at the bedroom side snapped back and there emerged an exceedingly fat and pink gentleman dripping wet and with a long red robe clutched around him.

He looked so much like a Thanksgiving Day pig, trussed up for roasting, that I could not forbear a burst of laughter. The irritation in his countenance increased, then changed to bewilderment; he said something and began to make motions which indicated a desire to decapitate me. I hurriedly turned the key that shut off the screen.

The next key in the series gave me nothing but a blank screen and a voice which repeated some question several times in a tone that grew increasingly querulous as I failed to reply and finally shut off altogether. The next key proved to be for the door into the hall, but I was afraid of being locked out.

The next key brought a gust of fresh and invigorating cold air, but the remainder was a complete washout. There was one for cleaning the room (which, of course, I turned on with the same blissful ignorance I had expended on the one in the dining room) and one for drying it, a key that showed an empty panel which slid back on an equally empty dumbwaiter. There was a row of studs beside this one, probably for ordering various objects, and I did not venture it.

This exhausted the resources of the living room and the dining room was already pretty well used up. There remained the bedroom. My first attempt here met with a reception that was dampening in both senses of the word. The bedroom door closed with a click, panels in the ceiling slid back with another, and I was treated to the Murasheman equivalent of a bath—a quick shower of hard, driving rain that wet my ragged clothes to my skin and filled the room with a couple of inches of water before I was able to turn it off.

In a moment or two I was shivering; the air was distinctly chilly by our standards, and I did not quite dare to peel off my clothes in view of the efficiency of the telephone system. The moment for an appeal to an attendant seemed to have arrived.

Leaving little puddles where my shoes squished on the floor, I walked across the living room, turned the second key and waited.

Not more than five minutes later one of those disembodied voices, which pop at you from all corners of Murashema, said something from the door. I opened it and the attendant entered. He was a little wizened man of perhaps fifty, dressed in sober blue clothes, loose jerkin sleeved to the elbows and provided with a belt and numerous pockets, closefitting trousers that ended at the knee and soft boots or shoes that ran up to meet the trousers. The shoulders of his jerkin bore a light blue emblem of complicated design, woven into the cloth. As I opened the door, he bent his knees and spread his hands in the gesture of greeting.

"Come in," said I. "Dry clothes? Can do?" And I held out the edge of my water-soaked coat.

For answer he produced from one of his pockets a tensal helmet, fitted it on and sat down in one of the chairs, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

"I want some dry clothes, if it's not too much trouble,"

I said. "These are pretty ragged anyway. I can arrange to pay for them later, I suppose."

Up he jumped, snapping off the tensal and dashing across the room to the key which gave on the empty panel. When the voice spoke, he answered and a moment later a picture appeared on the panel.

A figure was turning and twisting before a background of yellow and gray not unlike that of the walls of my room. I saw it was a man, dressed in the same Murashema costume my attendant wore. His costume was crimson and white and he was booted and belted in black. My servant indicated the picture with his finger, making a gurgling noise, the purpose of which was apparently to express his extreme admiration for it. A moment later the figure stepped away to be replaced by one clad in vivid diagonals of blue and yellow. My assistant gave a little gasp of admiration and looked at me questioningly. I comprehended that this was a style show, but picture me in that combination! To the obvious disappointment of my attendant, I shook my head, and the figure passed from the screen. I negatived a variety of others until one appeared in a suit of gray-green with belt and boots in bright blue. I nodded and pointed and the attendant, with a look that clearly indicated his disgust for so anemic a taste, turned one of the studs at the side of the panel.

"Your name?" I asked him to fill in the time as it closed. Out came the tensal. "What is your name?" I repeated. "Fixi Hadeg," he said, removing the apparatus. "Biyamo Oksen." He pointed to the emblem on his shoulder. "Hadeg," I repeated, and added "Good." I had to halt his motion for the tensal to find out what this word meant.

A voice at the door announced a visitor and Hadeg hurried to open it to a melancholy looking individual in pale lavender, who pushed a machine from which projected a system of padded knobs. There was a moment's conversation and by means of signs and the unbuttoning of my coat I was informed that they wished me to undress. With a glance over my shoulder at the telephone panel, I did so, while the man with the machine surveyed my hair and beard with a covert interest, picking up each garment as I let it fall and examining the buttons. It was not until that moment that I noted that neither of the Murashemans had a single button visible anywhere.

Once stripped, I was steered to a position in front of the machine. The lavender man turned a key in it, and the knobs, actuated by the machinery within, began to move over my whole body, feeling it to the tune of a portentous clicking within the device. They tickled. Under Hadeg's directions, I turned slowly round, the knobs felt gently down my back, and then still guided by my attendant I thrust first one foot and then the other into holes at the base of the instrument. The man in lavender nodded, shut off his machine and took it out again.

The next question was finding something to do. "Can't I learn Murasheman?" I asked when Hadeg had his tensal on again, "or have you some other means of amusement?"

He nodded brightly, stepped to the telephone-television panel and turned the key as I fled to the bedroom. I don't - know whom he called. They had a long conversation, at the end of which he came to get me and, turning to the newspaper key, showed me Ashembe sitting with his men in a circle, eating. By the inefficient method of signs, I was at last made to understand that learning Murasheman would have to wait until the return of my friend. Seeing that I had grasped the idea at last, Hadeg turned to one of the plays, and when I disapproved this, for lack of better occupation, returned to the panel by means of which he had summoned the tailor.

Upon its surface there appeared a row of weapons and armor. I shook my head again. Hadeg sighed and spoke a few words into the machine. The weapons gave place to a representation of the cubical chessboard. At last there was something I could understand. I nodded eagerly.

Hadeg turned a stud at the side of the panel and a moment later a clear voice spoke out into the room and he snapped open the dumbwaiter to reveal the chessboard. It was considerably larger than the one Ashembe had made and the pieces were beautifully worked, whether carved or molded, I could not tell. (Though from what I have learned since, I assume they were cast—the Murasheman dislikes the handwork of carving.) In a few minutes Hadeg and I were deep in the game and we played comfortably along until he led the way to the dining room for lunch.

We had hardly finished the meal before the voice from the next room spoke again, and we went to take my new clothes from the dumbwaiter. There was a closefitting undergarment just short of knee length and of silky texture; the outer garments were simply the boots, trousers and jerkin like those I described Hadeg and the tailor as wearing, with the exception that they were of the color I had chosen and that the shoulder bore a white star, woven into the green of the cloth. Of buttons there was not one. The clothes were secured by a series of tongue-snaps and the belt closed around my middle by the same means.

The fit of the garments was perfect and the boots were of so soft a material that it was more like cloth than leather, though it had the texture of leather to the fingers. Only at the soles were they stiff and even here the stiffness was caused by a greater thickness of material rather than by any difference in the character of the goods.

After lunch we returned to our game. Hadeg beat me, but I had expected it, and at least had the satisfaction of having given him a run for his money.

And thus began my three weeks of waiting for Ashembe's return from the Shoraru.