A florid gentleman in colonel's uniform leaned toward him with that marked condescension of the military man for the scholar and said, "If I interpret your expressions rightly, Dr. Arvardan, you are trying to tell us that these hounds of Earth represent an ancient race that may once have been the ancestors of all humanity?"
"I hesitate, Colonel, to make the flat assertion, but I think there is an interesting chance that it might be so. A year from now I confidently hope to be able to make a definite judgment."
"If you find that they are, Doctor, which I strongly doubt," rejoined the colonel, "you will astonish me beyond measure. I have been stationed on Earth now for four years, and my experience is not of the smallest. I find these Earthmen to be rogues and knaves, every one of them. They are definitely our inferiors intellectually. They lack that spark that has spread humanity throughout the Galaxy. They are lazy, superstitious, avaricious, and with no trace of nobility of soul. I defy you, or anyone, to show me an Earthman who can in any way be an equal of any true man-yourself or myself, for instance-and only then will I grant you that he may represent a race who once were our ancestors. But, until then, please excuse me from making any such assumption."
A portly man at the foot of the table said suddenly, "They say the only good Earthman is a dead Earthman, and that even then they generally stink," and laughed immoderately.
Arvardan frowned at the dish before him and said, without looking up, "I have no desire to argue racial differences, especially since it is irrelevant in this case. It is the Earthman of prehistory that I speak of. His descendants of today have been long isolated, and have been subjected to a most unusual environment-yet I still would not dismiss them too casually."
He turned to Ennius and said, "My Lord, I believe you mentioned an Earthman before dinner."
"I did? I don't recall."
"A physicist. Shekt."
"Oh yes. Yes."
"Affret Shekt, perhaps?"
"Why, yes. Have you heard of him?"
"I think I have. It's been bothering me all through dinner, ever since you mentioned him, but I think I've placed him. He wouldn't be at the Institute of Nuclear Research at-Oh, what's the name of that damned place?" He struck at his forehead with the heel of his palm once or twice. " At Chica?"
"You have the right person. What about him?"
"Only this. There was an article by him in the August issue of Physical Reviews. I noticed it because I was looking for anything that had to do with Earth, and articles by Earthmen in journals of Galactic circulation are very rare...In any case, the point I am trying to make is that the man claims to have developed something he calls a Synapsifier, which is supposed to improve the learning capacity of the mammalian nervous system."
"Really?" said Ennius a bit too sharply. "I haven't heard about it."
"I can find you the reference. It's quite an interesting article; though, of course, I can't pretend to understand the mathematics involved. What he has done, however, has been to treat some indigenous animal form on Earth-rats, I believe they call them-with the Synapsifier and then put them to solving a maze. You know what I mean: learning the proper pathway through a tiny labyrinth to some food supply. He used non-treated rats as controls and found that in every case the Synapsified rats solved the maze in less than one third the time...Do you see the significance, Colonel?"
The military man who had initiated the discussion said indifferently, "No, Doctor, I do not."
"I'll explain, then, that I firmly believe that any scientist capable of doing such work. even an Earthman, is certainly my intellectual equal, at least, and, if you'll pardon my presumption, yours as well."
Ennius interrupted. "Pardon me, Dr. Arvardan. I would like to return to the Synapsifier. Has Shekt experimented with human beings?"
Arvardan laughed. "I doubt it, Lord Ennius. Nine tenths of his Synapsified rats died during treatment. He would scarcely dare use human subjects until much more progress has been made."
So Ennius sank back into his chair with a slight frown on his forehead and, thereafter, neither spoke nor ate for the remainder of the dinner.
Before midnight the Procurator had quietly left the gathering and, with a bare word to his wife only, departed in his private cruiser on the two-hour trip to the city of Chica, with the slight frown still on his forehead and a raging anxiety in his heart.
Thus it was that on the same afternoon that Arbin Maren brought Joseph Schwartz into Chica for treatment with Shekt's Synapsifier. Shekt himself had been closeted with none less than the Procurator of Earth for over an hour.
4. The Royal Road
Arbin was uneasy in Chica. He felt surrounded. Somewhere in Chica, one of the largest cities on Earth-they said it had fifty thousand human beings in it-somewhere there were officials of the great outer Empire.
To be sure, he had never seen a man of the Galaxy: yet here, in Chica, his neck was continually twisting in fear that he might. If pinned down, he could not have explained how he would identify an Outsider from an Earthman, even if he were to see one, but it was in his very marrow to feel that there was, somehow, a difference.
He looked back over his shoulder as he entered the Institute. His biwheel was parked in an open area, with a six-hour coupon holding a spot open for it. Was the extravagance itself suspicious?...Everything frightened him now. The air was full of eyes and ears.
If only the strange man would remember to remain hidden in the bottom of the rear compartment. He had nodded violently-but had he understood? He was suddenly impatient with himself. Why had he let Grew talk him into this madness?