Part 16 (2/2)

”A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a n.o.ble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community. I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?”

He strapped the s.h.i.+p bag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not hold. He made a minor adjustment to the s.p.a.ce communicator. It was not ruined, but n.o.body else could use it without much labor finding out what he'd done. This was the sort of thing his grandfather on Zan would have advised. His grandfather's views were explicit.

”Helping one's neighbor,” he'd said frequently in Hoddan's hearing while Hoddan was a youth, ”is all right as a two-way job. But maybe he's laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he can't do you no harm and you're a lot better off and he's a h.e.l.l of a lot better neighbor!”

This was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that Derec was one of them. The other would represent the police or the planetary government. It was probably just as true of Don Loris and others.

Hoddan found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed.

Even though presently he sat at breakfast high up on the battlements, and Fani looked at him with interesting anxiety, he was filled with forebodings. The future looked dark. Yet what he asked of fate and chance was so simple! He asked only a career and riches and a delightful girl to marry and the admiration of his fellow-citizens. Trivial things!

But it looked like he'd have to do battle for even such minor gifts of destiny!

Fani watched him breakfast.

”I don't understand you,” she complained. ”Anybody else would be proud of what he'd done and angry with my father. Or don't you think he'll act ungratefully?”

”Of course I do!” said Hoddan.

”Then why aren't you angry?”

”I'm hungry,” said Hoddan.

”And you take it for granted that I want to be properly grateful,” said Fani in one breath, ”and yet you haven't shown the least appreciation of my getting two horses over in that patch of woodland yonder”--she pointed and Hoddan nodded--”and having Thal there with orders to serve you faithfully--”

She stopped short. Don Loris appeared, beaming, at the top of the steps leading here from the great hall where conferences took place. He regarded Hoddan benignly.

”This is a very bad business, my dear fellow,” he said benevolently.

”Has Fani told you of the people who arrived from Walden in search of you? They tell me terrible things about you!”

”Yes,” said Hoddan. He prepared a roll for biting. He said: ”One of them, I think, is named Derec. He's to identify me so good money isn't wasted paying for the wrong man. The other man's police, isn't he?” He reflected a moment. ”If I were you, I'd start talking at a million credits. You might get half that.”

He bit into the roll as Don Loris looked shocked.

”Do you think,” he asked indignantly, ”that I would give up the rescuer of my daughter to emissaries from a foreign planet, to be locked in a dungeon for life?”

”Not in those words,” conceded Hoddan. ”But after all, despite your deep grat.i.tude to me, there are such things as one's duty to humanity as a whole. And while it would cause you bitter anguish if someone dear to you represented a danger to millions of innocent women and children--still, under such circ.u.mstances you might feel it necessary to do violence to your own emotions.”

Don Loris looked at him with abrupt suspicion. Hoddan waved the roll.

”Moreover,” he observed, ”grat.i.tude for actions done on Darth does not ent.i.tle you to judge of my actions on Walden. While you might and even should feel obliged to defend me in all things I have done on Darth, your obligation to me does not let you deny that I may have acted less defensibly on Walden.”

Don Loris looked extremely uneasy.

”I may have thought something like that,” he admitted. ”But--”

”So that,” said Hoddan, ”while your debt to me cannot and should not be overlooked, nevertheless”--Hoddan put the roll into his mouth and spoke less clearly--”you feel that you should give consideration to the claims of Walden to inquire into my actions while there.”

<script>