In the Beginning by Robert Silverberg Read Free Book Online Page A

bull being groomed for the cattle show, and he didn’t like it. He decided the quickest way to fix things was to repair the thought-converter and talk to them.
    But he couldn’t do it himself. The repairs involved nothing more complex than putting three wires back in place, but he couldn’t fit his fingers through the opening to do it. He tried improvising tweezers out of two twigs, but that didn’t do it. He needed someone with small fingers—a child, perhaps. Or a woman.
    A woman. Here was where his Kejwahood was going to come in handy.
    One night as the tribe was gathered outside his hut he raised the thought-converter high over his head as a sign for silence. “Hold everything!” he thundered. “As your Kejwa, I declare this morsel strikes my fancy.”
    He pointed at a girl whom he’d noticed before—she seemed to be about seventeen or eighteen by Earthly standards and she wore her loincloth with the dignity of a matron displaying a mink. Some large precious-looking stone was strung on a necklace that dangled down between her breasts.
    She was the best of the lot. Crayden pointed to her, then to his hut—an unmistakable gesture.
    The girl flashed a glance at the old man. He nodded benignly, stroked his great beard, and smiled as she stepped forward shyly and stood before Crayden.
    “You’ll do,” he said approvingly. “A dish fit for a Kejwa.” He waved dismissal to the tribespeople and took her inside the hut.
    During the night he looked out the open entrance and saw a knot of tribespeople staring in with evident curiosity, but he didn’t let that disturb him.
    ***
    She seemed happy with the arrangement, and so did he. The blue skin didn’t trouble him at all. He had come to think of himself as the white-skinned freak among the normal people. It had been three long years on Kandoris since Crayden had had a woman, but he hadn’t forgotten anything. And this one knew all the tricks.
    The people began to bring him dead animals—strange-looking beasts, resembling Earthly ones but with differences—and left them at his door, as sacrifices. One morning there was a squirrel with horns, the next a fox with a prehensile tail.
    Whenever he walked through the village, they followed him, always at a respectful distance, and soft cries of “Kejwa” drifted through the air. His woman—he named her Winnie, after a girl he’d known on Venus—was getting the same treatment. She had become someone important now that she belonged to the Kejwa.
    He spent a full day trying to get her to fix the thought-converter. Her fingers were slim and tapering, and would fit into the opening easily. But it wasn’t simple to convey what he wanted her to do. After hours of gesturing and indicating what he wanted, she still couldn’t grasp it. Laboriously he went through it again. She looked up at him imploringly, and seemed ready to burst into tears.
    “Look, Winnie. For the last time. Just pick up these little wires and put them in here.” He showed her. “If you only understood English—”
    He showed her again. She still did nothing. He slapped her left hand, and left her in a little whimpering heap in a corner of the hut. He strode angrily out and stalked around the village. He wasn’t going to be stymied here, not when he got past every other hurdle so well.
    When he returned, night had fallen, and she was waiting for him, holding the thought-converter. She had a bright little smile, and seemed to have forgotten all about the slap. He looked at the thought-converter. The wires were in place. The Crayden luck was holding true to form.
    He kissed her, and she responded as he had taught her. After a while, he picked up the thought-converter and held it fondly.
    “Kejwa,” she said.
    This was his chance to find out, he thought. He reached underneath and snapped on the converter.
    Her lips formed the word “Kejwa” again.
    But through the converter came a stream of unexpected concepts. “Placator of the gods…noble