Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov [57]
The farmer was approaching him, clumping down the road, staring at him openly--something that made Gendibal frown. No Hamish man or woman had ever looked at him in this manner. Even the children ran away and peered from a distance.
Gendibal did not slow his own stride. There would be room enough to pass the other with neither comment nor glance and that would be best. He determined to stay away from the farmer's mind.
Gendibal drifted to one side, but the farmer was not going to have that. He stopped, spread his legs wide, stretched out his large arms as though to block passage, and said, "Ho! Be you scowler?"
Try as he might, Gendibal could not refrain from sensing the wash of pugnacity in the approaching mind. He stopped. It would be impossible to attempt to pass by without conversation and that would be, in itself, a weary task. Used as one was to the swift and subtle interplay of sound and expression and thought and mentality that combined to make up the communication between Second Foundationers, it was wearisome to resort to word combination alone. It was like prying up a boulder by arm and shoulder, with a crowbar lying nearby.
Gendibal said, quietly and with careful lack of emotion, "I am a scholar. Yes."
"Ho! You am a scowler. Don't we speak outlandish now? And cannot I see that you be one or am one?" He ducked his head in a mocking bow. "Being, as you be, small and weazen and pale and up-nosed."
"What is it you want of me, Hamishman?" asked Gendibal, unmoved.
"I be titled Rufirant. And Karoll be my previous." His accent became noticeably more Hamish. His r's rolled throatily.
Gendibal said, "What is it you want with me, Karoll Rufirant?"
"And how be you titled, scowler?"
"Does it matter? You may continue to call me 'scholar.' "
"If I ask, it matters that I be answered, little upnosed scowler."
"Well then, I am titled Stor Gendibal and I will now go about my business."
"What be your business?"
Gendibal felt the hair prickling on the back of his neck. There were other minds present. He did not have to turn to know there were three more Hamishmen behind him. Off in the distance, there were others. The farmer smell was strong.
"My business, Karoll Rufirant, is certainly none of yours."
"Say you so?" Rufirant's voice rose. "Mates, he says his business be not ours."
There was a laugh from behind him and a voice sounded. "Right he be, for his business be book-mucking and 'puter-rubbing, and that be naught for true men."
"Whatever my business is," said Gendibal firmly, "I will be about it now."
"And how will you do that, wee scowler?" said Rufirant.
"By passing you."
"You would try? You would not fear arm-stopping?"
"By you and all your mates? Or by you alone?" Gendibal suddenly dropped into thick Hamish dialect. "Art not feared alane?"
Strictly speaking, it was not proper to prod him in this manner, but it would stop a mass attack and that had to be stopped, lest it force a still greater indiscretion on his part.
It worked. Rufirant's expression grew lowering. "If fear there be, book-boy, th'art the one to be full of it. Mates, make room. Stand back and let him pass that he may see if I be feared alane."
Rufirant lifted his great arms and moved them about. Gendibal did not fear the farmer's pugilistic science; but there was always a chance that a goodly blow might land.
Gendibal approached cautiously, working with delicate speed within Rufirant's mind. Not much--just a touch, unfelt--but enough to slow reflexes that crucial notch. Then out, and into all the others, who were now gathering in greater numbers. Gendibal's Speaker mind darted back and forth with virtuosity,