Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [157]
“Move along, then. There are coaches waiting to take us back to the city.”
Turning away from the Grömsketter, receding rapidly now that it was edging back out into the main current, Ehomba began the long march to the end of the dock. Gate Masters paralleled him on both sides and were in turn flanked by their stalwart, alert soldiers.
“Maybe now you can tell me what this is all about?” he asked the green-clad official on his left. Like his sisters and brothers, the man’s hands were locked together in front of him.
“Certainly. We don’t act arbitrarily, you know. There is a reason for this. Your arrival was predicted by the Logicians. Taking their measurements from disturbances in the Aether and the flow of Time, they calculated the cognomen of your aura and its probable path. As you have seen, Hamacassar is a big place, where even a distinctive aura can hide. We almost missed you. That would have been tragic.”
Ehomba frowned, openly puzzled. “Why is that?”
The Gate Master looked up at him. “Because according to the Logicians’ predictions, if you were allowed to proceed on your chosen course unhindered, the flow of Time would have been substantially altered, and perhaps unfavorably.”
“Unfavorable to whom?” In the lexicon of the Naumkib, forthrightness invariably took precedent over tact. Ehomba was no exception.
“It does not matter. Not to you,” the official informed him importantly. “Having committed no crime, you are not a prisoner. You are a guest, until your friends return. Or if you prefer, you will be allowed to leave in one month’s time, once the Grömsketter is well out to sea and beyond reach.” The man smiled. His expression was, the herdsman decided, at least half genuine.
They were nearing the end of the dock. “What makes you so certain that if I was permitted to continue on my journey Time would react adversely?”
This time it was the woman on his right who replied. “The Logicians have declared it to be so. And the Logicians are never wrong.”
“Time may be a river,” Ehomba responded, “but logic is not. At least, not the logic that is discussed by the wise men and women of my village.”
“His ‘village.’” Two of the Gate Masters strolling in front of him exchanged a snickering laugh.
“This is not a village, foreigner,” declared the man on the herdsman’s left meaningfully. “This is Hamacassar, whose Board of Logicians is comprised of the finest minds the city and its surrounding provinces can provide.”
Ehomba was not intimidated. “Even the finest minds are not infallible. Even the most reasonable and logical people can make mistakes.”
“Well, according to them, detaining you is not a mistake. Whereas letting you continue on most surely would be.”
The tall southerner glanced back down the dock. In the distance, the sturdy hull of the Grömsketter was passing through the Narrows, traveling swiftly westward as the current continued to increase its speed. Turning his attention to the red-brick administration buildings up ahead, he saw several antelope-drawn coaches lined up outside. More soldiers waited there, a mounted escort to convoy him and the Gate Masters back to the city.
“You know,” he murmured conversationally, “logic is a funny thing. It can be used to solve many problems, even to predict things that may happen in the future. But it is not so very good at explaining people: who they are, what they are about, why they do the things they do. Sometimes even masters of logic and reason can think too long and too hard about something, until the truth of it becomes lost in a labyrinth of conflicting possibilities.”
While the woman on his right pondered his words, the man on his left frowned. “What are you trying to say, foreigner?”
“That anyone, however clever they believe themselves