Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [62]
“Improper contemplations?” Ehomba’s face contorted. “What is that?”
“Thinking not in alignment or kind with the approved general mode of thinking decreed for Tethspraih,” the mind cop informed him importantly.
“Well,” murmured Ehomba, “since we just arrived in your country, there is no way we could know what constitutes approved thinking and what does not, now could we? I have never heard of such a thing.”
“Hoy, that’s true,” Simna concurred self-righteously. “How can you arrest us for violating some ordinance we know nothing about?”
“I am only following orders. I was told to bring you to the rectory.” His fingers hovered close to his sword, and those behind him tensed. On the far side of the tavern, two couples departed in haste without paying their bill. The owner, a petrified expression on his face, did not go after them.
Simna’s jaw tightened and his own hand started to shift, but Ehomba raised a hand to forestall him. “Of course we will go with you.”
The swordsman gaped at him. “We will?”
“We do not want any trouble. And I would like to know who has been reading our thoughts, and how.”
“Well, I wouldn’t.”
“Then stay.” Ehomba waked Ahlitah, whose unexpected and suddenly looming presence swiftly wiped the complacent smiles from the faces of the police contingent. After whispering an explanation to the big cat, it nodded once and ambled out from behind the table. The police drew back farther, but at a sign from their leader kept their weapons holstered and sheathed.
“I’m glad you’ve decided to cooperate.” The officer nodded in the big cat’s direction and invoked a grateful smile. “Very glad.”
“We have just arrived here and we do not want to make any trouble.” Ehomba started toward the door. “Let us go to this rectory and see what is wanted of us.”
Simna hesitated, growled something nasty under his breath, then picked up his own pack and followed, falling in beside his friend. “You better know what you’re doing,” he whispered as the police escorted them out onto the street and turned left. “I don’t like jails.”
The herdsman barely glanced in his companion’s direction. He was much more interested in their new surroundings and in the people who were staring back at him than in the swordsman’s complaints. The citizens of the Dukedom were wholly human; no other simians here. No intelligent apes and orangs, chimps or bonobos. To his way of thinking it rendered the otherwise imposing town a poorer place.
Striding along importantly in the forefront, the police official led them through the streets, past stores and restaurants, apartments and workshops, until they crossed a neatly paved square to halt outside the towering wooden door of a large stone structure. It was decorated with finely sculpted portraits of men and women holding all manner of articles upon which writing had been incised. There were tablets and scrolls, bare slabs of rock, and thickly bound books. The graven expressions of the statues bespoke ancient wisdom and the accumulation of centuries of knowledge.
Other signatures of learning festooned the building: chemical apparatus and tools whose function was unknown to Ehomba, mathematical signs and symbols, human figures raising bridges and towers and other structures—all indicating a reverence for knowledge and erudition. For the endemic songbirds and parrots the multiplicity of sculptures provided a nesting ground that verged on the paradisiacal.
Simna was openly mystified. “This doesn’t have the look or feel of any jail I ever spent time in.”
“You are especially knowledgeable in that area?” Ehomba inquired dryly.
“Hoy, sure!” the swordsman replied cheerfully. “Just part of my extensive résumé of experience.”
The herdsman grunted as the door was opened wide by an acolyte clad in a simple white robe emblazoned with mathematical symbols. “We may need to draw on it. Though prior to this journey I had spent little time in towns, I am pretty sure that a police escort is not sent forth to escort people anywhere other than to a jail.”
It did not look much like a lockup, however. Simna continued