Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov [16]
“Wife,” he called vigorously. “Old woman—come here.”
An indignant head appeared at a window. The woman’s eyes followed his finger, gaped. With a cry, she dashed down the wooden stairs, snatching up an old wrap and a square of linen as she went. She emerged with the linen wrapped insecurely over her head and ears, and the wrap dangling from her shoulders.
She snuffled: “It is a ship from outer space.”
And Narovi remarked impatiently: “And what else could it be? We have visitors, old woman, visitors!”
The ship was sinking slowly to a landing on the bare frozen field in the northern portions of Narovi’s farm.
“But what shall we do?” gasped the woman. “Can we offer these people hospitality? Is the dirt floor of our hovel to be theirs and the pickings of last week’s hoecake?”
“Shall they then go to our neighbors?” Narovi purpled past the crimson induced by the cold and his arms in their sleek fur covering lunged out and seized the woman’s brawny shoulders.
“Wife of my soul,” he purred, “you will take the two chairs from our room downstairs; you will see that a fat youngling is slaughtered and roasted with tubers; you will bake a fresh hoecake. I go now to greet these men of power from outer space . . . and . . . and—” He paused, placed his great cap awry, and scratched hesitantly. “Yes, I shall bring my jug of brewed grain as well. Hearty drink is pleasant.”
The woman’s mouth had flapped idly during this speech. Nothing came out. And when that stage passed, it was only a discordant screech that issued.
Narovi lifted a finger, “Old woman, what was it the village Elders said a se’nnight since? Eh? Stir your memory. The Elders went from farm to farm—themselves! Imagine the importance of it!—to ask us that should any ships from outer space land, they were to be informed immediately on the orders of the governor.
“And now shall I not seize the opportunity to win into the good graces of those in power? Regard that ship. Have you ever seen its like? These men from the outer worlds are rich, great. The governor himself sends such urgent messages concerning them that the Elders walk from farm to farm in the cooling weather. Perhaps the message is sent throughout all Rossem that these men are greatly desired by the Lords of Tazenda—and it is on my farm that they are landing.”
He fairly hopped for anxiety, “The proper hospitality now—the mention of my name to the governor—and what may not be ours?”
His wife was suddenly aware of the cold biting through her thin house-clothing. She leaped toward the door, shouting over her shoulder, “Leave then quickly.”
But she was speaking to a man who was even then racing toward the segment of the horizon against which the ship sank.
Neither the cold of the world, nor its bleak, empty spaces worried General Han Pritcher. Nor the poverty of their surroundings, nor the perspiring peasant himself.
What did bother him was the question of the wisdom of their tactics. He and Channis were alone here.
The ship, left in space, could take care of itself in ordinary circumstances, but still, he felt unsafe. It was Channis, of course, who was responsible for this move. He looked across at the young man and caught him winking cheerfully at the gap in the furred partition, in which a woman’s peeping eyes and gaping mouth momentarily appeared.
Channis, at least, seemed completely at ease. That fact Pritcher savored with a vinegary satisfaction. His game had not much longer to proceed exactly as he wished it. Yet, meanwhile their wrist-sets were their only connection with the ship.
And then the peasant host smiled enormously and bobbed his head several times and said in a voice oily with respect, “Noble Lords, I crave leave to tell you that my eldest son—a good, worthy lad whom my poverty prevents from educating as his wisdom deserves—has informed me that the Elders will arrive soon. I trust your stay here has been as pleasant as my humble means—for I am poverty-stricken,