He found the writer in the desk in the living room and pulled it out. He sat down to write a letter.
He typed the salutation:
Dear Morley,
He got up and began pacing up and down the room.
What would he tell him?
What could he tell him?
That he had safely arrived, and that he had a job?
That the job paid a hundred credits a day - ten times more than a man in his position could earn at any Earth job?
He went back to the writer again.
He wrote:
Just a note to let you know that I arrived here safely and already have a job. Not too good a job, perhaps, but it pays a hundred a day and that's better than I could have done on Earth.
He got up and walked again.
There had to be more than that. More than just a paragraph.
He sweated as he walked.
What could he tell him?
He went back to the writer again:
In order to learn the conditions and the customs more quickly, I have taken a job which will keep me in touch with the Kimonians. I find them to be a fine people, but sometimes a little hard to understand. I have no doubt that before too long I shall get to understand them and have a genuine liking for them.
He pushed back his chair and stared at what he'd written.
It was, he told himself, like any one of a thousand other letters he had read.
He pictured in his mind those other thousand people, sitting down to write their first letter from Kimon, searching in their minds for the polite little fables, for the slightly colored lie, for the balm that would salve their pride. Hunting for the words that would not reveal the entire truth:
I have a job of entertaining and amusing a certain family. I tell them stories and let them laugh at me. I do this because I will not admit that the fable of Kimon is a booby trap and that I've fallen into it -
No, it would never do to write like that.
Nor to write:
I'm sticking on in spite of them. So long as I make a hundred a day, they can laugh as much as they want to laugh. I'm staying here and cleaning up no matter what -
Back home he was one of the thousand. Back home they talked of him in whispers because he made the grade.
And the businessmen on board the ship, saying to him: "The one who cracks this Kimon business is the one who'll have it big," and talking in terms of billions if he ever needed backing.
He remembered Morley pacing up and down the room. A foot in the door, he'd said: "Some way to crack them. Some way to understand them. Some little thing - no big thing, but some little thing. Anything at all except the deadpan face that Kimon turns toward us."
Somehow he had to finish the letter. He couldn't leave it hanging, and he had to write it.
He turned back to the writer:
I'll write you later at greater length. At the moment I'm rushed.
He frowned at it.
But whatever he wrote, it would be wrong. This was no worse than any of another dozen things that he might write.
Must rush off to a conference.
Have an appointment with a client.
Some papers to go through.
All of them were wrong.
What was a man to do?
He wrote:
Think of you often. Write me when you can.
Morley would write him. An enthusiastic letter, a letter with a fine shade of envy tingeing it, the letter of a man who wanted to be, but couldn't be, on Kimon.
For everyone wanted to go to Kimon. That was the hell of it.
You couldn't tell the truth, when everyone would give their good right arm to go.
You couldn't tell the truth, when you were a hero and the truth would turn you into a galactic heel.
And the letters from home, the prideful letters, the envious letters, the letters happy with the thought you were doing so well - all of these would be only further chains to bind you to Kimon and to the Kimon lie.
He said to the cabinet: "How about a drink?"
"Yes, sir," said the cabinet. "Coming right up, sir."
"A long one," Bishop said, "and a strong one."
"Long and strong it is, sir."