Once there were some children (human children, playfully) who had wanted a dog - a little playful puppy. But their father said they could not have a dog because they would not know how to treat him. But they wanted him so badly and begged their father so, that he finally brought them home a dog, a cunning little puppy, a little butterball, with a paunchy belly and four wobbly legs and melting eyes, filled with the innocence of puppyhood.
The children did not treat him as badly as you might have imagined that they would. They were cruel, as all children are. They roughed and tumbled him; they pulled his ears and tail; they teased him. But the pup was full of fun. He liked to play, and no matter what they did he came back for more. Because, undoubtedly, he felt very smug in this business of associating with the clever human race, a race so far ahead of dogs in culture and intelligence that there was no comparison at all.
But one day the children went on a picnic and when the day was over they were very tired, and forgetful, as children are very apt to be. So they went off and left the puppy.
That wasn't a bad thing, really. For children will be forgetful, no matter what you do, and the pup was nothing but a dog.
The cabinet said: "You are very late, sir."
"Yes," said Bishop, dully.
"You hurt somewhere, sir. I can sense the hurt."
"My hand," said Bishop. "I burned it in a fire."
A panel popped open in the cabinet.
"Put it in there," said the cabinet. "I'll fix it in a jiffy."
Bishop thrust his hand into the opening. He felt fingerlike appendages going over it, very gently and soothing.
"It's not a bad burn, sir," said the cabinet, "but I imagine it is painful."
Playthings, Bishop thought.
This hotel is a dollhouse - or a doghouse.
It is a shack, a tacked-together shack like the boys of Earth build out of packing cases and bits of board and paint crude, mystic signs upon.
Compared to that room back there, it is no more than a hovel, although, come to think of it, a very gaudy hovel.
Fit for humans, good enough for humans, but a hovel just the same.
And we? he thought.
And we?
The pets of children. The puppy dogs of Kimon.
Imported puppy dogs.
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the cabinet. "You are not puppy dogs."
"What's that?"
"You will pardon me, sir. I should not have spoken out. But I wouldn't have wanted you to think - "
"You never do a thing," said Bishop bitterly, "without having it all figured out. You or any of them. For you are one of them. You spoke because they wanted you to speak."
"I can assure you that's not so."
"You would deny it, naturally," said Bishop. "Go ahead and do your job. You haven't told me all they wanted you to tell me. Go ahead and finish."
"It's immaterial to me what you think," the cabinet told him. "But if you thought of yourself as a playmate..."
"That's a hot one," Bishop said.
"Infinitely better," said the cabinet, "than thinking of yourself as a puppy dog."
"So that's what they want me to think."
"They don't care," the cabinet said. "It all is up to you. It was a mere suggestion, sir."
So, all right, it was a mere suggestion.
So, all right, they were playmates and not pets at all.
The kids of Kimon inviting the dirty, ragged, runny-nosed urchins from across the tracks to play with them.
Better to be an invited kid, perhaps, than an imported dog.
But even so, it was the children of Kimon who had engineered it all - who had set up the rules for those who wished to come to Kimon, who had built the hotel, had operated it and furnished it with the progressively more luxurious and more enticing rooms, who had found the so-called jobs for humans, who had arranged the printing of the credits.
And, if that were so, then it meant that not merely the people of Earth, but the government of Earth, had negotiated, or had attempted to negotiate, with the children of another race. And that would be the mark of the difference, he thought, the difference between us.
Although, he told himself, that might not be entirely right.
Maybe he had been wrong in thinking, in the first flush of his bitterness, that he was a pet.
Maybe he was a playmate, an adult Earthman downgraded to the status of a child - and a stupid child, at that.
Maybe, if he had been wrong on the pet angle, he was wrong in the belief, as well, that it had been the children of Kimon who had arranged the immigration of the Earth folk.
And if it hadn't been simply a childish matter of asking some kids from across the tracks, if the adults of Kimon had had a hand in it, what was the setup, then? A school project, a certain phase of progressive education? Or a sort of summer camp project, designed to give the deserving but underprivileged, Earthmen a vacation away from the squalor of their native planet? Or simply a safe way in which the children of Kimon might amuse and occupy themselves, be kept from underfoot?
We should have guessed it long ago, Bishop told himself. But even if some of us might have entertained the thought, that we were either pet or playmate, we would have pushed it far away from us, would have refused to recognize it, for our pride is too tender and too raw for a thought like that.
"There you are, sir," said the cabinet. "Almost as good as new. Tomorrow you can take the dressing off."
He stood before the cabinet without answering. He withdrew his hand and let it fall to his side, like so much dead weight.
Without asking if he wanted it, the cabinet produced a drink.
"I made it long and strong," said the cabinet. "I thought you needed it."
"Thank you," Bishop said.
He took the drink and stood there with it, not touching it, not wanting to touch it until he'd finished out the thought.
And the thought would not finish out.
There was something wrong. Something that didn't track.
Our pride is too raw and tender -
There was something there, some extra words that badly needed saying.
"There is something wrong, sir?"
"Nothing wrong," said Bishop.
"But your drink."
"I'll get around to it."
The Normans had sat their horses on that Saturday afternoon, with the leopard banners curling in the breeze, with the pennons on their lances fluttering, with the sun upon their armor and the scabbards clinking as the horses pranced. They had charged, as history said they had, and they were beaten back. That was entirely right, for it had not been until late afternoon that the Saxon wall was broken, and the final fight around the dragon standard had not taken place until it was nearly dark.
But there had been no Taillefer, riding in the fore to throw up his sword and sing.
On that history had been wrong.
A couple of centuries later, more than likely, some copyist had whiled away a monotonous afternoon by writing into the prosaic story of the battle the romance and the glitter of the charge of Taillefer. Writing it in protest against the four blank walls, against his Spartan food, against the daily dullness when spring was in the air and a man should be in the fields or woods instead of shut indoors, hunched with his quills and inkpots.
And that is the way it is with us, thought Bishop. We write the half-truth and the half-lie in our letters home. We conceal a truth or we obscure a fact, or we add a line or two that, if not a downright lie, is certainly misleading.
We do not face up to facts, he thought. We gloss over the man crawling in the grass, with his torn-out guts snagging on the brambles. We write in the Taillefer.
And if we only did it in our letters, it would not be so bad. But we do it to ourselves. We protect our pride by lying to ourselves. We shield our dignity by deliberate indignation.
"Here," he said to the cabinet, "have a drink on me."
He set the glass, still full, on the top of the cabinet.
The cabinet gurgled in surprise.
"I do not drink," it said.
"Then take it back and put it in the bottle."
"I can't do that," said the cabinet, horrified. "It's already mixed."
"Separate it, then."
"It can't be separated," wailed the cabinet. "You surely don't expect me - "
There was a little swish, and Maxine stood in the center of the room.
She smiled at Bishop.
"What goes on?" she asked.
The cabinet wailed at her. "He wants me to unmix a drink. He wants me to separate it, the liquor from the mix. He knows I can't do that."
"My, my," she said, "I thought you could do anything."
"I can't unravel a drink," the cabinet said primly. "Why don't you take it off my hands?"
"That's a good idea," said the girl. She walked forward and picked up the drink.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked Bishop. "Turning chicken on us?"
"I just don't want a drink," said Bishop. "Hasn't a man got a right to - "
"Of course," she said. "Of course you have."
She sipped the drink, looking at him above the rim.
"What happened to your hand?"
"Burned it."
"You're old enough not to play with fire."
"You're old enough not to come barging into a room this way," Bishop told her. "One of these days you'll reassemble yourself in the precise spot where someone else is standing."
She giggled. "That would be fun," she said. "Think of you and me - "
"It would be a mess," said Bishop.
"Invite me to sit down," said Maxine. "Let's act civilized and social."
"Sure, sit down," said Bishop.
She picked out a couch.
"I'm interested in this business of teleporting yourself," said Bishop. "I've never asked you before, but you told me - "
"It just came to me," she said.
"But you can't teleport. Humans aren't parapsychic - "
"Some day, Buster, you'll blow a fuse. You get so steamed up."
He went across the room and sat down beside her.
"Sure, I get steamed up," he said. "But - "
"What now?"
"Have you ever thought... well, have you ever tried to work at it? Like moving something else, some object - other than yourself?"
"No, I never have."
"Why not?"
"Look, Buster. I drop in to have a drink with you and to forget myself. I didn't come primed for a long technical discussion. I couldn't, anyway. I just don't understand. There's so much we don't understand."
She looked at him and there was something very much like fright brimming in her eyes.
"You pretend that you don't mind," she said. "But you do mind. You wear yourself out pretending that you don't mind at all."
"Then let's quit pretending," Bishop said. "Let's admit - "
She had lifted the glass to drink and now, suddenly, it slipped out of her hand.
"Oh - "
The glass halted before it struck the floor. It hovered for a moment, then it slowly rose. She reached out and grasped it.
And then it slipped again from her suddenly shaking hand. This time it hit the floor and spilled.
"Try it again," said Bishop.
She said: "I never tried. I don't know how it happened. I just didn't want to drop it, that was all. I wished I hadn't dropped it and then - "
"But the second time - "
"You fool," she screamed, "I tell you I didn't try. I wasn't putting on an exhibition for you. I tell you that I don't know what happened."
"But you did it. It was a start."
"A start?"
"You caught the glass before it hit the floor. You teleported it back into your hand."
"Look, Buster," she said grimly, "quit kidding yourself. They're watching all the time. They play little tricks like that. Anything for a laugh."
She rose, laughing at him, but there was a strangeness in her laughing.
"You don't give yourself a chance," he told her. "You are so horribly afraid of being laughed at. You got to be a wise guy."
"Thanks for the drink," she said.
"But Maxine - "
"Come up and see me sometime."
"Maxine! Wait!"
But she was gone.