Impossible Dreamers

Chapter 25 (degtwi-ir): The education of Pritch

'Seems like the machines don't work very well on these specimens. The things they think don't show up properly. Not in a way we can understand, anyway. That's another thing you need to find out about. Their thought patterns are so different from our people that we can't make head or tail of them. For some reason Himester Sleech thought you might be able to shed some light on why that was.'

'Why do I have to go in the middle of the night?' Pritch asked.

'No more questions,' Hool replied, sharply. 'Quick, get ready.'

It was a dreary night, with a light rain falling. A vehicle was ready to transport them quickly to the Palace, which was a novelty for Pritch, who mostly had to walk wherever he needed to go. He sat alongside Hool, while he gave Pritch some more details of his mission.

These particular Grabblers were top people in their land, something like Himesters in Bartyronis. But the Grabblers didn't seem to understand the term 'Himester'. The idea of high and low people was not something they were able to grasp. At least, not in the way that it worked in Bartyronis.

So far, nobody from Bartyronis could understand the primitive Grabbler system. But however it worked, it had enabled the people in the Grabble valley to develop some things that could not be found in Bartyronis. Pritch was to find out about this system by gaining the trust of the Grabblers. He was to talk to them about how they lived, what they believed and how they decided things. He had to pretend to be their friend, as using the more common ways of trying to get information from these people was not working.

Of course, the barbaric system the Grabblers had practised for so long could never be useful in Bartyronis, but it was possible that something could be gained by understanding it. And this would also help subdue the natives when the glorious Bartyronian Guardians visited their land. This visitation was imminent.

Even at this time of night, the Palace was brightly lit, and as he walked through the entrance hall Pritch had the feeling that it was daytime, although he was still sleepy. They went down to the basement, and as they got lower in the building the lights got dimmer and dimmer.

The room Pritch was eventually pushed into was bare and grey, with no windows. Apart from the two Grabblers, there was a Guardian carrying a big, heavy-looking weapon. The Guardian looked bored, staring straight ahead, his eyes quite blank. Every now and then Pritch heard him mumble quietly, under his breath. He seemed to be counting. Pritch did not distract him.

The two people who faced Pritch looked tired, as though they had been awake a very long time indeed. They wore strange clothes, like wizards in an ancient story. But the clothes were marked and ripped in places. One of them, the woman, had marks around her left eye, as though she had fallen and hurt herself, or perhaps somebody else had hurt her.

Some stories about the Grabblers had already circulated, from the first lot of Guardians who had crossed the mountain, the advance party. So Pritch knew that Grabblers were both stupid and nasty. They had been cut off from civilisation in their valley for longer than anybody could remember, and knew nothing about the real world. According to the news that he saw on his watcher, the opinion of experts was that they were hardly human at all, but actually a sort of animal.

Pritch looked at the two examples of Grabbler life, the first he had ever seen, and wondered if these really were some sort of half-human animals. Their skin was darker than his own, and darker than that of anyone in Great Bartyronis, but they looked quite human to Pritch. In fact, there was something about their expressions that seemed to him to be intelligent, though he couldn't work out what this something was. They looked like they had been having a hard time, and Pritch couldn't help feeling sorry for them. Pritch was not a brave man, but he was a sympathetic man, who felt it keenly when somebody was experiencing trouble. It had always been one of his weaknesses, and because of it, he had no chance of ever becoming any sort of Master, let alone a Himester.