CHAPTER VII
Gawroi's office at Kedaki College was furnished home-style with low benches and a central mat rather than chairs and a desk. The home-style furnishings, in their simple beauty, were not popular here on Kedak. Typical, thought Gawroi angrily. For five thousand years home-style is good enough for the Kedaki. For five thousand years no muddle-brained agitators question the value of home-style, its beauty or its function. Then a wave of false galactic brotherhood sweeps Kedak and the big, ungainly desks and chairs clutter more offices every day, so a man finds it difficult to move about without striking his body against some sharp edge or other.
And emotionally? Emotionally it is the same. The Kedaki religion is—the Kedaki religion. The cornerstone on which the world-spanning structure that is the edifice of Kedaki culture rests. The womb of knowledge and the sum of knowledge. But—questioned now. Doubted secretly by some among the highborn, as if they get a masochistic satisfaction from believing their gods are false and their fifty-generation belief in metempsychosis an attempt of their own class to keep the lowborn in servitude. Why, it was ridiculous!
"Come in, come in, my dear fellow!" Gawroi boomed, motioning his visitor to one of the low benches. "So you are Felg."
"I came as soon as I saw your announcement," Felg said, seating himself uncomfortably on the low bench.
"Tell me about it, Felg. What you said by phone, it could be very important."
Felg licked his lips nervously. "You realize I'm not usually an informer, but when I saw that the Chairman of the Department of Archaeology at the College and the police were both seeking this Matlin...."
"The police were not my idea," Gawroi growled. And they weren't, but not for the reason he would have this Felg think. If the Five Bureau decided to ring in the police, he supposed that was the Five Bureau's business. But the police might make Matlin—the Earthman Rhodes, he was sure—wary. "Now, then. You say you know the whereabouts of Matlin?"
"I think so."