After two days' stay in Remo's capital the Aerocars took up a goodly entourage, and we moved softly and swiftly to the Greater City.
There Xamas and all his officials awaited us, along with every Intermerean of both sexes I had met in my journeys, as well as every Municipal Custodian of the realm, and in addition the Chief Citizens of the fourteen Provinces I had not visited.
A reception fete was given me in the chief temple of the city, hoary with age and instinct with wisdom. There were songs and music by the young and happy, and apropos discourses by the older. I essayed the role of orator, thanked my entertainers for their many courtesies and the happy hours they had conferred upon a wanderer in a strange land. The afternoon and evening were a season of unalloyed happiness.
As I dropped into slumber in the house of Xamas I soliloquized: "This kindness and these honors seem significant. Perhaps the Intermereans intend to adopt me into all their knowledge and wisdom. Perhaps"——
I felt that I was tossing on the swell of the ocean. Then there was a sensation of physical pain, as if from long exposure to the elements.
So keen was this sensation that I awoke fully, started up and looked around me. It was a grayish dawn, purpling in lines near the horizon. Towering above me I saw the outlines of a great ship, lying at anchor and lazily nodding as the swells swept into the harbor.
I found myself in one of the individual Merocars, intended for a single passenger, but the compartments containing the accumulatory motors had been removed and the marks of removal deftly concealed.
It was one of the most finished Merocars of its class with the exception of the motor, constructed entirely of prepared wood, resembling a piece of wicker work, but impervious to the sea, and floated like a cork or a feather.
I was trying to determine where I was and how I came to be in my present situation. Then came to me this in the Language of Silence: