boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

Mary Celestial 515
realize that in Xilmuch at that time there were different communities, all equal, but
speaking different tongues—”
“You mean, different nations?”
“Of course; that is your word for them. I intended to travel much, and I wanted
to be able to associate with all whom I met. So this, I stipulated, must be part of
my second wish.”
“So that’s how you speak Standard Galactic, is it? That’s puzzled me a lot.”
“That is how. And if you had spoken any other language, I could have understood
and spoken it just as well.”
“And what was your third wish?” Patrick began to see a pattern forming—and
wished that he did not.
Zoth paced the room, his glass of stralp in his hand. He glanced furtively at the
door through which Jyk had vanished. Then he said in a shaking voice:
“I told the grosh—the Nameless forgive me!—that I wished that the girl with
whom I was then so madly in love should love me in return, as madly and forever. I
wished that she might be willing to marry me at once. And I wished that she should
never leave me, but would live exactly as long as I did myself.
“And the grosh said, ‘Granted.’ ”
“That’s three wishes.” Patrick hesitated. “Did you make any more?”
“One more. Do you know what a war is?”
“Certainly. It has been centuries since there has been a war on Earth, but in
the past they were only too common. Even now, we must guard vigilantly against
hostility and conflict between rival groups.”
“We had not progressed so far. At one time or another, all of our various—
nations, as you call them—on Xilmuch had been at one another’s throats. We had
torn one another almost to pieces, and as our science advanced our wars grew still
more terrible. And at that very moment there was threat of a new war that would
have advanced my own people, here in this city.
“I was an idealistic young man, who hated bloodshed. So for my fourth wish,
I wished that everywhere on Xilmuch there should be complete and perpetual
peace.
“ ‘Granted,’ said the grosh.
“These were my four wishes. And I told the grosh that when I was ready to make
the fifth, I would summon him: these beings are immortal, you know. I have still
not made it.”
“But I don’t understand,” Patrick objected. “It seems to me that those were all
practicable wishes. And you say you had the—the grosh in your power. Didn’t he
really grant them?”
“He granted them all,” said Zoth.
“As for the first, I am as you see me. I shall live at least 27 years more, and I shall
never know illness or bodily pain. That wish I have no doubt the grosh granted me
with pleasure—knowing that long before the end I should yearn in vain for death.
“And I have, as you observe, every comfort and luxury I could desire. I live in a
palace, and I have at my disposal the food, the clothing, the furniture, all the paraphernalia
of life of a great city. The supply, easily obtained, will certainly outlast my
lifetime. As for the ability to converse with my fellow-beings in their own tongues,