Cubs of the Wolf | Page 9

are. They have some incomprehensible belief that their existence
is of no value unless they are serving their fellow beings. Since that
means all of them they can't be satisfied by serving each other so they
have to pick on some other race.
"I don't recall when they first showed up in the Nucleus, but it's been
many generations ago. There've been Ids in my family for a half dozen
generations anyway."
"They had space flight, so they came under their own power?"
Cameron asked incredulously.
"No. Nothing like that. You can't imagine them building spaceships can

you? They migrated at first as lowest-class passengers on the
commercial lines. Nobody knows just where they came from. They
don't even know their home worlds. At first we tried to persuade them
to go somewhere else, but then we saw how useful they could be with
their fanatic belief in servitude.
"At present there is probably no family in the Nucleus that doesn't have
at least one Id sargh. Many of us have one for every member of the
family." Marthasa paused. The tone of his voice changed. "When
you've had one almost all your life as I've had Sal Karone it--well, it
does something to you."
"What do you mean?" Cameron asked cautiously.
"Consider the situation from Sal Karone's point of view. He has no life
whatever that is his own. His whole purpose is to give me
companionship and satisfy my requirements. And I don't have to force
him in any way. It's all voluntary. He's free to leave, even, any time he
wants to. But I'm certain he never will."
"Why do you feel so sure of this?"
"It's hard to explain. I feel as if I've become so much a part of him that
he couldn't survive alone any more. He's the one who's made it that
way, not me. I have become indispensable to his existence. That's the
way I explain it to myself. Most of my friends agree that this is about
right."
"It's rather difficult to understand a relationship like that--unless you
put it in terms I am familiar with on Earth."
"Yes--? What would it be called among your people?"
"When a man so devotes his life to another we say it is because of
love."
Marthasa considered the word. "You would be wrong," he said. "It is
just that in some way we have become indispensable to the Ids. They're

parasites, if you want to put it that way. But they provide us a
relationship we can get nowhere else, and that does us a great deal of
good. That's what I meant when I said it does something to us."
"What about the Id's own culture? Haven't they any community ties
among themselves, or do they ignore their own kind?"
"We've never investigated very much. I suppose some of our scholars
know the answer to that, but the rest of us don't. The Ids have
communities, all right. Not all of them are in service as sarghs at one
time. They have little groups and communities on the outskirts of our
cities, but they don't amount to much. As a race they are simply inferior.
They don't have the capacity for a strong culture of their own, so they
can't exist independently and build a social structure like other people.
It's this religion of theirs that does it. They won't let go of it, and as
long as they hang onto it they can't stand on their own feet. But you
don't need to feel sorry for them. We treat them all right."
"Of course--didn't mean to imply anything else," said Cameron. "Do
you know if there are other Id groups serving in other galaxies?"
"Must be thousands of them altogether. Out beyond the Nucleus, away
from your galaxy, you can't find a planet anywhere that isn't using the
Ids. It's a wonderful setup. The Ids get what they want, and we get
sarghs with nothing like the slave relationship you had in mind. With
slaves there's rebellion, constant need of watchfulness, and no genuine
companionship. A sargh is different. He can be a man's friend."
III
They came out of the darkness of Transpace that evening and the stars
returned in the glory of a million closely gathered suns. The Markovian
Nucleus lay in a galaxy of tightly packed stars that made bright the
nights of all their planets. It was a spectacle for Cameron, who had
traveled but little away from the Solar System, and for Joyce who had
never traveled at all.
Marthasa and Sal Karone were with them in the lounge watching the

screens as the ship changed drives. The Markovian squinted a moment
and pointed to a minor dot near the corner of the view. "That's our
destination. Another six